That's enough. Nobody learns anything from this post, either -- we all
know you and Lou don't like each other and take opportunities for
potshots. Possibly-interesting discussions get derailed into pissing
matches. Of course we can probably expect another 40 years of this, but
maybe we can
Congratulations to Eric for doing this and I hope more people follow.
This material should be free.
Look at, say, one of Kindleberger's textbooks from 30 years back. You
get excellent, clearly-written, _text_: sentences, paragraphs, sections,
and chapters meant to be read like a real book, not
The UNDP is not perfect but it's quite distinct from the IMF and World
Bank -- The Human in the _Human Development Report_ was chosen as an
implied criticism of the World Bank's _World Development Report._ The
HDI is of course more a rhetorical tool than a measure of anything, but
if you don't
I have little quarrel with the substance of Lou's latest argument -- my
weasel words were provided you understand what they're measuring. As
far as I understand it, in general the data that UN and Bretton Woods
agencies report are gathered by national governments, not directly by
these agencies.
Hello Chris,
1. Re clearing systems, I simply noted that the logic of exploiting an
existing clearing infrastructure is that you may harm it. Efficient
clearing is a good thing.
2. I have no problem with the notion of working out the political
economy of finance. I just came out of a class
I would appreciate some comments, for and against, on this
article from the ATTAC website on its practicability.
1. Precisely by exploiting the useful features of this clearing system
a tax could hurt them, encouraging private clearing schemes with
associated counterparty risk, and perhaps
If you think about systems of markets in financial assets, they all seem to
pivot on a riskless asset, whose very high level of liquidity and support by
a strong state are parts of its risklessness. T-bills, as well as longer
Treasury bonds, play that role globally. This has long been a feature
Jim writes:
To be totally serious, I'd guess we'd have to say that the existence of
the
government
debt subsidizes the financial sector in the ways that Doug suggested.
Doug did not say this. Subsidy is not a very useful way of thinking about
the relationship between gov't and finance.
Jim:
I guess we should look back to the 19th century and the early 20th
century,
back before
the T-bill market became so developed and T-bills themselves became so
liquid.
How did the
US financial markets work then?
The predecessor was the call-loan market, which was vulnerable to
crises.
Given that Brad has a cogent critique that he is willing to explain and
unpack in response to challenges, this is yet another abuse of
moderating authority. I have no idea what this list is for any more,
save idle chat among the like-minded. Every time a discussion gets into
any critical depth,
Any details on Roy Prosterman? AIFLD land reform advisor in S. Vietnam
in
the 60's.
Developer of and leading apologist for the counterinsurgent land reform
in El Salvador in the early 1980s.
For more:
Philip Wheaton. 1980. _Agrarian Reform in El Salvador: A Program of
Rural Pacification._
I don't know if it will yield the sort of killer quote you want, but
Amartya Sen's work on famines has long made the point that a system of
market prices can leave some people dead. If you look through his
recent _Development as Freedom_ collection there is quite a lot on this.
Best, Colin
They mean the whole
world
is unified in a distributed computing environment.
All the above paragraph establishes is that there are a lot of business
plans out there around e-commerce and that it's possible with a little
academic energy to make them add up to a "vision."
Colin Danby,
To Charles et al.:
I'm repeating myself so I'll try to shut up after this.
Here are a few sentences early in an essay on globalization
available at http://www.LaborRepublic.org/Essay44.htm.
...
---
Globalization is about what is happening to economies on a world
scale.
This seems, on a
I asked my class this week what "globalization" was, a term almost all
of them said they had heard. The main idea that came back was
19th-century liberalism -- bigger markets, more trade, more competition.
It's also true that the word is often used as a euphemism for capitalism
or for
The main problems with the Finlayson piece are logical, not statistical.
1. He conflates arguments about the specific effects of trade or
investment pacts on wages and environment with a much more general, and
I think unsupportable, argument that trade and investment *in general*
have these bad
From Jim:
For example, in his CAN "IT" HAPPEN AGAIN?, Minsky has a
clearly-defined
distinction between hedge financing, speculative financing, and Ponzi
financing.
