[Marxism-Thaxis] From Vietnam to Venezuela - Socialism is 'viable' problem-solver
From Vietnam to Venezuela - Socialism is 'viable' problem-solver Author: Tony Pecinovsky http://www.pww.org/article/author/view/75 People's Weekly World Newspaper, 09/01/05 09:24 CARACAS, Venezuela - Experience and achievement have shown us that socialism is viable and economically effective at solving social problems, Tran Doc Loi, a member of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union's international department, told the World at a forum here titled Vietnam: 60 Years of National Independence and Socialism. Tran, a member of the Vietnamese delegation to the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students, spoke with the World about many topics, including Vietnam's fight for liberation, internal development, the socialist-oriented market economy and the impact of Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the 30th anniversary of its victory over U.S. imperialism in the southern part of the country. Despite these historic gains, Tran said, the legacy of the war has made development very difficult. Three million Vietnamese were killed during the war and 4 million were injured. Forty-five million liters of Agent Orange were used in Vietnam, causing an estimated 2-4 million victims, people who have suffered birth defects, chloracne, Hodgkin's disease, cancers, spina bifida, and soft tissue sarcoma as a result of the illegal use of chemical weapons. Many Vietnamese also die as a result of undetonated landmines every year. Vietnam is still in the initial stages of building socialism, said Tran. There are a lot of challenges to overcome politically, economically, culturally and socially. Socialist development can be economically and politically better. But we are working to combine our national interests with the objective international situation. In the past 60 years Vietnam has gone through two stages of development, said Tran. The first was the liberation from colonialism and imperialist aggression. The second is the construction of socialism. At this stage we are working to improve the life of the people, expand education, health care and life expectancy, said Tran. We are struggling to unite the people for the building of socialism. Tran said Vietnam is utilizing a socialist-oriented market economy to improve economic efficiency as a way to improve the people's living conditions. Pure market economic development is unable to carry with it social development, he said. The market must be under state management to ensure healthy development of the economy, thus facilitating social advancement. According to Tran, Vietnam's gross domestic product has increased at about 7 percent per year in recent years. Food production has increased from 17.5 million tons in 1987 to 39 million tons in 2004. The industrial share of the GDP has increased from 29 percent in 1986 to 40 percent in 2003. And about 25 percent of the national budget has been earmarked for social programs. The focus of the government is to assist the poor and disadvantaged of society, said Tran. When asked about the changes taking place within Venezuelan society, Tran said, We are excited to learn about the Bolivarian Revolution. The Venezuelan government is trying to provide education and expand health care. They are enabling the people to participate in the political and economic life of the country. The nature of the revolutionary process is very similar and the people of Vietnam and the people of Venezuela share a common objective, Tran added. What is happening in Venezuela is part of a new way, a new possibility of bringing a revolution that will lead to socialism. This is very significant for all progressive forces of the world. [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Labor Day at Camp Casey Detroit--Day 15
http://www.blogger.com/posts.g?blogID=15808640 Tuesday, September 06, 2005 Labor Day at Camp Casey Detroit--Day 15 Get down, Get up! Get out of Iraq! Not the war machine! Remember New Orleans! If we ever thought we were in the minority in voicing our call to Bring the troops home NOW!, yesterday's massive (47,000 people) Labor Day Parade here in Detroit showed us otherwise. We, my friends, are now in the majority! The response we 100 peace activists received from those 47,000 union members, their families, City Council candidates and high school marching bands made it crystal clear that the people say NO to this war on Iraq, they want their sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers home NOW, and are appalled that our nation was so ill-equiped in the face of Katrina's devastation in New Orleans and the Gulf States. Whenever a delegation of marchers would first see our signs and banners, hear our chants and receive our flyers, they would raise their fists in agreement, wave their arms, give us the thumbs up, nod their heads, shout YES!, flash us the peace sign, join their voices to ours in the chants, and invariably take the No War sign we offered and carry it proudly for the rest of the parade. The response was 100% against the war! And these were the workers, folks who make up what is called Middle America. Yes, there has been a major shift in public opinion and we here in Detroit saw it yesterday. So, watch out Washington! We have had enough of your aggression, arrogance, greed and lack of care or concern about us, the people. These people, the ones you choose to dismiss as unimportant, are coming together in ways you cannot imagine, and we are gaining momentum and confidence day by day. There is NO stopping us now! September 24th in Washington, DC, you will see evidence of this grassroots resistance to your policies and wars. We will take over your city and there will be NO ignoring us then! Just wait and see... So yesterday, Labor Day in Detroit, marked a new moment in the building of a People's Movement, and we at Camp Casey Detroit helped ignite the flames by our 15 days of 24 hours-a-day, 7 days-a-week commitment to saying NO TO WAR with our time, energy, minds, hearts and bodies. And after holding our signs and banners for the hour and a half it took for the Labor Day Parade to pass our block there in Grand Circus Park, about 30 of us carried our message down to Hart Plaza where the Detroit Jazz Festival was starting for the day. The police wouldn't let us onto the Plaza, so we marched in a circle on the Jefferson Avenue sidewalk with our signs and banners. What I will remember about that vigil were the two young boys who joined us and started the chant, Money for Schools, Not for War! Yes, we Americans are finally catching on! --posted by Patricia ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] U.S. relations of production acting as fetter on product
...Waistline2 at aol.com Comment To the point. Levies are not productive forces ^ Louie Nye from the Steve Allen show : Why not ? ^ and at best a specific stage of development of levies will indicate a certain stage of development of the technological regime and how the human components of the productive forces uses its material power. Actually, levies are a component of the infrastructure. ^ CB: What do you mean by infrastructure ? It is true that a combination of the actual social organization of the people of Cuba, in their economic/social and cultural life, and the form of property relations as ownership rights of their means of production; along with the practical activity of the Cuban Party, creates a lived circumstance where the human components of the productive forces - people, and their well being is priority number one, in contradistinction to the dictates and demands of bourgeois property as the private sector of economy and political guardian of the social life in our country. Marx is quoted as stating: At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or - what is but a legal expression for the same thing - with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution I have often wondered and worked out for myself the meaning of an epoch. What constitutes an epoch in the Marxist standpoint? ^ CB: period of time that is more than one generation. ^^ The events in New Orleans or rather the hurricane devastating Florida, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana cannot begin the social revolution as an epochal event because social revolution for Marx grows out of the conflict between the material productive forces and the existing relations of production, . . . with the property relations. ^^ CB: However, I am saying levies are productive forces, and, a conflict between relations of production and productive forces is when a lot of people get fucked over because the relations of production/property relations cause the productive forces to be fettered ,i.e. prevented from being used to their full potential so as to prevent people from getting fucked over; and to the extent that people get fed up and change the relations of production as a result of some crisis resulting from this conflict. ^^ The social revolution is well underway already. ^^ CB: What is the evidence of this ? ^ Society is in fact leaping - in transition, to a qualitatively higher mode of production as it leaves industrial society. This process is taking place unevenly across the face of the earth as it must and always does. Marx quote, perhaps his most famous, is interesting and filled with conceptual gold nuggets. Actually, one can read relations of production to mean more than simply the property relations. ^ CB: But that would be at variance with what Marx says in the passage. He says they are the same thing. At any rate levies are not the meaning of the productive forces. ^ CB: No, I think the levies are part of the productive forces in Marx's sense. That's pretty certain. They are only a small part , but they _are_ productive forces. They produce dry land where otherwise there would be a lake. One of the most famous ancient forms of productive forces is similar , but opposite: irrigation systems. See Wittfogel's theory. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] reflections at the end of Day 17 at Camp Casey Detroit
reflections at the end of Day 17 at Camp Casey Detroit http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3053/1476/1600/9-6-05-late-afternoon.jpg If I may speak personally, these are amazing times for me. Never before have I felt so inspired, energized and committed to my work for peace. What is happening at Camp Casey Detroit is exactly what needs to happen, especially during these times of such a painful, tragic and inexcusable breakdown in the social fabric of my country. New Orleans has shown that what we thought we had in this so-called land of opportunity--a safety net to catch us when we fall--was just an illusion. If there IS any net, it is only for the privileged among us. For those who are poor, black, young, old, infirm and/or without the resources to fend for themselves, life in these United States is a risk at best, a disaster at worst. Your government cares nothing about you, and, in fact, makes decisions every day that threaten your very lives. Many of us had suspected this before, but now we know it is true. So what do we do about it? We ask the hard questions publicly, we don't let them get off with their callously superficial answers, and we organize ourselves in such a way that coalitions are formed and movements are strengthened. No longer can we go off on our separate tangents. No longer do we have the time to waste bickering over the small stuff that divides us. Now it is time to come together and say, NO to corporate control of our politicians, NO to our tax dollars going to war rather than to our society's very real needs, NO to our children being sent to fight, kill and die in countries that are no threat to us, NO to governmental leaders who curry favor with their rich campaign donors by allowing them to despoil the earth, divert the waters, destroy the wetlands, pollute the air, deforest our wilderness areas, choose oil over our safety and the safety of the countless species of life with whom we share this planet. And it is time to say YES to creating the world we want, YES to respecting our wondrous diversity and calling forth everyone's gifts not just those who entertain us or play sports or find fame under some spotlight or other. We must say YES to community, to creativity, to critical thinking, to organizing for change, to looking for answers outside the box. We cannot waste our precious time whining, complaining, blaming, or denying the truth of what is happening. NOW is the time, my sisters and brothers, and, as the song says, We are the ones we've been waiting for. For us at Camp Casey Detroit, we've seen what it feels like to come together as one people and stand our ground...literally. What we have found for the past 17 days and nights on that street corner in the middle of Detroit is a reason to get up in the morning, to stay informed and aware, to organize, strategize, create new options, form deep and lasting bonds with all kinds of people, and to simply keep on keepin' on no matter what they do in Washington, DC or anyplace else when human rights and needs are ignored. Yes, WE are the ones we've been waiting for. And how grateful I am to be a small part of it all. --posted by Patricia http://www.blogger.com/posts.g?blogID=15808640 ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Craig Roberts sees Marxism revival
This is a forward from PEN-L CB ^ * To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * Subject: Paul Craig Roberts sees Marxism revival * From: Carl Remick [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * Date: Thu, 8 Sep 2005 11:40:56 + [Pretty remarkable column for a guy who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan.] The Vicious Downward Cycle of the American Economy: Resurrecting Karl Marx By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS Libertarians and free trade economists don't realize it, but they are pulling Marx out of his grave. Free traders are resurrecting class war, not because they are Marxists but because they confuse free trade with global labor arbitrage. Free traders turn cold shoulders to US job losses from offshore outsourcing, because they mistake the losses for the beneficial workings of comparative advantage. Committed to a 200 year old theory that they no longer understand, free traders are cheering on the destruction of middle class jobs and the dismantling of the ladders of upward mobility that make large income disparities politically acceptable. The destruction of the stabilizing middle class is occurring simultaneously with an extraordinary increase in income inequalities. Not so long ago CEOs were paid 20 times more than the average employee; now some are paid hundreds of times more. The gilded age is returning while the value of a college degree is declining. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' 10-year jobs forecast, the majority of US jobs that will be created in the coming decade will be in domestic services that do not require a college education. This is a strange job outlook for a high tech economy allegedly benefitting from free trade. Domestic services are nontradable. The US economy has not created a net new job in tradable goods and services in the 21st century. Free trade economists have forgotten that not all trade reflects the beneficial workings of comparative advantage. For comparative advantage to function, a country's capital must stay at home and be allocated to activities in which the country has comparative advantage. The other necessary condition is that countries have different internal cost ratios of producing different goods. When the principle of comparative advantage was discovered, capital was mainly kept at home under the watchful eye of the owners and protected by the country's laws. Tradable commodities were primarily products influenced by climate and geography, guaranteeing that the cost of a yard of wool in terms of a bottle of wine would vary among countries. Today capital is more mobile than tradable goods. Modern production functions are based on acquired knowledge and produce identical results regardless of location. When a US corporation closes a factory in Ohio and relocates its production for US markets to China, the loss of US jobs is not the result of a Chinese firm gaining a comparative advantage over the Ohio one. It is the result of US capital seeking absolute advantage in lower cost Chinese labor. Free trade economists have completely forgotten that the flow of resources to where they have absolute advantage does not result in mutual benefit. The country that receives the resources gains and the other country loses. When capital and technology flow from the US to China and India, the productivity of labor in China and India rises. In the US it falls. Outsourcing is eliminating entire American occupations in engineering and information technology. As there are fewer jobs for graduates, engineering enrollments in the US are declining. Libertarians and free traders are so emotionally enamored of the market that they have forgotten that markets can as easily work against a country as for it. In the US, markets are working to reduce the supply of American engineers as US corporations lay off their American employees and replace them with cheaper Chinese and Indians. Product development, or research and development, follows manufacturing. As US manufacturing moves offshore, so does RD. Innovation follows RD, with the consequence that US science is also in relative decline. In brief, the US is developing the labor force characteristics of a third world country in which jobs are available only in lower productivity, lower paid hands on domestic services. For engineering and IT jobs that remain in the US, fewer are filled by Americans. US firms have learned that they can pay foreigners on H-1B and L-1 work visas lower salaries, force their American employees to train their foreign replacements, and then discharge their American workers. Consequently, there is double-digit unemployment among American software engineers, IT professionals and computer programmers. As Lou Dobbs exposed recently on CNN, the US Department of Labor is currently reserving some 52,000 high tech job openings in US firms for H-1B visa holders. Bodyshops use the visas to bring in
[Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Craig Roberts sees Marxism revivalVictor
victor : Mr. Roberts should read some of this Marxist stuff. In a developed state such as is the US (at least in theory in light of recent events) the rate of profit is in a steady decline, first, by replacement of productive labour by more developed, efficient? means of production, and, second, by the rising costs of development in general. The decline in the sources of variable surplus value that characterises developed industrial states forces them to look for new sources of the kind of surplus value that brings profits. Cheap, well-trained Indian, Chinese, Malayan labour is just what is needed to resuscitate the rate of profit for serious capital enterprise. Globalisation is exactly this process of transferring production from expensive developed countries to cheap developing countries. Need I add that Marx told you so? Victor Victor, Your analysis sounds good to me, but Roberts is also saying, in his own way, that Marx told you so . But unlike u , Roberts is a rightwing , anti-Marxist, which makes it kind of noteworthy, no ? Note the note at the beginning: [Pretty remarkable column for a guy who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan.] In the legal evidence, we call this a (sort of) declaration against instance. When someone makes a statement that is against their own interests, it is an indication of high veracity. Why would they lie about something against their own interest, and in this case against his ideological interest ? Charles - Original Message - From: Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis To: 'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx andthe thinkers he inspired' marxism-thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis Sent: Friday, September 09, 2005 13:56 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Craig Roberts sees Marxism revival This is a forward from PEN-L CB ^ * To: PEN-L at http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis mailto:PEN-L at DOMAIN.HIDDEN http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis * Subject: Paul Craig Roberts sees Marxism revival * From: Carl Remick carlremick at xxx http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis mailto:carlremick at DOMAIN.HIDDEN http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis * Date: Thu, 8 Sep 2005 11:40:56 + [Pretty remarkable column for a guy who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan.] The Vicious Downward Cycle of the American Economy: Resurrecting Karl Marx By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS Libertarians and free trade economists don't realize it, but they are pulling Marx out of his grave ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] U.S. relations of production acting as fetter on production
Waistline2 Pardon, my misquoting your definition of an epoch. CB: No problem ^^^ An epoch in the Marxist standpoint is a historical period of time distinguished in its geenral framework on the basis of the mode of production, rather than by more than one generation. In my estimate this more accurately pays homage to the spirit of Marx. ^ CB: Well, the mode of production can just be referred to by naming the mode of production. The feudal mode of production. Epoch or age refers specifically to the time aspect. The epoch of feudalism. The word epoch is used to draw attention to the fact that it is a _long_ period of time, not a shorter one. It's true that we decide when the epoch begins and ends based on the beginning and end of a m. of p., but the word epoch is used to get at the fact that it's a long period of time. What does long mean ? Long relative to what ? I'd say one key thing is that it lets us know, hey , the rev may not come in our lifetime , buddy . Otherwise, we could just say the feudal period of history, which could be short or long. It's an important emotional issue that the rev may not come in our individual lifetimes. It's a philosophical issue, too. In sum, I'd say we use epoch to connote a long time relative to individual human lifetimes. Charles ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] relations of production as fetter on product... correction
Waistline2 Pardon, my misquoting your definition of an epoch. An epoch in the Marxist standpoint CB: What do u mean by the Marxist standpoint ? ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] relations of production as fetter on production
Pardon, my misquoting your definition of an epoch. ^ CB: This seems a disingenous pardon. ^ An epoch in the Marxist standpoint is a historical period of time distinguished in its geenral framework on the basis of the mode of production, rather than by more than one generation. In my estimate this more accurately pays homage to the spirit of Marx. CB: What do you mean by general framework ? ^ Again, I apologize for my misquoting. ^ CB: This seems a fake apology. Social revolution means the kind of change in the productive forces - tools, instruments, machines and underlying energy source of the production process, that compels society to reorganize itself around the new changes. CB: The Marx quote focused on here would seem to suggest that the social revolution begins when the property relations or relations of production prevent development of the productive forces, like levies, such that everybody gets pissed off and decides to change the property relations or relations of production so as to allow the levies and everything to fully develop and prevent disasters or prevent long term depressions. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] General Baker and Marian Kramer
http://www.michigancitizen.com/ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Christopher Caudwell : His aesthetics and film
JUMP CUT A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY MEDIA Christopher Caudwell His aesthetics and film by Ellen Sypher from Jump Cut, no. 12/13, 1976, pp. 65-66 copyright Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 1976, 2004 Christopher Caudwells career as a Marxist culture theorist was very brief. Two years after he began serious Marxist writing he was killed fighting in the Spanish Civil War at the age of thirty. Yet in that brief time his output was prodigious: a reputable book on physics from a dialectical materialist perspective (The Crisis in Physics) and four theoretical works on culture. One of these is dedicated to poetry (Illusion and Reality), another to the novel (Romance and Realism) and two to general essays in such fields as history, psychology and religion (presently combined in a single volume, Studies and Further Studies in a Dying Culture). Caudwells reputation, based solely on these five works, is considerable. His name has been a familiar one to Marxists since his death, and he is known of by the literary establishment. Serious evaluation of his writings is, however, only a fairly recent phenomenon.(1) This more recent assessment of him from a Marxist perspective is generally that while immature and deeply flawed, he is so richly suggestive and often so sound that every serious Marxist thinker on culture should deal with him. He was and remains more or less of a maverick. From upper middle class roots, he left school at fifteen to work in aeronautics. After his commitment to Marxism he moved to Poplar, a working class section of London, where he wrote and did menial party work for the British Communist Party, whose leadership did not even know of him until after his death. He apparently undertook his serious theoretical work in isolation. His work bears all the weaknesses of such an individualistic position in that he uncritically accepts prevailing attitudes. Especially he ignores proletarian culture, and he depends too much on the then very influential Freud. Yet notwithstanding these narrow dimensions of his work, some of his perceptions of literatures basis and workings stand alongside those of the best of Marxist aestheticians. Caudwells work, undoubtedly because of its mixed character, has not substantially influenced any writer on aesthetics although he is undisputedly the major Marxist writer on aesthetics in the British and U.S. tradition. Literature and especially poetry is Caudwells first love. Yet in Illusion and Reality he frequently branches out to mention other cultural forms: music, dance, drama, and film.(2) The comments on film are theoretical and frustratingly brief, yet always provocative and never mechanical. By themselves they cannot stand as a cornerstone for a Marxist theory of film. Placed, however, in the context of his general views on culture and particularly literature, his comments form a springboard for other Marxist film theoreticians. Unlike more mechanical Marxist writers, Caudwell approaches art neither as primarily a reflection of historical reality nor as a mere vehicle for expressing the authors class perspective. Rather, for Caudwell art is ultimately an instrument in social production. For Caudwell as for Marx, it is the act of social production which makes humans human, non-animal. Art thus is guaranteed its place as a necessary feature of human social life. Science serves this same end of fostering social production and is likewise necessary. Science, however, operates more in the realm of cognition, while art operates primarily in the realm of emotion. Poetry seems to operate more directly on the emotions, while the novel in its more literal representation of social relations contains somewhat more of the reflective, cognitive, or as Caudwell calls it, referential element. Yet in each case, art serves ultimately to direct the participants subjective life toward social production. Art achieves this end by creating an illusion of reality which many people can participate in together. It draws out what is common in peoples socially formed, yet idiosyncratically experienced thoughts and emotions. Caudwell seems to suggest that the poem is more effective than the novel in ensuring this collective response. In any case Caudwell is insistent (see particularly his essay on D.H. Lawrence in Studies on a Dying Culture) that there is no area of consciousness or the unconscious, no area of thought or feeling, that is asocial as Freud and Lawrence believe. Both areas are repositories and transformers of ones social, historical experience. Thus arts effect in focusing common responses can be profound. Art can be a powerful instrument in encouraging social cooperation, social production. Caudwell recognizes, however, that in a class society all art is class art, or, the life experiences of people and their interests are class specific. The shared pool of experience and thus
[Marxism-Thaxis] Christopher Caudwell : His aesthetics and film
Ralph Dumain : Terrific to see a piece on Caudwell I never read taken out of the mothballs. (did you find this on the web, perchance?) More has appeared since 1976, but I have apparently failed to document it comprehensively in my bibliography: http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/caudwell.html E.P. Thompson's essay is stupendous. As for Caudwell himself, I loved his STUDIES AND FURTHER STUDIES IN A DYING CULTURE, taking them in the '80s as a model for similar work for our time. I thought Romance and Realism was really weak and crude. No question, though, that Caudwell was an original. ^ CB: Yes. I just google the name. Something about that Caudwell, for sure. If I don't laz out as usual , I am going to try to annotatively discuss some and copy one of the essays from one of the collections. The first person I heard discuss Caudwell was Angela Davis, who is also officially a philosopher. I try to read her study of women blues singers as philosophical work. In general, I'd make the current changes in philo based on feminist critique. The long term of philosophers lacks women philosophers. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] relations of production as fetter on productionWaistline2
Waistline2 Actually, social revolution comes about as the result of a qualitative addition in the material power of production that demands the restructuring of the productivity architecture. ^^^ CB: In the New Orleans flood type of example, it might be better said that it is the failure to make an addition in the material power of production, failure to add to the material holding power of the levies, that might make masses demand a restructuring of the relations of production/property relations ,and the restructuring of the relations of production constitute a social revolution. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] that man and woman was born free, but was crippled through social organisation.
that man (sic) was born free, but was crippled through social organisation. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Key idea in Caudwell
Key idea in Caudwell is ye ancient antagonism between predominantly mental and predominantly physical labor. ^ Caudwell had sought to discern the most basic thought patterns and to discover the lines of connection between these and the most basic socio-economic realities. At the heart of it all was the subject-object dichotomy, that had its basis in the social division of labour, in the separation of the class that generated ideology from the class that actively struggled with nature. This dichotomy distorted all realms of thought and activity. It distorted art, science, psychology, philosophy, economics and all social relations. It was a disease endemic to class society that has become most acute in bourgeois society as the most highly developed form of class society. Only an integrated world view and a classless society could bring to a synthesis what had been severed and had grown pathologically far apart. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] _Bourgeois_ Philosophy
Christopher Caudwell 1938 Reality A Study in Bourgeois Philosophy CB: Importantly, Caudwell discusses philo in terms of classes. This is a fundamental and continuous theme in his approach. This is critical in making his writing Marxist philosophical, Marxist-Thaxist. Few technical philosophers recognize the adjectives bourgeois or working classed as legitimate in describing philo. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Graham Priest: Dialetheism Marx
Graham Priest: Dialetheism Marx Ralph Dumain : Priest, Graham. 'Was Marx a Dialetheist?', Science and Society, 1991, 54, 468-75. While I don't expect everyone to be held spellbound by this question, it is illustrative of a recurring problem in intellectual history (and also in popular intellectual culture, which is another story. Priest's views on dialetheism (logic which admits contradictions) is controversial among his fellow logicians, and he responds to objections in his book. Probably his fellow logicians (except those interested in Marx, among which there are more than a few) are not terribly concerned about his views on Marx, and in fact he says nothing about Marx in his book. However he did get a response to his earlier article on dialectics and dialetheism: Marquit, Erwin. A Materialist Critique of Hegel's Concept of Identity of Opposites, Science and Society, Summer 1990, 54, no. 2, 147-166. ^ CB: You may know that Marquit is the editor at Marxist Educational Press,at the University of Minnesota. So along with the above article, Marquit has an article Contradictions in Dialectical and Formal Logic in a book _Dialectial Contradictions: Contemporary Marxist Discussions_, with about nine articles by US , Soviet, Canadian and German philosophers, juris prudence et al on this related topic. James Lawler has one of the articles. He has been on this list. Lawler's article is Hegel and Logical and Dialectical Contradictions, and Misinterpretations from Bertrand Russell to Lucio Colletti. Also, in Nature, Society and Theougt Vol.3, No. 1 1990 Marquit has Distinctions Between the Spheres of Action of Formal Logic and Dialectical Logic ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] that man (sic) was born free, but was crippled through social organisation.
