[PEN-L:8398] Re: good news!
HTML HEAD TITLERe: [PEN-L:8381] good news!/TITLE /HEAD BODY BGCOLOR="#FF" [Well, I'm always up for some crisis-talk, Doug! One thing ya gotta say here is that no specific reason is given in the whole spiel. More crisis-mongering below ... ]BR FONT SIZE="2"BR ÝNot only will today's good times rollBR Ýlonger than ever before, according to thisBR Ýview, but the traditional cycle of boomBR Ýand bust will never be the same again.BR ÝEconomic expansions of the future willBR Ýbe longer than they used to be, and theBR Ýanguishing interludes known asBR Ýrecessions will be milder, shorter andBR Ýrarer ...BR BR ÝBut this time, many experts say,BR Ýthings just might be different. One sign:BR ÝThe American economy provedBR Ýimpervious to the financial crisis thatBR Ýstarted in Asia in 1997 and spread toBR Ýmuch of the rest of the world. BR BR [Here again, our optimists miss the little matter of globalisation. America did not do well despite the awful mess in SE Asia; they did well because of it. They had the institutions and the size to bring the mess about, confine it to those countries, and make sure core finance didn't have to pay a penny for it. They copped the fleeing capital, they copped the lower prices, and they copped the region's productive assets at 15 cents in the dollar. Is it really not that simple?]BR BR ÝThe case for a brighter economic future rests onBR Ýseveral observations: BR BR Ý* The Federal Reserve, learning from past mistakes,BR Ýruns the nation's monetary policy more effectively thanBR Ýbefore. Last fall, for example, the Fed suddenly reversedBR Ýcourse and cut interest rates at the first signs that overseasBR Ýfinancial turbulence was hurting U.S. credit markets. BR BR [Surely they did not think they would actually raise interest rates at such a time? Anyway, US national accounts remain ever a greater nest of hornets, no?]BR BR Ý* Computer technology has revolutionized the wayBR Ýprivate industry manages the flow of products andBR Ýmaterials. Disruptive pile-ups of unused goods andBR Ýbottlenecks caused by shortages--historically majorBR Ýcauses of economic instability--appear to be less of aBR Ýthreat these days. BR BR [Is it true to say that first-world depressions of the past have been brought about by slow distribution? And are there not substanmtial inventories around the world, not of stuff for which there is unmet demand, but of stuff for which there is no effective demand at all? Oz has $70 billion of it stashed away just now, and there's a fair bit in Europe, and I read somewhere that several Asian economies are bouncing back as producers to a much greater extent than they are as consumers.]BR BR Ý* The bond market has become an increasinglyBR Ýimportant shock absorber. With abundant information atBR Ýtheir fingertips, private investors are better able toBR Ýanticipate Fed policy shifts--and their quickness inBR Ýadjusting interest rates accordingly helps keep theBR Ýeconomy on an even keel. BR BR [What's so new in bond markets, anyway? And you'd need to live on Jupiter not to know a 0.25% hike is universally expected on Wednesday. I've been getting that in the paper, meself. Not that new a medium, really.]BR BR Ý* The increasingly important service sector is lessBR Ýprone to wild ups and downs than the factory-dominatedBR Ýeconomy of yesterday, suggesting that service employeesBR Ýmay be less vulnerable to layoffs than their factoryBR Ýcounterparts. BR BR [So much of this 'post-industrial' economy's history has unfolded during bull runs, that one could easily make the mistake of assuming the booming service sector has profoundly transformed markets. If one were not to make that moot assumption, one would have to admit we haven't really seen what happens to service employees when the bears are out.]BR BR ÝBond investors, for instance, are behaving in a similarBR Ýmanner to purchasing managers or even Federal ReserveBR Ýpolicymakers: All can respond to events in the real worldBR Ýmore effectively than ever with the help of the Internet,BR Ýround-the-clock news and information about global eventsBR Ýand specific industry concerns. BR BR [Another assumption at work! We might want to define 'information' as a lessening of uncertainty. But that doesn't make it so, does it? My regular pronouncements on the economy over these last three years have been 'information', haven't they? Certainly hope no-one here treated them as a 'lessening of uncertainty'! More communication can make for less certainty, too, no? Isn't that what this chaos stuff is all about? Even if there are unusually reliable sources, and if most people do have access to them, might it not be that they are reliable because they take a hand in making the news? If so, we might have, say, a Bloomberg taking the place of the hidden hand, no? I'm not saying that leads to a worse scenario, but I guess neo-classicists would see this as worrying.]BR BR Ý"Financial market
[PEN-L:8470] New Fed Vacancies Web Page
What kind of interest rate policy might come out of Tuesday and Wednesday's Federal Reserve meeting if the two vacant seats on the Fed's Board of Governors were filled by worker-friendly governors with different perspectives than the conventional academic economists who dominate the Board today? What kind of difference could new Fed leadership make on the central bank's handling of community reinvestment or predatory lending issues? Its stance on financial decontrol legislation? Its accountability to the public? Few people in public life have more impact on ordinary citizens' living standards than the leaders of the Fed. Now, for the fourth time in his presidency, Bill Clinton has an opportunity to appoint two new governors to the Federal Reserve Board and citizens have a chance to publicly debate the candidates and concerns Clinton should consider. To encourage that debate, the Financial Markets Center has created an extensive Fed Vacancies Page at its web site (www.fmcenter.org). The new Page includes Fed-governor lore galore, a forum for users views, and a pipeline for making suggestions to the White House selection team. We don't offer this page as a substitute for organizing around specific candidates -- or as an endorsement of the (flawed, in our opinion) idea of armchair activism. However, the page could serve as a tool for organizing. And it asserts that average Americans belong in this game no less than the privileged groups that currently hold a monopoly on it. We invite groups with their own web sites to link to this page via www.fmcenter.org and to encourage their member to participate in the forum.
[PEN-L:8471] Re: Is Racism Still a 'Serious' Charge?
