There is more to the drive for the euro than just
elites squashing labor in Europe, although that is
certainly a good part of it. Another is the rivalry with
the US dollar and by extension US capitalists. I was
struck by this very forcibly while in France when I would
raise questions
On the totally separate subject of satire and the need (?) to label it,
I'm bewildered about this request. Have we entered an age when it's
necessary to tell people "Don't take this seriously" or "You can laugh
now"? I find that an integral part of satire and parody is getting part
way into it
In a message dated 98-01-23 16:56:15 EST, you write:
actually-existing socialism
actually inexisting socialism
A posting from another list FYI. Any comments?
Wojtek
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Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 17:41:31 +
From: Steve Rosenthal [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Why won't they let Slick Willie womanize in peace?
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: PSN-CAFE [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-to:
At 09:39 PM 1/25/98 -0800, you wrote:
Pope Scolds Capitalism in Cuba
By Victor L. Simpson
Associated Press Writer
Sunday, January 25, 1998; 2:29 p.m. EST
HAVANA (AP) -- This communist island is not exactly on
the verge of a free-market explosion, but there was Pope
John Paul II, warning
On Sunday Max, repeating Rakesh in an imbroglio I take no side in, "said":
as for politics, you may want to check out Herman Gorter's and Anton
Pannekoek's anti-parliamentary communism (ed. DA Smart), Hal Draper's first
Now there's a name I hadn't come across in ages! I have a fascination
Wojtek Sokolowski:
I was reviewing the _Critique of the Gotha Programme_ over the weekend and
I realised how much different the Left's attitude is today. Back then,
Marx trashed the liberal reformers for their sentimentalist vision of the
economy instead of accepting the historical role of
There's a dimension of the current fight between the US and Iraq that many
forget: back in 1992, when the Bush League launched its war against the
oft-misprounounced Saddam, the war was totally paid for by Saudi Arabia
and, to a lesser extent, Kuwait. 9Look at the US balance on the current
A posting from another list FYI. Any comments?
Uh, yes, maybe one or two.
From: Steve Rosenthal [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Who is this nitwit?
In short, the Clintonites have failed to address the two most life
and death problems currently facing U.S. imperialism: The widening
and deepening
As for ForniGate (as it showed up in the L.A. TIMES this a.m., proving once
again pen-l's, or at least Tom's, absolute ability to predict the future)
Tomorrow it will rain. Somewhere.
Regards,
Tom Walker
^^^
Know Ware Communications
The real question: does Lewis Clark play an allegorical East/West role
orthogonal to Mason Dixon's North/South?
Regards,
Tom Walker
^^^
Know Ware Communications
Vancouver, B.C., CANADA
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(604) 688-8296
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
"These people (Wall Street traders) spend a lot of time on the phone with
each other, which creates a culture of gossip," he said. "If you accept
the classical Freudian analysis that making jokes is all about releasing
tension, well, these are extremely aggressive
At 08:06 AM 1/26/98 -0800, Jim Devine wrote:
perjury. It's only HRC who should care about the adultery issue. Though I
do wonder why the Pres. should engage in hanky-panky when he knows that the
highly-paid dogs of Starr are panting outside the White House gate looking
to dig up the slightest
At 11:47 AM 1/26/98 -0500, Paul Zarembka wrote:
Of course, another hesitation is that they don't wanted to get snookered
through reacting too quickly to that which they don't know enough about
(and I don't mean mainly what did or did not happen between Lewinsky and
Clinton, but rather the whole
I think that what Castro has accomplished is remarkable. How could a
small island continue to defy the U.S. without any superpower to prop it
up?
To survive, Castro has had to make some very hard choices. I doubt that
any committed revolutionary would like to see the rise of the dollar
By the way, I find it ironic that the jesuit schools in the U.S. are among
the most open in the country. They even employ a Jim Devine -- or maybe
Jim just spelt his name wrong to slip in.
Also, Terry McDonough earlier at Canisius College, Buffalo, NY.
Right, Terry?! Paul
Specifics, please on the "anti-popular and anti-worker legislation"! Or at
least some reference so we know what you are talking about.