Right, but this is a distinction about the mode of financing, not about
the character of the asset financed, and changes in
Apropos Chavez and labor:
Report: Labor Nominee Chavez Housed Illegal Alien
Linda Chavez, President-elect George W. Bush's nominee for labor
secretary, allowed a Guatemalan woman who was in the United States
illegally to live in her home and gave the woman spending money, ABC
reported January
To David:
We're past diminishing returns, and I'll be away for a couple of weeks
now. So real quickly:
1. Marx had a great many ideas about Capitalism and social science in
general, and much can be used even if you don't buy the notion that
capitalism blows up of its own accord (I don't). To
Gen. Powell's statement today on being nominated Secretary of State
deserves close attention. It promises support for "missile defense,"
and all but announces renewed bombing of Iraq. I am reminded of the way
that Reagan came into office.
Foreign policy (or more aptly, killing foreigners)
Hello David,
Now you want us to fight each other.
But seriously, these *are* much-debated questions. On (1), there are
many different ways to link the moral charge of Marx's writing to its
analytical content, many different ways and levels at which one may
accept or challenge the analysis.
It is not clear to me that a currency board inevitably involves fixed
exchange rates which cannot be devalued.
By definition, it does. You peg your currency to a stronger one,
abandon any exchange controls, and adopt the rule that your monetary
base will never exceed your central bank's
I'd concur with Jim on how "capitalism" is normally defined as a
theoretical concept. Just to underline two points:
1. Marxist analysis focuses on production, not exchange. What
distinguishes the capitalist productive enterprise is that its profits
are controlled by the owners of capital, not
I should probably sit this one out, but I did want to endorse a Lou
point on consumption,
http://csf.Colorado.EDU/mail/pen-l/2000IV/msg02234.html
since I didn't get round to it during last week's chat about pleasure.
The key issue is *not* the content of my desires (banal though they
are!), but
Let me associate myself with Mat's comments, and reaffirm that
empiricism is *not* the same thing as using and respecting data and
taking history seriously. Shallow dichotomies like pomo-empiricist are
barriers to understanding.
Justin backpedals to say he used "empiricist ... in the sense of
Justin writes:
I don't "backpedal": I know a bit about philosophical empiricism, and
can
also distinguish between what Hume called the strict and philosophical
and
the loose and vulgar meanings of the term.
I'm delighted to know how smart and well-educated you are, but I'm not
interested in
There are some fine books in this group, but it's not a coherent list --
looks like it was thrown together by someone with a vague idea that
Marxism, socialism, communism etc. were all the same thing. If you are
looking for readings _on Marx_, less than half of these would really be
appropriate.
If it's introductions we're looking for Tucker's _Marx-Engels Reader_ is
arguably the classic; of course it's mainly original writings but if
Norm can buy it used it'll be a lot cheaper and easier than printing all
that stuff off the web, plus there's the benefit of an intelligent
selection.
1. Let me take the opportunity to agree with Jim D re dependency theory
and affirm the excellence of Samir Amin. One may disagree with Amin on
policy or analysis, but there are few contemporary scholars who have
taken the project of extending Marxian economics quite so seriously.
_Accumulation
Doug, have you ever met a teenager that thought about future
consequnces?
I did not think that way, nor did anyone that I knew.
So ... Come the Revolution (or a Nader presidency), teenagers won't take
risks any more? What's the point of being a teenager?
Cigarettes are a cheap luxury which a
Re Michael:
how do you go with libertarianism? Should speed limits be enforced?
There is a difference between full-blown Libertarianism, which has a
very peculiar social ontology, and a small-l libertarian critique which
asks how much do you really want to try to control behavior. There's
Does anyone know what year Chile privatized it's Social Security
system?
Beginning in 1981, though initially the eligible assets were quite
restricted.
For an overview see Diamond and Valdes-Prieto, "Social Security
Reforms," in Bosworth et al. eds. 1994. _The Chilean Economy._
Brookings.
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/epolls/US/P000.html
Exit polls show that nationally, Nader voters were disproportionately
male and white. Was that because those categories of folks had less to
lose from a Bush victory over Gore?