I don't know how many of your saw Nightline - June 29 1999 on the happy life that Asian Americans are enjoying in America these days. Of course, they are just all hper-sensitive. Henry C.K. Liu Nightline Monday June 28, 1999 Its not a great time to be Asian-American in the United States. So often, it seems, the face of wrongdoing, the face of evil, has been Asian. http://abcnews.go.com/onair/nightline/NightlineIndex.html Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Charles wrote in response to the statement that "Racism is a serious charge that should not be thrown around lightly": The irony comes in with the post-Reagan,liberal-"lefts" who turn the new gravity of the charge of racism into a basis for suppressing most charges of racism. In effect they say, "I am so respectful of the importance of the problem of racism that I think to say someone or action is racist is a very serious charge, so you, Black person or other person of color, are irresponsible in making the charge so much." In practice, including a lot on these "left" lists, the main thing that happens is criticism of misuse of the serious charge of racism, and almost no criticism of racism. I'll add that racism isn't treated as a serious charge at all in America. (Maybe it never really was, except by non-whites and a very small minority of anti-racist whites.) Nothing untoward happens to white politicians who make racist comments, policies, etc. (For instance, look at Trent Lott who is said to have had ties with a white supremacist group. Did he suffer any major negative political or economic consequences from such disclosure?) Affirmative Action has been fast disappearing, and a number of important lawsuits that alleged 'reverse discrimination' against whites have been decided in favor of the white plaintiffs. Racially differential effects of the war on drugs have been admitted, but they have not been corrected. Clinton (among other politicians) made political capital out of standing tall and not looking like 'pandering' to blacks. Among non-marxist leftists + 'liberals,' the term 'universalism' works as a code word for a genteel version of Clintonism. Listers can see and begin to discuss this glaring retreat from anti-racism if they don't take Charles' comments personally. No charge of racism is considered 'serious' enough to merit serious action in America. Yoshie
[PEN-L:8476] Re: David Colander -- The Invisible Hand of Truth
Thanks for posting this sensible analysis by Colander, Lou. Two comments: Economics research has become more a move in a game of chess than a search for understanding reality. Actually, I gave up tournament chess to focus on economics. I was no Ken Rogoff (grandmaster, then leading international trade/finance economist), but I was pretty good. Second, Colander is a little too abstract. He leaves out the specific role of the NBER nomenklatura within the economics profession. I don't there can be a successful critique of the internal dynamics of the economic profession without a close look at the self-perpetuating NBER power structure. Peter
[PEN-L:8477] Re: getting back on track
Craven, Jim wrote: Just another pampered self-absorbed CV-building punk. Wow! Glad I missed it... I apologize if am in a sour mood. I hope that we can learn to sort things out. A system that condemns 1/3 of the Black children is racist. and is likely to remain racist for a long time to come--unless America's left can unify and organize... Brad DeLong
[PEN-L:8479] Re: Re: [Fwd: Australia]
G'day again, A while back, I wrote that: [I suspect Australia will be pretty interesting to the US already. I doubt the US has not embarked on throwing Russia and China into each other's arms lightly. Surely, they'd have a 'Son-of-Cold-War' scenario in mind by now? Trade Minister (and deputy PM) Tim Fisher's mission to the US, to try yet again to get the Yanks to play the agricultural free trade game according to the rules they impose on others might be interesting from that point of view. How harsh will Fisher's rhetoric be if he is, as we all expect, to be disappointed? Can Washington afford the domestic price of rewarming Oz/Yank relations by actually allowing the unsubsidised Australian producers a fair go?] Well, here's how it's panning out. The US reckons its protection of its domestic lamb industry has nothing to do with free trade issues, that it does not have anything to do with APEC, and that the rest of the world should indeed be grateful to the US for its world-market-sustaining gluttony of late ... I imagine it can be even more embarrassing being a Yank than an Ozzie, eh? From today's *The Australian* US bleats over lamb quota attack From DENNIS SHANAHAN Political editor, in Auckland 29jun99 ANGRY US trade ambassadors have hit out at attacks on Washington's proposed barriers to Australian and New Zealand lamb exports as the issue threatens to overshadow APEC talks on trade. After a concerted campaign against plans to limit lamb imports to protect American sheep farmers, US trade ambassador Richard Fisher publicly expressed concern and frustration at accusations the US was becoming protectionist and hypocritical over trade. US President Bill Clinton is overdue to make a decision on American sheep industry appeals for quotas and tariffs to be applied to Australia's $100-million-a-year lamb exports to the US. Trade ministers and representatives of member-economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum began meeting in Auckland yesterday ahead of the annual APEC summit in September. In a private meeting last night, the US ambassadors told Australian Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer that the delay was unprecedented and related to the strength of the Australian lobbying campaign. Richard Fisher also moved to separate the preliminary APEC trade talks and lamb quotas as well as suggesting the rest of the world owed some gratitude to the US because of the size of its economy and buying power. At a forum where Tim Fischer, the Trade Minister, was one of the speakers, Richard Fisher, who is heading the US delegation to the APEC trade ministers' meeting in Auckland because senior trade negotiator Charlene Barshefsky had to cancel, said he was "concerned by the implications we are protectionist". "There is no correlation between the lamb issue and the success of this (APEC) meeting," he said. "The US strongly supports the APEC agenda on free trade. APEC has been a leader on this front." On Sunday, Tim Fischer and New Zealand International Trade Minister Lockwood Smith criticised the US quota proposal at a farm rally in Christchurch, describing it as hypocritical and totally unacceptable. Yesterday, while acknowledging Australia's "miraculous economic growth rate", Richard Fisher said the Asian region was still recovering from the financial crisis and as always the US had become the market of "first, last and only resort". "We buy $US1 trillion in goods from the rest of the world," he said and agreed to a suggestion that the rest of the world owed the US gratitude. His fellow trade ambassador, Susan Esserman, defended the US quota proposals as "fully consistent" with World Trade Organisation sanctions where there was a "threat of injury" to an industry. A recent International Trade Commission inquiry found that the Australian and New Zealand lamb imports were not damaging the small US sheep industry although there was the potential for future market share to be affected. Ms Esserman also said the delay in the White House decision on the lamb quotas and tariffs indicated the seriousness with which it was being handled. Tim Fischer said there had been more steps taken in recent days on the lamb issue that continued to give him some hope. He said he was disappointed Ms Barshefsky could not come because of family problems, but said "we are continuing".
[PEN-L:8481] RE: The Theory of Cultural Racism
I would insist, following Hegel, that difference by itself amounts to an "indifferent differentiation", an endless difference in which everything becomes everything, without anything being anything in particular. If all cultures are simply different, how can there be any difference between those differences? Without identifiable standards, or criteria difference becomes indifferent. Not true and not ncessary. Ricardo Duchesne wrote: Simply, to talk about "undeniable" cultural differences is to make evaluations about those differences, ranking not being far off . True. Yet differences are just differences. Ranking is another matter.
[PEN-L:8483] Re: Re: getting back on track
Brad De Long wrote: ... and is likely to remain racist for a long time to come--unless America's left can unify and organize... I just read a quote attributed to Ronald Reagan, of all people, in today's paper. He said that someone who agrees with you 80% of the time isn't your enemy. Maybe I'm just entering my dotage a few years behind the Gipper, but I think he's got a point. Doug
[PEN-L:8486] LP, Call Your Office
You haven't commented on this. What's the buzz? Others have been excoriated for much less. mbs Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 09:59:35 -0400 From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: NYSE-FARC [The "president of capitalism" touts shareholder democracy to armed revolutionaries] Financial Times - June 28 1999 NYSE CHIEF MEETS COLOMBIAN GUERRILLAS By Adam Thomson in Bogotá Richard Grasso, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, travelled to Colombia at the weekend to sell capitalism to the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), a leftwing group that has a tradition of targeting US interests in Colombia.
[PEN-L:8487] Re: Re: Re: Whiteness Studies and Its Discontents
Henry C.K. Liu wrote: Note the tactic of shifting the issue to one of protocol rather than substance. The way you said it, Yosjie, is ungentlewoman like, therefore what true. This is utter crap, Henry. I never tried to stop discussion of race on lbo-talk; the only thing I wanted to stop was the trading of personal insults. When I asked you and your interlocutors to stop insulting each other, you took this as an affront to your dignity and asked to be unsub'd. For her part, Yoshie has declared it worthless to attempt a discussion on race, which is a bit of a limit on discourse. She can be as ungentlewomanly as she likes; I don't have a decorum fetish. I think Brad's critique of Lin Biao's prose style, and with it the critique of Maoism, has some substance to it. It's an odd conception of socialism that thinks the masses should revere the Great Leader, and treat his writing with scriptural reverence. Instead of dismissing his critique as racism, you might tell us why this isn't a hierarchical, patronizing philosophy of governance. Denouncing him as a racist enemy of the people does more to confirm the critique than refute it. Doug
[PEN-L:8488] Re: LP, Call Your Office
At 09:27 AM 6/29/99 -0400, you wrote: You haven't commented on this. What's the buzz? Others have been excoriated for much less. mbs The only thing that is odd is that Richard Grasso, frequent guest on the Don Imus show, is involved. I would have presumed that all sorts of high-level delegations have been meeting privately with the FARC for several years now in light of its ability to control a substantial portion of Colombian real estate. Coincidently, I plan to post a series of pieces on Colombia over the next month or so. The problem of the FARC-U'wa is something that fits into the general research I have been doing on Marxism and the American Indian. One of the things that should come out of it is a better understanding, that I will be happy to share with others, about Colombian politics and history. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:8489] Re: Re: Thomas Friedman an economist?
On Monday, June 28, 1999 at 22:07:06 (PDT) Rod Hay writes: RH: The truth that religion holds is this. It reifies the best human qualities abstracts them from people and assigns them to a deity. ... You mean like the part in II Kings (2:24) where God sends out two she-bears from the woods to maul 42 children because they had been teasing Elisha? Bill
[PEN-L:8492] Re: RE: The Theory of Cultural Racism
This is precisely why Hegel, though his views were not racist, could easily lend themselve into logical racism. People can and are diffierent without being better or worse. To insist otherwise will lead towards a dangerous and inhuman path. Henry C.K. Liu Ricardo Duchesne wrote: I would insist, following Hegel, that difference by itself amounts to an "indifferent differentiation", an endless difference in which everything becomes everything, without anything being anything in particular. If all cultures are simply different, how can there be any difference between those differences? Without identifiable standards, or criteria difference becomes indifferent. Not true and not ncessary. Ricardo Duchesne wrote: Simply, to talk about "undeniable" cultural differences is to make evaluations about those differences, ranking not being far off . True. Yet differences are just differences. Ranking is another matter.