There are many. I'll list just a few in point form:
- 1990, law promulgated for the tourist sector (Cuba's fastest-growing)
releasing management from the
"200 million children in the world sleep in the streets today.
Not one of them is Cuban."
(A sign in Havana, photographed March 1997.)
The Financial Times of London is calling it
"Naughtygate." How British of them.
Barkley Rosser
On Mon, 26 Jan 1998 09:41:57 -0800 Tom Walker
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
As for ForniGate (as it showed up in the L.A. TIMES this a.m., proving once
again pen-l's, or at least Tom's, absolute
Downloaded from WWW, January 1997
Apocalypse Now
by Edward Said
It would be a mistake, I think, to reduce what is happening between Iraq
and the United States simply to an assertion of Arab will and sovereignty
on the one hand versus American imperialism, which undoubtedly plays a
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Academe Today's DAILY REPORT (1/26/98)
_
* LEWIS CLARK COLLEGE, the alma mater of Monica Lewinsky, has
encouraged one of its employees to come forward with a
document that may have bearing on the investigation into her
http://www.illinimedia.com/di/jan_98/jan26/opinions/edit2.html
_
Monday, 26 January 1998
The Daily Illini(student newspaper at the U. of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign)
EDITORIAL
At 02:01 PM 1/26/98 -0500, Doug Henwood wrote:
A simple challenge for the propaganda apparatus to deal with: Asia's
problems were caused by the very lack of neoliberalism, not its
application. A restructuring, which may come with a bit of transitional
pain, along American lines is just what the
At 02:08 PM 1/26/98 -0500, Louis Proyect wrote:
Capitalism does not improve the material living conditions of the people.
It reduces it, except in imperialist nations. The improvements there are a
function of worsening conditions in places like Cuba, the former Soviet
Union and elsewhere. The
Michael Perelman wrote,
Doug wrote:
Why then is the U.S. capital/output ratio in a downtrend (I know, I know,
this is by bourgeois measures) and the employment/population ratio in an
uptrend?
1. Labor is cheap compared to capital. High wages will move this ratio
over time.
2. Computers and
Louis,
This largely reasonable posting would be more accurate
if "Indian" was modified by "many" or "most". This
generalizing about all Native American Indians is a bit
much. They identified themselves by tribes which varied
substantially from one to another in language, ethnicity,
Well, this is now the third list I am replying to
Louis P. on this on. Don't disagree fundamentally, but
find this generalized romanticization of "Indians" a bit
much. There is and was a lot of diversity among tribes on
many grounds. Many fit this idealized view that Louis
presents,
Tom Walker wrote:
What makes you think the restructuring will work so smoothly, Doug?
Oh, there's no guarantee it will, I wasn't saying that. I was just saying
that as it stands, the U.S. propaganda apparatus can deal with it easily
within its conventional paradigm. Russia hasn't worked very
John Gulick:
"What do pen-l'ers make of the argument propounded by pro-EMU social
democrats that w/o EMU global financial markets will discipline
expansionary/welfare initiatives, and at the very least w/EMU some weak
version of EC-wide expansionary/welfare initiatives can be achieved, as
Brian Green:
State farms were officially named co-ops, yes. You are referring here to the
'basic units of cooperative production'. Here's the deal with these. Workers
collectively 'own' the machinery and the harvest; land, however, remains in
state hands, production quotas are set by the state,
At 09:03 AM 1/27/98 +1100, you wrote:
Interesting story Louis but how do you account for the practice
whereby some tribes in the plains used to stampede whole herds
of bison over cliffs as a quick way of killing them and then
picking only bits and pieces of the bodies below. Incredible
waste
A visit to Cahokia (across the river from St. Louis) is fascinating in and
of itself and also for the evidence it provides that the large number of
residents there overused the local resources, which then led to its
decline. There may have been other factors, such as climate, but the
decline took
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BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, JANUARY 26, 1998
In October, there were 1,362 mass layoff
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Hi Doug --
As far as I can see the Fed is controlling the market very closely these
days with 3-month treasuries. At
My impression from reading various anthropological works is that the
American Indians initially were far from in "harmony with nature" when they
first came to what we call the "New World." Thus various species of animals
became extinct, though it's quite possible that other animals (including
Having broken his own vow not to engage in discussion about Cuba with
unworthy opponents, Louis then makes the comparison between events in Cuba
and those in Leningrad during the Nazi seige.