excerpt from Liberty A study in bourgeois illusion From this it follows that the animals are less free than men. Creatures of impulse, acting they know not why, subject to all the chances of nature, of other animals, of geographical accidents and climatic change, they are at the mercy of necessity, precisely because they are unconscious of it. That is not to say they have no freedom, for they possess a degree of freedom. They have some knowledge of the causality of their environment, as is shown by their manipulations of time and space and material - the bird's flight, the hare's leap, the ant's nest. They have some inner self-determination, as is shown by their behaviour. But compared to man, they are unfree. Implicit in the conception of thinkers like Russell and Forster, that all social relations are restraints on spontaneous liberty, is the assumption that the animal is the only completely free creature. No one constrains the solitary carnivore to do anything. This is of course an ancient fallacy. Rousseau is the famous exponent. Man is born free but is everywhere in chains. Always in the bourgeois mind is this legend of the golden age, of a perfectly good man corrupted by institutions. Unfortunately not only is man not good without institutions, he is not evil either. He is no man at all; he is neither good nor evil; he is an unconscious brute. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Russell, number is class of all classes
Liberty A study in bourgeois illusion Suppose someone had performed the regrettable experiment of turning Bertrand Russell, at the age of nine months, over to a goat foster-mother, and leaving him to her care, in some remote spot, unvisited by human beings, to grow to manhood. When, say forty years later, men first visited Bertrand Russell, would they find him with the manuscripts of the Analysis of Mind and the Analysis of Matter in his hands? Would they even find him in possession of his definition of number, as the class of all classes? No. In contradiction to his present state, his behaviour would be both illogical and impolite. ^ CB: Speaking of the unconscious, interesting that Russell introduces classes puningly into his philosophical discussion of number, at the same time that Marxist philosophy pressing on the world thinking about philosophy in terms of social classes. This passage reminds of the discussion of Piaget and chldren discovering number wihtout schooling. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] On Zeleney's On the Relation of Analytic and Dialectical Thinking
Ralph D: I also know Marquit and have published in his journal, most recently, a book review on Marcuse. ^^^ CB: And I just noticed that one of your reviews On Zeleney's On the Relation of Analytic and Dialectical Thinking, with response by Jindrich Zeleny, is in the same issue (Vol.3, No.1 , 1990) of _Nature, Society and Thought_ as Marquit's Distinction Between the Spheres of Action of Formal Logic and Dialectical Logic I'll have to read that one. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] COVERUP: The dynamiting of the New Orleans levy system
COVERUP: The dynamiting of the New Orleans levy system by Ernesto Cienfuegos La Voz de Aztlan Los Angeles, Alta California - September 11, 2005 - (ACN) New evidence is surfacing concerning the sabotaging of the New Orleans levy system that resulted in the flooding of primarily Black neighborhoods. A significant number of New Orleans residents have come forward to say that the levies were breached on purpose by the authorities. Also, this publication has located the original Associated Press article that reported on a gun battle between the New Orleans Police Department and US military contractors near the vicinity of the breached levy along the 17th Street Canal. The original report states that New Orleans police shot and killed 5 armed US military contractors in a gun battle. The original AP report was confirmed by a US Army Corps of Engineers spokesman. The AP story has now been deleted on pretty much all news websites and a different version substituted. Our publication was forwarded a link to the original report by one of our subscribers after reading our article, The Great New Orleans Land Grab This article argues that the gun battle was an attempt by the New Orleans police to stop further sabotaging of the levy system by US military saboteurs under high level secret orders. We have also provided a mirror link to the original AP report on our server in case the forwarded link gets deleted or the report is changed. The original AP report is at _http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5256023,00.html_ http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2005-September/_http://www.gua rdian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5256023,00.html_ (http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5256023,00.html) Our mirror link to the report is at _http://www.aztlan.net/police_kill_five_contractors.htm_ http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2005-September/_http://www.azt lan.net/police_kill_five_contractors.htm_ (http://www.aztlan.net/police_kill_five_contractors.htm) Our article, The Great New Orleans Land Grab proposes that the sabotaging of the levy system had already been planned. They were just waiting for the right hurricane to implement it. Katrina provided just the right cover. The ultimate purpose is to rid New Orleans of poor Black folks and take their valuable land away. We are already seeing the plan take fruition. Banks and mortgage companies are already foreclosing on homes and properties because poor Black in diaspora are unable to make mortgage payments. Also, Black families in New Orleans who owned their homes outright could not afford damage insurance and do not have the money to rebuild. Most likely, their properties would be taken away for failure to pay property taxes. Developers, and contractors stand to make a lot of money in the new New Orleans. Vultures are already hovering over the devastated city. Dick Cheney was recently in town to survey the possibilities for Halliburton and deals are being made with a Las Vegas group to build multi-million casinos in the Big Easy. Many of the Black families in diaspora already suspect the worse. Resident Andrea Garland, now re-located to Texas, said, I also heard that part of the reason our house flooded is that they dynamited part of the levy system after the first section broke - they did this to prevent Uptown (the rich White part of town) from being flooded. Apparently they used too much dynamite, thus flooding part of the Bywater. So now I know who is responsible for flooding my house - not Katrina, but our government. There are also claims by intelligence expert Tom Heneghen that 25 earwitnesses heard explosions immediately before the levies broke. The Washington Post, in addition, interviewed John Mullen III, an African American retired schoolteacher now staying at the Houston Superdome. John Mullen III lived in the Lower Ninth Ward, an all Black neighborhood. John Mullen told the Washington Post that he believes that the levy breaks had somehow been engineered to keep the wealthy French Quarter and Garden District dry at the expense of poor Black neighborhoods like the Lower Ninth Ward -- a suspicion the Washington Post has heard from many other Black survivors. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Philosophy of Rousseau
Philosophy of Rousseau http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau [edit http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jean-Jacques_Rousseauaction=edit section=3 ] Nature vs. society Rousseau saw a fundamental divide between society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society and human nature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_nature . Rousseau contended that man http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humankind was good by nature, a noble savage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage when in the state of nature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature (the state of all the other animals, and the condition humankind was in before the creation of civilization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization and society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society ), but is corrupted by society. He viewed society as artificial and held that the development of society, especially the growth of social interdependence, has been inimical to the well-being of human beings. Society's negative influence on otherwise virtuous men centers, in Rousseau's philosophy, on its transformation of amour de soi http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amour_de_soiaction=edit , a positive self-love, into amour-propre http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amour-propreaction=edit , or pride http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride . Amour de soi represents the instictive human desire for self-preservation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-preservation , combined with the human power of reason http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason . In contrast, amour-propre is not natural but artificial and forces man to compare himself to others, thus creating unwarranted fear http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear and allowing men to take pleasure in the pain or weakness of others. Rousseau was not the first to make this distinction; it had been invoked by, among others, Vauvenargues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vauvenargues . In Discourse on the Arts and Sciences Rousseau argued that the arts and sciences had not been beneficial to humankind, because they were advanced not in response to human needs but as the result of pride and vanity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanity . Moreover, the opportunities they created for idleness and luxury contributed to the corruption of man. He proposed that the progress of knowledge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge had made governments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government more powerful http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_%28sociology%29 and had crushed individual http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual liberty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty . He concluded that material progress had actually undermined the possibility of sincere friendship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship , replacing it with jealousy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jealousy , fear http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear and suspicion http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Suspicion_%28emotion%29action=ed it . His subsequent Discourse on Inequality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Inequality , tracked the progress and degeneration of mankind from a primitive state of nature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_nature to modern society. He suggested that the earliest human beings were isolated semi-apes who were differentiated from animals by their capacity for free will and their perfectibility. He also argued that these primitive humans were possessed of a basic drive to care for themselves and a natural disposition to compassion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassion or pity. As humans were forced to associate together more closely, by the pressure of population growth, they underwent a psychological transformation and came to value the good opinion of others as an essential component of their own well being. Rousseau associated this new self-awareness with a golden age of human flourishing. However, the development of agriculture and metallurgy, private property and the division of labour http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour led to increased interdependence and inequality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inequality . The resulting state of conflict led Rousseau to suggest that the first state was invented as a kind of social contract http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract made at the suggestion of the rich and powerful. This original contract was deeply flawed as the wealthiest and most powerful members of society tricked the general population, and so cemented inequality as a permanent feature of human society. Rousseau's own conception of the social contract can be understood as an alternative to this fraudulent form of association. At the end of the Discourse on Inequality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Inequality , Rousseau explains how the desire to have value in the eyes of others, which originated in the golden age, comes to undermine personal integrity and authenticity in a society marked by interdependence, hierarchy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy , and inequality. [edit
[Marxism-Thaxis] relations of production as fetter on production
CB: The high tech , chip and computer technological revolution has _not_ been fettered or prevented from developing by the bourgeois property relations. The success of the high tech rev within bourgeois property relations means that it is not likely to cause a change in those property relations. Social revolutions result from property relations and material productive forces in conflict. With the chip revolution, the productive forces and relations are not in conflict. WL: I have a different conception of Marx specific meaning of fetter as a concept concerning the general law of the development of society. Nor is it suggested that technology is not developed or the productive forces are not revolutionized by the bourgeoisie. CB: What is suggested by Marx is that the bourgeois property relations will not be revolutionized and overthrown by the successful development of the productive forces, but by the failure to develop the productive forces. ^^ Bourgeois property by definition does in fact act as a fetter on the material factors of production, at all stages of the evolution of the technological regime. CB: In fact, they don't. Under bourgeois property relations the productive forces have been developed more than under any previous mode of production. By definition does in fact is contradictory. This does not mean production is not revolutionized. The most historical presentation of the question of the fetter on production is the market barrier created by bourgeois property, that limits consumption - due to the working classes limited wages, or the crisis of overproduction. The development of the productive forces and their continuous expansion is blocked - fettered, by the circuit of capital as reproduction and its need to sell and realize a profit. In addition to the overproduction crisis, their is our current crisis of overcapacity in various industries. The auto industry world wide is the most classical example in our country. The revolution in technology exacerbates the crisis of overproduction and overcapacity as ever larger segments of labor are rendered superfluous to production along side of a lowering of the value of labor power. ^ CB: So far, all this fettering has not caused the beginning of an epoch of social revolution , except in Russia and in various imperialist colonies. The bourgeoisie have selectively augmented the consumption of segments of the working class such that the working class has not burst asunder the bourgeois property relations. ^^^ Then again the actual development of the material property of the productive forces are fettered by the bourgeois property on the basis of how the extensive and intensive development of equipment takes place. For example, single function tools and machinery are considered more profitable for the bourgeoisie because they extract a higher degree of surplus value from the individual and pin the worker to the machine. This form of the laboring process is a fetter on the overall expansion of the productive forces. ^ CB: But this fettering hasn't arisen to such a conflict between forces and relations of production so as to initiate an epoch of social revolution. ^^ The most fundamental fetter of the bourgeois property relations resides in the actual self movement of production - reproduction, on the basis of bourgeois need. Marx speaks of this extensively in his Philosophic Manuscript of 1844. Capital as bourgeois property does not reproduce to satisfy authentic human needs but rather inherits these human needs and creates a different set of needs that becomes its condition and precondition for expansion and reproduction. Capital produces for profits. By definition the positive results of science are channeled into and realized on the basis of bourgeois need or the circuit of capital peculiar to bourgeois production and this is at all times a fetter on the overall expansion of the productive forces. There is simply no way around the statement that relations of production or production relations - in standard American English, are the laws defining property and the relationship of people to property in the process of production. ^ CB: yea. Relations of production and property relations are the same thing. ^ Relations of production or social relations of production also embody the physical act of producing, based on a specific state of development of the technological regime and this old technological regime stands in contradiction with the new means of production that have spontaneously emerged within the old system - and not simply an abstract concept of property and ownership. ^^^ CB: The physical act of producing is the productive forces, not the relations of production/property relations. This does not render the concepts of property and ownership abstract. Property relations refer to the concrete, not abstract, ownership relationships between people with
[Marxism-Thaxis] Rousseau
If the summary below and posted earlier is accurate, then Rousseau does have a bourgeois anthropological concept , as Caudwell claims. The earliest humans are characterized by the opposite of isolation. They are characterized by increased sociality, elaborate kinship systems, based on tracing relationships with living other humans through the relationships to dead ancestors. They are not differentiated from apes by individual free will, but rather greater freedom for individuals because of their elaborate kinship and culture. It was not population growth the forced greater association, but rather greater association with each other ( kinship and culture) that allowed adaptive success , and thereby population growth. Charles ^^ His subsequent Discourse on Inequality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Inequality , tracked the progress and degeneration of mankind from a primitive state of nature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_nature to modern society. He suggested that the earliest human beings were isolated semi-apes who were differentiated from animals by their capacity for free will and their perfectibility. He also argued that these primitive humans were possessed of a basic drive to care for themselves and a natural disposition to compassion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassion or pity. As humans were forced to associate together more closely, by the pressure of population growth, they underwent a psychological transformation and came to value the good opinion of others as an essential component of their own well being. Rousseau associated this new self-awareness with a golden age of human flourishing. However, the development of agriculture and metallurgy, private property and the division of labour http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour led to increased interdependence and inequality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inequality . ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Compatibilism and incompatibilism
Jim Farmelant : Caudwell seems to have held to a type of compatibilism concerning the issue of free will and determinism. As such it seems to bear more than a passing resemblance to the views of Plekhanov as outlined his essay, The Role of the Individual in History, http://art-bin.com/art/oplecheng.html as well as to view of my friend Tom Clark (who is not a Marxist), see: http://www.naturalism.org/freewill.htm Certainly, Caudwell's take on freedom can be seen as as a Spinozan and even Baconian, since for him human freedom is based not on an illusory contracausal free will but rather upon the acceptance of necessity which leads us to seek the determinants of our own behaviors which in turn makes it possible for us to become the masters of the natural and social forces that shape our destinies. Thus, for Caudwell, socialism was seen as the key for the expansion of human freedom under modern conditions. Compatibilism and incompatibilism From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Compatibilism, also known as soft determinism and most famously championed by Hume http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume , is a theory which holds that free will http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will and determinism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism are compatible. According to Hume, free will should not be understood as an absolute ability to have chosen differently under exactly the same inner and outer circumstances. Rather, it is a hypothetical ability to have chosen differently if one had been differently psychologically disposed by some different beliefs or desires. Hume also maintains that free acts are not uncaused (or mysteriously self-caused as Kant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant would have it) but caused by our choices as determined by our beliefs, desires, and by our characters. While a decision making process exists in Hume's determinism, this process is governed by a causal chain of events. For example, a person may make the decision to support Wikipedia, but that decision is determined by the conditions that existed prior to the decision being made. The opposing view, that free will cannot be consistent with determinism, is sometimes called incompatibilism. The pessimistic version, sometimes known as hard determinism, is that neither determinism nor indeterminism permit free will; Hume also considered free will inconsistent with indeterminism. One incompatibilist position holds that free will refers to genuine (e.g. absolute, ultimate) alternate possibilities for beliefs, desires or actions, and that such possibilities are absent from the compatibilist definitions. In the absence of such possibilities, the belief that free will confers responsibility is held to be false. However, one compatibilist counter-argument is that such absolute alternate possibilities could only have random causes, which would actually diminish responsibility. Some views are less easily categorized. The libertarian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism_%28philosophy%29 position is that our experience of free will implies the universe is not deterministic. Some advocates of this view consider it compatible with determinism in the physical universe, but believe mental events are different. A more concise description can be found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (see link below) The thesis of determinism says that everything that happens is determined by antecedent conditions together with the laws of nature. Incompatibilism is the philosophical thesis that if determinism is true, then we don't have free will. The denial of incompatibilism is compatibilism; a compatibilist is someone who believes that the truth of determinism does not rule out the existence of free will. William James http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James , the American http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States pragmatist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatism philosopher who coined the term soft determinist in an influential essay titled The Dilemma of Determinism http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Dilemma_of_Determinismaction =edit , held that the importance of the issue of determinism is not one of personal responsibility, but one of hope. He believed that thorough-going determinism leads either to a bleak pessimism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pessimism or to a degenerate subjectivism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjectivism in moral judgment. The way to escape that dilemma is to allow a role of chance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance . He said that he would not insist upon the name free will as a synonym for the role chance plays in human actions, simply because he preferred to debate about things, not words. Texts ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Free will
I can imagine Caudwell saying something like the problem of free will and determinism is a bourgeois philosophical problem. Free will is another of the many expressions of bourgeois liberty, i.e. the total independence and autonomy of the individual from society and the universe. The desire that this individual will not be determined by anything but itself is the dream of bourgeois individualism and absolute individual freedom. ONce we are comfortable with the individual as especially a social individual, the lack of undetermined and free will of the individual is not so bothersome. Charles ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] The development of bourgeois property moves ownership further and further from actual engagement of production
WL: The issue under discussion is not the bourgeois property relations being revolutionized. Nor is it a question of the bourgeoisie as a class failing to develop the productive forces. The bourgeois property relation as a specific form of ownership rights - as you define it separate from the actual engagement of production, cannot be revolutionized as such, but in the last instance will be shattered. ^^ CB: By revolutionized , I mean the same thing as shattered. They will be sublated. Preserved and overcome. The bourgeois owners are separated from the actual engagement of production, progressively so historically as capitalism goes on and on. The joint stock company was analyzed by Marx and Engels as a step in the structure of property moving the capitalist further from actual engagement of production. Since then the coupon clippers , the hedge fund owners are even further from actual engagement of production. No factories on Wall Street. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] The Specter of a Soviet-Style Crisis
http://www.lefigaro.com/debats/20050912.FIG0354.html?083700 Emmanuel Todd: The Specter of a Soviet-Style Crisis By Marie-Laure Germon and Alexis Lacroix Le Figaro Monday 12 September 2005 According to this demographer, Hurricane Katrina has revealed the decline of the American system. Le Figaro. - What is the first moral and political lesson we can learn from the catastrophe Katrina provoked? The necessity for a global change in our relationship with nature? Emmanuel Todd . - Let us be wary of over-interpretation. Let's not lose sight of the fact that we're talking about a hurricane of extraordinary scope that would have produced monstrous damage anywhere. An element that surprised a great many people - the eruption of the black population, a supermajority in this disaster - did not really surprise me personally, since I have done a great deal of work on the mechanisms of racial segregation in the United States. I have known for a long time that the map of infant mortality in the United States is always an exact copy of the map of the density of black populations. On the other hand, I was surprised that spectators to this catastrophe should appear to have suddenly discovered that Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell are not particularly representative icons of the conditions of black America. What really resonates with my representation of the United States - as developed in Apr=E8s l'empire - is the fact that the United States was disabled and ineffectual. The myth of the efficiency and super-dynamism of the American economy is in danger. We were able to observe the inadequacy of the technical resources, of the engineers, of the military forces on the scene to confront the crisis. That lifted the veil on an American economy globally perceived as very dynamic, benefiting from a low unemployment rate, credited with a strong GDP growth rate. As opposed to the United States, Europe is supposed to be rather pathetic, clobbered with endemic unemployment and stricken with anemic growth. But what people have not wanted to see is that the dynamism of the United States is essentially a dynamism of consumption. Is American household consumption artificially stimulated? The American economy is at the heart of a globalized economic system, and the United States acts as a remarkable financial pump, importing capital to the tune of 700 to 800 billion dollars a year. These funds, after redistribution, finance the consumption of imported goods - a truly dynamic sector. What has characterized the United States for years is the tendency to swell the monstrous trade deficit, which is now close to 700 billion dollars. The great weakness of this economic system is that it does not rest on a foundation of real domestic industrial capacity. American industry has been bled dry and it's the industrial decline that above all explains the negligence of a nation confronted with a crisis situation: to manage a natural catastrophe, you don't need sophisticated financial techniques, call options that fall due on such and such a date, tax consultants, or lawyers specialized in funds extortion at a global level, but you do need materiel, engineers, and technicians, as well as a feeling of collective solidarity. A natural catastrophe on national territory confronts a country with its deepest identity, with its capacities for technical and social response. Now, if the American population can very well agree to consume together - the rate of household savings being virtually nil - in terms of material production, of long-term prevention and planning, it has proven itself to be disastrous. The storm has shown the limits of a virtual economy that identifies the world as a vast video game. Is it fair to link the American system's profit-margin orientation - that neo-liberalism denounced by European commentators - and the catastrophe that struck New Orleans? Management of the catastrophe would have been much better in the United States of old. After the Second World War, the United States assured the production of half the goods produced on the planet. Today, the United States shows itself to be at loose ends, bogged down in a devastated Iraq that it doesn't manage to reconstruct. The Americans took a long time to armor their vehicles, to protect their own troops. They had to import light ammunition. What a difference from the United States of the Second World War that simultaneously crushed the Japanese Army with its fleet of aircraft carriers, organized the Normandy landing, re-equipped the Russian army in light materiel, contributed magisterially to Europe's liberations, and kept the European and German populations liberated from Hitler alive. The Americans knew how to dominate the Nazi storm with a mastery they show themselves incapable of today in just a single one of their regions. The explanation is simple: American capitalism of that era was an industrial
[Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering
WL: You seem to be stating the following: 1). the bourgeois property relations . . . a). will not be revolutionized and b). (will not) BE overthrown . . . c).AS A RESULT OF the successful development of the productive forces BY THE BOURGEOISIE. 2). but by . . . d). the failure (of the bourgeoisie) to develop the productive forces, IN OTHER WORDS, BY THE BOURGEOISIE FETTERING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES. ^ CB: Yea, that's what I am saying with the words added in capitals above. I'm saying that that's what Marx says when he says: At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or -what is but a legal expression for the same thing - with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution WL: That is to say, I understand this to mean - not imply, that social revolution today will result as the failure of the bourgeois to develop the productive forces. You state that this is what Marx implies. The bourgeoisie is the involuntary promoter of industry and its development. Social revolution comes about as the result of the development of the productive forces. The productive forces do not stop developing or stop undergoing revolutionizing. CB: Well,again, that's the opposite of what I am saying. To the extent that bourgeois property relations do not fetter the development of the productive forces, the bourgeois property relations are not likely to be overthrown, at least not because of what is happening with the productive forces. ^ WL:At a certain stage in their development the material power of the productive forces cannot be contained - (continue its extensive and intensive expansion and operate on the basis of the universality of the law system unique to the new qualitative addition to production) by the old relations of production - with the property relations within, and then an epoch of social revolution begins. CB: Of course, inside/outside is a metaphor ( neither one is physically within the other actually), but in using the metaphor Marx is saying that the material productive forces are in the property relations (not that the property relations are in the productive forces). He is saying that when the productive forces can no longer grow within the specific property relations, the property relations will be burst asunder by the oppressed class shattering them. ^ Production and revolutionizing continues to take place but within the bounds of bourgeois property or on the basis of the needs - bourgeois needs, created as the condition for its reproduction. The concept is not the failure of the bourgeoisie to develop the productive forces, but their fettering and/or distortion by the needs of bourgeois property. CB: Maybe , but in this particular formulation, Marx is using fettering to mean hindering the development. ^ WL:I believe at this point the focus of the discussion has been lost because you state the exact opposite to what you state above in the following statement. WL: Bourgeois property by definition does in fact act as a fetter on the material factors of production, at all stages of the evolution of the technological regime. CB: In fact, they don't. Under bourgeois property relations the productive forces have been developed more than under any previous mode of production. ^^ CB: The point hasn't been lost. It is being stated repeatedly. The bourgeoisie have not been fettering the development of the productive forces at all stages of the evolution of the technological regime, otherwise we would expect that an epoch of social revolution would have started in the U.S. and other capitalist countries. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] The Specter of a Soviet-Style Crisis: Evidences of Fettering of the Productive Forces
Emmanuel Todd's comments excerpted here might be said to characterize U.S. domestic industrial decline as property relations fettering development of the material productive forces. The Katrina phenomenon might be a microcosm of the larger U.S. system. The trend in U.S. property relations is to move the factories further and further from the locus of the owners, as a byproduct of running the plants away from the U.S. workers. Effectively , this is fettering the development of the material productive forces _in_ the U.S. national territory. Todd says this was why the U.S. was not ready with material forces to defend people from Katrina. Charles Clip- What really resonates with my representation of the United States - as developed in Apres l'empire - is the fact that the United States was disabled and ineffectual. The myth of the efficiency and super-dynamism of the American economy is in danger. We were able to observe the inadequacy of the technical resources, of the engineers, of the military forces on the scene to confront the crisis. That lifted the veil on an American economy globally perceived as very dynamic, benefiting from a low unemployment rate, credited with a strong GDP growth rate. As opposed to the United States, Europe is supposed to be rather pathetic, clobbered with endemic unemployment and stricken with anemic growth. But what people have not wanted to see is that the dynamism of the United States is essentially a dynamism of consumption. -clip- What has characterized the United States for years is the tendency to swell the monstrous trade deficit, which is now close to 700 billion dollars. The great weakness of this economic system is that it does not rest on a foundation of real domestic industrial capacity. American industry has been bled dry and it's the industrial decline that above all explains the negligence of a nation confronted with a crisis situation: to manage a natural catastrophe, you don't need sophisticated financial techniques, call options that fall due on such and such a date, tax consultants, or lawyers specialized in funds extortion at a global level, but you do need materiel, engineers, and technicians, as well as a feeling of collective solidarity. A natural catastrophe on national territory confronts a country with its deepest identity, with its capacities for technical and social response. Now, if the American population can very well agree to consume together - the rate of household savings being virtually nil - in terms of material production, of long-term prevention and planning, it has proven itself to be disastrous. The storm has shown the limits of a virtual economy that identifies the world as a vast video game. -clip- ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering
An epoch of social revolution was in fact indisputably completing itself world wide and no one disputes that this was the Industrial Social Revolution of which Marx wrote and called for the communists and proletarians to place themselves at the head of the process. CB: How you gonna say with a straight face that the Industrial Revolution was the Industrial Social Revolution, or that Marx treated it as a social revolution ? :) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering
Waistline2 CB: How you gonna say with a straight face that the Industrial Revolution was the Industrial Social Revolution, or that Marx treated it as a social revolution ? :) WL:Comment Obviously you are joking. The industrial revolution is a social revolution and the industrial social revolution means the same as industrial revolution. The world social means society CB: The Industrial Revolution does not begin the epoch of the social revolution of capitalism. It is an apex of it. In terms of the quote from Marx in focus, instead of Then begins an epoch of social revolution, Then,at the Industrial Revolution, climaxes an epoch of social revolution. The epoch of bourgeois social revolution _begins_ 3-4 hundred years earlier, with merchantilism and manufacture. Also, the Industrial Revolution is not a time when the bourgeois property relations are fettering the material forces of basic production. The bourgeoisie are not yet cooking with gas. But they are steamrolling like a motherfucker. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] paraconsistent logic
My review is part of a much larger project, which has to do with te relation of logic and reality, and beyond that, the fragmentation of knowledge under conditions of alienation. That would be the marxist angle that iunterests me, rather than advocacy of 'Marxism' per se. Graham Priest is far more interesting than Sean Sayers was at the time of the debate in question. But let's review the logic of my intervention. CB: Good to see some statements of your larger project. What is the difference between paraconsistent logic and dialectics or aspects of dialectics. I welcome paraconsistent logic efforts as steps by formal logicians to develop dialectical logic more in formal logical terms, if that is what paraconsistent logical thinking is. ^ Priest's book (1995, 2002) BEYOND THE LIMITS OF THOUGHT doesn't mention Marx or Marxism, though Hegel emerges as the hero of the book. We also know from Priest's earlier two essays in SCIENCE SOCIETY that he is a Marxist or has a keen interest in Marxism. Furthermore, he is one of those rare individuals in the English-speaking world with an interest in both dialectics and formal logic. So it is important to see how he seeks to unite the two. But oddly--and this part of my larger purview--he doesn't seem to have a whoe lot to say about dialectics (or about the vcarious philosophies he treats later) except to make his one big pitch for paraconsistent logic which offers a formalism for incorporating contradictions. But what good is this formalism in terms of modeling reality in a substantive fashion? I can't tell. And this, it seems to me, Priest merely reproduces the conditions of alienated theoretical labor and fails to overcome fragmentation and to unify an understanding of how logic relates to other philosophical issues and to objective reality itself. His grasp of formal logic should make him far more sophisticated than the dialectical materialists of old, but he seems bent on making the same trivial points. ^ CB: There is this paradox that both formal logic , in say the identity principle, and dialectics, in elementary processes, have trivial aspects. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] The Specter of a Soviet-Style Crisis: Evidences of Fette...