[PEN-L:8494] BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, JUNE 28, 1999 Nearly two-thirds of 1998 high school graduates were enrolled in colleges or universities in the fall, a percentage little changed in the last 2 years, BLS reports. The enrollment rate for young women (69.1 percent) continued to exceed that of young men (62.4 percent). "Young women are particularly getting the message" that education is the ticket to success in the 21st century, Labor Secretary Alexis M. Herman said in a statement. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A-13). Workplace education programs are vital to employers for overcoming widespread skills shortages in the workplace, according to a report by the Conference Board and the Education Department. The overwhelming majority of U.S. employers have gained economically from such programs, while employees have benefited from acquiring or improving work skills, according to the report, "Turning Skills Into Profit: Economic Benefits of Workplace Education Programs." The conclusions were draw from a survey of more than 40 private and public employers that have participated in national workplace education projects funded by the Education Department's National Workplace Literacy Program between 1995 and 1998. The respondents represent a cross-section of economic sectors, the report said. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A-7). Net exports proved to be less of a drag on U.S. growth in the first quarter than the Commerce Department earlier believed, prompting the department to upwardly revise the estimate of gross domestic product increase from 4.1 percent to 4.3 percent for the first 3 months of 1999. ... (Daily Labor Report, page D-1; Washington Post, page E1)_Torrid consumer spending helped the economy grow at a brisk annual rate of 4.3 percent in the first quarter of the year. Economists believe growth has slowed to about 3.5 percent in the current quarter, but they say that is probably not enough to dissuade the Federal Reserve Board from raising interest rates as a caution against inflation. The report indicated that inflation remained low. An inflation gauge tied to the gross domestic product rose at an annual rate of just 1.2 percent in the first quarter, compared with the 1.1 percent previously estimated. ... (New York Times, June 26, page B4)_Unshaken by the prospect of higher interest rates, consumers' confidence in the economy continued to soar in June. ... Meanwhile, the U.S. economy performed a bit better than the government had estimated earlier. ... (Wall Street Journal, page A2). Sales of existing homes dropped 4 percent in May. But the National Association of Realtors said sales went up from May 1998. ... (Washington Post, June 26, page E2)_The May level of sales of existing homes was the lowest level in 6 months. The drop coincided with rising mortgage rates. (New York Times, June 26, page B4)_Sales of existing homes slowed in May, amid heightened concerns over rising mortgage rates, elevated real-estate prices, and modest inventories of single-family homes. ... (Wall Street Journal, page A23). "At the turn of the century, immigrant workers speaking Slavic, Russian and Polish were at the core of union organizing efforts," says Professor Harley Shaiken, a labor specialist at the University of California at Berkeley, "and at the end of the century it's immigrant workers speaking Spanish, Laotian, Vietnamese." ... With a strong economy and many employers anxious for workers, the potential benefits of pressing for better wages and working conditions outweigh any risks. ... Unionization has increased, as workers at the nation's largest textile complex in North Carolina voted to unionize, and, earlier this year, the Service Employees International Union earned the right to represent nearly 75,000 home-care workers in the Los Angeles area. Many of them are immigrants. ... (New York Times, June 26, page A8). The unemployment rate for June, to be released Friday, July 2, is estimated to remain at 4.2 percent by the Thomson Global Consensus Forecast, according to The Wall Street Journal's "Tracking the Economy" (page 23). Nonfarm payrolls are forecast to rise by 223,000 in June. application/ms-tnef
[PEN-L:8496] Re: racism
But what you quote is not at all the same as your previous "paraphrases". What you said earlier is an distortion and exaggeration of what you quote below. "Guiding principle" does not include the details and specifics. But the other thing you leave out is that Mao Zedong's thought , which in large part references Marxism and Leninism, is highly CRITICAL AND MATERIALIST THINKING. So for the masses to be guided by Mao thought is to for them to think critically and based on the way things really are. This is the complete opposite of religious or dogmatic thought. The words you quote specifically mention opposition to dogmatism. It calls for "revolutioniz(ing) our people's thinking". This is the complete opposite of "bootlicking" and your distorted paraphrases of this passage. The Cultural Revolution may have had many failings , but one of its failings seems to have been masses of people going overboard in criticizing the status quo and traditional thinking. It was the complete opposite of "bootlicking". Charles Brown Brad De Long [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/28/99 07:24PM Henry, Yes, it seems something of an exaggeration to say Lin Biao was saying that all are to think as one ABOUT EVERYTHING as, Brad sort of implies. To me the most horrible thing is that it isn't *anything* of an exaggeration: Mao Zedong thought is Marxism-Leninism of the era in which imperialism is headed for total collapse and socialism is advancing to world-wide victory. It is a powerful ideological weapon for opposing imperialism and for opposing revisionism and dogmatism. Mao Zedong thought is the guiding principle for all the work of the party, the army, and the country. Therefore the most fundamental task in our Party's political and ideological work is at all times to hold high the great red banner of Mao Zedong thought, to arm the minds of the people throughout the country with it, and to persist in using it to command every field of activity. The broad masses of the workes, peasants, and soldiers, and the broad ranks of the revolutionary cadres and the intellectuals should really master Zedong thought; they should all study Chairman Mao's writings, follow his teachings, act according to his instructions, and be his good fighters In our great motherland, a new era is emerging in which the workers, peasants, and soldiers are grasping Marxism- Leninism-Mao Zedong thought. Once Mao Zedong thought is grasped by the broad masses, it becomes an inexhaustible source of strength and a spiritual atom bomb of infinite power. The large-scale publication of _Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong_ is a vital measure for enabling the broad masses to grasp Mao Zedong's thought and for promoting the revolutionization of our people's thinking. It is our hope that all comrades will learn earnestly and diligently, bring about a new nation-wide high tide in the creative study and application of Chairman Mao's works and, under the great red banner of Mao Zedong's thought, strive to build our country into a great socialist state with modern agriculture, modern industry, modern science and culture, and modern national defence! Lin Biao Mao Zedong thought was to be the guiding principle "for *all* the work of the party, the army, and the country." Not some. All. Only the revisionists, the dogmatists, and the other counter-revolutionary elements opposed Mao Zedong thought. And (at least until his assassination, presumably on Mao's orders) Lin Biao was to be in charge of telling everyone else what Mao Zedong thought was... Brad DeLong
[PEN-L:8497] TimeWork Web: four years online
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm June 29, 1995 - June 29, 1999 Here's what they say about the TimeWork Web: "Il s'agit d'un site particulièrement riche et bien fait autour du thème du temps de travail en général, et de sa réduction en particulier." - Gilles L. Bourque, Association d'économie politique, Université du Québec à Montréal. "Onderzoek naar levensvatbare beleidsopties voor arbeidstijdverkorting en herverdeling van arbeid gericht op terugbrengen van werkloosheid. Houdt zich ook bezig met het opbouwen van een achterban voor dergelijke politieke opties." - Albert Benschop, Sociology Department, University of Amsterdam. "LAVORARE MENO, LAVORARE TUTTI: Da qualche tempo si sta diffondendo una nuova filosofia che cerca di studiare nuove forme per l'economia e per la società in generale. Si fa, in particolare, riferimento alla riduzione dell'orario di lavoro per svolgere attività socialmente utili. Molto materiale su questi aspetti si trova su Time Work Web." - TQS Soluzioni, Italy. "TimeWork Web: Informationen zum Thema Arbeitszeit" - Robert Neunteufel, Bildungsabteilung der Arbeiterkammer, Graz, Austria. "This is the official home page of the Shorter Work Time Network of Canada, and is a mine of information and internet links related to work and working time. The TimeWork Web was launched in June 1995, and is both a research facility and an activist organizing site." - The Jobs Research Trust, New Zealand. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
[PEN-L:8502] RE: Re: David Colander -- The Invisible Hand of Truth
-Original Message- From: Peter Dorman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, June 28, 1999 11:14 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:8476] Re: David Colander -- "The Invisible Hand of Truth" Thanks for posting this sensible analysis by Colander, Lou. Two comments: Economics research has become more a move in a game of chess than a search for understanding reality. Actually, I gave up tournament chess to focus on economics. I was no Ken Rogoff (grandmaster, then leading international trade/finance economist), but I was pretty good. Second, Colander is a little too abstract. He leaves out the specific role of the NBER nomenklatura within the economics profession. I don't there can be a successful critique of the internal dynamics of the economic profession without a close look at the self-perpetuating NBER power structure. Peter Perhaps take a look at Dave Colander's: "The Spread of Economic Ideas" with A.W. Coats, Cambridge 1993 "Why Aren't Economists as Important as Garbagemen: Essays on the State of Economics", M.E.Sharpe, 1991 Beyond Microfoundations: Post Walrasian Macroeconomics, Colander, Ed. Cambridge, 1996 "The Coming of Keynesianism to America: Conversations With the founders of Keynesian Economics" Colander and Landreth eds, Edward Elgar, 1996 Dave's work is very deep and somewhat molelike. As an editor and final technical reviewer on Colander's Economics 3rd Ed., I had many exchanges with Dave on incorporating non-linear dynamics, the spread of ideas and institutional resistance to development/critique of theory, the "education" of new economists etc. He thought some of my proposals for Economics 3rd Edition would kill the book in less than a week (some were indeed somewhat outrageous like using the metaphor of a singles bar to explain various forms of "efficiency" (technological, economic, productive, consumer, exchange and allocative) e.g. maximizing output per unit of input or minimizing input per unit of output--the dance of maximization common in all singles bars. But Colander is a very deep thinker whose writings often do for his CV and career what Jaws I,II and III did for ocean bathing. Jim Craven