So far, so good.
But what about the actions of the Cuban government, mentioned in Green's
posting,
On Mon, 26 Jan 1998, Tom Walker wrote:
Productivity has become
largely a managerial afterthought. It is more a way of retroactively
matching outlays to output than it is a way of adjusting output.
The whole point of the computer revolution is that capital can
increasingly measure the
Thanks, Brian, for the specific examples I asked for. It makes for a more
useful discussion. Having said that, I'm running up against the limits of
my knowledge on specifics, so my replies are not really adequate. But, a
few points:
On Mon, 26 Jan 1998, Brian Green wrote:
There are many.
Bill Burgess comments that these kinds of (regressive) changes are what
you have to do if you want to attract foreign capital. True enough. But
this is the very argument that's being used around the world by regimes of
conservative, liberal and social democratic stripe. This is the essence of
the
Sid Schniad:
Does anything and everything go under such circumstances?
Of course not, but on the big question of NEP-like measures, there are no
alternatives. With the collapse of the USSR, these measures became
painfully necessary. In order to make them disappear, it requires money not
-- Forwarded message --
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 1998 14:36:20 -0500
From: DEW [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: Electronic Democracy in Nova Scotia [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Chernobyling
Originally To: comp.software.year-2000 newsgroup
Driving home one recent night
On Mon, 26 Jan 1998, Sid Shniad wrote, about the TINA line:
How do you keep from careening along this slippery slope once you've set
foot on it?
Seems to me that this was the issue posed by Brian's interventions.
I agree this is a real question, but I thought Brian's intervention tried
Jim Devine:.
I am far from being an expert on this stuff. I would appreciate factual
evidence for and against -- plus logical criticisms of the theory above.
In a couple of weeks I plan to write extensively about Mariategui, the
great Peruvian Marxist who believed that the ayllus could
Louis compares Green's criticisms of the Cuban government's policies vis-
a-vis Cuba's workers to a criticism of socialism based on what happened in
Leningrad during the Nazi seige.
A better analogy is to criticism of the actions of the Stalinist regime
(including the purges of the Soviet
OK, OK. Let's get the ground rules down. First comes complete immunity
then comes the good stuff.
I figure you could build a football team, or you can have a riot, or then
well there are lots of way to boost the name recognition of a college.
I wonder if I can leverage this into a
Dear Friends,
But isn't it the case that in precapitalist societies, there is nothing
inherent in the societies which leads to the destruction of nature. On
the contrary, there appear to be many what we might call social
reproductive mechanisms designed to insure some sort of ecological
On Mon, 26 Jan 1998, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
What I am arguing is that Cuba, as well as most other Soviet block
countries did not create internationalist momentum other than ideological
appeals and political organizations. What they were really after, however,
was a protection of their
Doug Henwood wrote,
Oh, there's no guarantee it will, I wasn't saying that. I was just saying
that as it stands, the U.S. propaganda apparatus can deal with it easily
within its conventional paradigm. Russia hasn't worked very smoothly, but
they still blame Communism. Latin America hasn't worked
Wojtek Sokolowski:
Workers today are clearly better off than
their counterparts some 150 years ago. However, today's workers would have
been much better off, had they received (individually or collectively) all
the surplus their labor produced.
Of course workers are better off, if you are
Barkley Rosser;
One famous counerexample to the view that Indians were
always "in harmony with nature" is the high probability
that the extinction of the sabre-tooth tiger and several
other large mammals in North America probably resulted from
overhunting arising from the initial
The last sentence of my reply to Louis P. should have
said that this did not imply that later tribes did not use
ecologically sound practices.
Another clear counterexample is the self-destructive
behavior of the Mayans. Not all Indians were or are the
same.