The blitheness, and cynical detachment, with which folks dismiss
Reflection on Peter's comment
One of my colleagues refers to this as Shrodinger's election...
plus this from a news article on butterfly ballots in MA
The problem in Massachusetts was the chad -- the piece of paper that
is
supposed to separate completely from a hole-punch ballot. When it
Michael I have to take exception. Lou's post was cogent and
interesting. Speaking as someone who lacked the time to follow the whole
exchange, it was a useful summing-up of one position, and brought
forward an important question about agrarian capitalist transition
I have no problem with a
To Yoshie:
While Marx, etc. spoke of capitalism revolutionizing the means
of production, I haven't heard any feminist argue that
patriarchy revolutionizes the means of reproduction or
anything else for that matter. :)
If you look at '70s-vintage radical feminism you'll find almost
Jim:
As I've said several times I see the real, empirical, world is a
combination of various social institutions -- including those of
patriarchy
and ethnic domination, along with capitalism. It's a "complex social
formation dominated by capitalism."
The mischief is in the word "dominated."
Yoshie writes:
Well, does it suggest that "capitalism" is "the sole historical
agency *as a source of change*" if one describes a complex social
formation being "dominated" by capitalism? It appears to me that
there is no logical necessity leading from the latter to the former.
Probably
Writes Paul:
Rob raises an interesting question. If, due to subcontracting
labour, wage labour becomes a minority of workers in developed
"capitalist" countries, does that mean they are no longer capitalist?
Absolutely.
Not to mention lots of subcontracting and putting-out in the 3W.
Not
Jim D writes:
Anyway, please don't just _assert_ that capitalism needs slaves, etc.
Tell me the logic behind your argument.
There may be an ontological difference over what we mean when we say
capitalism -- is it an analytical category or an historical one. Mat,
when he says:
Enslaved
With charter schools public schools managed by
private entities firmly established and
multiplying, some of their advocates are floating a
new idea: charter colleges.
...
How charter colleges might operate is unclear, since
there are no formal proposals yet. But if they
operated like
... i would like sources that show
stats for yearly per capita income by quintile/decile for mexico
and/or the
maquiladora mexican states since the advent of NAFTA.
INEGI's website will give you GDP and population by state for 93-98.
http://www.inegi.gob.mx/
I'm not sure what's meant by
Great post. 2 booknotes.
John D. French Daniel James eds. 1997. _The Gendered Worlds of Latin
American Women Workers_ Duke University Press
has wonderful articles by historians along these lines, several showing
the extent to which governments were involved in creating and enforcing
the
Hirschman's book is great. But if you look at the kind of contrasts
that doux commerce advocates tended to draw, they were between what they
saw as the innate civility of face-to-face market exchanges and what we
might *very* loosely call feudal manners -- relations of patronage and
sharp
Just a couple of notes on Lou's substantive critique.
1. I share Lou's skepticism over Jameson's abrupt discovery that we live
in a "postmodern" age, and that there's a qualitatively new stage of
capitalism to go with it. I'm absolutely mystified by the authority
Jameson has exerted on this
Yoshie and Ben:
Specie-flow is just a model Hume employed and he can't be blamed for
Rothbard's abuse of it 2 centuries after his death.
Hume *was* a very sophisticated social analyst, but I'd base the case on
his economic history and analyses of contemporary institutions. A good
piece of
Yoshie:
Hume was anti-egalitarian ...
So what? Nobody's arguing that we should adopt his politics. The
question is whether we can learn from his analysis.
As Jim D notes, even Austrians have useful insights.
Reducing analysis to politics is a real problem -- you can see a more
elaborate
I tried to avoid getting reimmersed in these
recurrent pen-lpomo discussions, which are a sort
of chronic cyberdisease. But this latest by "jks"
was a little much.
I have read and indeed taught the major pomos
poststructuralists--Derrida,
DeMan, Foucault, DeLeuze Guttari, Baudrillard,
Steve: the Diamond Valdes-Prieto chapter in
Bosworth et al. eds. 1994. _The Chilean Economy._ Brookings,
describes the mechanics and has a good bibliography. There must be more recent lit,
but that's a starting point.