[PEN-L:8503] US Reps shill for druglords against South Africa
you may be aware that AIDS activists have been protesting Gore's role in attempts by the US drug industry to bully South Africa into rescinding policies to make drugs affordable. Here's a letter from US Reps pushing on the other side. A Hall of Shame. Though I understand Pascrell has switched sides and now supports the HOPE for Africa Act (which would bar the U.S. from interfering in such policies). -Robert Naiman -- February 2, 1998 Ms. Charlene Barshefsky United States Trade Representative 600 17th Street Washington, D.C. 20508 Dear Ms. Barshefsky: We are writing to urge that the Administration respond to a law recently enacted by the Government of South Africa which effectively abrogates the intellectual property rights of foreign pharmaceutical companies operating in South Africa. These rights are guaranteed by the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), to which South Africa is a signatory. The new law contains at least two egregious provisions. First, it permits the parallel importation of patented products and second, it allows for the administrative expropriation of patented technology. Both provisions are violations of the TRIPS Agreement. Article 28 of the Agreement obligates member countries to prohibit parallel imports of patented products and Article 27 prohibits discrimination on the enjoyment of patent rights based on the field of technology. As South Africa seeks to establish itself in the world market, it needs the assistance of the international community to create jobs and economics opportunity. Weakening intellectual property protection in any field is certain to lessen, rather than enhance South Africa's ability to attract vitally needed foreign direct investment. We hope to work with the South African government in its pursuit of equitable social reforms, including those within the health sector. However, the implications of this law are so great that in the absence of its repeal, we must urge you to pursue all appropriate actions, including if necessary with the WTO. Sincerely, Congressman Bob Menendez (D-NJ) Ranking Member House Subcommittee on Africa Congressman Edward Royce (R-CA) Chairman House Subcommittee on Africa Senator Bob Toricelli (D-NJ) Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ) Congressman Howard Coble (R-NC) Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA) Congressman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) Congressman Frank Pallone (D-NJ) Congressman Donald Payne (D-NJ) Congressman Bob Franks (R-NJ) Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) Congressman Scott Klug Congressman Rob Andrews (R-NJ) Congressman Steve Rothman (D-NJ) Congressman Ken Calvert (R-CA) Congressman Steve Chabot (R-OH) Congressman Mark Sanford (R-SC) Congressman Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ) Congressman Carrie Meek (D-FL) Congressman Sam Gejdenson (D-CT) Congressman James Traficant (D-OH) Congressman Dan Burton (R-IN) Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY) Congressman Brad Sherman (D-CA) Congressman Eni Faleomavaega (D-AS) Congressman Gerald Solomon (R-NY) Congressman Martin Frost (D-TX) Congressman Elton Gallegly (R-CA) Congressman Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ) Congressman John Hostettler (R-IN) Congressman John Peterson (R-PA) Congressman Merill Cook (R-UT) Congressman Jim Davis (D-FL) Congressman John Porter (R-IL) Congressman Edolphus Towns (D-NY) Congressman Jim Saxton (R-NJ) Congressman David Price (D-NC) Congressman David Drier (R-CA) Congressman Don Manzullo (R-IL) Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) Congressman Stephen Horn (R-CA) Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL) Congresswoman Julia Carson (D-IN) Congressman Michael Pappas (R-NJ) Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-CA) Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) --- Robert Naiman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Preamble Center 1737 21st NW Washington, DC 20009 phone: 202-265-3263 fax: 202-265-3647 http://www.preamble.org/ ---
[PEN-L:8504] quoth Doug...
quoth Doug, from LBO #90, which I received today: One of the depressing things about this war [against Serbia] is all the side-taking that's been going on. Almost every position was built around the endorsement of some nationalism or other; internationalism, difficult enough in practice, could hardly find a friend even in principle. Either you were pro-NATO or pro-Milo. Either the Serbs were channeling Hitler and propagating a Holocaust, or they were (ludicrously) the last bastion of true socialism in Europe. ... Either the KLA are freedom fighters or the scum of the earth. Any notion that all armed ethnicization thrives on exclusion and displacement disappeared, the ideological battle reduced to a conflict over how to distribute black and white hats. sounds like pen-l to me! I can even identify the names of the people that Doug is referring to. I say: let's drop all nationalism, whether it's ethnic nationalism or the anti-nationalistic nationalism of the US (in which the US is identified with the world's public interest), and bring back internationalism. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
[PEN-L:8505] Arianna Huffington on Pharmacologic Al, AGOA and HOPE
Arianna Huffington, presente! http://www.ariannaonline.com/columns/files/062899.html June 28, 1998, Arianna Huffington, "Pharmacologic Al" Presidential race 2000 has already spawned its first protests, with demonstrators following Vice President Al Gore from Tennessee to New Hampshire to New York to Philadelphia. There is no catchy character -- like 1992's ``Chicken George'' or 1996's ``Buttman'' - but their issue provides an excellent object lesson about the rotten core of American politics: how our campaign finance system allows powerful special interests to secretly dictate policy -- even when the life or death of millions is at stake. The protesters are outraged that Gore, in his role as co-chair of the U.S.-South African Binational Commission, has, according to a recent State Department report to Congress, spearheaded ``an assiduous, concerted campaign'' to stop South Africa from making low-cost AIDS drugs available to its 3.2 million infected citizens. Allowing South Africa to license domestic production of the lifesaving drugs, known as ``compulsory licensing,'' is one of those rare issues -- such as child abuse and drunk driving -- on which there cannot possibly be two sides. After all, the country is suffering from an AIDS epidemic that our own surgeon general has compared ``to the plague that decimated the population of Europe in the 14th century.'' Although sub-Saharan African nations account for 70 percent of the world's new HIV cases and 90 percent of all AIDS deaths, less than 1 percent of AIDS drugs are sold there. Who would defend leaving hundreds of thousands to die because lifesaving medicines are priced out of their reach? Certainly not the same people who have spared no expense in the last few months waging a humanitarian war. Or so one would think. But Gore, wedded to a trade policy that is anything but humanitarian, thinks otherwise and has aligned himself with the pharmaceutical companies that are suing the government of South Africa. They claim that its 1997 Medicines Act violates World Trade Organization (WTO) regulations by allowing for the compulsory licensing and parallel importing -- i.e., shopping for the best price -- of AIDS drugs. But it does not. In fact, WTO rules are particularly liberal when it comes to national emergencies such as epidemics. In explanation, the vice president's office served up a bureaucratic cocktail of words -- to be taken only with an empty head. ``In August 1998,'' his spokesman told me, ``the vice president met with Thabo Mbeki (now South Africa's president) and proposed trying to clarify Section 15(c) of South Africa's Medicines Act by working toward a resolution within a framework that included parallel importing and compulsory licensing in line with international agreements.'' I don't know how many South Africans died of AIDS while you were reading that sentence, but many have perished while the vice president has been figuring out the controlling legal authority over AIDS drugs. It looks like Gore's ``livability agenda'' stops at the suburbs' edge. The reasons why Gore tried to get Mbeki to acquiesce to the drug companies are chillingly laid out in next month's American Prospect magazine. John B. Judis exposes ``K Street Gore's interlocking directorate'' of aides, friends, advisors and lobbyists moving seamlessly between the pharmaceutical industry and his inner circle. Among them are Anthony Podesta, a top advisor and close friend of Gore and one of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America's chief lobbyists; Gore's chief domestic policy advisor David Beier, who was previously the top in-house lobbyist for Genentech; and Peter Knight, Gore's main fund-raiser, who made $120,000 lobbying for Schering-Plough. (According to Public Campaign, Gore has helped raise at least $1.4 million from drug companies over the course of his career.) With all of this crossover, a drug to loosen Al up on the campaign trail can't be far off. It is no wonder that the African Growth and Opportunity Act, sponsored by Rep. Phil Crane (R-Ill.) with the full backing of the president and the vice president, does not even mention the AIDS crisis. Fortunately, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) has introduced a competing bill that would prevent the United States from applying sanctions on South Africa and other sub-Saharan nations that are attempting to make AIDS drugs widely available. ``American drug companies want some of the poorest people in the world to pay U.S. market prices for drugs,'' Jackson told me. ``But AIDS drugs can cost $500 per week -- which happens to be the annual per capita income of sub-Saharan Africa.'' One indication that the Jackson bill is gaining steam is the fact that Rep. Tony Hall (D-Ohio), who originally co-sponsored both bills, has now decided to support Jackson's. ``It is the better bill,'' he told me. ``The White House called me and
[PEN-L:8508] Re: quoth Doug...