Waistline2 CBThe trend in U.S. property relations is to move the factories further and further from the locus of the owners, as a byproduct of running the plants away from the U.S. workers. Effectively, this is fettering the development of the material productive forces _in_ the U.S. national territory. WL:I understand - perhaps incorrectly, you to say that moving factories away from the owners in America is restrain the development of the material power of production or the productive forces in America. CB: The plants are run away overseas more to run them away from the working class in the U.S. I said the plants are moved away from the owners as a byproduct as in indirect result, of running them away from the U.S. workers. Note they run them over to some other workers in other countries. Thus, things are not post-industrial. We are still very industrial. The U.S. national territory has been deindustrialized relative to its level of industrialization in the recent past. I said: Effectively, this is fettering the development of the material productive forces _in_ the U.S. national territory. The development of the productive forces _in the U.S. national territory._ the material productive forces = material power of the productive forces. How does moving factories halt the technological advance or the qualitative development of the productive forces? ^ CB: fetters the development within the U.S. national territory. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering in the U.S. national territory; developing in other national territories
In other words, the bourgeoisie doesn't fetter the development of the material productive forces outside of the U.S.national territory where it runs the plants away to. It buildsup the productive forces in Mexico, Korea, and other places to which industrial production has been moved. It has not fettered their development in those countries. But it has fettered them in the U.S. national territory. This by the way, is a bit of a material basis for social revolution in the U.S. national territory. The transnational financial-corporate bourgeoisie are fettering the development of the productive forces in the U.S. national territory to the extent that there should be ripeness in even privileged sectors of the American proletariat like the airplane mechanics for some shaking up of the relations of production. CBThe trend in U.S. property relations is to move the factories further and further from the locus of the owners, as a byproduct of running the plants away from the U.S. workers. Effectively, this is fettering the development of the material productive forces _in_ the U.S. national territory. WL:I understand - perhaps incorrectly, you to say that moving factories away from the owners in America is restrain the development of the material power of production or the productive forces in America. CB: The plants are run away overseas more to run them away from the working class in the U.S. I said the plants are moved away from the owners as a byproduct as in indirect result, of running them away from the U.S. workers. Note they run them over to some other workers in other countries. Thus, things are not post-industrial. We are still very industrial. The U.S. national territory has been deindustrialized relative to its level of industrialization in the recent past. I said: Effectively, this is fettering the development of the material productive forces _in_ the U.S. national territory. The development of the productive forces _in the U.S. national territory._ the material productive forces = material power of the productive forces. How does moving factories halt the technological advance or the qualitative development of the productive forces? ^ CB: fetters the development within the U.S. national territory. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering
CB: How you gonna say with a straight face that the Industrial Revolution was the Industrial Social Revolution, or that Marx treated it as a social revolution ? Comment I am saying with a stright face that Karl Marx and Frederick Engels treated the Industrial Revolution as a Social Revolution . . .period. The Industrial Revolution and the Industrial Social Revolution means the same thing. If not then please explain the difference in meaning as you understand it. Question: Explain the difference. ^ CB: Marx and Engels treat the Industrial Revolution as a revolution in the material productive forces, not in the relations of production/property relations. Social revolutions are revolutions in the relations of production/property relations, not in the material productive forces. There are many revolutions in the productive forces throughout the bourgeois epoch, because the bourgeoisie are constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production. But these are not social revolutions because bourgeois relations of production/property relations rule throughout all of these revolutions in the instruments of production, including the Industrial Revolution in the instruments of production. The Industrial Revolution is a scientific and technological revolution, a big one in the history of the bourgeoisie's constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production. The Industrial Revolution is the leap from manufacture to Modern Industry, as discussed by Marx in Capital I in relation to the Relative Surplus Value. The bourgeoisie constantly revolutionize the instruments of production in pursuit of relative surplus value, which is to say, not absolute surplus value, or lengthening the work day, but relative surplus value, increasing productivity. Marx analyzes the machine there. The machine is at the heart of the Industrial Revolution. The factory system also arises in that revolution. The change in the technical organization of the material productive forces, the change in the shop floor setup that accompanies the rise of machine dominance is termed the factory system. The computer revolution in the productive forces is another in the long line of scientific and technological revolutions but still within bourgeois property relations. It is not a social revolution either,- at least not _yet_ - as the Industrial Revolution was not a social revolution ( especially at the beginning of the Industrial Rev. in the early 1800's) The computer revolution might become a fettering of productive forces that generates social revolution, if the runaway plants made possible by computers fetters the development of productive on the U.S. territory to the point that the U.S. labor aristocracy bolts its collaboration with the bourgeoisie , and leads the working class in sublating or revolutionizing the bourgeois property relations in the U.S. That would be labor ex-aristocrats, like airline mechanics, PATCO workers, steelworkers getting radicalized and moving with Seven League Boots, like Americans are want to do. We aren't there yet. But the U.S. capitalists may sell the Chinese Communists and others the rope for which the U.S. workers hang the U.S. capitalists. Anyway, history is class struggles, not technological regimes. Relations of production or property relations are class relations. The organization of material productive forces, including the organization of people on the shop floor, the technical division of labor, is not class relations. The capitalist owner is not even there overseeing the shopfloor anymore. The owning is done out in Grosse Pointe and on Wall Street. That's the class relation. There is a separation of the technical overseer position (part of the division of labor) and the class capitalist ownership position ( part of the relations of production or what is an expression for the same thing, the property relations). There are also, like a shadow of death of the material forces of production, the material forces of destruction ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Correspondence vs coherence theories of truth
Ralph D:. In any case, I favor correspondence over coherence theories of truth. CB: What's the difference ? ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] laws defining property
WL: Interesting proposition. What you end up stating and illustrating is that relations of production or property relations are the laws defining property CB: What kind of laws are you speaking of here ? and peoples relationship to property in the process of production. You define the capitalist as living beings in the process of production as technical overseer and ownership position and then basically state the technical overseer aspect is part of the division of labor and the ownership position is the relations of production embodied in the same person. ^^ CB: It is a trend of history that they get separated into different people. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Bourgeois obsession with developing the means of production
History is the progressive accumulation of productive forces (Engels). What this means is that history is the accumulation of productive forces and what constitutes its progressiveness is its spontaneous qualitative development and expansion. This qualitative development has at its center the revolutionizing and expansion of however the existing technological regime is constituted ^ CB: Before capitalism, the technological regimes have relatively less development during the course of their epochs. The prior ruling classes were _not_ constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production. Because we are in the bourgeois epoch, we tend to project onto the past the bourgeois obsession with developing the means of production. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] This is slander
CB: The plants are run away overseas more to run them away from the working class in the U.S.I said the plants are moved away from the owners as a byproduct as in indirect result, of running them away from the U.S. workers. WL: I call this national chauvinism. I will not seriously engage this kind of thinking. You should be ashamed. CB: Don't even try it. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Infrastructure does not micromanage the economy
Infrastructure does not micromanage the economy ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Graham Priest vs Erwin Marquit
I know that's right. Well, well, well. You might want to take a look at that collection of articles, _Dialectical Contradictions : Contemporary Marxist Discussions_. Somebody mentions, maybe Lawler, the square root of negative one. There is an article by Narski there. Marquit (1981) endeavors to clarify the three 'laws of dialectics' beginning with a formulation of what he calls law zero, the law of universal interconnection. ^^^ CB: Cornforth emphasizes interconnectedness first in his book critiquing Popper. It is the issue of the whole and parts. Anti-reductionism, so important in Caudwell, derives from holistic emphasis, moving from the whole to the parts primarily rather than from parts to wholes. Lewontin and Levins emphasize this in _Dialectical Biologist_. It may be that Marxist philosophy developed outside of the SU in the Stalinist period. Britain had Caudwell and others. A changing object exists in a given state and not in the given state at the same time. CB: This is the general paradox in Zeno's paradox for displacement, I believe. It is the paradox inherent in conceiving of motion in this way. But what other way is there to conceive of motion ? It's a trivial paradox in a way. CB (1)Ralph Dumain : Erwin Marquit's articles in Science and Society offset the two articles by Graham Priest previously described. Marquit, Erwin. Dialectics of Motion in Continuous and Discrete Spaces, Science and Society, vol. 42, Winter 1978-79, 410-425. Marquit, Erwin. Contradictions and Dialectics and Formal Logic, Science and Society, vol. 45, no. 3, Fall 1981, 306-323. Marquit, Erwin. A Materialist Critique of Hegel's Concept of Identity of Opposites, Science and Society, vol. 54, no. 2, Summer 1990, 147-166. See also Marquit's article in NST: Marquit, Erwin. Distinctions Between the Spheres of Action of Formal Logic and Dialectical Logic, Nature, Society and Thought, vol. 3, no. 1, 1990, 31-37. Both Marquit (1981) and Priest (1990-91) refer to Marquit (1978-79). Marquit also refers to Marquit (1981) and Marquit's article in NST. Marquit (1990) reacts to Priest (1989-90), and Priest (1990-91) reacts to Marquit (1990). There, now that we've cleared that up . . . Marquit (1981) endeavors to clarify the three 'laws of dialectics' beginning with a formulation of what he calls law zero, the law of universal interconnection. He then clarifies the logic of the famed three laws and their relation one to one another. His next step is to clarify objective and subjective dialectics and their relation to one another. Taking examples of antinomial statements which seem to embody logical contradictions, Marquit then argues that dialectical contradictions are not logical contradictions. (319). Examples chosen from Hegel, Engels, and quantum mechanics can be expressed in the form: A changing object exists in a given state and not in the given state at the same time. Other views are brought in from Ilyenkov, F.F. Vyakkerev, Gottfired Stiehler, and D.P. Gorskii. Marquit's main inspiration is Igor S. Narski. While I have not really described Marquit's argument, I will give him credit for treating this matter in an uncommonly precise and sophisticated manner, which Priest (the logician!) unaccountably shortchanges. I don't know what I've seen by Narski if anything, though I am familiar with the name. Also in evidence is the increasing professionalism and sophistication of Soviet philosophers following the death of Stalin. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] written history of society is a history of class struggles.
WL: The issue is your definition of history as class struggle. I reply that history is not class struggle but rather the progressive accumulation of productive forces and society moving in class antagonism. The bourgeoisie role in revolutionizing production is irrelevant to the definition of history you state. Here is what you wrote, and what I directly quoted and the above was my reply. CB: All I said was what Marx and Engels's said about history. To be more precise , the written history of society is a history of class struggles. The discussion on this thread is about class society ,not preclass society. Capitalism is class society. The history of all hitherto existing society(2) is the history of class struggles. 2. That is, all written history. In 1847, the pre-history of society, the social organisation existing previous to recorded history, all but unknown. Since then, August von Haxthausen (1792-1866) discovered common ownership of land in Russia, Georg Ludwig von Maurer proved it to be the social foundation from which all Teutonic races started in history, and, by and by, village communities were found to be, or to have been, the primitive form of society everywhere from India to Ireland. The inner organisation of this primitive communistic society was laid bare, in its typical form, by Lewis Henry Morgan's (1818-1861) crowning discovery of the true nature of the gens and its relation to the tribe. With the dissolution of the primeval communities, society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes. I have attempted to retrace this dissolution in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, second edition, Stuttgart, 1886. [Engels, 1888 English Edition and 1890 German Edition (with the last sentence omitted)] http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm #a2 WL: History is the progressive accumulation of productive forces(Engels) CB:Better said, to discover the various uses of things is the work of history. Marx: Every useful thing, as iron, paper, c., may be looked at from the two points of view of quality and quantity. It is an assemblage of many properties, and may therefore be of use in various ways. To discover the various uses of things is the work of history.[3] So also is the establishment of socially-recognized standards of measure for the quantities of these useful objects. The diversity of these measures has its origin partly in the diverse nature of the objects to be measured, partly in convention 3. Things have an intrinsick vertue (this is Barbon's special term for value in use) which in all places have the same vertue; as the loadstone to attract iron (l.c., p. 6). The property which the magnet possesses of attracting iron, became of use only after by means of that property the polarity of the magnet had been discovered. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#3 ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] The bourgeoisie, by the rapid _improvement_ of all instruments of production
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. Marx and Engels are not talking about the bourgeoisie fettering the development of the forces of production here. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] The Ontological Status of Women and Abstract Entities
[Bibliographic note: Following is the conclusion of a lecture that the logician Alonzo Church presented at Harvard University on April 18, 1958. In this excerpt, which was first published on the web site of Cathy Legg, Church was arguing against the nominalistic approach of the philosophers Nelson Goodman and Willard van Orman Quine. ] The Ontological Status of Women and Abstract Entities by Alonzo Church Goodman says somewhere that he finds abstract entities difficult to understand. And from a psychological viewpoint it is certainly his dislike and distrust of abstract entities which leads him to propose an ontology from which they are omitted. Now a misogynist is a man who finds women difficult to understand, and who in fact considers them objectionable incongruities in an otherwise matter-of-fact and hard-headed world. Suppose then that in analogy with nominalism the misogynist is led by his dislike and distrust of women to omit them from his ontology. Women are not real, he tells himself, and derives great comfort from the thought -- there are no such things. This doctrine let us call ontological misogyny . There are various forms which such a doctrine may take. The misogynist may follow the example of Ryle and say that the world of women has no independent existence, it does not exist in addition to man's world but is an aspect of it; and though it may be convenient to speak of women independently, it is also misleading, and actually one should not ask such questions as whether women exist. But if this doctrine stands in isolation and does not affect the circumstances under which he agrees to my assertion that there is a woman in the room, or admits that some women have made important scientific discoveries, then it is clear that the denial of ontological status to women is only a matter of psychological comfort to the misogynist and has no further significance. Instead of this the misogynist may take the more profound course which follows Goodman and Quine, attempting to construct a comprehensive theory that is adequate in general for purposes of understanding and communication, but at the same time avoiding ontological commitment to women. It is an interesting logical question how far such a theory is possible (without inconsistency with experimental and observational results). I think it may have at least as much success as has attended the corresponding search for a nominalist theory. Just as propositions are replaced by inscriptions in order to avoid ontological commitment to the former, so a woman might be replaced by her husband. Instead of saying that a woman is present, we might speak of men as having two kinds of presence, primary presence and secondary presence, the observational criteria for secondary presence of a man being the same which the more usual theory would take as observational criteria for presence of a woman. And similarly in the case of other things that one might think to say about women. Certain difficulties arise over the fact that some women have more than one husband and others none, but these are no greater than the corresponding difficulties in the case of propositions and inscriptions. Actually the task might be lightened by taking advantage of the fortunate circumstance that every woman has only one father. And for this reason ontological misogyny is a doctrine much easier to put into satisfactory nominalistic theory, and probably more logical order than is the Quine-Goodman finitistic nominalism. But the question of the logical possibility of such a theory must be separated from the question of the desirability of replacing the ordinary theory by this ontologically more economical variant of it. Quine and Goodman emphasize the economy of nominalism in supposing the existence of fewer entities. But the economy which has commonly been the concern of the logician, and of the mathematician dealing with foundations, has been simply economy of assumption, which might be thought to include (among other things) economy of ontological assumption, but certainly not as its primary or most important element. Surely there are other criteria by which to judge a theory. And though we may be obliged to grant that the ontological misogynist has made a successful application of Ockham's razor, in that he has reduced his ontology without losing the adequacy of his theory, we may still prefer the more usual theory which grants existence to women. To return to Quine and Goodman, it is possible, even likely, that the failure of their program will demonstrate the untenability of their finitistic nominalism. But the success of their program, like that of ontological misogynist, would leave us to choose between the rival ontologies on other grounds. It is only in the former case that Quine and Goodman could be said in any sense to have settled the nominalist-realist controversy. But it is in any case a major contribution to have clarified the meaning of the dispute, by putting the
[Marxism-Thaxis] Contradiction inherent in symbolling
There is an inherent contradiction in all efforts to represent, as the process is fundamentally establishing an identity between two different things - the thing represented and the thing being used to represent. I think this is the contradiction that always pops up in math , logic , dialectics because they all involve symboling or representing. This convention is what allows messages across generations of dead and living, yet it carries with it inherent paradox. Will elaborate. CB ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Contradiction inherent in symbolling
Thanks Victor, Am still contemplating what you say below. Hadn't thought of this - the kernel of dialectics is purposive activity, activity with an end before. Hmmm Charles ^^ Victor _ Well put. I assume your message concerns the problem of expressing dialectics through formal logical formula. If so, we can investigate more concretely the utility of formal logical expressions for representations of dialectical relations, than the true but rather abstract problem of the correspondence (not identity) between the symbolic systems used to represent the message and the thing represented. The kernel of dialectics is purposive activity, activity with an end. That is, dialectics emerges when life forms do things in order to make some change in the state of the world of their activity (including, of course, themselves). Most dialectical activity is not even willed much less conscious. Some human dialectical activity is, indeed, conscious, and some is expressed in language form (that which is communicated between men). Finally, a relatively small amount of human dialectical activity is expressed in the form of concepts, some of which take the form of formal logic. Formal logical representation is a special category within the general category of dialectics. Having described the place of formal logic in the category of dialectics we can say that the correspondence of formal logical systems to dialectics in general will, by virtue of the former being only a very particular representation of dialectical, i.e. reasoned or logical activity, be restricted relative to the category of dialectics as a whole. In the case of formal logic these restrictions are in part represented by its definitions, axioms, and propositions, but there are also other, (as Marx would put it) hidden restrictions that are necessary to the practice of formal logic. As we wrote above, some human dialectical activity (that which is expressly social) is expressed through language. Most language use according to researchers and theorists of language learning and use, such as Vygotsky, is immediate representation of experience, particularistic and directly related to the activity and things represented. Conceptualisation is a special development of meaningful speech in which particulars are categorised by abstract representations in which particulars are grouped according to some shared relation. The particular utility of the concept is in the use of the abstraction to design models (surrogates) of world conditions entirely from symbolic components without reference to immediate experience. While the concept as the primary instrument of designed activity imparts great advantages to the development of human practice:We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. (Marx Capital vol 1.) it also restricts all creative human activity to the possible constructs of the linguistic system by which it is formulated. For Hegel, conceptual activity includes all forms of consciously designed purposive activity, i.e. the sciences. This is a far larger category than that of 'formal logic.' Formal logic is reason divested of all content but that of relation. In terms of language forms, formal logic is meaningful speech reduced to the conjunctives, determiners, and prepositions. The subjects of the employment of these operators, the nouns, pronouns, adverbs, verbs and adjectives is fortuitous and the outcome of pure logic is indifferent to the relation of the reasoning to actual practice in the world. This is the 'Pure Reason' of Kant, free of all relation to the world of movement and of sense. Need I say that the concept of pure reason as anything but intellectual exercise is pure nonsense from the viewpoint of objective idealist and of materialist dialectical concepts of knowledge. MORE LATER. Victor ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] M A S S M A R C H O N W A L L S T. NYC/ Non-violent , direct action