I had a note on the system a few years back on PKT:
Lou, Doug: It's hopeless! This question comes up on
Pen-L about once a year, and each time Ricardo makes
essentially the same post, citing the same, single,
article. Each time folks patiently point out (a) that
there is more literature and (b) that his arithmetic
means far less than he
A few years ago Michael Kinsley wrote an essay
on Pat Robertson's anti-Semitism for the _New
Republic_. The gist (trusting my fly-blown
memory), was that the Kinsley had a lot of fun
parsing Robertson's utterances about Jews, and
then got to one of Robertson's curiously oblique
defenses,
a sunnier take on some of
them.
Best, Colin
(Colin Danby, U. Wash., Bothell)
Mat has politely shifted focus to a more abstract
level, but let's be clear that Sokolowski's latest
post is a disingenuous response to Mat's critique.
Sokolowski called the following, posted by someone
signing as Peter Kosenko, an "excellent argument":
a
language that is basically confined
On another note, Doug, I've checked on the Blaug quote
with a colleague,
Bill Barber, who does history of thought. He agrees that
general
equilibrium was pretty much a dead letter by the turn of
the century, but
disagrees with the date that Blaug associates with its
revival. Barber
places
Jim writes:
my presumption is that racist and sexist
practices change due to impacts from capitalism which (1) disrupt the
power of the dominators and/or (2) strengthen the struggles of the
dominated.
First, thanks to Jim for emphasizing that these
are *assumptions* -- simplifications
Jim D writes:
I think the only reason one can see capitalism as the "root cause" of
other
oppressive institutions is dynamic. Like a virus, capitalism
continually
spreads, attacking preexisting institutions like racism and patriarchy
and
either destroying them or, perhaps more likely,
Hello Joseph,
What are the "Transition Debates" that you are referring to?
Sorry for the jargon. Leaping off the shelf is:
Hilton, ed. 1976. _The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism_ Verso.
as a starting point. Others on this list could give more extensive and
recent references.
Best,
Peter:
There is tons of post-structural empirical work
especially in history and anthropology. The 3
ethnographies I mentioned the other week (Clark,
_Onions are My Husband_, Tsing, _In the Realm of
the Diamond Queen_, Steedly, _Hanging Without a
Rope_) are recent examples from anthro. I'll
Hello Joseph,
Thanks for a clarifying response. I am
much in agreement that AGF tends to telescope
the differences between merchant and
industrial capitalism. While I like his
attention to merchant activity it is surely
true that qualitatively different things
happen in class relations with
Ricardo,
from your first post:
Colin, you are raising an important point which, as I said in a
previous post, Frank also makes, the logic of which runs like this:
the colonial trade was instrumental in the development of the British
textile industry, an industry which in turn was the key
Hello Joseph,
Thanks for an interesting post.
What are "internal factors"? Can you give an
example which clearly distinguishes the internal
from the external?
You raise the example of Spain. But what made
Spain Spain? We have to draw on the reconquista
and the formation of Castile in
Ricardo:
Our positions are close enough that we have to
be careful in defining the propositions under
discussion.
To start from the last but perhaps most fundamental
point
Colin concludes: "But I would ask you to consider whether the very
question of locating e.g. "the main factor in the
Ricardo:
Thanks for taking the time and trouble to discuss
AGF's work so seriously.
On the question of the role of colonial trade in
European growth, however, we risk going back over
ground covered a year ago, when you raised this
question. Responding,
Well, there is *one* little problem with using the Pen-L
archive to keep track of proceedings which is that it's
sometimes slow, and right now running about two days late.
I wrote Thursday's post re "stop waiting" in ignorance of
Wednesday's developments that Jerry had been red-carded,
so
Jerry:
Your solution exists at
http://csf.Colorado.EDU/mail/pen-l/feb99/date.html#start
where you can read Pen-L like a newspaper, picking out
the people you like and threads you find engaging. Set
your mail to postpone.
Re "non-economists:" the participation of people unwarped
by
Hello Paul,
That post-modernism and post-structualism are lumped is a readily
observable fact, I do not advocated said lumping.
Just so we're clear that the lumping is unwarranted.
I specifically was not trying to make post-modernism
look fatuous, though "positive philosophy" or
In response to Paul Meyer.