quoth Doug, from LBO #90, which I received today: One of the depressing things about this war [against Serbia] is all the side-taking that's been going on. Well, of course Doug would write something like this. He is a journalist above the fray. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:8509] Re: China
The current direction of China is another issue which we have discussed at some legenth on this and other lists. This particularly debate is focused on an historical issue: whether Mao purposefully murdered 30 million of his countrymen with an egotistic policy of the Great Leap Forward. Professor DeLong, to substantiate his erroneous claim, produced Lin Biao's preface to the Quotations From Mao as evidence of uncritical thinking of Mao socialist thought. Please read my post: Mao in the Chinese context, on the Marxism list, if you are interested on the subject. Henry C.K. Liu Michael Keaney wrote: Howdy y'all Please forgive me if I'm missing something, but a little clarification would not go amiss. I have been following the discussions re Mao and Lin Biao et al. I would like to know whether Charles and Henry believe that the present government of China is at all representative of the kind of vision typical of Mao and other Marxist revolutionaries, as has possibly been implied in some of the exchanges. What about the struggle for power during the caretakership of Hua Guo-Feng between the "Gang of Four" and Deng Xiao-Ping? Did this not signify some significant sea change in the direction of Chinese policy? I am under the impression that such a change (I assume it exists) was away from the ostensibly socialist and towards a form of state capitalism. In addition, how connected is the present administration to the masses? I am also uncomfortable with the ease with which the Tiananmen Square episode was brushed away, given the democratic aspirations so obviously expressed by its participants and suppressed by its targets. To excuse tanks rolling over citizens by means of attributing contamination of the originally egalitarian purpose of the demonstration to the corrupting influence of US television is a little too trite. That US TV, in typical fashion, chose to sensationalise and make stars out of a few "lucky" individuals hardly alters matters for the vast majority of those involved, other than to provide the Chinese power elite with a few handy propaganda weapons to discredit the demonstrators. It worries me that the Tiananmen demonstrators can be so casually written off because of their obvious value to US propagandiststhe same propagandists who cheerfully ignore the Al Sharptons and Cesar Chavezes. I do appreciate the contributions of both Henry and Charles, and the opportunity they provide for critical self-examination with regards to implicit racism. I certainly do not want the above to be interpreted as evidence of it, because it is not my intention to cast aspersions of that kind on anyone. But let's not defend the otherwise indefensible because it is somehow less ugly than a racism it is not entirely clear has manifested itself in the list. In friendship, Michael
[PEN-L:8511] Re: disutility of work: dark Satanic Mills
Brad De Long wrote, - snip - Once again, lower material output per capita is associated with greater human happiness because the disutility of work was lower. Econometric attempts to estimate disutility of work today (and in the past) have, however, been largely unsuccessful. - snip - I have to say I agree 100% (or at the very least 80%). I don't suspect you'd find many economists who would insist that GDP per capita is a good measure of human happiness. But I think there is a general feeling that the two move in the same direction and that thus consumption can stand as a proxy for revealed preference, wage compensation can be taken as proportional to the disutility of work c., c., c. What can be measured comes to stand for what matters, not because of any deep conviction that measurable output is the only thing that matters, but for mundane technical reasons. A profoundly consequential leap of faith is thus made by default -- AS IF lack of conviction was a firmer ground than conviction for making such a leap of faith. Those who would make a different leap of faith are politely and distractedly told that an alternative is only admissible if also arrived at by default through a similarly deductive process. AS IF the enigmatic defect of mathematical economics -- the gap between what can be measured and what matters -- is the bastion of its "unpretentious" objectivity. But that gap, that void, that emptiness isn't cheerily agnostic, it's Satanic. "Any prescribed set of ends is grist for the economist's unpretentious deductive mill, and often he can be expected to reveal that the prescribed ends are incomplete and inconsistent. The social welfare function is a concept as broad and empty as language itself -- and as necessary." -- Paul Samuelson 'And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic Mills?' -- William Blake "After all their idle sophistry, there is, thank God! no means of adding to the wealth of a nation but by adding to the facilities of living: so that wealth is liberty -- liberty to seek recreation -- liberty to enjoy life -- liberty to improve the mind: it is disposable time, and nothing more." -- Anonymous (The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties, 1821) "These are our deficits now: the time deficit in family life; the decency deficit in our common culture; the care deficit for our little ones and our elderly parents. Our families are loving but over-stretched." -- Al Gore regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
[PEN-L:8513] RE: Re: Thomas Friedman an economist?