WE MUST TURN OUR OUTRAGE OVER KATRINA INTO A MOVEMENT On the 50th Anniversary of Dec. 1, 1955, the day in Montgomery Alabama that Rosa Parks sparked the modern Civil Rights Movement -- A Call for A NATIONWIDE STRIKE AGAINST POVERTY, RACISM WAR THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1 NO SCHOOL - NO SHOPPING - NO WORK CONTINUED PROTEST AND TEACH-INS THROUGH DECEMBER 2 AND 3 M A S S M A R C H O N W A L L S T. NYC JUSTICE FOR THE PEOPLE OF NEW ORLEANS THE GULF STATES A JOB AT A LIVING WAGE IS A HUMAN RIGHT BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW HEALTHCARE, HOUSING AND EDUCATION NOT WAR AND OCCUPATION The Outrage in New Orleans is a clarion call to the antiwar movement and the grassroots: The time has arrived to take our struggle to a higher level. Let us work together and organize a nationwide strike against Poverty, Racism and War on Dec. 1, 2005, the 50th anniversary of the day that Rosa Parks helped launch the modern civil rights movement - no work, school, or shopping - continued protest through Dec.2 and 3 - A MASS MARCH ON WALL ST. NYC. It is time for the people to demonstrate that they can stop business as usual coast-to-coast when justice requires the people to do so. We owe it to the victims of Katrina, to poor and working people, to the world and to ourselves to find the way to help turn the outrage over Katrina into a mass grassroots movement for social justice, the likes of which this country has not seen for some time. Moreover, it is vitally necessary, and much more possible now, to forge real unity on a phenomenal scale between the movement against the war and the movements of African Americans, people of color, and poor and working people in a struggle for economic, social and political rights. The war and occupation of Iraq and the Katrina outrage have demonstrated to the world the urgent necessity for fundamental change and a movement that is big enough and determined enough to achieve the goal. Katrina has exposed the ugly truths about class and race, poverty, war and militarism. Our solidarity with demands of the survivors of Katrina must evolve from empathy, charity and symbolism to a mighty social force to be reckoned with. Key to this mighty potential will be the forging of a strong alliance with activists and leaders within the African American community in the Gulf States, taking direction from them regarding the kind of solidarity that they need and the demands they are making. Our demand to end the war in Iraq and to bring the troops home now must be backed up by the kind of mass tactics that signal that we mean business. Fifty years ago, Black people in Montgomery, Alabama were forced by law to sit in the back of public buses, and give their seats to any white person who demanded it. When Rosa Parks, a garment worker and civil rights activist, refused to give up her seat to a white man, she sparked the Montgomery bus boycott against segregation on public buses, one of the most successful and truly mass boycotts in history. The Montgomery bus boycott also introduced to the world a young reverend named Martin Luther King Jr., who became the boycott's principal public leader. A Dec. 1 Strike Working Committee was set up at a Sept. 10 Natl. Strategy Meeting of the Troops Out Now Coalition (TONC) attended by more than 100 activists. The working committee will develop outreach and building plans for the Dec. 1 strike. Dec. 1 Nationwide strike against poverty, racism and war -- INITIATING ORGANIZATIONS: Troops Out Now Coalition, Million Worker March Movement, Teamsters National Black Caucus, Michigan Emergency Committee Against War Injustice. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] This is global warming, says environmental chief
Overproduction of forces of production: will it burst asunder the relations of production in time to save us ? This is global warming, says environmental chief As Hurricane Rita threatens devastation, scientist blames climate change By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor The Independent, UK Published: 23 September 2005 Super-powerful hurricanes now hitting the United States are the smoking gun of global warming, one of Britain's leading scientists believes. The growing violence of storms such as Katrina, which wrecked New Orleans, and Rita, now threatening Texas, is very probably caused by climate change, said Sir John Lawton, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. Hurricanes were getting more intense, just as computer models predicted they would, because of the rising temperature of the sea, he said. The increased intensity of these kinds of extreme storms is very likely to be due to global warming. In a series of outspoken comments - a thinly veiled attack on the Bush administration, Sir John hit out at neoconservatives in the US who still deny the reality of climate change. Referring to the arrival of Hurricane Rita he said: If this makes the climate loonies in the States realise we've got a problem, some good will come out of a truly awful situation. As he spoke, more than a million people were fleeing north away from the coast of Texas as Rita, one of the most intense storms on record, roared through the Gulf of Mexico. It will probably make landfall tonight or early tomorrow near Houston, America's fourth largest city and the centre of its oil industry. Highways leading inland from Houston were clogged with traffic for up to 100 miles north. There are real fears that Houston could suffer as badly from Rita just as New Orleans suffered from Hurricane Katrina less than a month ago. Asked what conclusion the Bush administration should draw from two hurricanes of such high intensity hitting the US in quick succession, Sir John said: If what looks like is going to be a horrible mess causes the extreme sceptics about climate change in the US to reconsider their opinion, that would be an extremely valuable outcome. Asked about characterising them as loonies, he said: There are a group of people in various parts of the world ... who simply don't want to accept human activities can change climate and are changing the climate. I'd liken them to the people who denied that smoking causes lung cancer. With his comments, Sir John becomes the third of the leaders of Britain's scientific establishment to attack the US over the Bush government's determination to cast doubt on global warming as a real phenomenon. Sir John's comments follow and support recent research, much of it from America itself, showing that hurricanes are getting more violent and suggesting climate change is the cause. A paper by US researchers, last week in the US journal Science, showed that storms of the intensity of Hurricane Katrina have become almost twice as common in the past 35 years. Although the overall frequency of tropical storms worldwide has remained broadly level since 1970, the number of extreme category 4 and 5 events has sharply risen. In the 1970s, there was an average of about 10 category 4 and 5 hurricanes per year but, since 1990, they have nearly doubled to an average of about 18 a year. During the same period, sea surface temperatures, among the key drivers of hurricane intensity, have increased by an average of 0.5C (0.9F). Sir John said: Increasingly it looks like a smoking gun. It's a fair conclusion to draw that global warming, caused to a substantial extent by people, is driving increased sea surface temperatures and increasing the violence of hurricanes. Super-powerful hurricanes now hitting the United States are the smoking gun of global warming, one of Britain's leading scientists believes. The growing violence of storms such as Katrina, which wrecked New Orleans, and Rita, now threatening Texas, is very probably caused by climate change, said Sir John Lawton, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. Hurricanes were getting more intense, just as computer models predicted they would, because of the rising temperature of the sea, he said. The increased intensity of these kinds of extreme storms is very likely to be due to global warming. In a series of outspoken comments - a thinly veiled attack on the Bush administration, Sir John hit out at neoconservatives in the US who still deny the reality of climate change. Referring to the arrival of Hurricane Rita he said: If this makes the climate loonies in the States realise we've got a problem, some good will come out of a truly awful situation. As he spoke, more than a million people were fleeing north away from the coast of Texas as Rita, one of the most intense storms on record, roared through the Gulf of Mexico. It will probably make landfall tonight or early tomorrow near
[Marxism-Thaxis] When Rose met Cindy
When Rose Met Cindy: The Case against the War in Iraq By Andrew Buncombe The Independent UK Friday 23 September 2005 On both sides of the Atlantic, two mothers who lost sons in Iraq have launched campaigns to end the conflict. One camped outside George Bush's ranch. The other stood in the general election. This week, they came face to face for the first time. Andrew Buncombe reports. Along the sunbaked sidewalk of Pennsylvania Avenue came the sound of singing. It was music from an earlier generation, but as relevant now as it ever was. All we are saying is give peace a chance, chanted the group of demonstrators as they made their way to the north-west gates of the White House. All we are saying is give peace chance. At the head of the huddled group was Cindy Sheehan, the woman whose soldier son, Casey, was killed in Iraq last year and whose campaign to demand an explanation for the war from President George Bush took her to the gates of his Crawford ranch, made headlines around the world and - seemingly almost single-handedly - re-energised the US peace movement. At her side was Rose Gentle, a woman whose son, Gordon, was also killed in Iraq and who has launched a similarly relentless campaign to demand answers from Prime Minister Tony Blair. It's exciting to be here, to let George Bush know what we think about the war, Mrs. Gentle said moments afterwards, standing at the junction with 17th Street, carrying a photograph of her son wearing his uniform of Royal Highland Fusiliers. Asked if she thought he would have approved of her campaign, she glanced at the photograph of the young man, 19 years old, and replied: Gordon would have wanted this. His pals are still there [in Iraq] and he would have wanted them home safe. They still keep in touch. She added: Those young boys don't know who's with them or who's against them. People think we are against the troops but we are for them - we want them home safe. Once they're dead, the [authorities] don't want to know them. For a 19-year-old with just 24 weeks basic training to be sent to Iraq ... Had the US and Britain not invaded Iraq in the spring of 2003 it is unlikely that Mrs. Sheehan, 48, from Vacaville, California, and Mrs. Gentle, 40, from the depressed Glasgow suburb of Pollok, would ever have had reason to know each other. As it is, they and many of the other demonstrators, who have this week made their way to the US capital after a tour that has taken them to 51 cities in 28 states, share a terrible bond. Mrs. Sheehan's 24-year-old son was killed in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City on 4 April when his unit, the 1st Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment, was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire. Gordon Gentle was killed by a roadside bomb in the southern city of Basra on 28 June last year, the day the US and Britain purportedly handed back control of the country to an Iraqi government. We have been in e-mail contact for months but this is the first time we have met, Mrs. Sheehan said of Mrs. Gentle as she later stood in the sunshine on the National Mall, helping set up a Camp Casey memorial within view of the Capitol Building. It helps [meeting the other people who have lost loved ones]. They really are the only people who know what I'm going through. Mrs. Sheehan said she would like to accept Mrs. Gentle's invitation to tour the UK and share her message with British audiences. It was important that the anti-war message was as loudly heard in Britain as the US because they have troops in Iraq. They are part of it, she told The Independent. The families' descent upon Washington to participate in three days of anti-war protests this weekend organised by the group United For Peace and Justice (UFPJ) comes at a time when public support in the US for the war stands at an all-time low. A recent poll conducted for The New York Times suggested that only 44 per cent of Americans now believe the invasion of Iraq was the correct thing to do. Around 80 per cent are concerned that the spiralling costs of the occupation are diverting resources needed in the US. Mr. Bush's own ratings have similarly sunk to record lows. A Gallup poll released this week suggested only 40 per cent approve of his performance, down from almost 90 per cent in the aftermath of 9/11. Yesterday, Mr. Bush showed no sign of changing tack. Speaking at the Pentagon where he had just received an update of the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq, he claimed that withdrawing US forces would make the world more dangerous and allow terrorists to claim an historic victory over the United States. The President claimed that terrorists had been emboldened over the years by the hesitant US response to the hostage crisis with Iran, the bombing of US
[Marxism-Thaxis] FW: Camp Casey goes to Washington
http://truthout.org/imgs.site_01/endwar3.jpg Live blog from Camp Casey, Crawford, Texas http://www.truthout.org/cindy.shtml http://www.truthout.org/imgs.site_01/1.video.gif Video Reports http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm Anti-War March in Washington, DC 09.24.05 QuickTime http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm DSL http://websrvr20.audiovideoweb.com/avwebdswebsrvr2143/news_video/march512K. mov | 56K http://websrvr20.audiovideoweb.com/avwebdswebsrvr2143/news_video/march56K.m ov Windows Media DSL http://win20ca.audiovideoweb.com/ca20win15004/march512K.wmv | 56K http://win20ca.audiovideoweb.com/ca20win15004/march56K.wmv RealMedia DSL http://real21mt.audiovideoweb.com/ramgen/nj20real2514/march512K.rm | 56K http://real21mt.audiovideoweb.com/ramgen/nj20real2514/march56K.rm http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm Cindy Sheehan: We Mean Business 09.24.05 QuickTime http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm DSL http://websrvr20.audiovideoweb.com/avwebdswebsrvr2143/news_video/cindy_in_D C512K.mov | 56K http://websrvr20.audiovideoweb.com/avwebdswebsrvr2143/news_video/cindy_in_D C56K.mov Windows Media DSL http://win20ca.audiovideoweb.com/ca20win15004/cindy_in_DC512K.wmv | 56K http://win20ca.audiovideoweb.com/ca20win15004/cindy_in_DC56K.wmv RealMedia DSL http://real21mt.audiovideoweb.com/ramgen/nj20real2514/cindy_in_DC512K.rm | 56K http://real21mt.audiovideoweb.com/ramgen/nj20real2514/cindy_in_DC56K.rm http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm Camp Casey | A Film by Sally Marr and Peter Dudar http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm QuickTime DSL http://websrvr20.audiovideoweb.com/avwebdswebsrvr2143/news_video/campcasey2 512K.mov | 56K http://websrvr20.audiovideoweb.com/avwebdswebsrvr2143/news_video/campcasey2 56K.mov Windows Media DSL http://win20ca.audiovideoweb.com/ca20win15004/campcasey2512K.wmv | 56K http://win20ca.audiovideoweb.com/ca20win15004/campcasey256K.wmv RealMedia DSL http://real21mt.audiovideoweb.com/ramgen/nj20real2514/campcasey2512K.rm | 56K http://real21mt.audiovideoweb.com/ramgen/nj20real2514/campcasey256K.rm Saturday Rally in Washington, DC http://www.truthout.org/imgs.art_01/3.092505C.jpg http://www.truthout.org/imgs.art_01/3.092505DC_sm.jpg George Bush in Trouble (Cartoonist: Plantu / Le Monde Paris) http://truthout.org/imgs.site_01/3.dc.protest-04_sm.jpg http://truthout.org/imgs.site_01/3.dc.protest-01_sm.jpg http://truthout.org/imgs.site_01/3.dc.protest-03_sm.jpg Print This Story http://truthout.org/$art_printer_url$ http://truthout.org/imgs.site_01/2.ClrSpc.indent_2.gif E-mail This Story http://truthout.org/campcaseydc.shtml# http://www.truthout.org/imgs.site_01/2.ClrSpc.indent_2.gif What do you think? The t r u t h o u t Town Meeting http://forum.truthout.org/blog/ is in progress. Join the debate http://forum.truthout.org/blog/ ! On the Move By Scott Galindez Monday 26 September 2005 12:20 PM Several hundred people marched from the AME Church to the White House. Most of the crowd went to the Ellipse and is now heading back to Lafayette Park. Code Pink has a large banner reading Mothers Say No to War. It is expected that several hundred people will be arrested. Today's Activities By Scott Galindez Monday 26 September 2005 9:27 AM Capitol Hill is swarming with anti-war lobbyists this morning. They don't have their checkbooks open to gain access like other lobbyists in this town - what they have is the majority of the American people behind them. They are hoping they will convince Congress that it is time for them to start doing their job again, and hold the administration accountable. Later today, several hundred people will be risking arrest at the White House, including Jesse Jackson. Religious leaders will attempt to meet with Bush, and if they are not allowed to meet with him, they will kneel and pray at the gates, which will probably lead to their arrest. Code Pink will be attempting to deliver 1 million messages they have received in opposition to the war to the President. Many affinity groups formed yesterday and will add their own flavor to the mass civil disobedience. Preparing for Tomorrow By Scott Galindez Sunday 25 September 2005 3:48 PM Today's focus is preparing for tomorrow. At the University of the District of Columbia, Progressive Democrats of America is preparing everyone to lobby Congress tomorrow. Their event started with a bang, Reverend Yearwood brought the crowd to its feet several times declaring that it's time to take. He argued that it's not enough to speak to power, you have to take power. William Rivers Pitt told the crowd that the we are the majority and promised PDA will be the change that we desire. Medea Benjamin called on the US to join the International Court of Justice so we can
[Marxism-Thaxis] -cousin of the poem Footprints In The Sand
-cousin of the poem Footprints In The Sand Butt-prints in the Sand, One night, I had a wondrous dream; One set of footprints there was seen. The footprints of my precious Lord, But mine were not along the shore. But then some stranger prints appeared, And I asked the Lord, What have we here? Those prints are large and round and neat, But, Lord, they are too big for feet. My child, He said in sombre tones. For miles I carried you alone. I challenged you to walk in faith, But you refused and made me wait. You disobeyed, you would not grow, The walk-of-faith you would not know. So I got tired and fed up, And there I dropped you on your butt, Because in life, there comes a time, When one must fight, and one must climb, When one must rise and take a stand, Or leave their butt prints in the sand. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] In search of the truth about Robert Mugabe
In search of the truth about Robert Mugabe By Mark P. Fancher Not long ago, columnist Nat Hentoff attacked the African Union and African leaders for failing to condemn Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe. For some time now, Mugabe has been accused of a series of tyrannical acts by the British and American governments, and their respective media. The latest of Mugabe's purported crimes is the bulldozing of shacks in Zimbabwe's urban center, and the forced relocation of the inhabitants to rural areas. After taking Africa's sitting heads of state to task for not criticizing this operation, Hentoff wrote: [The displaced persons] have also been abandoned by the justly venerated Nelson Mandela, who has marred his autumnal years by refusing to say a word in criticism of Mugabe. I asked an African, a longtime human rights worker concerning the continent, why Mandela will not speak, when his condemnation of this horrifying injustice would, should he offer it, reverberate around the world. The human rights worker replied that Mandela still sees Mugabe 'as a liberator of his nation in the long, bitter struggle on the continent in which so many, including Mandela, suffered so much. He will not condemn this man.' For many of us who have studied western treatment of African leaders since the era of independence, red flags go up immediately when we observe ferocious, obsessive, continuous attacks on a particular African head of state. Such actions bring immediately to mind the vicious CIA-sponsored smear campaigns against Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and Patrice Lumumba of Congo in the 1960s. Western imperialists had strategic economic and geo-political reasons for wanting both of these men removed from power, and ultimately both leaders were eliminated. Nkrumah was driven into exile. Lumumba was assassinated. Although both were accused by the west of heinous acts, history has shown both to have been targets of carefully orchestrated propaganda. Thus, when we see a non-stop barrage of screaming headlines about Mugabe (in the British press in particular), it is prudent to recall that there are two sides to every story, and a proper judgment cannot be made without hearing both. The mainstream western press has charged that the bulldozers leveled the shacks of countless innocents and children, leaving all of them cold, desperate and homeless. However, the British-based magazine New African, states in its August/September issue that the operation was a clean-up campaign that was aimed at eliminating illegal activities and health hazards. The magazine stated: Some people in Harare [Zimbabwe's capital], for instance, did not know until the clean-up that they were neighbors to 'farmers' with a cattle herd of up to 10, several goats and over 100 pigs, let alone countless chickens, squeezed in some makeshift quarters in some of the residential suburbs of the capital. Or that they shared a residential address with a 'well-manned' brothel, harmful not only to their children, but husbands too...On the economic front, the economic benefits of the clean-up were even more immediate and far-reaching. For example, after the illegal tapping of electricity was broken in shanty settlements, demand for power, 35 percent of which Zimbabwe imports, dropped by two per cent. With respect to persons who were displaced, the magazine reports that the flip-side of the operation is a three trillion (Zimbabwean) dollar program to develop affordable housing and vending areas for persons rendered homeless by the clean-up. One individual interviewed by the magazine received a newly-constructed home less than one month after his shack was destroyed. This person's new home was one of 4,000 such units that became available in his region alone. New houses are under construction throughout the country. In the same way that the mainstream press never reported the Zimbabwean government's perspective on the clean-up operation, historical context was never provided for Zimbabwe's efforts to reclaim for Africans land that had been stolen and occupied for generations by British settlers. It was not until Mugabe began to move seriously toward land reclamation a few years ago that he was transformed in media portrayals from a responsible African statesman into a wild-eyed dictator. Yet, for anyone who knew history, the only remarkable fact was that Mugabe had delayed acting on the land issue for nearly two decades. Shortly before Mugabe and the liberation forces known as the Patriotic Front won Zimbabwe's independence in 1980, a mediated meeting was held at Lancaster House in London to bring armed hostilities to an end. At that meeting, the Patriotic Front declared: The essential questions we have posed constantly to ourselves and which we insist must be understood by all seriously concerned with a solution include the following:...What will be the future of the people's land? The Patriotic Front answered its own question at that time by making clear
[Marxism-Thaxis] The Wars Over Evolution
The New York Review of Books http://www.nybooks.com/index
Volume 52, Number 16 · October 20, 2005
http://www.nybooks.com/contents/20051020
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Review
The Wars Over Evolution
By Richard C. Lewontin http://www.nybooks.com/authors/4463
The EvolutionCreation Struggle
http://service.bfast.com/bfast/click?bfmid=2181sourceid=41397204bfpid=067
4016874
by Michael Ruse
Harvard University Press, 327 pp., $25.95
Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution
http://service.bfast.com/bfast/click?bfmid=2181sourceid=41397204bfpid=022
6712842
by Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd
University of Chicago Press, 332 pp. $30.00
1.
The development of evolutionary biology has induced two opposite reactions,
both of which threaten its legitimacy as a natural scientific explana-tion.
One, based on religious convictions, rejects the science of evolution in a
fit of hostility, attempting to destroy it by challenging its sufficiency as
the mechanism that explains the history of life in general and of the
material nature of human beings in particular. One demand of those who hold
such views is that their competing theories be taught in the schools.
The other reaction, from academics in search of a universal theory of human
society and history, embraces Darwinism in a fit of enthusiasm, threatening
its status as a natural science by forcing its explanatory scheme to account
not simply for the shape of brains but for the shape of ideas. The
EvolutionCreation Struggle is concerned with the first challenge, Not By
Genes Alone with the second.
It is no surprise that Cardinal Christoph Schönborn has recently chosen the
Op-Ed page of The New York Times to enunciate the doctrine on evolution of
the new Benedictine papacy.[1] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18363#fn1
Political and cultural struggle over the origin of life and of the human
species in particular has been a characteristically American phenomenon for
a century, providing Europeans (the French in particular) with yet another
example of la folie des Anglo-Saxons. In his essay, Cardinal Schönborn
accepts that human and other organisms have a common ancestry and, by
implication, that the species on earth today have evolved over a long period
from other species no longer extant. That is, he accepts the historical fact
that life has evolved. He distinguishes this acceptable fact of evolution
from what he characterizes as the unacceptable neo-Darwinian theory that,
in the words of the offi-cial 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church of which
he was an editor, evolution is reducible to pure chance and necessity. He
rejects, as he must, the Newtonian notion of first cause, that at the
beginning God only created a material mechanism with a few basic molecular
laws and that the rest of history has simply been the consequence of this
mechanism.
In the evolutionary process, he writes, there must have been an internal
finality, the Divine plan. He calls attention to the fact that John Paul
II, who endorsed the science of evolution in his 1996 address to the
Pontifical Academy of Sciences, nevertheless insisted in his other writings
that there must also be such a principle of finality and direction built
into the material process. Such internal finality and direction cannot be
omitted from the minimal Christian position. For if evolution is only the
consequence of random mutations, none of which needs to have occurred, and
if the subsequent fate of those mutations is subject only to the relative
ability of their carriers to reproduce and to survive catastrophes of the
environment that eliminate species and make room for new ones, then rational
beings capable of moral choices might never have come into existence. But
without such beings the concept of Redemption is unintelligible.
Christianity demands, at the very least, the inevitable emergence of
creatures capable of sin. Without a history of human sin, there is no
Christ.
Everything else is up for grabs. Neither the Vatican nor much of quite
conventional Protestant theology demands that one take the story in Genesis
1 literally. Even William Jennings Bryan, famous as the prosecutor in the
Scopes trial in 1925, when called as a witness for the defense, confessed
that he did not much care whether God took six days or six hundred million
years to create the world. Moreover, even the minimalist Christian position
does not require the abandonment of the neo-Darwinian view of the mechanism
of evolution. It is quite possible to argue, as some of my believing
religious colleagues do, that God set the stage for evolution by natural
selection of undirected mutations, but that He reserved the ancestral line
destined to become human for special preservation and guidance.
What, then, is the source of the repeated
[Marxism-Thaxis] The bourgeoisie, by the rapid _improvement_ of all instr..