1. The divide betweem continental phil and the anglo-american
tradition has been widening for, what, almost 200 years. At
this point they're really quite separate projects whose
results are not mutually translatable. I'm not sure how to
deal with
In America, we
On the general point, Butler's work, if scarcely
Hemingwayesque, is quite intelligible to anyone
with a background in W. philosophy and post-
structural thought. Precisely how important a
theorist Butler is really doesn't interest me
here; but I did want to take a swat at the idea
that
Professor Dannin:
... In my opinion, anyone who writes this sort of prose cannot call
themselves
revolutionaries, and I have real trouble with their calling themselves
Marxists. They write not for workers but for other privileged
academics, ...
Read a page or two from any of the more
Thanks to Jim D for a reasoned reply to my
provocations. I think we can begin to narrow
differences.
The thing is that if the Enlightenment folks are consistent -- and
they
often are not, being better in theory than in practice -- they can see
through that rhetoric. We should be able to see
Thanks to Louis for posting this amazing stuff. A few
notes on Jim's reply:
But, Louis, isn't it very much in the Enlightenment tradition that
stuff
like Diderot's racist rant should never be exempt from rational
criticism
(i.e., reasoned argument, reference to objective fact, etc.)
You're
I need a good, short working defintion of what a "maquila" is,
especially in
terms of forward/backward linkages and ownership. By defintion are
inputs
and outputs provided/absorbed by one transnational or parent company?
By
definition is ownership separate from the parent co.?
I've seen the
Perhaps I can make myself clearer if I offer a slightly
more fleshed-out interpretation of events in Brazil.
First a couple paragraphs from a PKT post the other
week.
"
A skewed income distribution such as that suffered by
Brazil is an inadequate basis for growth -- low and
unstable
Apologies for what may look like hair-splitting to
non-academics. In a separate post I'll summarize my
suggestions on how to look at Brazil.
Thanks to Ellen for her comments.
At 12:18 PM 10/26/98 -0800, Colin wrote:
This is a false dichotomy. You can argue that there are
real forces
Ellen writes:
Efficient market types try desperately to put a good face
on foreign exchange markets by claiming that everything
will make sense in the long run. All real-world evidence
contradicts this. I find it most helpful to regard the .
exchange rate as a purely speculative variable
OK, OK, anything to save Bill from reading Krugman. But I
have to confess that I didn't understand his original
question, perhaps because his diagram was gibberished in
transmission.
If the question is about the effects of a fall in Japanese
net exports, you'd expect the yen to weaken given
Rob asks about Sen. Here's a start.
2 web resources are the official "Nobel" site, dry
but extensive:
http://www.nobel.se/announcement-98/economics98.html
and the relevant page from the excellent History of
Economic Thought site, which provides references.
I'm puzzled by Bill's post.
There are lists which are private and whose members agree not
to share anything posted with people who are not on the list.
In that case I would understand and share his complaint.
But Pen-L, which is publicly archived, clearly is not such a
list. Anyone can find
Stiglitz is a major player in what is now called "New
Keynesian" economics.
But as the rest of Barkley's post implicitly acknowleges
this is "NEW" as in "No Effing Way" Keynesian, as is pointed
out from time to time over on PKT. Whatever the "results,"
(and however interesting it might be
Colin was hypothesizing about Stiglitz simply playing good cop to IMF
bad cop. Yes, but they also have ways of dealing with rogue Keynesians in
the Bank.
Well the posted material still looks like advocacy of
neoliberalism with differences mainly in the manner
of transition and the kind of
I agree with most of Barkley's post but I have a couple
of questions.
-- Well, who knows what will happen next, but I would
argue that the current "Japan is down and out and the US is
up and running" stories may well be oversold. Dennis is
correct on the long-run very strong fundamentals
Maybe I missed something, but this speech seems consistent with
the World Bank's traditional role as good cop to the IMF's bad
cop.
When Stiglitz says that "we do not have all the answers" he
may provide a rhetorical opening for alternatives. He also
acknowledges a number of critiques that
Barkley:
Great letter. Is there any value in having more of us
unwashed types write in support? If so can you post a
name and address to write to?