It seems to me that the real issue is not whether there is truth content to neoclassical economics but why neoclassical economists (but not just the neoclassicals!) are so reticent about challenging the flagrantly bogus stuff that abounds. My cynical guess is that it's a "professional courtesy". In other words, class triumphs over content. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm Response: Bingo! Karl Meninger once noted that the neurotic is one who builds castles in the sky and the psychotic is the one who moves in--and the shrink collects the rent. In the case of the neoclassicals, they have not only built--and dominated--the various theoretical castles in the sky of bourgeois economics, they have moved in and constructed policies built and implemented on neoclassical "principles" and it is the poor, marginalized and exploited who are paying the rent--paying in blood. As was pointed out in an earlier post (I apologize for not remembering who wrote it) but essentially as the neoclassical ultra-reductionism, axiomatics, hypothetico-deductivism, tautologies and contrived syllogisms have proved useless in analyzing and predicting even essential capitalist relations, categories and dynamics (where there is some sort of attempt to actually apply neoclassical principles and axioms), the answer by the World Bank and IMF et al has been "conditionality" meaning if the theory doesn't fit, analyze, predict the reality, then alter the reality to fit the theory (sort of like chopping off part of the foot to make the shoe fit instead of looking for another size shoe--but with even worse consequences). But it gets worse. for example, part of my obligation to my students is to ensure that they have adequate foundations and preparation for higher levels of study in economics (knowing full-well the scholar despotism and ideological brainwashing of neoclassicals and non-neoclassicals to which they are likely to be subject). I teach the neoclassical stuff as "pure gospel" and the students really believe I am a born-again neoclassical. Then after giving an honest exposition of some of the theory (from the writings of the real original and born-again neoclassicals themselves and not from my caricatures of neoclassicism) I then probe the theory: what happens to certainty in equilibria or even the concept of "equilibrium" when certain "exogenous" variables like tastes/preferences or expectations are endogenized through histeresis feedback etc?; what ideological purposes and interests are served by the assumed "givens" such as wealth/income inequality?; what ideological purposes and interests are served by simple aggregations (whole = simple sum of parts)and what are some of the problems in macro being nothing more than aggregated micros? Why the resistance and slow pace of modifying basic assumptions of NC that are patently bogus--from perfect to possible asymmetric info and factor mobility, from pure to bounded rationality, from maximizing to satisficing etc?; what happens when "capital" is viewed as a fundamental implicit and explicit relation of power and exploitation between capital and non-capital (labor)rather than a "thing"? What does it mean that only concepts that are "operationalizable" are worth consideration and what does "operationalizable" mean? How does the neoclassical view phenomena such as power, racism, sexism, ageism, ethnocentrism, imperialism, colonialism and on what basis are such phenomena assumed to be anecdotal and/or non-operationalizable and/or non-existent and/or "squishy" and not worth any consideration? Etc Etc. The problem is at the higher levels, they get the pure neoclassical shit again and if they remember any of the critiques or counter-questions, the students will likely be punished for daring to utter any of them because the profs at the higher levels all studied and/or sit at the feet of the true-believer Elders who also tolerate none of that "radical stuff" or critiques. then there is the problem of congitive dissonance where if there is a contradiction between fact and emotion, between fact and belief and/or belief and emotion there arises a potentially disturbing "dissonance" in need of resolution. for example, I am a "radical" but, I never bring up radical critiques, I do strict neoclassical stuff--perhaps applied to a social issue--and my dissertation disturbs no mainstream sensibilities. I quietly tell my self that I am not selling out but rather "infiltrating" the profession so that someday I'll get to teach what total horseshit all the neoclassical stuff is. Well, my dissertation passes and I am on my way to my first new job. Now, I still have to keep quiet to get my tenure so I do, again telling myself that I am a spy and a mole infiltrating the bourgeois apologists. Now I get my tenure, but still, Assistant Prof is way down the food chain I need to really get up there so again I keep quiet, publish in the "right journals", go to the "right
[PEN-L:8515] Re: Re: Re: Unions Weigh 'CHARLIE CHAN dispute
"Henry C.K. Liu" [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/29/99 10:51AM Typical. I suggested a comparison of Kennedy's campaign speeches to Lin Biao's preface to Quotations From Mao, Professor DeLong produced a Kennedy graduation address at Harvard on Robert Frost. Kennedy described through his adulation of Frost, an America I did not recognize in the 60s, nor now, nor do I see it going in that direction. Charles: How about the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, recited mindlessly, daily by millions of school children about the same time as the Red Books ? How about if we get some of the nominating speeches at Dem and Rep party conventions ? How about George Washington never told a lie ? How about television commercials and their praises of commodities ? Lin Biao wrote in his preface: In studying the works of Chairman Mao, one should have specific problems in mind, study and apply his works in a creative way, combine study with application, first study what must be urgently applied in order to get quick results, and strive hard to apply what one is studying. We have compiled Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung in order to help the broad masses learn Mao Tse-tung's thought more effectively. In organizing their study, units should select passages that are relevant to the situation, their tasks, the current thinking of their personnel, and the state of their work. It does not read like dictatorial oppression to me, as Professor DeLong claims. ((( Charles: So, what we have in the selective quotations earlier by Brad D. is a form of distortion by omission. To call the above "bootlicking " and adherence to an autocrat is a gross distortion. Charles Brown (( More to the point, let me quote directly from the Quotations From Mao: 17. SERVING THE PEOPLE We should be modest and prudent, guard against arrogance and rashness, and serve the Chinese people heart and soul. . . . "China's Two Possible Destinies" (April 23, 1945), Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 253. Our point of departure is to serve the people whole-heartedly and never for a moment divorce ourselves from the masses, to proceed in all cases from the interests of the people and not from the interests of individuals or groups, and to understand the identity of our responsibility to the people and our responsibility to the leading organs of the Party. "On Coalition Government" (April 24, 1945), Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 315.* The organs of state must practise democratic centralism, they must rely on the masses and their personnel must serve the people. On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People (February 27, 1957), 1st pocket ed., p. 8.* Comrade Bethune's spirit, his utter devotion to others without any thought of self, was shown in his great sense of responsibility in his work and his great warm-heartedness towards all comrades and the people. Every Communist must learn from him. .. . . . . . . . . . . We must all learn the spirit of absolute selflessness from him. With this spirit everyone can be very useful to the people. A man's ability may be great or small, but if he has this spirit, he is already noble-minded and pure, a man of moral integrity and above vulgar interests, a man who is of value to the people. "In Memory of Norman Bethune" (December 21, 1939), Selected Works, Vol. II, pp. 337-38.* Our Communist Party and the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies led by our Party are battalions of the revolution. These battalions of ours are wholly dedicated to the liberation of the people and work entirely in the people's interests. "Serve the People" (September 8, 1944), Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 227. All our cadres, whatever their rank, are servants of the people, and whatever we do is to serve the people. How then can we be reluctant to discard any of our bad traits? "The Tasks for 1945" (December 15, 1944). Our duty is to hold ourselves responsible to the people. Every word, every act and every policy must conform to the people's interests, and if mistakes occur, they must be corrected -- that is what being responsible to the people means. "The Situation and Our Policy After the Victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan" (August 13, 1945), Selected Works, Vol. IV, p. 16. Wherever there is struggle there is sacrifice, and death is a common occurrence. But we have the interests of the people and the sufferings of the great majority at heart, and when we die for the people it is a worthy death. Nevertheless, we should do our best to avoid unnecessary sacrifices. "Serve the People" (September 8, 1944), Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 228. All men must die, but death can
[PEN-L:8518] Re: Re: Thomas Friedman an economist?
=== RH: The truth that religion holds is this. It reifies the best human qualities abstracts them from people and assigns them to a deity. It exists and flurishes as Marx says because it gives hope and comfort in a world without hope and comfort. Maybe. Religion also gives people comfort and answers to questions they might find discomforting or even terrifying. "There are no atheists in foxholes." Is Marxism withering away or only those distortions of it put forward by the Leninist, Maoist, etc.? The distortions and the pure forms look like they are withering away. I don't know for certain, but there are less Marxists in academia, in unions, in the studentwomen's movements and less subscribers to Marxist periodicals then there ever have been. Of course I would love to be proved wrong. In most cases this has been no fault of Marxism. At my Alma Mater Simon Fraser U., in the 60's and 70's many Marxists were fired simply because of their political views. Many never found jobs in academia ever again. The Taft-Hartley act makes it illegal for Marxists to be involved with unions at a high level. that the threat of the Soviet Union is gone it is more common to see emascualated Marxist explaination in the press that it was before. Perhaps, I was only 16 when the SU went down the tubes. It seems to me that the bourgeois press has always embraced a kind of 'vulger' marxism, they're just on the side of the capitalists. And as the current contradiction of this stage of capitalism work themselves out, I predict it will make a comeback. Let's hope so, it would only be natural since Marxism is the best theory. The conquering of the USSR has made that awful white elephant known as Soviet Marxism obsolete. OTOH, the conquering of the USSR was a tremendous blow to the left world-wide and has been felt by just about everyone who doesn't wear a Rolex. I always like Lev Trotsky's formulation: unconditional military defense of the USSR but working for worker's revolution within it. Unfortunately, many leftists and liberals never read Trotsky or took his analysis to heart. There is no other rational explaination of misery. There are other explanantions, none of them are very good. RH: Subjective idealism is an assumption not a technique. Marginalism is the technique. It can be useful in many situtations. Subjective idealism is a red herring. I meant individualism with a subjective v alue theory. Marginalism and NE are most convincing when used in biology e.g. R.Dawkins The Blind Watchmaker. Depending on how its presented, NE is just differential calculus. In the hands of it best practitioners, NE is a internally consistent deductive system such that marginal analysis follows from philosophical individualism. You can't have marginalism without the individualism. RH: I don't know how anyone could construct a feasible plan without a good knowledge of mathematics. Yes, but a plan isn't a theory. The best mathematical minds the USSR produced worked for GOSPLAN. RH: But individuals exist and they do sometimes act selfishly (in fact in capitalism selfish activity is strongly encouraged. Yes, in capitalism selfish behavior is rewarded. It might be useful to make a distinction between selfish behavior and self-interested behavior. I think it is in the majority's individual self-interest to be for socialism since the majority will,individually, benefit from having it. Classic prisoner's dilemma. The social relations of production would not make any sense if there is not something to relate. I.e., how do individual relate in production. Again we are dealing with a particular distortion of Marxism pushed for political reasons. What we want is a dialectic of the individual and the group. Yes. Sartre's *Critique of Dialectical Reason* is the best work here but by no means is it easy going. Neither is prior to the other and neither makes any sense without the other. I agree, but how do you square this with marginal analysis? The denial of the individual is just the sort of philosophy that would allow the sacrifice of the individual to the "necesities of history". I would imagine that most of us would want to avoid that. Yes. Analysis that are too structural leave out human agency. Incidentally, that is another serious flaw of NE, its crude and false theory of human agency. best, Sam Pawlett note to Mike L. in lurker-land: Resub! Matthew Shipp was awesome!