Barkley Rosser
On Mon,
Doug Henwood wrote,
A simple challenge for the propaganda apparatus to deal with: Asia's
problems were caused by the very lack of neoliberalism, not its
application. A restructuring, which may come with a bit of transitional
pain, along American lines is just what the doctor ordered. Because as
Indian religious beliefs are intrinsically ecological since they regard
nature as sacred. The various tribes who inhabited North America before the
European invasion had been here for tens of thousands of years, where they
developed economically sustainable hunting-and-gathering economies that
I am generally in sympathy with Louis Proyect's
posting on ecological attitudes/practices of American
Native Indians in contrast with the European
invaders/settlers. But I fear that he overdoes both the
unity of views among Indian tribes and the universality of
these views among them.
wojtek sokolowski:
I am not trying to deny, in any way, the progress revolutionary changes in
Eastern Europe or Cuba brought to improve the general human conditions in
those backward and exploited countries. But improving the material living
conditions of the people, a noble end in itself, is
Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
Asia, mostly. I think the Asian crisis goes well beyond the bailout issue.
If the presss gave it enough attention, as it normally would, that could
undermine the popular faith in the neoliberal ideology.
A simple challenge for the propaganda apparatus to deal with:
At 01:18 PM 1/26/98 -0500, Doug Henwood wrote:
What political-economic crisis? Clinton was sailing high in the polls and
the U.S. was (and still is) awash in official self-satisfaction. If Clinton
wanted to kill a few Iraqis, all he had to do was unleash some cruises and
his approval rating would
Michael P. writes: By the way, I find it ironic that the jesuit schools in
the U.S. are among the most open in the country. They even employ a Jim
Devine -- or maybe Jim just spelt his name wrong to slip in.
I was originally hired partly because the chair didn't know the difference
between the
Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
That is why I think that the whole brouhaha is invented - a sort of "Wag
the Dog" in reverse. in the movie, the political crisis was invented to
cover up a sex scandal, in the Lewinsky affair, the sex scandal is invented
to cover up a political-economic crisis.
What
On Mon, 26 Jan 1998 09:41:32 -0600 (CST) valis said:
Does anyone know of some biographical material on Pannekoek? I don't
think his life has been formally done.
There is a brief biographical introduction, in French, in Serge
Bricanier's book, Pannekoek et les conseils ouvriers, 1969.
Walter
Someone asked me over the weekend for the "Marxist-historical" analysis
of all this, with a wink. I said, half-facetiously, anything that
discredits the antidemocratic institution of the presidency and paves
the way for a parliamentary system is good. In Canada or UK Bill would
be out on his
At 10:57 AM 1/26/98 -0500, Louis Proyect wrote in response to my posting:
Marx would embrace Castro as the most genuine representative of his thought
in the world today. Cuba has been devoted to attacking the world capitalist
system through action rather than idle chatter:
1) creation of OLAS,
I read a news item yesterday that the right-wing is hesitate to jump on an
impeachment and/or demand-for-resignation of Clinton since it helps Gore
AND ALSO because of "concern for the country". This latter has a ring of
truth to it because a basic institution of the United States ruling
"He noted that year after year we [in the US] invent a new pattern"
of ethics.
The pattern of ethics in US public life is remarkably stable -- little or
none. It's the pattern of moral posturing that is ephemeral.
Regards,
Tom Walker
^^^
Pope Scolds Capitalism in Cuba
(January 25, AAS)
HAVANA (AP) - This communist island is not exactly on the verge of a
free-market explosion, but there was Pope John Paul II, warning
against "capitalist neoliberalism" and "blind market forces."
The pope - best-known as
Hey Marty Hart-Landsberg, you out there? Forget all this Asia crisis stuff
and answer the really important question: did you know Monica Lewinsky when
she was at Lewis Clark?
Doug
Castro Disconcerted with Clinton
Havana, 24 January 1998 (AP). The senstaionalism of the US press
concerning the sexual scandals surrounding US president Bill Clinton have
disconcerted [desconcertado: embarrased or puzzled by, concernd or baffled
with] president Fidel Castro, according to a
Recently I have read criticism's of the business and mainstream press's
triumphalism about the state of the American vs. European economies
with regards to unemployment rates. The criticism points out
that factoring in prison populations into the unemployment rates creates
a much smaller gap.
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