Thanks, Colin
PS If AEA is busily stifling us hets is there any good
reason to remain a member? I could easily manage
without my own
Aidi writes:
Indeed it is a disingenuous comment to link the setting up of
the currency board to saving the President's family and his cronies.
While I for one do not agree with how these people have squeezed the
economy to line their own pockets, it is the little people that have
suffered
RD:
Colin has yet to tell us what is
Blackburn's argument.
I summarized the bits I remembered in my first post, including
a couple of substantive economic arguments which RD ignores.
Moreover, the book is easily available. Blackburn discusses
Williams and the critiques of Williams with
Rakesh asks:
why in recent years has capital export taken less the form of
foreign direct investment and more the form of short term credits or hot
money (one of the articles from *The Economist* at the website gives some
rather stunning data on the growth of short-term credit vis-a-vis
As Jim notes, comparing a profit flow to total European
output sheds little light.
Anyone interested in the question might want to look at
Blackburn's 1997 _Making of New World Slavery_, which
takes up in a late chapter the question of whether the
Atlantic slave trade and slave cultivation were
Tom W on Doug:
A family in which
two adults have to be working full time to earn a similar level of income
contributes twice as many participants to the labour force and thus
"improves" the employment picture.
It's magic: lower incomes + higher labour force participation = a lower rate
of
Peter DeFazio had a nice reply to this business about special
interests.
From "'Fast Track' Comes Down to the Wire" p. A2, WSJ 10 November
1997:
Mr. Clinton personally lobbied Democrats, but found the going
rough and at times showed his temper. An Oval Office meeting with
Democratic Rep.
Also, could someone give a quick theory of effective protection,
If intermediate inputs are assessed a lower tariff than
final goods, the value-added by domestic firms which turn
those inputs into final goods is protected to a greater
degree than the amount of the tariff on the final good.
Has anyone got the reference context for K Marx's reported
denial that he was a Marxist?
Lou:
I am still confused by:
The real culprit in all this teleological
totalitarianism was not Marx, nor Hegel. Nor the Enlightenment thinkers
before Hegel. Nor Descartes who got the whole totalitarian rational-thought
campaign going. You have to go back to Plato who put Reason on a
Lou again:
I will continue to use humor in my posts.
Doug Henwood gets my sense of humor and that's all that matters to me.
Doug has, however, the privilege of knowing you better than most of
us do.
I will fiercely resist smileys, but I'd point out that mockery
etc. are only evident as
A few of points of clarification in response to Ricardo's note.
1. Ancients
What were those "Greek achievements" that Islamic intellectuals
builded on?
Math, medicine, philosophy aesthetics etc. ... Or is this a
rhetorical question?
Before the Greeks, people were satisfied with whatever
I've had an instructive offlist correspondence with the
irascible Bill L and will try to clarify a couple of points.
1. I sought in my last post to offer a very broad definition
of culture as ditinct from say economics or biology, not of
what marks the boundaries of one culture as opposed to
Here are several points in response to thoughtful messages from Ricardo
and Bill. They make for a tediously-long post, so be forewarned.
1. What is a culture?
If we think of culture broadly as the ways people give meaning to their
lives (one might go so far as to say the structures of
I'm still reeling from Friday's WSJ. See p.A2, "Rubin Says
Global Investors Don't Suffer Enough." Rubin, the creator
and chief propagandist of the Mexico bailout, is now noticing
that by socializing losses, bailouts encourage the large
portfolio flows that destabilize financially-open
Just 3 notes re culture and critique.
Ricardo writes:
Yet the
same people who say this have no hesitation castigating
western culture for its "possessive individualism",
"consumerism", "ethonocentrism" , and so on.
1. Edward Said (e.g. _Culture and Imperialism_) argues that
in fact
Doug H will be able to provide a much better answer;
in the meantime here are a few ideas.
1. If you believe fin mkts incorporate information
efficiently then the value of a stock (multiplied by
total shares) gives you the value of the whole firm.
Even if you don't believe fin mkts are so
Arrives now from Ricardo:
Colin: You may have asked one central question, but alongside that
one came a whole series of more detailed ones. Moreover, I am sure
you know that behind your queries about what I meant by "cultural
practices" is the central issue of ethnocentrism. While I am
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