[PEN-L:8519] RE: Re: Re: Re: Unions Weigh 'CHARLIE CHAN dispute
Response: I got a call not long ago from my 5-year-old daughter's school. It seems that she refused to repeat the "Pledge of Allegiance" because she felt "it is a bunch of lies." Somehow, as a Blackfoot, she has a problem with the concept of alleging the actuality [the promise is a lie also] of "liberty and justice for all", "one nation indivisible" (She is a member of a nation within a nation and knows children of many other Indian nations) and she knows that whatever one's religion or concept of "God", supporting fascist dictatorships, overthrowing sovereign states, supporting torture and mindcontrol, imperialism and genocide in the Americas and elsewhere etc has nothing to do with any relgion's concept of "God" and "God's" Commandments (as articulated not as actually practiced)or a "nation under God". The actual pledge of Allegiance was written in 1893 by Francis Bellamy as an open instrument and attempt to do mass brainwashing in the school system. It is interesting how in the US so many point to "mass brainwashing" under "communism" while themselves being the most uncritical and Stepford-Wives-and-Husbands-like products of true mass brainwashing by the schools, churches, politicians and media of America. I asked my classes how many supported bombing in Yugoslavia, Kosovo etc?; those who supported it, I asked them to go up to the maps and show me the areas being bombed and not one could. BTW Henry, excellent selections from the Works of Chairman Mao to quote; I can't see even a sliver of "Mein Kampf" in any of them. Jim C -Original Message- From: Charles Brown [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 1999 10:51 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:8515] Re: Re: Re: Unions Weigh 'CHARLIE CHAN" dispute "Henry C.K. Liu" [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/29/99 10:51AM Typical. I suggested a comparison of Kennedy's campaign speeches to Lin Biao's preface to Quotations From Mao, Professor DeLong produced a Kennedy graduation address at Harvard on Robert Frost. Kennedy described through his adulation of Frost, an America I did not recognize in the 60s, nor now, nor do I see it going in that direction. Charles: How about the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, recited mindlessly, daily by millions of school children about the same time as the Red Books ? How about if we get some of the nominating speeches at Dem and Rep party conventions ? How about George Washington never told a lie ? How about television commercials and their praises of commodities ? Lin Biao wrote in his preface: In studying the works of Chairman Mao, one should have specific problems in mind, study and apply his works in a creative way, combine study with application, first study what must be urgently applied in order to get quick results, and strive hard to apply what one is studying. We have compiled Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung in order to help the broad masses learn Mao Tse-tung's thought more effectively. In organizing their study, units should select passages that are relevant to the situation, their tasks, the current thinking of their personnel, and the state of their work. It does not read like dictatorial oppression to me, as Professor DeLong claims. ((( Charles: So, what we have in the selective quotations earlier by Brad D. is a form of distortion by omission. To call the above "bootlicking " and adherence to an autocrat is a gross distortion. Charles Brown (( More to the point, let me quote directly from the Quotations From Mao: 17. SERVING THE PEOPLE We should be modest and prudent, guard against arrogance and rashness, and serve the Chinese people heart and soul. . . . "China's Two Possible Destinies" (April 23, 1945), Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 253. Our point of departure is to serve the people whole-heartedly and never for a moment divorce ourselves from the masses, to proceed in all cases from the interests of the people and not from the interests of individuals or groups, and to understand the identity of our responsibility to the people and our responsibility to the leading organs of the Party. "On Coalition Government" (April 24, 1945), Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 315.* The organs of state must practise democratic centralism, they must rely on the masses and their personnel must serve the people. On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People (February 27, 1957), 1st pocket ed., p. 8.* Comrade Bethune's spirit, his utter devotion to others without any thought of self, was shown in his great sense of responsibility in his work and his great warm-heartedness towards all comrades and the people. Every Communist must learn from him. .. . . . . . . . . . . We must all learn the spirit of absolute selflessness from him. With this spirit everyone can be very useful to the people. A man's ability may be great or small, but if he has this
[PEN-L:8520] Re: Re: Re: Re: Unions Weigh 'CHARLIE CHAN dispute
excerptTypical. I suggested a comparison of Kennedy's campaign speeches to Lin Biao's preface to Quotations From Mao, Professor DeLong produced a Kennedy graduation address at Harvard on Robert Frost. /excerpt I have a limited number of documents online to post. Be happy with what you can get. Brad DeLong, looking for an on-line copy of fontfamilyparamTimes/parambiggerbiggerYao Wen-yuan/bigger/bigger/fontfamily's review of "Hai Jui Dismissed from Office."
[PEN-L:8521] Re: Unions Weigh 'CHARLIE CHAN dispute
Brad De Long wrote: I didn't expect to be called a racist for daring to suggest that the people of China deserved better than to be ruled by a boot-licking theocrat like Lin Biao either... As I said for the nth time, it is your callous lampoon of Chinese language that was an racist act, not your disagreement with Lin Biao. Henry C.K. Liu To take a document and replace all appearances of the string "Mao Zedong" by the string "Max Sawicky" is hardly a lampoon--callous or otherwise. You see, the thing about such "totalitarian" language is it makes fun of itself: it does not need lampooning by others. I could say that there is nothing Chinese about Lin Biao's language: the pattern for this form of Communist rhetoric was set by Stalin, and Lin Biao is simply following in the tradition of Molotov and company. Hence accusations of racism are absurd. But instead I will simply say that you have defecated into the stream of discourse for too long.
[PEN-L:8523] The politics of the Holocaust
July 12, 1999 Holocaust Creationism by JON WIENER Between 1945 and 1947 the United States underwent perhaps the most breathtaking ideological transformation in its history. "The Good War," which had united America with Russia to save Western civilization from Nazi barbarism, ended, and within two years the incarnation of evil had been relocated: Germany was suddenly our ally in defending freedom from the USSR. This astonishing ideological shift was accomplished by invoking the theory of totalitarianism, which held that Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were "essentially alike." Whatever the intellectual strengths or weaknesses of the theory, it served to marginalize talk about what we today call the Holocaust: The suggestion that the destruction of European Jewry was the defining feature of the Nazi regime undermined the logic of the cold war by denying the essential similarity of Hitler and Stalin. The dizzying reversal redefined discussion of German war crimes as evidence of disloyalty to the "free world." A riveting new book by historian Peter Novick describes how "the Holocaust" as we speak of it today--a singular event--barely existed in Jewish consciousness or anybody else's at the end of World War II and for many years afterward. American Jews had learned by 1945 about the fate of "the 6 million." But for Jews and non-Jews alike, it was the overall course of the war and the deaths of 50 million people that were the dominant facts. Jews understood themselves to be one group among many that suffered immense and heartbreaking losses. (Complete review is at http://www.thenation.com/) Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:8526] Re: Neoclassical economics [was Thomas Friedman an economist?]