.Waistline2 WL: Yes they are. Of course they are not talking about the fettering of the productive forces in this passage from the Communist Manifesto. They of course describes in detail how the bourgeoisie as a property relations fetter the development of the productive forces very clearly in the same Communist Manifesto. The issue of fettering does not mean that development of the material power of production no longer takes place. What is meant is what Marx states in the Communist Manifesto five paragraphs after the material you quote. Here is what he states: KARL MARX: The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm WL: The productive forces . . . no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; . . . they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. Marx concept of the fettering of the productive forces is not to be understood as the material power is no longer revolutionized or that bourgeois society reaches a point where science and scientific development halts or there is no basis for social revolution in human society. What would one call the enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; of which Marx speaks and why is it a part of his statement on the fettering of production under the sway of the bourgeois mode of production? Waistline ^^^ CB: So, according to the above , everything I have said about the levees in New Orleans , industrial plant closings in the U.S.and moving the plants overseas from the U.S. as examples of bourgeois property relations fettering the development of the material forces of production in relation to U.S. workers fits in with what Marx said. So, why did you not agree with what I said on all this ? The spontaneous development of the material productive forces is the activity of human beings - engineers, technicians, industrial workers, physicists - the activity of discovery, experimentation, invention, theorizing, sciencing, practice . The material forces do not develop themselves. So, to give a prime role to the development of the material forces of production is to make these categories of human actors a sort of vanguard revolutionary role. Communists would be focussed primarily in these areas of activity, natural science and engineering. Marx, Engels and Lenin would have been directing people into these science and technology fields so as to develop the forces of production. Instead, Marx , Engels and Lenin focus communists on a _class_ group, a property relations social category of people, the working class, and the activity is for the working class to change the property relations directly. The reason the working class is likely to be willing to change the property relations is that the bourgeoisie use the developing productive powers in a way that is not beneficial or is outright harmful to the working class. The fettering of the development of the forces of production is in relation to the beneficial use of the working masses, whose property relation to those forces of production is that of wage-laborer. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Hugo Chavez on Peak Oil
The following is an abridged version of the address given to the 60th UN General Assembly on September 15 by Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's revolutionary socialist president. excerpted from http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/644/644p28.htm Ladies and gentlemen, we are facing an unprecedented energy crisis in which an unstoppable increase of energy [consumption] is perilously reaching record highs, as well as the incapacity to increase oil supply and the perspective of a decline in the proven reserves of fuel worldwide. Oil is starting to become exhausted. For the year 2020 the daily demand for oil will be 120 million barrels. Such demand, even without counting future increments, would consume in 20 years what humanity has used up to now. This means that more carbon dioxide will inevitably be released, thus warming our planet even more. Hurricane Katrina has been a painful example of the cost of ignoring such realities. The warming of the oceans is the fundamental factor behind the increase in the strength of the hurricanes we have witnessed in the last years. Let this occasion be an outlet to send our deepest condolences to the people of the United States. Their people are brothers and sisters of all of us in the Americas and the rest of the world. It is unpractical and unethical to sacrifice the human race by applying in an insane manner the validity of a socio-economic model that has a galloping destructive capacity. It would be suicidal to spread it and impose it as an infallible remedy for the evils which are caused precisely by them... -- ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Stan Goff on Peak Oil
[Marxism] Stan Goff on Peak Oil Jon Flanders * Next message: [Marxism] Mark Jones on Peak Oil The left doesn't want to tell the same people that their living standards are destined to fall based on the energetic limits to growth, regardless of who is in power, or that this decline will happen sooner rather than later if our imperial government fails to secure military control over Southwest Asia. They are interested in stopping the war (and I share this goal, even though it will ultimately mean economic hardship for the West), painting the right as the source of all our problems, and procrastinating about revealing the tougher truth that no simple political brake in the US will be sufficient to stop us running over the fossil energy bluff. The complexity of the question of Saudi Arabia makes it impossible to say exactly how and when the decisive historical shift that is now in progress will finally play out. Still, it is helpful to lay out some of the constituent parts of the current conjuncture as a way of developing some credible hypotheses, in particular my own that we may be seeing the initial stage of the historical obsolescence of conventional imperial military power. The United States is particularly vulnerable to any disruption in the constant flow of inexpensive oil - more vulnerable than any society in history. We have developed a social infrastructure not just around ground transportation that requires petroleum-based fuel, but around the private automobile. This does not mean that we simply use a lot of cars. Cars are no longer a luxury in the United States, but an absolute necessity because of the spatial separation inhering in our economic specialization. We are absolutely dependent on the oceanic web of asphalt that connects every economic activity to every other with roads for private automobiles. The nearest grocery store to my home is two and a half miles away, and my spouse commutes 35 minutes each way to her job each day. Public transportation systems, with a few exceptions in places like New York, are ludicrously inadequate. Any disruption in oil flow would have immediate and near catastrophic consequences for the US. from:http://stangoff.com/index.php?p=59 -- My photo gallery at Rangefinderforum.com http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/showgallery.php?cat=500ppuser=524 Under the Tuscan Snow Visiting Italy 2/2005 http://www.jflan.net/jonphotos/italy/italy/italy.html * Previous message: [Marxism] Earl Browder * Next message: [Marxism] Mark Jones on Peak Oil * Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] More information about the Marxism mailing list http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] [Marxism] Mark Jones on Peak Oil
[Marxism] Mark Jones on Peak Oil .What form will this catastrophe take and what kind of working-class politics is appropriate to meet it? If the economists suffer from over-optimism, the geologists also are not clear about the historical implications of the global Hubbert-peak. How does capitalism react and adapt to energy shortage and growing entropy? This is first of all and above all, an accumulation crisis, not a resource crisis. The oil will never run out, and most of even known, easily-accessible conventional oil reserves will probably stay underground forever and never be pumped. As for non-conventional resources like tar-sands-let alone hydrogen-they will remain mere fantasy. In the wake of a severe slow-down, neither capital-nor, crucially, effective demand- will exist capable of bringing the alternatives onstream. World capitalism can slip into a post-crash equilibrium state which can endure for decades or longer, amid unprecedented social stress and immiseration. To say this is not (obviously) to seek it or to welcome it; but only by resolutely analysing historical processes, and not by hiding from them, can we hope to positively influence outcomes. It may seem odd to argue on the one hand that fossil fuels are running out but on the other that even known, easily-accessible reserves may never be used. But there are plenty of examples of this happening in history. The age of coal and steam ended with most of the coal still underground. More to the point, economies can collapse because of an energy-famine even though there is still plenty of reserve left. That happened in the USSR. The USSR was a very energy-intensive economy. The main reason for its collapse was not because it was bankrupted by Reagan's Star Wars, or because planning doesn't work or even because of Gorbachev's treason. These were factors, but the main underlying reason was the failure of the Soviet energy system. But there is still plenty of oil left in the former Soviet Union. In fact fSU reserves-to-production ratios have consistently risen for the past 15 years. Russian reserves are higher now than in Soviet times. Isn't availability of reserves all that matters? Economists constantly repeat the mantra that 'world reserves are rising' when they seek to refute the known facts that world oil production is at or near its Hubbert-peak. But this kind of information, which the panglossians depend on, is highly misleading. What went wrong in the USSR is a paradigm example of just how misleading the argument about reserves can be: and how crises can bite with unexpected and devastating suddenness. Soviet oil production peaked in 1987 and swiftly (within 5 years) fell by half. This brought about the complete collapse not only of the Soviet energy industry, but the whole Soviet economy. 15 years later, there are few real signs of economic revival. Without the kind of effective demand which the Soviet economy provided, and without the kind of social and technical infrastructure and political stability which the Soviet economy also provided, there is no material basis to recreate such a colossal oil industry in the fSU. Therefore, the fSU is unlikely to ever be more than a raw materials and above all, energy-supply appendage of the capitalist world-system. What happened to the Soviet oil industry exactly mirrors what is happening in the West today: in the face of faltering supplies, the energy supply system is being pressured to the maximum. Exactly as N Sea and Mexican production is just now being forced to its technical limits, so big Soviet resources such as Samotlor were intensively exploited until production collapsed almost overnight. The result was an immediate technical crisis of production from which the Soviet oil industry never recovered. Worse, it brought down the whole economy in its wake. The crisis in oil production triggered positive feedbacks in the wider economy which produced an uncontrollable, runaway collapse. What had been a stable economy running in equilibrium entered a period of chaotic turbulence before flipping into a quite different steady-state. *The same thing is happening now in the Western oil industry*. Exactly as in the West, oil and gas was internally priced so low that it was impossible to recapitalise the industry. North Sea oil (its huge infrastructure having been financially and energetically amortized many years ago) was producing at maximum capacity even when oil prices fell to $10/bbl in the late 1990s. Now, a savage depletion in UK North Sea production has set in. Prices are temporarily higher, but fear of a new slump is a deterrent to new investment in what is anyway a declining reserve. Since 1973, US imperialism has successfully externalised the overheads of this chronic crisis, and the result has been the growth in mass immiseration, both relatively and absolutely, of the working class and its social allies in peripheral and semi-peripheral states. There
[Marxism-Thaxis] Zimbabwe brings steam engines back
The Hindu Saturday, Oct 01, 2005 Zimbabwe brings steam engines back PRETORIA: Zimbabwe has announced it is moving back into the steam age by re-commissioning 10 coal-fired locomotives to cope with the economic crisis. Further indications of shortages came from hospitals, which are turning away patients because they do not have basic medicines and surgical equipment. In the courts, state witnesses said they were too weak from hunger to testify. The announcement that steam engines would be put back into service was made by Fanuel Masikati, a spokesman for the state-owned National Railways of Zimbabwe, which has been plagued by breakdowns and cancellations due to fuel shortages. Mr. Masikati told the Government-controlled Herald newspaper that lack of foreign currency prevented the railway from importing fuel and spare parts for the diesel engines. The country has abundant coal and basic components to keep the steam engines running. In another example of reverting to old technology, Zimbabwe has begun using ambulances pulled by cattle in rural areas because there is no fuel for motor vehicles. The country's hospitals admitted on Wednesday that they could not test patients for HIV infection because of a lack of laboratory chemicals. - Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 Copyright C 2005, The Hindu. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering
WL:Marx is not speaking about plant closing or relocation of production facilities ^ CB: This conclusion is not supported by Marx's discussion as quoted on this thread. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] fettering
Moving plants overseas, industrial plant closings, and then measuring this against employment opportunity of American workers, and on this basis speaking of the fettering of productive forces - in the context of job opportunity for American workers, is risky business for communists. Our relative prosperity has been carved out of the back of the world proletariat. We forget we are imperial communists and imperial Marxists - the most imperialist on earth, and not simply bourgeois, and I will not speak about the fettering of productive forces in relationship to American workers. Fettering according to Marx is about a collision between the conditions of bourgeois property and the productive forces - not a segment of the world working class. ^ CB: Nowhere in his remarks, does Marx say that the fettering impacts all national segments of the working class at the same time. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Louisiana back to the French
Baton Rouge, LA September 26, 2005 Page A1 September 26, 2005 (AP Wirephoto) -- President Bush and a jubilant Jacques Chirac shake hands as the deal is finalized. The official handover is to occur on October 15th. SEPTEMBER 26, 2005, BATON ROUGE, LA (AP) - The White House announced today that President Bush has successfully sold the state of Louisiana back to the French at more than double its original selling price of $11,250,000. This is a bold step forward for America, said Bush. And America will be stronger and better as a result. I stand here today in unity with French Prime Minister Jack Sharaq, who was so kind to accept my offer of Louisiana in exchange for 25 million dollars cash. The state, ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild. Jack understands full well that this one's a 'fixer upper,' said Bush. He and the French people are quite prepared to pump out all that water and make Louisiana a decent place to live again. And they've got a lot of work to do. But Jack's assured me, if it's not right, they're going to fix it. The move has been met with incredulity from the beleaguered residents of Louisiana. Shuba-pie! said New Orleans resident Willis Babineaux. Frafer-perly yum kom drabby sham! However, President Bush's decision has been widely lauded by Republicans. This is an unexpected but brilliant move by the President, said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Instead of spending billions and billions, and billions of dollars rebuilding the state of Louisiana, we've just made 25 million dollars in pure profit. This is indeed a smart move, commented Fox News analyst Brit Hume. Not only have we stopped the flooding in our own budget, we've made money on the deal. Plus, when the god-awful French are done fixing it up, we can easily invade and take it back again. The money gained from 'The Louisiana Refund' is expected to be immediately pumped into the rebuilding of Iraq. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] MARXISM AND CLASS, GENDER AND RACE: by Martha Gimenez
http://www.colorado.edu/Sociology/gimenez/ MARXISM AND CLASS, GENDER AND RACE: RETHINKING THE TRILOGY Published (2001) in RACE, GENDER http://ml1.suno.edu/sunorgc/conference.htm#Conference CLASS, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 23-33, special issue on Marxism and Race, Gender Class. It is posted here with permission of Jean Belkhir, Editor http://ml1.suno.edu/sunorgc/ Introduction A taken for granted feature of most social science publications today, especially those about inequality, is the ritual critique of Marx and Marxism in the process of introducing theoretical alternatives intended to remedy its alleged failures. This practice became popular in early feminist literature: Marx and Marxists were criticized for not developing an in-depth analysis of the oppression of women, their economism, class reductionism, and sex blind categories of analysis. Soon after it became common place to assert that Marxism was also at fault for neglecting race, demography, ethnicity, the environment and practically everything that mattered to the new social movements in the West. As the movements died, scholarship informed by those political concerns flourished; the energy that might have been spent in the public arena found expression in academic programs (e.g., women's studies, racial/ethnic studies) and efforts to increase diversity in the curriculum and the population of educational institutions. Publication of the journal Race, Sex Class (changed afterwards to Race, Gender Class), in 1993, signaled the convergence of those political and intellectual interests into a new social science perspective that soon acquired enormous visibility, as demonstrated by the proliferation of journal articles and books with race, gender and class in their titles. This perspective, put forth primarily but not exclusively by social scientists of color, emerged as a reaction to feminist theories which neglected racial/ethnic and class differences among women, theories of racial/ethnic inequality which neglected sexism among men of color and, predictably, as a corrective to Marxism's alleged shortcomings. For example, Jean Belkhir, editor and founder of Race, Sex Class, prefaces an article on this topic as follows: The Failure Of Marxism To Develop Adequate Tools and A Comprehensive Theory of Ethnicity, Gender and Class Issues is Undisputable (Belkhir, 1994: 79). The list of putative failures could be as long as we wanted it to be but what would that prove, beyond the fact that Marx's and Engels' political and theoretical priorities differed from those of contemporary social scientists? Less biased, albeit debatable, is the conclusion that Marxism, although offering crucial and unparalleled insights into the operation of capitalism, needs to develop the analytical tools to investigate the study of racism, sexism and classism (Belkhir, 1994: 79). To refer to class as classism is, from the standpoint of Marxist theory, a deeply misleading formulation (Eagleton, 1996: 57; see also Kandal, 1995: 143) because class is not simply another ideology legitimating oppression; it denotes exploitative relations between people mediated by their relations to the means of production. Nevertheless, it is the case that neither Marx nor Engels devoted the intensity of effort to the investigation of gender and race (and other issues) that would have satisfied today's critics. It is (and any literature review would support this point) far easier to emphasize their sins of omission and -- in light of current political sensibilities -- commission, than it is to use their theoretical and methodological contributions to theorize and investigate those aspects of capitalist social formations that today concern us. Notable exceptions are Berberoglu (1994), who has examined the underlying class forces leading to gender and racial divisions in the U.S. working class, linking gender and racial oppression to capital accumulation, and Kandal (1995), who has forcefully argued for the need to avoid the racialization and feminization of social conflicts while minimizing or overlooking the significance of class. In this essay, I intend to argue that Marxism does contain the analytical tools necessary to theorize and deepen our understanding of class, gender and race. I intend critically to examine, from the standpoint of Marxist theory, the arguments for race, gender and class studies offered by some of their main proponents, assessing their strengths and limitations and demonstrating, in the process, that Marxism is theoretically and politically necessary if the study of class, gender and race is to achieve more than the endless documentation of variations in their relative salience and combined effects in very specific contexts and experiences. Race, Gender Class as a Social Science Perspective Long before the popularization of the Race, Gender Class (RGC) perspective, I suspect that most Marxist sociologists teaching social stratification
[Marxism-Thaxis] Catholic Church admits fallibility of Bible!
But not of the Pope ? CB http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-1811332,00.html Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent THE hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true. The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their five million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they should not expect total accuracy from the Bible. We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision, they say in The Gift of Scripture. The document is timely, coming as it does amid the rise of the religious Right, in particular in the US. Some Christians want a literal interpretation of the story of creation, as told in Genesis, taught alongside Darwins theory of evolution in schools, believing intelligent design to be an equally plausible theory of how the world began. But the first 11 chapters of Genesis, in which two different and at times conflicting stories of creation are told, are among those that this countrys Catholic bishops insist cannot be historical. At most, they say, they may contain historical traces. The document shows how far the Catholic Church has come since the 17th century, when Galileo was condemned as a heretic for flouting a near-universal belief in the divine inspiration of the Bible by advocating the Copernican view of the solar system. Only a century ago, Pope Pius X condemned Modernist Catholic scholars who adapted historical-critical methods of analysing ancient literature to the Bible. In the document, the bishops acknowledge their debt to biblical scholars. They say the Bible must be approached in the knowledge that it is Gods word expressed in human language and that proper acknowledgement should be given both to the word of God and its human dimensions. They say the Church must offer the gospel in ways appropriate to changing times, intelligible and attractive to our contemporaries. The Bible is true in passages relating to human salvation, they say, but continue: We should not expect total accuracy from the Bible in other, secular matters. They go on to condemn fundamentalism for its intransigent intolerance and to warn of significant dangers involved in a fundamentalist approach. Such an approach is dangerous, for example, when people of one nation or group see in the Bible a mandate for their own superiority, and even consider themselves permitted by the Bible to use violence against others. Of the notorious anti-Jewish curse in Matthew 27:25, His blood be on us and on our children, a passage used to justify centuries of anti-Semitism, the bishops say these and other words must never be used again as a pretext to treat Jewish people with contempt. Describing this passage as an example of dramatic exaggeration, the bishops say they have had tragic consequences in encouraging hatred and persecution. The attitudes and language of first-century quarrels between Jews and Jewish Christians should never again be emulated in relations between Jews and Christians. As examples of passages not to be taken literally, the bishops cite the early chapters of Genesis, comparing them with early creation legends from other cultures, especially from the ancient East. The bishops say it is clear that the primary purpose of these chapters was to provide religious teaching and that they could not be described as historical writing. Similarly, they refute the apocalyptic prophecies of Revelation, the last book of the Christian Bible, in which the writer describes the work of the risen Jesus, the death of the Beast and the wedding feast of Christ the Lamb. The bishops say: Such symbolic language must be respected for what it is, and is not to be interpreted literally. We should not expect to discover in this book details about the end of the world, about how many will be saved and about when the end will come. In their foreword to the teaching document, the two most senior Catholics of the land, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-OConnor, Archbishop of Westminster, and Cardinal Keith OBrien, Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, explain its context. They say people today are searching for what is worthwhile, what has real value, what can be trusted and what is really true. The new teaching has been issued as part of the 40th anniversary celebrations of Dei Verbum, the Second Vatican Council document explaining the place of Scripture in revelation. In the past 40 years, Catholics have learnt more than ever before to cherish the Bible. We have rediscovered the Bible as a precious treasure, both ancient and ever new. A Christian charity is sending a film about the Christmas story to every primary school in Britain after hearing of a young boy who asked his teacher why Mary and Joseph had named
[Marxism-Thaxis] Biblical truth
[Marxism] Biblical truth paul illich paul_illich at hotmail.com mailto:marxism%40lists.econ.utah.edu?Subject=%5BMarxism%5D%20Biblical%20%22 truth%22In-Reply-To=E1EN9W9-0006Ed-Ob%40lists.econ.utah.edu Nor should it be forgotten that Teilhard de Chardin was not only a scientist Jesuit who was closely involved with the Peking Man discoveries, but also that he provided an RC vision of teleology, with the evolution of Man to a Godhead, the Omega Point - all very Hegelian. So the church has a long and recent, if ambiguous (after all, Chardin was not exactly top of the food cahin), history of resolving the supposed conflict between science and religion in a pseudo-scientific manner, just as the not-so-'new' ID debate tries to do. The latest special edition of Scientific American has a report on a conflab in Cambridge, England, that has theist and non-theist scientists face to face, and following excahnges occured: Take the exchange between biologists Simon Conway Morris of Cambridge and Richard Dawkins of the University of Oxford. Morris contended that intelligence is not a freak occurrence but a recurring theme in evolution, appearing in dolphins, parrots and crows as well as in primates. He speculated that any of these species might be capable of discovering God, but we had help--from Christ, whom God sent to Earth for our benefit. Dawkins, by far the most antireligious lecturer, praised Morris's evolutionary views but called his Christianity gratuitous. Morris retorted that he found Dawkins's atheism archaic and asserted that the resurrection and other miracles attributed to Christ were historically verifiable. After more give-and-take, Morris, crossing his arms tightly across his chest, grumbled, I'm not sure this conversation can go any further. Dawkins also challenged the faith of physicist John Barrow, an Anglican. Like several other speakers, Barrow emphasized how extraordinarily fine-tuned the universe is for our existence. Why not just accept that fine-tuning as a fact of nature? Dawkins asked. Why do you want to explain it with God? For the same reason you don't want to, Barrow responded drily. Everyone laughed except Dawkins, who protested, That's not an answer! Disagreement divided believers as well. Physicist John Polkinghorne, a winner of the $1.4-million Templeton Prize, given annually to those who advance spiritual matters, contended that physicists' understanding of causality is patchy and hence allows for a God who answers prayers and carries out the occasional miracle, such as parting the Red Sea. Another physicist and Templeton Prize winner, Paul Davies, discerned tentative evidence of design in the laws of nature but added, As a physicist, I feel very uncomfortable with a God who intervenes in human affairs. (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000C055B-0CBB-1306-8A6883414B7F0 000sc=I100322) Any discussion of biblical truth, literal interpretation and the ID or wider evolution debate will inevitably hit these walls. Simon Conway Morris and his bizarre asserrtion (from a so-called scientist) that the resurrection and other miracles attributed to Christ were 'historically verifiable' seems to me laughable, and would lead me to distrust his objectivity in science reports. The point is made that a 'scientist' is a person who has science as an aspect of his life, and 'science' is a seperate abstract idea, so that therefore a scientist is not by necessity required to be as a hard-headed a rationalist as, say, Dawkins is, and other aspects of intelligence can inform their work. This becomes slightly nuts beyond a certain point (if 'science' is to have any meaning), assuming you can even swallow the last paragraph at all. Thus this passage from SA had me laughing even harder: Tension was evident not only between speakers but also within individual minds. Nancey Murphy, a philosopher at the Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., described herself as a materialist who does not view the soul as a spirit separate from the body. Yet she believes in phenomena that many scientists might find hard to swallow, such as the resurrection of Christ and, at the end of time, of all humans. When a journalist pressed her to explain how resurrection might work, Murphy acknowledged that at times the discussion between science and religion breaks down because they involve incommensurable schemes for understanding reality. In the end, my position is that the religious wouldn't know 'truth' if they tripped over it, as they have precepts that are, frankly, weird distortions of reality (at best) or just plain insane. How can their conclusions be respected? That protestants believed in witches and in the literal truth of the bible (including no doubt that famous injunction against homosexuals, 'thou shalt not covet they neighbors ass') is true. That a catholic willingness to bend the rules, rewrite the bible, bin
[Marxism-Thaxis] September 24 March journal and photos
http://www.windchimewalker.com/-webpages/9-24-05-antiwar-photos.html ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Unity of theory and practice
WL :The focus of revolutionary activity - politics, is a very different subject matter and doctrine than political economy, which arose during the manufacturing period as a theoretical science. CB: For Marx there is unity of theory and practice on this. _Capital_ is to be read as a guide to revolutionary activity, as the same subject matter. That's why it's _political_economy, not economics. ^ For instance my life activity took place during the ascendency and decline of what is called the African American Peoples Liberation Movement. Political rights were very important to this movement but because I am generations industrial proletariat my own particlar standpoint has been to trace the development of the African American Liberation Movement on the basis of the change in the laboring process as slave labor and its corresponding implements all the way through the emergence of the qualitatively new productivity implements in the form of computers, advance robotics and digitalized production process. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Relations ABUSE forces
As Polar Ice Turns to Water, Dreams of Treasure Abound By CLIFFORD KRAUSS, STEVEN LEE MYERS, ANDREW C. REVKIN and SIMON ROMERO This article is by Clifford Krauss, Steven Lee Myers, Andrew C. Revkin and Simon Romero. CHURCHILL, Manitoba - It seems harsh to say that bad news for polar bears is good for Pat Broe. Mr. Broe, a Denver entrepreneur, is no more to blame than anyone else for a meltdown at the top of the world that threatens Arctic mammals and ancient traditions and lends credibility to dark visions of global warming. Still, the newest study of the Arctic ice cap - finding that it faded this summer to its smallest size ever recorded - is beginning to make Mr. Broe look like a visionary for buying this derelict Hudson Bay port from the Canadian government in 1997. Especially at the price he paid: about $7. By Mr. Broe's calculations, Churchill could bring in as much as $100 million a year as a port on Arctic shipping lanes shorter by thousands of miles than routes to the south, and traffic would only increase as the retreat of ice in the region clears the way for a longer shipping season. With major companies and nations large and small adopting similar logic, the Arctic is undergoing nothing less than a great rush for virgin territory and natural resources worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Even before the polar ice began shrinking more each summer, countries were pushing into the frigid Barents Sea, lured by undersea oil and gas fields and emboldened by advances in technology. But now, as thinning ice stands to simplify construction of drilling rigs, exploration is likely to move even farther north. Last year, scientists found tantalizing hints of oil in seabed samples just 200 miles from the North Pole. All told, one quarter of the world's undiscovered oil and gas resources lies in the Arctic, according to the United States Geological Survey. The polar thaw is also starting to unlock other treasures: lucrative shipping routes, perhaps even the storied Northwest Passage; new cruise ship destinations; and important commercial fisheries. It's the positive side of global warming, if there is a positive side, said Ron Lemieux, the transportation minister of Manitoba, whose provincial government is investing millions in Churchill. If the melting continues, as many Arctic experts expect, the mass of floating ice that has crowned the planet for millions of years may largely disappear for entire summers this century. Instead of the white wilderness that killed explorers and defeated navigators for centuries, the world would have a blue pole on top, a seasonally open sea nearly five times the size of the Mediterranean. But if the Arctic is no longer a frozen backyard, the fences matter. For now it is not clear where those fences are. Under a treaty called the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, territory is determined by how far a nation's continental shelf extends into the sea. Under the treaty, countries have limited time after ratifying it to map the sea floor and make claims. In 2001, Russia made the first move, staking out virtually half the Arctic Ocean, including the North Pole. But after challenges by other nations, including the United States, Russia sought to bolster its claim by sending a research ship north to gather more geographical data. On Aug. 29, it reached the pole without the help of an icebreaker - the first ship ever to do so. The United States, an Arctic nation itself because of Alaska, could also try to expand its territory. But several senators who oppose any possible infringement on American sovereignty have repeatedly blocked ratification of the treaty. Indeed, not everyone agrees that warming of the Arctic merits concern. No one knows what share of the recent thawing can be attributed to natural cycles and how much to heat-trapping pollution linked to recent global warming, and some scientists and government officials, particularly in Russia, are dismissive of assertions that a permanent change is at hand. We are not going to have apple trees growing in Vorkuta, said the mayor of that coal-mining city, Igor L. Shpektor, who is also the president of Russia's union of Arctic cities and towns. But the current thaw is already real enough for the four million people within the Arctic Circle, including about 150,000 Inuit. As long as it's ice, said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, leader of a transnational Inuit group, nobody cares except us, because we hunt and fish and travel on that ice. However, the minute it starts to thaw and becomes water, then the whole world is interested. Increasingly, big corporations, the eight countries with Arctic footholds and other nations farther south are betting on the possibility of a great transformation. Energy-hungry China has set up a research station on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen and twice deployed its icebreaker Snow Dragon, which normally works in
[Marxism-Thaxis] Poor People's Movement initiative
http://www.millionsmoreportal.com/air.html Join Us Saturday, October 15th 2005 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Millions More Movement TM to Mobilize and Empower America's Poor and Disenfranchised at 10th Anniversary Gathering of the Million Man March October 14-16 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. NEW YORK, NY, - The nation's poor and disenfranchised will gather on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, October 15th to help launch a movement long overdue. The Millions More Movement will focus on mobilizing men, women and youth into an effective national movement with the goal of transforming American society and eliminating poverty and injustice. As was starkly evidenced in the revelations following Hurricane Katrina, our nation's poor are being grossly underserved. As we witnessed, New Orleans' 9th Ward was the invisible ward but a 9th Ward exists in every city in America. From South Central in Los Angeles to Houston's 2nd Ward to North Philadelphia to Southeast Washington D.C. to Miami's Overtown, all of them and more contain people who are drowning in poverty. The power and resources to alleviate the horror of this condition is among us. The Millions More Movement will focus on empowering poor people to help themselves, beginning with the knowledge that in numbers comes strength and a common purpose to effect change. It takes place on the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March, which peacefully mobilized two million Black men in order to help them be better fathers, husbands and sons. The Millions More Movement is being orchestrated by a broad coalition of national organizations including Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, Dr. Dorothy Height and the National Council of Negro Women, Bruce Gordon and the NAACP, Mark Morial and the National Urban League, Russell Simmons and the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, Dr. Charles Steele and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Reverend Jesse Jackson and the National Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the Reverend Al Sharpton and the National Action Network and Congressman Mel Watt and the Congressional Black Caucus, among others. The National Director of the Millions More Movement is Washington, D.C. pastor the Reverend Willie Wilson. The Millions More Movement is challenging all of us to rise above the things that have kept us divided in the past, by focusing us on the agenda of the Millions More Movement to see how all of us, with all of our varied differences, can come together and direct our energy, not at each other, but at the condition of the reality of the suffering of our people, that we might use all of our skills, gifts and talents to create a better world for ourselves, our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, declared Minister Louis Farrakhan. Added Dr. Dorothy Height, The Million Man March ten years ago could not have been successful without the support of women. And we are pleased that women are invited to take part in the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March to launch the Millions More Movement, which encompasses the whole of black families and poor families throughout America. Hip-hop leaders helping to galvanize the movement include Reverend Run, Sean Diddy Combs, Damon Dash, Jermaine Dupri, Kanye West, Ludacris, LL Cool J, Queen Latifah, Common, Wyclef Jean, Missy Elliott, Foxy Brown, David Banner, Snoop Dogg, Ice T, Jim Jones, Juelz Santana and Jha Jha of the Diplomats, Masta P, Juvenile, Erykah Badu ?Questlove of The Roots, MC Lyte, Fab Five Freddy, Biz Markie, Kid Capri, Cassidy, the Wu Tang Clan, Xzibit, Tony Austin, Humpty Hump, the Ruff Ryders and dead prez, among others. Russell Simmons, Chairman of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, emphasized, The commemoration deserves the respect and support of all people of goodwill who cherish the universal love of humanity. The time has come for the hip-hop community and all of us to come together and participate in a movement which will have a fundamental influence on the lives of this generation and generations to come. Other celebrities endorsing or participating include Harry Belafonte, Cornell West, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, Susan Taylor, Dr. Julianne Malveaux, Steve Harvey, Tavis Smiley, Tom Joyner, Cathy Hughes and many others. Kanye West, speaking as he accepted the Million Man March Image Award at Mosque Maryam in Chicago, expressed his support for the Millions More Movement. West stated, When your message resonates with the people, then you know your message is from God, and we are building this movement in the interest of all of God's people. Common explains, I always looked at hip-hop as a vehicle to educate, to enlighten, to inspire. If we make money at this music game, we can contribute to our communities, create jobs in our communities and really help make a
[Marxism-Thaxis] HISTORICAL TENDENCY OF CAPITALIST ACCUMULATION
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: HISTORICAL TENDENCY OF CAPITALIST ACCUMULATION What does the primitive accumulation of capital, i.e., its historical genesis, resolve itself into? In so far as it is not immediate transformation of slaves and serfs into wage-laborers, and therefore a mere change of form, it only means the expropriation of the immediate producers, i.e., the dissolution of private property based on the labor of its owner. Private property, as the antithesis to social, collective property, exists only where the means of labor and the external conditions of labor belong to private individuals. But according as these private individuals are laborers or not laborers, private property has a different character. The numberless shades, that it at first sight presents, correspond to the intermediate stages lying between these two extremes. The private property of the laborer in his means of production is the foundation of petty industry, whether agricultural, manufacturing, or both; petty industry, again, is an essential condition for the development of social production and of the free individuality of the laborer himself. Of course, this petty mode of production exists also under slavery, serfdom, and other states of dependence. But it flourishes, it lets loose its whole energy, it attains its adequate classical form, only where the laborer is the private owner of his own means of labor set in action by himself: the peasant of the land which he cultivates, the artisan of the tool which he handles as a virtuoso. This mode of production pre-supposes parcelling of the soil and scattering of the other means of production. As it excludes the concentration of these means of production, so also it excludes co-operation, division of labor within each separate process of production, the control over, and the productive application of the forces of Nature by society, and the free development of the social productive powers. It is compatible only with a system of production, and a society, moving within narrow and more or less primitive bounds. To perpetuate it would be, as Pecqueur rightly says, to decree universal mediocrity. At a certain stage of development, it brings forth the material agencies for its own dissolution. From that moment new forces and new passions spring up in the bosom of society; but the old social organization fetters them and keeps them down. It must be annihilated; it is annihilated. Its annihilation, the transformation of the individualized and scattered means of production into socially concentrated ones, of the pigmy property of the many into the huge property of the few, the expropriation of the great mass of the people from the soil, from the means of subsistence, and from the means of labor, this fearful and painful expropriation of the mass of the people forms the prelude to the history of capital. It comprises a series of forcible methods, of which we have passed in review only those that have been epoch-making as methods of the primitive accumulation of capital. The expropriation of the immediate producers was accomplished with merciless Vandalism, and under the stimulus of passions the most infamous, the most sordid, the pettiest, the most meanly odious. Self-earned private property, that is based, so to say, on the fusing together of the isolated, independent laboring-individual with the conditions of his labor, is supplanted by capitalistic private property, which rests on exploitation of the nominally free labor of others, i.e., on wage-labor. [1] http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch32.htm#n1 As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the laborers are turned into proletarians, their means of labor into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialization of labor and further transformation of the land and other means of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the laborer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many laborers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralization of capital. One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the co-operative form of the labor-process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labor into instruments of labor only usable in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialized labor, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world-market, and
[Marxism-Thaxis] The expropriators are expropriated
Here's the fettering and burst asunder metaphor in its public , publication form. CB ^ The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it.Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. Thus integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Graeco-Roman heritage of capitalism
With respect to the famous notion that being determines consciousness, the superstructural changes that follow a revolution in the base, a revolution in the relations of production such as the capitalist revolution, need not, in Marx and Engels theory ,be confined to ideas that are new, have never been expressed in history before. Nothing in the historical materialist model claims that old ideas from a previous mode cannot be recycled in a revolution. The bourgeoisie recycled some ideas from the mode prior to feudalism as part of the bourgeois revolution. So, the bourgeoisie superstructure was a new one relative to feudalism. It was determined by the revolution in the relations of production ( the primitive accumulation of capital). But it also went back and picked up elements of the old Graeco-Roman superstructure for its specific content. The determination of the superstructure by the base ( which only occurs especially intermittently, in punctuations admits long equilbria) does not specify all the content of the superstructure. The determination by the base is only that the superstructure fit within certain limits. It is a negative determination, a condtional determination. The base is a necessary cause of the superstructure. It is not a sufficient cause of the superstructure. The new superstructure must meet a certain minimum to meet the new demands and requirements of the new base. But above that minimum, the base does not determine the form of the superstructure. The ruling class can choose the specifics . The ruling ideas of any age are the ideas of its ruling classes, and these ideas are consciously chosen to some extent. Roman law worked fine for early capitalism. Roman society had a market, though it was not the predominant economic form. Caveat Emptor ! Bourgeois law is largely based on Roman law especially early. ( More on this later). We have a Senate, in the U.S. What book do I recall Republic in the title ? etc., etc. Napoleonic Code is based on Roman law. In my father's generation, law students had to take Latin. Why is it that Roman law is more fit for bourgeois society than feudal law ? Because the bourgeois are building an empire: slavery and colonialism ( more than specifically than conquest as I said in previious posts) The new bourgeois ruling class could look at old Rome and Greece and see a sort of precedent on how to rule. The elements of colonialism and slavery were organized with a developed rule system for a market and for slavery at the same time in the Roman system, just the ticket the new capitalist ruling class was looking for. They viewed Classical society as a prior golden age ,before the dark age of feudalism. So capitalism is both a step backward from feudalism to slave society as well as a step forward from feudalism in all the wellknown ways, wage-labor, science and technology. The Spirit of Capitalism is as much pagan as Protestant. This paganism of the bourgeoisie is also a veiled atheism, for the bourgeoisie idealize the Classical humans not their gods. The bourgeoisie needs an atheist outlook to be more class conscious than the working class. It is a very important point that the bourgeoisie consciousness is more atheist than that of the masses. Charles ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] theory of the Communists
* V3: I regard the manifesto as a call to arms rather than a serious effort at analysis. It is if anything more dated by the conditions that engendered its production, than are Marx and Engel's theoretical productions. I know this is not a direct or full answer, but it's the best I can give you for the moment. CB: Marx and Engels take the unity of theory and practice very seriously. Theoretical productions must united in a call to arms. Quite a bit of most fundamental analysis in the Manifesto. All the fundamentals of Merxist analysis are there. Later stuff doesn't really change too much from the fundamentals on historical materialism in the CM. One exception is first sentence change, the _written_ history, not just history of society is a history of class struggles. So, with respect to the following: Prefaces to critiques of political economy are casual while political manifestos are serious analytical statements? CB: Yes, definitely. ^^ V2: In fact, both premedieval and medieval/feudal society was much more active than high school history books would have us believe. CB: But not like capitalism. V3: No, not like capitalism. Capitalism, beginning with Watt's steam engine and its accessories, unites the innovative effectiveness of natural science with production. The unity of science and production in Capitalist production in the mid 19th century brought about the movement of creative productive process from the slow, restricted development by creative labour to the hectic and universal development we witness today. CB: In capitalism, we have gone through technological revolutions that would have forced changes in the property relations in previous eras when the pace of technological development was, on average slower. Thus the role of development of productive forces in changing the relations in the sense of property relations ( not so much organization of the plant and equipment, workplace, shop floor(s)) is watered down compared with in long term history. ^^ After all, the so called middle ages witnessed repeated urban and peasant uprisings and efforts to establish utopias e.g. the Hussites of Mt Tabor and the Anabaptist regime of Munster and was a period of impressive advances in manufacturing technology. Remember, that the flowering of the natural sciences and technology of the 16 and 17th centuries preceded Capitalist Industrial society by 300 to 200 years. ^^ CB: Are you saying that there is not qualitative leap in development in capitalism as compared with earlier modes ? V3: This is in my view no longer a good question, because the answer must be ambiguous at best. New forms of production, of relations of production and so on emerge first as individual or singular events. Some of these develop into particularities, i.e. special developments within universal world contexts and even fewer of these eventually replace the universal modes in which they were special developments and become themselves the universal mode. Certainly this is the case with capitalism which begins as commodity exchange, develops into a fairly complex array of interrelated institutions throughout the European middle ages and only becomes the universal mode of production in England in the early 19th century and in Europe in the early to mid 20th century. Is there a qualitative leap here? That depends what you call a qualitative leap. In a sense virtually any creative development, e.g. the development of direct exchange (i.e.barter)the introduction of money, and the replacement of material tokens of value (e.g. cowrie shells, precious metals and what have you) with scrip are all evolutionary developments that are first, qualitative (as singular innovations) and then quantitative (as they are adopted by more individuals and communities) and finally once again qualititative (as they become special and universal practices). Take, for example, the representation of value by scrip. It's as ancient as the commercial practices of Classical Greek and Chinese civilization, develops into the regular practice of a considerable sector of European and Near Eastern medieval society, i.e. urban commercial civilization, but only becomes the universal mode of commercial relations between nation states in the mid 20th century. Even today, scrip is yet to become the absolute universal mode of representing value for all commercial transactions, though thanks to computer tech, we are eventually and probably will see that occur within the next 30 to 40 years. Notice, the Preface to the Introduction to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy or whatever in which the quote occurs WAS NEVER PUBLISHED. Marx didn't put out there for everybody his daydreaming about this. So, don't hold him to it so tightly. It's just a metaphor to sum up what he was thinking. He didn't mean it to be the most important statement he made at all, or else he would
[Marxism-Thaxis] theory of the Communists
^ V4: Certainly Marx and Engels take the unity of theory and practice very seriously, but no manifesto need represent the entire theoretical program to be consistent with practice. In fact, the very reverse is true, the object of social political work, like any other form of labour is designed for a practical objective and that practical objective is always a synthetic product of theory and the conditions of its realization. There notmuch point in discussion on the material conditions of historical development when the object of the writer is to mobilize the working classes to take control of the means of production (such as in the interesting current situation in the Argentine). In selecting the appropriate theoretical elements relative to a particular situation, in this case the mobilization of a class (a function of the relations of production or economics) to move to physically change the current state of the relations of production and the legal system that enables the mobilization of social force to perpetuate it (a function of the legal/governmental superstructure engendered by the capitalist mode of production) one does just what the workman does when he selects a pair of adjustables to tighten a bolt rather than a hammer even though both are to be found in his tool box. ^^^ CB: The Manifesto is longer than the Preface to the Contribution to the Critique, no ? More of the theory is there than in the Preface. I got to go , but I think the penultimate Chapter of _Capital_ vol. on which I sent here the other day, has a better formulation of the Preface to the Contribution's, or as good. I'll analyze that later. Good point below, good research point on Engels article on the Preface to the Contribution. But Engels statement is shorter than the Manifesto, and consistent with it. The notion that the goal is abolition of private property doesn't conflict with the fundamental idea Engels states. Plus Engels says in what you quote The essential foundation of this German political economy is the materialist conception of history whose principal features are briefly outlined in the Preface to the above-named work. Briefly outlined. It is more briefly outlined than in the Manifesto. So, on your point of the Manifesto being too short for a theoretical statement of historical materialism, the Preface to the Contribution is even briefer. later - Prefaces to critiques of political economy are casual while political manifestos are serious analytical statements? -- CB: Yes, definitely. ^ V4: I see. How does this view compare to Engel's review of the Critique? Note Engels critical comparison of the purely political economic analyses of the relations of production of bourgeois economists and the Marxian system. Note particularly the last sentence of this selection. While in this way in Germany the bourgeoisie, the schoolmasters and the bureaucrats were still making great exertions to learn by rote, and in some measure to understand, the first elements of Anglo-French political economy, which they regarded as incontestable dogmas, the German proletarian party appeared on the scene. Its theoretical aspect was wholly based on a study of political economy, and German political economy as an independent science dates also from the emergence of this party. The essential foundation of this German political economy is the materialist conception of history whose principal features are briefly outlined in the Preface to the above-named work. Since the Preface has in the main already been published in Das Volk, we refer to it. The proposition that the process of social, political and intellectual life is altogether necessitated by the mode of production of material life; that all social and political relations, all religious and legal systems, all theoretical conceptions which arise in the course of history can only be understood if the material conditions of life obtaining during the relevant epoch have been understood and the former are traced back to these material conditions, was a revolutionary discovery not only for economics but also for all historical sciences - and all branches of science which are not natural sciences are historical. (Engels, F. 1859, Review of A Contribution to the Critique of Political economy paragraph 2) Anyway remember that the manifesto was written in 1848 while the Critique, written in 1959, became a part of the Grundrisse which was in turn the raw material of Capital. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] 1965
1965 By Cindy Sheehan t r u t h o u t | Perspective Thursday 13 October 2005 Going to the movies was something Casey and I enjoyed doing together. Casey was a Theater Arts major in college, and he went with a critical eye. Since I love sharing my children's passions with them, Casey and I would go to the movie theater often. We saw two movies the last time he was home at Christmas, 2003, before he was deployed to Iraq ... We saw the last movie in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the live action movie Peter Pan. I still have the ticket stub for that movie in my wallet. We got to the theater a little late, so we had to sit up front with the moms and dads and their small children. I commented to Casey that it looked like we were the only grown ups interested in the movie. The small children were cute to watch as they enjoyed the movie, and Casey and I got quite a few chuckles from them also. On Ash Wednesday of 2004, a few days before Casey left for Iraq, his dad and I went to see The Passion of the Christ. That was our Ash Wednesday penance that year. Casey's dad fell asleep during the scourging scene while I sat in my seat and quietly sobbed. I was especially touched by the actress who played Jesus' mom, who followed her son along while he was being violently tortured and killed by devious men with an evil agenda. Of course, since I became a mom over 26 years ago, I have identified with Mary as she sobbed at the foot of her son's cross and cradled his lifeless body in her arms. I am recounting all of this, because since Casey was killed in Iraq by devious men with evil agendas, I find it extremely difficult to go to the movies. Yesterday, I went to the same movie theater in Vacaville, California, that Casey and I loved to attend. My sister and I saw the movie Serenity. It was a good science fiction flick that was entertaining and had many parallels with what is going on in our world today. But that is not what affected me about yesterday's movie-going experience. First of all, it breaks my heart to be in the theater where Casey and I saw so many films together. While we were waiting for the movie to start, the interminable previews started. About the 4th one in, a preview for the movie Jarheads came on. My sister quickly said; Close your eyes. Well, I already had them closed, but what I heard was tough enough. I heard a flight attendant tell a plane load of Marines Good luck, now as they got off of the plane, I am assuming in Kuwait. I wondered if a smiling flight attendant said the same thing to Casey has he deplaned in Kuwait. I will never know. I can't ask him and he didn't tell me in the one phone call I received from him before he was killed 5 days after he arrived in Baghdad. Well, that did it for me. I couldn't stop sobbing for 20 minutes after that preview. I tried to do it quietly as to not disturb the other movie goers. I wonder how many other theater patrons have been so affected by the preview for Jarheads? God forbid anyone get too disturbed over the devastation and needless death and suffering in Iraq. God forbid that the media tell us that 32 of our young people have been slaughtered in Iraq so far in October. God forbid that we have to think about the hundreds of faceless and nameless Iraqis who have been needlessly killed, too, just performing day-to-day tasks. God forbid that anyone be held accountable for the mayhem in the Middle East! God forbid that a broken-hearted and honest mother speak from her heart about the lies and betrayals of George and gang that makes some war supporters uncomfortable. The War Department lists 1963 confirmed dead and 2 pending confirmation, for a total of 1965. Thirty-five more of our children to go before the grisly number of 2000 is reached. 2000 will be the wake-up call for some Americans ... but whatever number Casey was, was a wake-up call for me: a violent and tragic wake up call. Casey was not a number, and the 2000th will not be a number to his or her family. Casey was a wonderful young man who loved to go to the movies with his mom. What will number 2000 be like? What will be his/her passion that will be snuffed out with the heartbeat? Which mom in America will be the unfortunate one to fall on the floor screaming for her baby next, for nothing? No, most Americans probably did not sob when they saw the previews for Jarhead, and most Americans probably didn't go straight to their son's premature grave to place fresh flowers after their movie outing. I did. God forbid that I am angry and God forbid that I want someone to be held accountable for George's war of choice that has robbed so much from almost 2000 families. --- ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Fettering the production of Tamiflu
If capitalist relations of production fetter the forces of production from producing Tamiflu ,and there is big epidemic, it could contribute to bursting those relations of production asunder. CB ^ [lbo-talk] Indian Company to Make Generic Version of Flu Drug Tamiflu joanna 123hop at comcast.net mailto:lbo-talk%40lbo-talk.org?Subject=%5Blbo-talk%5D%20Indian%20Company%20 to%20Make%20Generic%20Version%20of%20Flu%20Drug%0A%09TamifluIn-Reply-To= Fri Oct 14 08:29:03 PDT 2005 * Previous message: [lbo-talk] Indian Company to Make Generic Version of Flu Drug Tamiflu * Next message: [lbo-talk] Indian Company to Make Generic Version of Flu Drug Tamiflu * Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] * Search LBO-Talk Archives Limit search to: Subject Body Subject Author Sort by: Date Rank Author Subject Reverse Sort Like the bible says: and the last shall be the firstor something like that. Picture this, cranking out the generic antiviral, India staves off bird flu pandemic while the West manages to save the few millions they have drugs for, but lose a sizable proportion of the rest. I notice that the media IS reporting this little Capitalist blip: no generics...even if it means mass death...but not commenting much on it. Joanna Ira Glazer wrote: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/14/health/14virus.html By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. Published: October 14, 2005 A major Indian drug company announced yesterday that it would start making a generic version of Tamiflu, the anti-influenza drug that is in critically short supply in the face of a possible epidemic of avian flu. * Previous message: [lbo-talk] Indian Company to Make Generic Version of Flu Drug Tamiflu * Next message: [lbo-talk] Indian Company to Make Generic Version of Flu Drug Tamiflu * Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] More information about the lbo-talk mailing list http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Unity of theory and practice: Production of Relative Surplus Value
WL: Fair enough. Give one example how Capital can be applied to the social struggle or how you have applied it or anyone else over the course of say the past 30 years. ^ CB: You apply _Capital_ in practice when you propagandize the industrial workers that part of the loss of total number of jobs is due to greater efficiency of instruments of production due to CAD/CAM, robotics, computerization. This is practice united with the theory in: Part IV: Production of Relative Surplus Value Ch. 12: The Concept of Relative Surplus-Value Ch. 13: Co-operation Ch. 14: Division of Labour and Manufacture Ch. 15: Machinery and Modern Industry ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] fetter means chain, literally
Fettering is a metaphor based on the definition below to tie someone to a
place by putting chains around their ankles or a pair of chains which were
tied round the legs of prisoners to prevent them from escaping.
Fetters are literally chains. The metaphor Marx uses is chaining.
The forces of production are not literally tied up like someone . They are
not literally chained. Marx applies fetter as an analogy from this usage.
(Analogy is another word for metaphor). The forces of production do not
literally burst asunder some chains.
You know, Workers of the World , Unite ! You have nothing to lose but your
chains.
CB
^^^
http://www.freesearch.co.uk/dictionary/fettering
definition
fetter
verb {T}
1 LITERARY
to keep someone within limits or stop their advance:
- He felt fettered by a nine-to-five office existence.
2 to tie someone to a place by putting chains around their ankles
fetters
plural noun
1 OLD USE
a pair of chains which were tied round the legs of prisoners to prevent them
from escaping
2 LITERARY
something which severely limits you:
- the fetters of motherhood
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[Marxism-Thaxis] Supporting Hillary
Published on Sunday, October 16, 2005 by CommonDreams.org Supporting Hillary by Cindy Sheehan I would love to support Hillary for President if she would come out against the travesty in Iraq. But I don't think she can speak out against the occupation, because she supports it. I will not make the mistake of supporting another pro-war Democrat for president again: As I won't support a pro-war Republican. This country wants this occupation to end. The world wants the occupation to end. People in Iraq want this occupation to end. Senator Clinton: taking the peace road would not prove you are weak. Instead, it would prove that you are the strongest and wisest candidate. As a mom, as an American, as a patriot: I implore you to have the strength and courage to lead the fight for peace. I want to support you, I want to work for you, but like many American moms, I will resist your candidacy with every bit of my power and strength unless you show us the wisdom it takes to be a truly great leader. Prove that you are passionate and reflect our nations' values and refusal to support imperialism, greed and torture. Senator Clinton: come out against this occupation of Iraq. Not because it is the politically expedient thing to do but because it is the humane thing to do. If you want to make Casey's sacrifice count, bring the rest of his buddies home alive. *** I did meet with Sen. Clinton, along with Sen. Harry Reid, on September 22, 2005. No one has asked me how it went with Sen. Reid, but I've been asked about my meeting with Sen. Clinton many times. A few days earlier in Brooklyn, I had referred to her as waiting for a politically expedient moment to speak out against the war in Iraq. I, of course, think that this tactic is wrong, because politics has nothing to do with the slaughter going on in Iraq. No one asked the almost 2000 Americans and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis who have been killed what political party they were rooting for. When a mother receives the news that her son or daughter has been killed for lies she never thinks Oh no, how could this have happened? I am a Democrat(Republican)!!! Playing politics with our soldiers' lives is despicable. I thought the meeting with Sen. Clinton went well. I thought she listened and heard what we had to say. I went with another Gold Star Mother, Lynn Braddach, and my sister, Dede Miller. After Sen. Reid left, Mrs. Clinton stayed for a few more moments and she told us that she had met with the other Gold Star Mothers who had a different view from ours. I said it didn't really matter, because our view is right. Lynn, Dede, and I don't want our loved ones to be used as political pawns to justify the killing spree in Iraq. I can't believe any mother who has had her heart and soul torn out would wish that on another mother. How often do the lies have to be exposed before every American (elected official, media representative, average citizen) wakes up and says, enough killing is enough! I thought Mrs. Clinton listened, but apparently she didn't because immediately afterwards she said the following to Sarah Ferguson of the Village Voice: My bottom line is that I don't want their sons to die in vain... I don't believe it's smart to set a date for withdrawal... I don't think it's the right time to withdraw. That quote sounds exactly like what the few Republicans I talked to that week said. Making sure that our children did not die in vain sounds exactly like something George Bush says. A date for withdrawal? That sounds like Rush Limbaugh to me. That doesn't sound like an opposition party leader speaking to me. What Sen. Clinton said after our meeting sounds exactly like the Republican Party talking points I heard from Senators Dole and McCain. Sen. Clinton is in California today to raise money for her political campaigns. An invitation to one star-studded gala reads: We must stand with Senator Clinton as she stands up for what we believe in. Hillary is and always has been our champion in the White House and the Senate. And she's one of the strongest, most passionate and intelligent Democrats. I didn't get an invitation to any of the events, but maybe it's because she doesn't stand up for what I believe in. I don't believe in continuing this occupation of Iraq and I don't believe in killing more of our soldiers because my son has already been needlessly and tragically killed. I don't believe she is passionate. I think she is a political animal who believes she has to be a war hawk to keep up with the big boys. She is intelligent, there's no doubt about that. However, I believe that the intelligent thing for Democrats to do for 2006 and 2008 would be to come out strongly and correctly against the botched, bungled, illegal, and immoral occupation of Iraq. 62% of Americans now believe that this war is based on lies and betrayals and want our troops to start coming home. 53% of Americans want our
[Marxism-Thaxis] Unity of theory and practice: Production of Relative Sur...
WL: Interesting concept. ^^^ CB: Isn't it ? ^^^ WL: I of course am not a trade unionists but a communist. What I did and for a living was as a union rep and speed up and rationalization is part of my job description. Explaining in different terms what workers already experience have never been my idea of communist practice, but trade union politics. Actually, our workers already understand the expereince of bourgeois production. Waistline CB: Marxist unity of theory and practice is intended to be the theory and practice united in communist workers. However, it doesn't seem too plausible that many U.S.workers have a whole Marxist theory of capitalist production. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] GM
GM just announced a huge health care cost concession by the UAW. According to a report on Bloomberg.com GM has 106,000 active hourly workers and 321,000 retirees and surviving spouses. If each of them share equally in the changes announced today, their annual out-of- pocket health expenses would increase by $2,341 annually, according to Bloomberg calculations. Active GM workers now earn $58,240 a year in wages before overtime and taxes. A $1 billion cut in GM's estimated $5.6 billion yearly health-care tab and 25 percent cut in retiree health-care liability may be offset by inflation for medical and the potential Delphi liability, Robert Barry, an analyst with Goldman Sachs, said in a written report today. Selling a controlling interest in GMAC could boost credit ratings and cut funding costs but would also divert earnings from GM, he said. ``Severe operating challenges still confront GM, including mix, pricing and market-share pressures plus a tough macro outlook as consumers face rising interest rates and energy costs,'' Barry wrote. If current trends continue, it is unlikely this concession will save General Motors from the political earthquake of bankruptcy. GM is on the hook for the bankruptcy bound Delphi parts manufacturer's pension fund. In a previous post I said that the answer for a tax-payer bailout of GM should be nationalization with the requirement that GM begin a massive program of electric transport, specifically light rail, electric trolley manufacture. Here is some background on GM's role in the destruction of the US light rail system in the first half of the twentieth century. GM organized a company called National City Lines to buy up city rail systems and convert them to diesel buses. Jon Flanders By 1949, General Motors had been involved in the replacement of more than 100 electric transit systems with GM buses in 45 cities including New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, Oakland, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles. In April of that year, a Chicago Federal jury convicted GM of having criminally conspired with Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire and others to replace electric transportation with gas- or diesel-powered buses and to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to local transportation companies throughout the country. The court imposed a sanction of $5,000 on GM. In addition, the jury convicted H.C. Grossman, who was then treasurer of General Motors. Grossman had played a key role in the motorization campaigns and had served as a director of Pacific City Lines when that company undertook the dismantlement of the $100 million Pacific Electric system. The court fined Grossman the magnanimous sum of $1. Despite its criminal conviction, General Motors continued to acquire and dieselize electric transit properties through September of 1955. By then, approximately 88 percent of the nation's electric streetcar network had been eliminated. In 1936, when GM organized National City Lines, 40,000 streetcars were operating in the United States; at the end of 1965, only 5,000 remained. In December of that year, GM bus chief Roger M. Kyes correctly observed: 'The motor coach has supplanted the interurban systems and has for all practical purposes eliminated the trolley (street-car)' . . . Electric street railways and electric trolley buses were eliminated without regard to their relative merit as a mode of transport. Their displacement by oil-powered buses maximized the earnings of GM stockholders; but it deprived the riding public of a competing method of travel, the report asserts, and quotes urban transit expert George M. Smerk as saying that 'Street railways and trolley bus operations, even if better suited to traffic needs and the public interest, were doomed in favor of the vehicles and material produced by the conspirators.' Progressing from the conversion of rail systems to bus transportation, new market temptations appear on the transportation scene: General Motors' gross revenues are 10 times greater if it sells cars rather than buses. In theory, therefore, GM has every economic incentive to discourage bus ridership. In fact, its bus dieselization program may have generated that effect. Engineering studies strongly suggest that conversion from electric transit to diesel buses results in higher operating costs, loss of patronage, and eventual bankruptcy. They demonstrate, for example, that diesel buses have 28 percent shorter economic lives, 40 percent higher operating costs, and 9 percent lower productivity than electric buses. They also conclude that the diesel's foul smoke, ear-splitting noise, and slow acceleration may discourage ridership. In short, by increasing the costs, reducing the revenues, and contributing to the collapse of hundreds of transit systems, GM's dieselization program may have had the long-term effect of selling GM cars. full: http://www.thethirdrail.net/9905/agt4.htm
[Marxism-Thaxis] Brutal vigor of the Middle Ages
V2: In fact, both premedieval and medieval/feudal society was much more active than high school history books would have us believe. After all, the so called middle ages witnessed repeated urban and peasant uprisings and efforts to establish utopias e.g. the Hussites of Mt Tabor and the Anabaptist regime of Munster and was a period of impressive advances in manufacturing technology. Remember, that the flowering of the natural sciences and technology of the 16 and 17th centuries preceded Capitalist Industrial society by 300 to 200 years. ^^ CB: I'd like to discuss revisionary history of the Dark Ages. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Preface
Karl Marx's A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Preface Source: K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, with some notes by R. Rojas. I examine the system of bourgeois economy in the following order: capital, landed property, wage-labour; the State, foreign trade, world market. The economic conditions of existence of the three great classes into which modern bourgeois society is divided are analysed under the first three headings; the interconnection of the other three headings is self-evident. The first part of the first book, dealing with Capital, comprises the following chapters: 1. The commodity, 2. Money or simple circulation; 3. Capital in general. The present part consists of the first two chapters. The entire material lies before me in the form of monographs, which were written not for publication but for self-clarification at widely separated periods; their remoulding into an integrated whole according to the plan I have indicated will depend upon circumstances. A general introduction, which I had drafted, is omitted, since on further consideration it seems to me confusing to anticipate results which still have to be substantiated, and the reader who really wishes to follow me will have to decide to advance from the particular to the general. A few brief remarks regarding the course of my study of political (economy are ?)appropriate here. Although I studied jurisprudence, I pursued it as a subject subordinated to philosophy and history. In the year 1842-43, as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, I first found myself in the embarrassing position of having to discuss what is known as material interests. The deliberations of the Rhenish Landtag on forest thefts and the division of landed property; the officials polemic started by Herr von Schaper, then Oberprasident of the Rhine Province, against the Rheinische Zeitung about the condition of the Moselle peasantry, and finally the debates on free trade and protective tariffs caused me in the first instance to turn my attention to economic questions. On the other hand, at that time when good intentions to push forward often took the place of factual knowledge, an echo of French socialism and communism, slightly tinged by philosophy, was noticeable in the Rheinische Zeitung. I objected to this dilettantism, but at the same time frankly admitted in a controversy with the Allgemeine Augsburger Zeitung that my previous studies did not allow me to express any opinion on the content of the French theories. When the publishers of the Rheinische Zeitung conceived the illusion that by a more compliant policy on the part of the paper it might be possible to secure the abrogation of the death sentence passed upon it, I eagerly grasped the opportunity to withdraw from the public stage to my study. The first work which I undertook to dispel the doubts assailing me was a critical re-examination of the Hegelian philosophy of law; the introduction to this work being published in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher issued in Paris in 1844. My inquiry led me to the conclusion that neither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended whether by themselves or on the basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on the contrary they originate in the material conditions of life, the totality of which Hegel, following the example of English and French thinkers of the eighteenth century, embraces within the term civil society; that the anatomy of this civil society, however, has to be sought in political economy. The study of this, which I began in Paris, I continued in Brussels, where I moved owing to an expulsion order issued by M. Guizot. The general conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached, became the guiding principle of my studies can be summarised as follows. In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter Into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development
[Marxism-Thaxis] Philosopher's stone
As far as Masonic societies and their history goes you might seek out the book The Hiram Key. Hiram was the Master builder of King Solomon's Temple and his foul murder has been ritualized as a rite of passage into modern Masonry. If you have friends who belong to the Masons they could perhaps give you an insight into their rituals. There are very many industrial workers that are Masons in Detroit and their recruitment is still more secret than that of the communists. Prince Albert Masons - the African American Masons in our history, remains very big in Detroit. (Prince Albert is the black guy standing along with George Washington on our money). ^ CB: I don't see how communists can relate to proletarians without being in with masons. Where are the pictures of Prince Albert on money, which denominations ? The pyramid with the eye at the top is a masonic symbol, as I understand it. The were Egyptian desert themes painted on the auditorium of the Masonic lodge hall I visited a few months ago. Many of the early bourgeois leaders of the U.S. were masons, I think . The shift to speculative Masons - with the emergence of industrial society, and its dominance in the life of society, meant the gutting and end of the transferring of the scientific body of real knowledge associated with Temple building and the written and oral history spanning back to King Solomon. The Masonic Temple in Detroit is one of the last great artifacts of an epoch of history long gone. One could spend literally years just observing the handicraft of this building and its measures. ^^^ CB: Many cities have masonic temples The rationale kernel in alchemy depends on how one understands and defines the code words of alchemy. For instance the search for the Philosopher's stone or what is the same, the fifth element is based on the fusion - combination of warring opposites who end result is a substance referred to as the philosophers stone or fifth element or philosophers mercury. CB: Are you getting this discussion of alchemy from masons ? The modern alchemist claim to have located/created the substance of relative immortality code named atomic white. The Mason doctrine and theory underpinning is sorely in need of updating and reinterpretation by Marxism. Some of this I wrote for private comrades in the early and mid 1990s, but one can get in trouble for talking about this stuff to publicly. In my opinion The Hiram Key is a must read for Marxists of all persuasions. Waistline ^^ CB: Sounds true to me. The paradox of the secret society for the social scientist is that by definition it doesn't want to be studied by outsiders. How do masonic principles impact politics, if at all ? ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] What is the purpose of Freemasonry?
Turning the Hiram Key invites readers to join a gripping journey of discovery to find the real secrets of Freemasonry. Robert Lomas - co-author of the best-selling book The Hiram Key - has finally tackled the big unanswered questions about The Brotherhood... * What is the purpose of Freemasonry? * What do Masons gain from working the Rituals? * Can anybody benefit from the spiritual teachings of The Craft? * Does Freemasonry hold the secret to unlocking the hidden potential of the human mind? * Are Masonic rituals simple moral plays designed to encourage people to behave well? * Are they a secret tradition preserved from a long lost civilisation? * Are they meaningless formalities? Or do they serve a deeper purpose? In this ground-breaking new book Lomas describes his personal journey through the mystical rituals of Freemasonry. Drawing from personal spiritual insights, hidden Masonic texts and modern scientific knowledge, he reveals why people join Freemasonry, what they expect to find and how they benefit. IN THE PAST, THESE INNER SECRETS HAVE BEEN PRESERVED FOR A SELECT FEW... ...UNTIL NOW! ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Foreward , not Preface
The Foreword to Turning The Hiram Key Written by Colin Wilson I became aware of the work of Robert Lomas in May 1996, when my wife and I were taken to visit Rosslyn Chapel. In the souvenir shop there I bought The Hiram Key by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, then only recently published, for Joy to read on the train. At this time I knew little about Freemasonry, except what I had read in a book called The Brotherhood written by a friend, Stephen Knight, which argued that Freemasonry was a kind of Old Boys' Network whose members were devoted to helping one another get good jobs. But then, Stephen (who was dead by then) had admitted that he knew very little of the history of Freemasonry. But he mentioned a tradition that Freemasonry had its roots in ancient Egypt, and another that the pre-Christian sect the Essenes were among its ancestors. About a year later I began to research a book about the legend of Atlantis, and the great flood which Plato claimed engulfed the continent 'in a day and a night'. And since I recalled reading something about the Flood in The Hiram Key, I settled down to a more careful reading. I instantly became absorbed in Knight and Lomas's investigation into the history of Freemasonry. They argued that its origin could be traced back far beyond 1640, the year Stephen Knight said it began, first to the Scottish knight William St Clair, who had built Rosslyn in the fifteenth century, then to the Order of Knights Templar, founded after the first Crusade in Jerusalem and virtually wiped out on the orders of Philip the Fair of France in 1307, then further back still, to the Essenes, of which Jesus was almost certainly a member, and then to the Temple of King Solomon around 900 BC. And before that, they argue, there is evidence that the legend of the murder of Hiram Abif, architect of the Temple, was based on a real event: the murder of the pharaoh Sequenenre during the reign of the 'Shepherd' (Hyksos) kings of Egypt in the seventeenth century BC. If they are correct, then the origins of Freemasonry can indeed be traced to ancient Egypt (and that extraordinary man Cagliostro, who called himself an Egyptian Freemason, is justified). Why was I interested in this story? Because I was convinced that Plato's story of Atlantis (in the Timaeus) was based on a real event - an immense flood that occurred around 9500 BC, possibly caused by a comet or asteroid that struck the earth. I was collaborating with a Canadian librarian named Rand Flem'Ath, who had studied legends of Native Canadians and North Americans that seemed to suggest that they were based on some tremendous real catastrophe in which 'the sky fell' and floods poured down, drowning most of the inhabitants of the earth. The Hiram Key convinced me that Masonic legends may indeed date back to the Atlantis Flood. I also came to believe that those ancient traditions of Freemasonry were kept alive after the Roman destruction of the Essenes in the first century AD, perhaps descending via the Merovingian kings of France to the Templars, then to William St Clair, the builder of Rosslyn, as well as to a secret order, known as the Priory of Sion, founded by Templars (as described in a seminal book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and, even more recently, in Dan Brown's bestseller The Da Vinci Code). As anyone who has read the latter will know, it claims that the Roman Catholic Church has always been deeply opposed to the Templars and Priory of Sion because they preserved the truth about the life of Jesus - and that truth has nothing in common with the Christianity of St Paul, in which Jesus died on the cross to save men from the consequences of Original Sin. The fact is, Lomas and Knight insist, that Jesus was a man, not a god, and the Roman Catholic Church is therefore built on a myth. (The Hiram Key even quotes Pope Leo X as saying 'It has served us well, this myth of Christ'. But then, some would say that Leo was himself a member of the Priory of Sion.) This could account for the immense and long-standing hostility of the Church to Freemasonry. It is necessary to explain all this before moving on to the subject of the present book. (And I should add before I do so that Bob Lomas has grave doubts about the Priory of Sion, which I am sure he can explain better than I can.) When Bob told me he was writing a book about the meaning of Masonic ritual, I felt relatively certain it would not interest me. Once again I was wrong, as I soon discovered when I read some of its earlier chapters. I have written a great deal about religion since my second book Religion and the Rebel, published in 1957, in which I state my belief that St Paul's Christianity is his own invention and has nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus. (This point was made by Bernard Shaw in his brilliant preface to Androcles and the Lion.) But I have always been deeply interested in the experiences of the mystics, and in what one writer, R.M. Bucke, has called 'cosmic
[Marxism-Thaxis] More H Key
The Hiram Key By Zuerrnnovahh-Starr Livingstone http://educate-yourself.org/zsl/zslthehiramkey18sep02.shtml Sept. 18, 2002 Dear Ken Adachi, This is an email that I sent to a friend in California. Joan bought a used book at a local garage sale last week (June 9 2002). The book, The Hiram Key by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas was published 1996 in England by Arrow. The book has a Canadian price on it BUT NO USA PRICE. That means it was not published in the USA. Checking Amazon.com I found it there with a ten day delay on shipping, meaning that it was being shipped from outside the USA. The book cover was the same as Arrow's. There were no commentaries added to the webpage. The book goes into Masonic rituals and initiations. The authors are both Freemasons who went through the rituals and initiations, but did not have a clue as to what they all meant. They suspected that few Masons knew the origins of their social club. They both had access to the Masonic libraries of England, Scotland and Wales plus many rare books which would be available only in England. They made discovery after discovery over the decade they researched. They found the man, Hiram Abif, around which all the traditions were focused. They actually found his body in Egypt with the wounds still visible. These are the three wounds which are reenacted in dark rooms in Masonic Halls. The two authors then followed the story of Hiram Abif through 3700 years and proved that the Templar Knights of France (1120 AD) rediscovered the story of Hiram Abif in a vaulted chamber beneath the place where the Temple of Solomon had stood. The Copper Scroll of Quram, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, lists 12 parchments in that chamber, written by James, the brother of Jesus. There was also gold and silver listed as hidden in various nooks around the vaulted chamber. The Templars realized that the Roman Catholic Church in the first centuries had totally changed the teachings of Jesus, so they hid the scrolls and swore their knights to secrecy. With the destruction of the Templar Knights in 1307, the Knights went underground in Scotland. The Chapel at Roslyn in Edinburgh is believed by the authors to be the place where the 12 scrolls are hidden as that building is a replica of the Temple of Solomon including the vaulted, Roman era chamber. It is likely that translations of the 12 scrolls are in hidden libraries in England, America and other places in the world. It is likely that Sir Francis Bacon, George Washington and others read the scrolls. It is also extremely likely that the Roman Catholic Church has found and destroyed some of those translations, so that what remains outside Roslyn is very well hidden. Possibly the scrolls were stolen out of Roslyn in the late 1800s when a baptistry was added to the west wall. The authors, reading between the lines, of their rituals and related documents have a good idea as to the basic gist of the 12 scrolls, but not the details. The details would render the RC Church powerless, a lie created by liars. There are many organizations and governments that do not want the 12 scrolls rediscovered. The RC Church hid, delayed, and eventually minimized the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They had a plan in place to do so, as they knew damaging documents existed. It is interesting that a publisher for The Hiram Keycould not be found in the USA. Zuerrnnovahh-Starr Livingstone C Copyright 2002 Educate-Yourself.org All Rights Reserved. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Prince Albert
Edward VII of the United Kingdom ( Albert Edward) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Edward VII King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Emperor of India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Edward_vii_england.jpg Edward VII King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Emperor of India -clip- An active Freemason http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemasonry throughout his adult life, Edward VII was installed as Grand Master in 1874, giving great impetus and publicity to the fraternity. He regularly appeared in public, both at home and on his tours abroad, as Grand Master, laying the foundation stones of public buildings, bridges, dockyards, and churches with Masonic ceremony. His presence ensured publicity, and reports of Masonic meetings at all levels appeared regularly in the national and local press. Freemasonry was constantly in the public eye, and Freemasons were known in their local communities. Edward VII was one of the biggest contributors to the fraternity. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Masons connections to the working class ?
So Charles, what's up with all the postings on the Free Masons? How is this related to Marxism? Jim F. ^^^ Take a look at the posts before this. First, some discussion of the CLASS relations in feudalism and a reconsideration of the level of production and science in the middle ages. Then I mentioned the stone MASONS as a working class component in the Middle Ages, and the modern masons as deriving from various physical laborers from past eras. Then Waistline mentioned a book on the modern masons. Waistline also pointed out that many INDUSTRIAL WORKERS are in masonic organizations. The Marxist angle is a different look at some of the influences and organizations of workers and the working class, some influences and organizations that are not usually discussed by Marxists , but may have some significance in trying to understand workers. CB ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Freemasonry
Victor, Notice that Waistline, an industrial worker for over 35 years says: There are very many industrial workers that are Masons in Detroit and their recruitment is still more secret than that of the communists. Prince Albert Masons - the African American Masons in our history, remains very big in Detroit. I can't really say how widespread masonry is in the working class. That's why I looked into it with all the posts. If there are a lot of masons in the U.S. working class that has significance for working class organizing. Charles Freemasonry Victor victor at kfar-hanassi.org.il - CB, What's with this expedition into the world of the shriners and others of their ilk? There are, by the way, some interesting connections between the gnosticism of the rosy-C and masons and the development of Hegel's ideas. (see G. A. Magee's Hegel and the Hermetic tradition 2001). Another connection may be found in the origins of free-masonry in the social and vaguely political organization of skilled labourers in 18th century Britain and Ireland. Finally, there is probably a makeable relation between the adoption of Gnostic mysticism with its ideas of private salvation through reason and the development of political liberalism in 18th century Europe, but modern free masonry and its various relations have long since become exclusive clubs for members of the petit bourgeoisie and a model for college fraternity ceremonials. Victor ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Why investigate free masons ?
So Charles, what's up with all the postings on the Free Masons? How is this related to Marxism? Jim F. ^ CB: Following up Waistline's suggestion below In my opinion The Hiram Key is a must read for Marxists of all persuasions. Waistline ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Opposite of what I say
Waistline2 at aol.com Waistline2 at aol.com mailto:marxism-thaxis%40lists.econ.utah.edu?Subject=%5BMarxism-Thaxis%5D%20 Opposite%20of%20what%20I%20sayIn-Reply-To= Thu Oct 20 18:41:07 MDT 2005 * Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Masons connections to the working class ? http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2005-October/019212.htm l * Messages sorted by: [ date ] http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2005-October/date.html# 19213 [ thread ] http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2005-October/thread.htm l#19213 [ subject ] http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2005-October/subject.ht ml#19213 [ author ] http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2005-October/author.htm l#19213 CB: CB: I have said that computerization does qualitatively alter the industrial process. It makes it super-industrial,not post-industrial. It also does not automatically, or shall we say robotically, burst asunder the capitalist relations of production. It is a qualitative change in the technological regime that has not as yet caused a qualitative change in the property regime. You misrepresent what I say very often. That significantly undermines principled discussion and analysis with you. *** WL: I do not misrepresent what you write. There has been occasional mistakes by me over the past 4 or 5 years and when brought to my attention I correct them. I disagree and cannot understand your words from your conceptual framework. Example: It makes it super-industrial, not postindustrial. Well, the word super contradicts a qualitative transformation of a thing, as I understand it. Not as you understand it. CB: When something is OVERcome, the over is equivalent to super . Super means above or over. A qualitiative change is an overcoming and preservation, a sublation. It is entirely appropriate to label a qualitative change in the industrial , super-industrial, over-industrial. It purposeful misrepresentation of what I am saying to pretend that you think that when I say superindustrial that I am arguing that there is not a qualitative change in the industrial process, especially when I say that explicitly also, often, have layed a theory on the scattering of the points of production as defining the qualitative change in industry, layed that out in response to you about two or three times. All the while saying this is _why_ its' a qualitative change in industry. Told you why I don't think post is appropriate and super is appropriate the characterize this qualitative change in industry. Computerization, advanced robotics and digitalized processes qualitatively alter the industrial process. In my opinion this is indisputable and I know of no author that has written to the contrary other than CB. You state we are not passing to postindustrial society but super industrial society. I therefore state you deny the injection of a new qualitative configuration into the production process that sublates the electro mechanical process. CB: It's post-manufactural. Super-industrial. I think those are better uses of the semantic content or meaning of super and post , and using Marx's chapters on modern industry and machines as the starting point for defining basic factors. I have several times on Thaxis spelled out the elements in this change that make it a qualitative change in the tech regime, based on Marx's concepts in _Capital_ I Part IV: Production of Relative Surplus Value Ch. 12: The Concept of Relative Surplus-Value Ch. 13: Co-operation Ch. 14: Division of Labour and Manufacture Ch. 15: Machinery and Modern Industr ^ Super indeed. ^ CB: That's correct. Indeed. ^ You state: It also does not automatically, or shall we say robotically, burst asunder the capitalist relations of production. Automatically? Give me a break. ^ CB: Put it on automatic. ^ What is burst asunder is the electro mechanical process. Society is compelled to leap to a new political basis and politics means the superstructure or the superstructure relations or the arena where property rights are institutionalized. I do not misrepresent, I disagree. ^ CB: You disagree and misrepresent. Don't you mean the post-structure ? The electromechanical process is part of the forces of production. In the formulation in question , the forces of production socalled burst asunder the chains or fetters placed on the forces of production by the relations of production, impliedly leading to the expropriation of the expropriators, the proprietors, the private property owners. How , oh give me a break, does this happen just automatically, without class consciousness in humans, not in forces of production ? The development of the forces of production and organzation of production is to increase the division of labor, to become more and more socialized. In the penultimate chapter
[Marxism-Thaxis] Freemasonry's History of Racism
Freemasonry's History of Racism Draft 6/11/96, comments appreciated, [EMAIL PROTECTED] The book Christianity and American Freemasonry by William J. Whalen (Our Sunday Visitor:1987, pgs 23-25) discusses the racism of Freemasonry at some length, An organization dedicated to brotherhood, Masonry ironically remains a bulwark of racial segregation in the United States. By 1987, decades after most American institutions had accepted racial integration, only four of the forty-nine Grand Lodges could count even one black member in their jurisdictions. As the author of a recent scholarly study of black Freemasonry observes, The legitimation of social intermingling between black and white Masons has remained anathema in mainstream Freemasonry.' (Handbook of Secret Organizations by Whalen) A lodge within the British military forces initiated Prince Hall with fourteen free black men in 1775 after the men had been rebuffed in their attempt to join St. John's lodge in Boston. Eventually the black Masons received a charter from the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England for African Lodge No. 459 (1784). Regular Masonry has continued to deny recognition to Prince Hall lodges, and individual lodges have barred black candidates by the simple method of the black cube. Except for one curious exception, Alpha Lodge No. 1 16 in New Jersey, and a handful of blacks reported to be initiated by lodges in New York and Massachusetts, regular Freemasonry remains ninety-nine and forty-four hundredths percent white. A Prince Hall Mason may not visit a white lodge, nor a white Mason visit a Prince Hall lodge, without risking Masonic punishment. Albert Pike, no friend of blacks, admitted in 1875 Prince Hall lodge was as regular a lodge as any lodge created by competent authority. It had a perfect right to establish other lodges and make itself a Mother Lodge. When the Grand Lodge of New Jersey accepted several blacks into membership, other Grand Lodges decried the action and some severed fraternal relations with New Jersey. Mississippi was one. The Grand Master of that state wrote in 1908 Masonry never contemplated that her privileges should be extended to a race, totally, morally and intellectually incapacitated to discharge the obligations which they assume or have conferred upon them in a Masonic lodge. It is no answer that there are exceptions to this general character of the race. We legislate for the race and not for the exceptions. We hold that affiliation with negroes is contrary to the teachings of Masonry, and is dangerous to the interest of the Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons. The Prince Hall lodges include a number of distinguished gentlemen on their rosters such as Supreme Court Justice Marshall, Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles, Dr. Benjamin Hooks of the NAACP, Mayor Andrew Young of Atlanta, and Mayor Coleman Young of Detroit. Of course, none of these black Masons would be allowed to visit a white Masonic lodge. Whether Masonry influenced Southern mores or was simply influenced itself is hard to determine. Even during the civil-rights battles of the 1960s, knowledgeable blacks discovered that many of the leaders of the segregationist movement, such as Governors George Wallace of Alabama, Orval Faubus of Arkansas, and Ross Barnett of Mississippi, were also active Masons. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Masonic discussion
Why don't Caucasian masons and black masons associate. ... Question by Warrior Submitted on 7/10/2003 Related FAQ: Anti-Masonry FAQ (v. 2.8.11) Why don't Caucasian masons and black masons associate. Is the Roman Catholic Church founded on the rites of freemasonry. Is there a such thing as the dark pope? Answer by bugtussle most of that is over i live in Maine and a mason is a mason Answer by hashim Submitted on 1/13/2004 Whites have never changed, Its in there nature to hate and conquer. North Africa(Egypt), where a lot of masonic symbols are derived from, was robbed and destroyed buy whites,and these people would never give back to blacks that had held them as the Great Builders and Great Minds of the world, because that would mentally and spiritually set Black people free and white masons who know the truth of there history are not accepting that in no way shape or form. So when Prince Hall and 14 other African-American men where made masons white masons knew their time was becoming short Answer by abiff Submitted on 3/11/2004 i was told that there were no blacks present at time in which the brethern were building the temple of king solomen Answer by MERA WHY DO WE (BLACK) PEOPLE NEED TO ASSOCIATE OURSELVES WITH WHITE AMERICA? WHY DO WE NEED TO BE ACCEPTED BY THEM? WHO REALLY CARES WHAT THEY THINK OR FEEL ABOUT US? WE ARE CREATED BY GOD, HE IS THE ONLY TO ASSOCIATE YOURSELF WITH, AND HE IS THE ONLY ONE BESIDES YOURSELF THAT NEEDS TO ACCEPT US. IF YOU INTEND TO DO GOOD, JUST DO IT WITHOUT WHITE AMERICA'S APPROVAL,BECAUSE YOU WILL NEVER GET THEIR APPROVAL AND YOU DO NOT NEED IT. Answer by PrinceHall Submitted on 6/12/2004 Prince Hall Masons and White masons are beginning to let go of past racial anger and mutual recognition is happening all over the USA; the SOUTH being the slowest to change for obvious reasons. Freemasonry is sectioned off much like Churches on Sunday morning in America. As a Black Freemasonry I have (for the most part) encountered respectful White brethren; usually extending tokens of brotherly affection when deemed prudent. Freemasonry is only a reflection of the culture in which it operates. Answer by blackpix Submitted on 6/13/2004 Sorry, but this is a QUESTION: I am a professor who is searching the history of a famous Black Mason in the West, James Pressley Ball. A photographer, he founded - or helped found - more than one Black Masonic Lodge in Montana and Oregon, at least. he was also active in Cincinnati. Does anybody have any information about him, his son, James Pressley Ball, Jr., or his daughter-in-law, Laura Ball (of Hawaii and Seattle)? Many thanks for all you Masons out there. Answer by brothawhocares Submitted on 6/23/2004 If all do there true history, you would know that Solomon was black. So was King Arthur and Jesus (See Revalations 1:14-15). Also, not to offend anyone but, in my opinion a mason is not of GOD its under His shadow which is Satan. There shouldnt be any Black masons, because we as blacks are GODs chosen which is why we have no stake in America (The Devils kingdom). Our Kingdom is when GOD returns and destroy all of the wicked including all that are part of this Illuminati. Did you know that the most famous Mason, Albert Pike (1809-1891), was also the founder of the KKK? Did you also know that his statue is on the Federal Grounds of DC? Oh yes!!! Did you know that he was also a confederate General who had slaves and was arrested for treason but was pardoned by fellow mason President Andrew Johnson who met with him in the White House the very next day? Did you know that the White House was named after the founder of the evil Illuminati, Adam Wieshaupt (Pronounced wise how-t which means White chief)Did you know that in 1871 Andrew Pike wrote the Game plan for how to enforce the New World Order inwhich 3 World Wars had to take place? (2 World Wars have passed as he instructed and the 3rd one is on its way). He said in his letter in 1871 that WWIII had to involve the Moslems and the Zionist (Jews) annihilating each other to know end (sounds like Jeruselam today to me). Did you know that recently a man was shot in his head during a secret masonic ritual out in Long Island? Before you decide to become a follower (Black Mason) make sure that you know who you are actually following, and its not GOD Answer by PrinceHall I think it is unfortunate that some people think masonry is evil. It is no more evil than football teams/games, cable tv, lotto, casinos, police, judges, or modern universities. Evil is in the eye of the beholder. Masonry is NOT evil. Its a great fraternity that teaches lessons of charity, truth, justice, and love through its symbolism. I think its sad when non-masons make
[Marxism-Thaxis] list
http://www.masonicinfo.com/famous.htm Tell me thy company, and I'll tell thee what thou art. Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), Spanish writer. The creator of this web site is acutely aware of the aphorism that a person who has a hammer views the whole world as a nail. However, if one compares the number of famous and good people who were Masons or members of the Masonic 'family' with the number of famous and good people who were against Masonry, there is simply no contest. Anti-Masons who've achieved positions of greatness and recognition can be counted on a few fingers. Compare the list of 'famous Anti-Masons' we've provided on another page http://www.masonicinfo.com/famousanti.htm with the famous Freemasons you'll find on our lists. If Masonry was evil, occultic, conspiratorial or bad, why would these men - and the many millions more whose names are not recorded here - voluntarily choose to affiliate with it over the past three hundred years? Find a Grave: Many Masons and members of the Masonic 'family' proudly display their affiliation with the fraternity at their final resting place. If you see this image gravestone.gif (67 bytes) http://www.masonicinfo.com/images/gravestone.gif , you can click on the Mason's name and be transported to the Find A Grave http://www.findagrave.com/ web site to see an actual picture of their grave located on the web. (There may be more than just those we've got noted here; gravestone pictures at that web site are being updated constantly.) You might also find our page about Masonic gravestones http://www.masonicinfo.com/gravestones.htm of interest Due to popular request, we now offer a printable version http://www.masonicinfo.com/images/Masonicinfo_FamousFreemasons.pdf of this information (which includes the 'Black Sheep' and 'Infamous' pages) -- click here http://www.masonicinfo.com/images/Masonicinfo_FamousFreemasons.pdf . You'll need the free Adobe Reader http://www.adobe.com/ in order to be able to view/print this PDF file. Our lists are not the 'standard' ones seen on other Masonic websites. They are greatly augmented by additional material on the lives of these distinguished persons as well as by the listing of many Masons whose membership has been verified through news stories, personal knowledge, etc. Many of these names have been provided by others and we've set up a special page here http://www.masonicinfo.com/contributors.htm to say thanks for their contributions. We also note an exceptionally well-designed site which shows many of the individual Masons we've named in 'categories'. Congratulations to New Jersey Masons website http://www.njmasons.com/ for their excellent presentation. Due to the HUGE size of this page and the frequency of visitors to it, we've finally been forced to divide it into sections. You can find our list divided alphabetically A-L here http://www.masonicinfo.com/famous1.htm and M-Z here http://www.masonicinfo.com/famous2.htm . Masonic Webmasters: If linking to this portion of our site, please be sure to link to this page and not the individual 'child' pages of this section as they may be subsequently changed with even further division as time passes with more names being added. This page will provide the continuity to those other pages. Listings of those who are (or were during their lifetime) Masons serves to remind us of the many notables who - of their own free will - chose to associate with this noble institution. Those who preach anti-Masonic hate must ultimately wonder how it is that so many have been (supposedly) deceived - while they have found the 'truth' And while some will argue that these men have been deceived; others contend they are/were part of a New World Order conspiracy. What is not arguable is that they represent all walks of life and that they were - in their respective ways - LEADERS! Throughout the 300 years of Freemasonry in its current form, there have been a precious few who have not behaved in a way that reflects positively upon the organization. We talk about them on this page http://www.masonicinfo.com/blksheep.htm . Important Note: This listing is not all-inclusive nor is it an 'official' list of any sort. Information is derived from sources believed to be accurate. Any errors are solely the fault of the compiler! Names for this site have come from many sources. Please take a moment to see the list of contributors here http://www.masonicinfo.com/contributors.htm . Please note, though, that we do not have unlimited space nor do we have unlimited time. We'd love to keep adding to this section but have found far too many submissions sent as: I think X is a Brother. or A fellow mentioned in Lodge the other night that X is a Mason.. That simply isn't sufficient for our purposes. Accordingly, we're now curtailing efforts on these pages considerably and returning our focus to anti-Masonry. We believe that the many Masons shown clearly acknowledge that
[Marxism-Thaxis] Labor in the Era of Capitalist Globalization
Labor in the Era of Capitalist Globalization By Scott Marshall http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/author/view/23 http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/author/view/23 Up until the early 1990s the Socialist camp including the Soviet Union acted somewhat as a brake on imperialism and on capitalist globalization. In addition to checking military domination and adventures, as trading partners the socialist block also provided the means for many developing countries to resist and/or minimize unfair trade and the penetration of foreign capital. The collapse of socialism in Russia and Eastern European countries released a tremendous capital scramble and global competition for markets. Under a banner of capitalist triumph, deregulation, privatization and unfair, predatory trade agreements swept much of the planet. To be sure, the technological and communication revolutions that feed and accelerate globalization were already well developed by the 1990s. Capitalist globalization with its free flow of capital around the world began much earlier, but it took on new aggressiveness and clearly accelerated with the collapse of the Socialist block. And without the socialist system acting as a brake, US capital became the undisputed top dog protected and developed by the worlds single remaining military super power. Lenin made it clear in his Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism, that imperialism is not a policy. It is a stage of capitalist development, an objective process. The same is true of capitalist globalization. It is not a policy of this or that government. It is an objective process of transnational capitalist development. This distinction is important to understanding the class struggle today. While government policy can have impact on how capitalist globalization proceeds, as long as capitalism is the dominant economic system, its globalization will continue. The process of capitalist globalization is important context for understanding the labor movement in the US today. How did we get here? Why such a decline in union membership in the last 35 years? Why such a steep decline in industrial union membership with plant closings etc? Why have so-called free trade agreements like NAFTA become such a big deal for labor? What is behind all these sharp debates within the labor movement? The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 signaled a sharpening corporate and government attack on labor. It is no coincidence that the early 1980s also marked the acceleration of plant closings and downsizing in the manufacturing sector and greater investment by US based transnational corporations overseas. This period also featured increased outsourcing of jobs and work overseas. During the 80s and 90s accelerated mergers and created vast new manufacturing and financial empires. Take, for example, the steel industry. Up until the 1980s steel was, in most countries, a nationally owned industry, whether private or public, with very little penetration of foreign capital. Today, the worlds top three steel companies are based in India, Luxemburg and Japan. Each has vast holdings around the world, including some in the US. US Steel also now owns plants in other countries, including in some formerly socialist countries in Eastern Europe. The growth and concentration of transnational capital has fueled far right political trends in many of the industrialized countries, including the US. In the early years the strongest trend in the US labor movement was to channel anti-capitalist globalization sentiment into right-wing and jingoistic directions. Some fell for arguments that pitted US workers against workers in other countries and against immigrant workers. Japan bashing and Buy America campaigns mobilized xenophobic attitudes. Global capitalist competitiveness was packaged as worker-against-worker competition requiring wage and benefit sacrifices to beat the competition. The early 80s saw big losses for workers in the form of concessions in wages and benefits. It also was a time when unions lost ground in coordinated bargaining with common contract expiration dates, and when unions lost industry wide master agreements that had set higher standards for many manufacturing sectors of the economy. At the same time, left-center coalitions and rank-and-file movements in labor challenged these setbacks and put forward class struggle alternatives that rejected concessions and give backs. They stressed global labor solidarity and targeted the transnational corporations. By the late 1980s, many of the leaders of the rank and file movements of the 70s and early 80s were moving into leadership positions in local, state and national unions. This process culminated in 1995 with the election of the Sweeney, Chavez-Thompson, Trumka slate to the leadership of the AFL-CIO. Still, the objective process of capitalist globalization continued to develop. With the
[Marxism-Thaxis] Prince Hall
Prince Hall clergyman, abolitionist Born: 1748 Birthplace: Barbados Hall established the African Lodge of the Honorable Society of Free and Accepted Masons of Boston in 1775. It was the first lodge of black Freemasons in the world. The lodge received a permanent charter from the Grand Lodge of England in 1784. The secret fraternity, which still exists, promoted brotherly love and social, political, and economic improvement for its members. Hall arrived in Boston in 1765 and was a slave for William Hall. He was freed in 1770, shortly after the Boston Massacre, and worked at a variety of jobs, including as a leather worker for the Boston Regiment of Artillery. He was one of a few black men who fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Hall became a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and advocated black rights and the abolition of slavery. He opened a school for black children in his home. Died: 1807 ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Freemasonry's History of Racism
WL: Comrade CB evidently took my comments to mean that one something unique about this structure from those in other cities. ^ CB:Not particularly , but, I am down with the general idea of just deliberating a little more on where the masons of various types, Black and white, fit in to the social structure of the U.S., and your musings below are right on that. As far as the building, I always have in the back of my mind well, these are masons and this is a stone building, this masonic temple, so they may have a bit a deeper meaning to their temple. The other level is since most of human existence time wise was in the Stone ages, with stone tools being a main instrument of production, in a sense, masonry is the oldest labor. I imagine the masons are aware of that. Then there are pyramids, which is masons in original monumental architecture. Yes, ancient trade unions or guilds. At any rate , what are some of the elements of masonic ideology ? Does masonic ideology give us a picture of the thinking of some working class groups from earlier time periods, even from feudalism ? The Prince Hall lodges include a number of distinguished gentlemen on their rosters such as Supreme Court Justice Marshall, Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles, Dr. Benjamin Hooks of the NAACP, Mayor Andrew Young of Atlanta, and Mayor Coleman Young of Detroit. Of course, none of these black Masons would be allowed to visit a white Masonic lodge. Whether Masonry influenced Southern mores or was simply influenced itself is hard to determine. Even during the civil-rights battles of the 1960s, knowledgeable blacks discovered that many of the leaders of the segregationist movement, such as Governors George Wallace of Alabama, Orval Faubus of Arkansas, and Ross Barnett of Mississippi, were also active Masons. Comment I do not possess the intellectual capability to craft a book on the role of African Americans in the Masonic Movement. Or the desire or patients. The quoted comment above is instructive. Those recruited into the Prince Albert sector of the Mason - as best as I could tell in Detroit, tend to be of the middle strata (class) and that strata called the labor lieutenants of capital, and this for me includes organizations like the NAACP, PUSH as well as the upper strata of the trade union movement. Or certain individuals with leadership skills. Another small layer of people are retired auto workers who simply have the time and energy to engage any kind of civic activity. These retired autoworkers are in history and currently the upper layer of our working class. Lenin said we communist are just a drop in the bucket. I have been approached to join the Masons - Prince Hall of course, many times over the past 35 years, and mostly by union officials, number men, entertainers and generally folk of the entrepreneur mode - petty capitalist type. The Masons have working class members but so do the Democrats and Republicans. My work has carried me into various realms, some of which many comrades simply do not volunteer for or care to carry out their activity in. Like the Church and the old Theology in Americas Movement - Liberation Theology. I am a communist and do Marx - flat out, but I work where ever the action is. I have not hid my politics, including siding with the Stalin polarity within the world communist movement. Hey . . . don't hate! :-) I was actually living in Atlanta Georgia when Andrew Young was elected Mayor and he was a despicable man in the political sense, and vastly different from a Coleman Young Jr. Yet, certain class factors unite a Coleman Young Jr. and an Andy Young and even a Harold Washington. I have experienced some Mason initiation, because I wanted to know directly and my recruiters understood I was a communist worker and Marxist. My comments on the Masons is basically limited to that aspect of their history before the rise of speculative Masonry. The speculative Masons - basically all of them today, do not know jack about building structures. Speculative Masonry carries the same connotation as speculative capital - as a concept of being. Mason structures - real building, are works of art and contain mathematical equations. Mason were master builders passing down a real trade from one generation to the next. That is why I mentioned the Masonic Temple in Detroit and why one should visit it and examine its structure and art symbols. Comrade CB evidently took my comments to mean that one something unique about this structure from those in other cities. What I meant was go look at it. Go inside and examine its details . . . I have years before being invited into the Masons. In a sense the Masons were the very first form of organizations of what today is trade unions. Very skilled men of structure. Here is something to think about in terms of the future of trade unions and the industrial union movement in particular. Masonry as an
[Marxism-Thaxis] Prince Hall Masonry
Prince Hall Masonry Main article: Prince Hall Freemasonry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Hall_Freemasonry In 1775 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1775 , an African American named Prince Hall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Hall was initiated into an Irish Constitution Military Lodge, along with fourteen other African Americans, all of whom were free by birth. When the Military Lodge left the area, the African Americans were given the authority to meet as a Lodge, form Processions on the days of the Saints John, and conduct Masonic funerals, but not to confer degrees nor to do other Masonic Work. These individuals applied for, and obtained, a Warrant for Charter from the Grand Lodge of England in 1784 and formed African Lodge #459. Despite being stricken from the rolls (like all American Grand Lodges after the 1813 merger of the Antients and the Moderns) the Lodge restyled itself as the African Lodge #1 (not to be confused with the various Grand Lodges on the Continent of Africa ), and separated itself from UGLE-recognised Masonry. This led to a tradition of separate, predominantly African American jurisdictions in North America, known collectively as Prince Hall Freemasonry. Widespread racism and segregation in North America made it impossible for African Americans to join many so-called mainstream Lodges, and many mainstream Grand Lodges in North America refused to recognize as legitimate the Prince Hall Lodges and Prince Hall Masons in their territory. Presently, Prince Hall Masonry is recognized by some UGLE-recognized Grand Lodges and not by others, and appears to be working its way toward full recognition (see [1] http://www.mindspring.com/~johnsonx/whoisph.htm ). It is also no longer unusual for traditional lodges to have significant numbers of African-American members. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] THE EMERGENCE OF COMMUNISM WITHIN CAPITALISM
THE EMERGENCE OF COMMUNISM WITHIN CAPITALISM James Lawler The Soviet model of state command socialism. In many recent commentaries in connection with the 150th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto, we are told that Marx had profound insight into the problems of capitalism. His main failing, however, was his proposed solution to these problems, state command socialism. This is the idea that the workers' state was to plan the operation of an entire national economy. The collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union is taken to mean the practical refutation of Marx's alleged solution to the problems of capitalism. But was this really the conception of socialism, or communism, that Marx proposed? We have perhaps been understanding Marx for too long in the light of the later Soviet experience, the command system installed by Stalin beginning in 1929 and continuing until Gorbachev began the process of perestroika in 1985. State market socialism market socialism What kind of socialism is possible if it is not state socialism in the sense of a centrally controlled and planed economy? Clearly, another possibility is the state market socialism characteristic of the early Soviet period of the New Economic Policy, established by Lenin in 1921. This was also the form of socialism proposed by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto. The nature of state market socialism becomes quite clear if we read the Manifesto in the light of Engels' earlier draft, The Principles of Communism. One of the planks of the program of the Communist Party is: Gradual expropriation of landed proprietors, factory owners, railway and shipping magnates, partly through competition on the part of the state industry and partly directly through compensation in the form of bonds. (1) Two ways of acquiring property are mentioned. 1) The proletarian state will buy out some, but not all, capitalist enterprises. 2) The proletarian state will also acquire property through competition with capitalist enterprises. This implies that socialist state property will be more efficient than capitalist property and will win in a fairly structured market-place competition. In all this, a market context is simply presupposed. An economic logic, respectful of market production, is observed and perhaps even improved upon. Such state market socialism does not however operate on capitalist principles. Substantial modification of the capitalist environment is implied in the fourth measure of the Principles: Organization of the labour or employment of the proletarians on national estates, in national factories and workshops, thereby putting an end to competition among the workers themselves and compelling the factory owners, as long as they still exist, to pay the same increased wages as the State. (2) The immediate goal of the proletarian government is not the elimination of competition per se. It is the elimination of competition between workers over the price of their labor. While market relations in the production of goods for sale continues after the communist revolution, what is ended, or is in the process of ending, is the labor market, the market in human time, energy and skill. By becoming owners of their own means of production, workers no longer sell their ability to work as a commodity, subject to pressures of market forces, especially to the pressures arising from competition with other workers. Consequently the kind of market that is initiated by the proletarian state is no longer a capitalist market. Thanks to conscious management by the proletarian state the market begins to work against the bourgeoisie and for the proletariat. It is no longer the blind elemental force in which the interaction of isolated producers takes place as if it were an external power of nature. The rational or conscious element or planning transforms market production, rather than simply replacing it. From 1848 to 1864 Marx's conception of the nature of socialism underwent further evolution after 1848. The crucial text for understanding this evolution is Marx's Inaugural Address of the Working Men's International Association of 1864. In his address, Marx says that he is assessing the experience of the period from 1848 to 1864. There he writes of the victories of the working class movement in the great contest between the blind rule of the supply and demand laws which form the political economy of the middle class, and social production controlled by social foresight, which forms the political economy of the working class. Here are the two main opposites of Marxist thought: the unfettered rule of money, on the one hand, and the rule of free human beings, on the other. How do we go from the one to the other? Is it by eliminating the first, outlawing it, burying it or abolishing it, so as to allow the second to be created in its stead? This sort of approach is characteristic of what I call nihilistic socialism which takes a fundamentally negative attitude