Yes, professional courtesy, or the wish for a quiet life. "I am stuck with this guy until I retire, so why make things unpleasant". And although I said that there was truth content in neoclassical economics. It is not all true (or I wouldn't be here). It is also useful. A good part of what passes for economics is politics dressed up in economic jargon. It pushes the economic agenda of a particular group. Imagine the surprise if a banker denounced monetarism. Or the small business lobby argued for higher payroll taxes. It is my belief that given the methods of neoclassical economics and the appropriate assumptions you could prove anything you desire. Justify any policy. Original Message Follows From: "Craven, Jim" [EMAIL PROTECTED] It seems to me that the real issue is not whether there is truth content to neoclassical economics but why neoclassical economists (but not just the neoclassicals!) are so reticent about challenging the flagrantly bogus stuff that abounds. My cynical guess is that it's a "professional courtesy". In other words, class triumphs over content. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm Response: Bingo! Karl Meninger once noted that the neurotic is one who builds castles in the sky and the psychotic is the one who moves in--and the shrink collects the rent. In the case of the neoclassicals, they have not only built--and dominated--the various theoretical castles in the sky of bourgeois economics, they have moved in and constructed policies built and implemented on neoclassical "principles" and it is the poor, marginalized and exploited who are paying the rent--paying in blood. As was pointed out in an earlier post (I apologize for not remembering who wrote it) but essentially as the neoclassical ultra-reductionism, axiomatics, hypothetico-deductivism, tautologies and contrived syllogisms have proved useless in analyzing and predicting even essential capitalist relations, categories and dynamics (where there is some sort of attempt to actually apply neoclassical principles and axioms), the answer by the World Bank and IMF et al has been "conditionality" meaning if the theory doesn't fit, analyze, predict the reality, then alter the reality to fit the theory (sort of like chopping off part of the foot to make the shoe fit instead of looking for another size shoe--but with even worse consequences). But it gets worse. for example, part of my obligation to my students is to ensure that they have adequate foundations and preparation for higher levels of study in economics (knowing full-well the scholar despotism and ideological brainwashing of neoclassicals and non-neoclassicals to which they are likely to be subject). I teach the neoclassical stuff as "pure gospel" and the students really believe I am a born-again neoclassical. Then after giving an honest exposition of some of the theory (from the writings of the real original and born-again neoclassicals themselves and not from my caricatures of neoclassicism) I then probe the theory: what happens to certainty in equilibria or even the concept of "equilibrium" when certain "exogenous" variables like tastes/preferences or expectations are endogenized through histeresis feedback etc?; what ideological purposes and interests are served by the assumed "givens" such as wealth/income inequality?; what ideological purposes and interests are served by simple aggregations (whole = simple sum of parts)and what are some of the problems in macro being nothing more than aggregated micros? Why the resistance and slow pace of modifying basic assumptions of NC that are patently bogus--from perfect to possible asymmetric info and factor mobility, from pure to bounded rationality, from maximizing to satisficing etc?; what happens when "capital" is viewed as a fundamental implicit and explicit relation of power and exploitation between capital and non-capital (labor)rather than a "thing"? What does it mean that only concepts that are "operationalizable" are worth consideration and what does "operationalizable" mean? How does the neoclassical view phenomena such as power, racism, sexism, ageism, ethnocentrism, imperialism, colonialism and on what basis are such phenomena assumed to be anecdotal and/or non-operationalizable and/or non-existent and/or "squishy" and not worth any consideration? Etc Etc. The problem is at the higher levels, they get the pure neoclassical shit again and if they remember any of the critiques or counter-questions, the students will likely be punished for daring to utter any of them because the profs at the higher levels all studied and/or sit at the feet of the true-believer Elders who also tolerate none of that "radical stuff" or critiques. then there is the problem of congitive dissonance where if there is a contradiction between fact and emotion, between fact and belief and/or belief and emotion there arises a potentially disturbing "dissonance" in need of resolution. for
[PEN-L:8527] Re: Re: Re: quoth Doug...
And we've had the Proyect-Jones axis making the most extraordinary claims that a murderous, kleptocratic regime represented the last bastion of European socialism It is a lie to state that I said that "socialism" was under attack. I am sure that Cuba is socialist, but I am not so sure what Yugoslavia is. What I am sure about is that western imperialism viewed Yugoslavia as an impediment to its economic program in Eastern Europe. Sandinista Nicaragua, despite having less state ownership than Mexico, was targeted for the same reason. The problem is that the economic tensions between Belgrade and the west got lost in the ocean of ink about human rights, refugees, etc. Just a reminder of the sort of thing I had been posting which other people I'm sure will recognize have nothing to do with the black-and-white reductionist caricature that Doug puts forward. NY Times, July 18, 1996 United Nations sanctions against Serbia were suspended after the Dayton accord but can be reimposed for noncompliance with the treaty. On the positive side, Mr. Holbrooke can offer to formally end the sanctions, lifting the cloud of uncertainty that might deter international investors. Since the suspension of sanctions last December, there has been little improvement in the Serbian economy, largely because of the determination of Mr. Milosevic, a former Communist, TO KEEP STATE CONTROLS AND HIS REFUSAL TO ALLOW PRIVATIZATION. But daily life has regained a modicum of normality. Families no longer hoard oil, sugar and other foodstuffs and gasoline, previously sold on the roadside by black marketeers, is more easily available. June 10, 1998 G8 Stability Pact for Yugoslavia The Stability Pact aims at strengthening countries in South Eastern Europe in their efforts to foster peace, democracy, respect for human rights and economic prosperity, in order to achieve stability in the whole region. Those countries in the region who seek integration into Euro-Atlantic structures, alongside a number of other participants in the Pact, strongly believe that the implementation of this process will facilitate their objective. . . To that end we pledge to cooperate towards: --creating vibrant market economies based on sound macro policies, markets open to greatly expanded foreign trade and private sector investment, effective and transparent customs and commercial/regulatory regimes, DEVELOPING STRONG CAPITAL MARKETS AND DIVERSIFIED OWNERSHIP, INCLUDING PRIVATISATION, leading to a widening circle of prosperity for all our citizens; --fostering economic cooperation in the region and between the region and the rest of Europe and the world, including free trade areas; promoting unimpeded contacts among citizens; Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:8529] Re: Socialism, Social Democracy, Democracy
Louis Proyect wrote: In some ways, Chomsky with his blend of anarchism and libertarianism is less timid than the averaged tenured Marxist professor. They have been trained to write in a lofty, non-judgemental manner about history and economics, but rarely in the exhortative manner found in Chomsky's writings. Where are all these tenured Marxist professors? You been reading Reed Irvine and Roger Kimball? Even in cult studs the Marxists are having a terrible time of it these days - can't get jobs, can't keep jobs, etc. As for political science and economics, well you could probably count 'em only having to remove one shoe. The ones that are tenured - in cult studs, economics, and poli sci - are mostly over 50, remnants of an earlier era. And over the past couple of years I've gotten to know a few of the younger Marxist cult stud scholars, the kinds of people you Eric Alterman like to make fun of. Most of them are serious people who do real political work - prisons, labor organizing, antiwar. So who are all these frivolous, self-indulgent tenured radicals anyway? Doug
[PEN-L:8531] On Prevarication ( not about racism)
Brad De Long [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/29/99 02:22PM Brad De Long wrote: To take a document and replace all appearances of the string "Mao Zedong" by the string "Max Sawicky" is hardly a lampoon--callous or otherwise. You see, the thing about such "totalitarian" language is it makes fun of itself: it does not need lampooning by others. ( Charles: However, when one reads the other passages written by Lin Biao in the very same text, which Henry sent to the list, the passages you sent don't sound totalitarian. They sound comparable to enthusiastic praise that we hear all of the time in U.S. political speeches promoting a candidate. Sticking to the non-racism issues, your post amounts to prevarication in the service of anti-communism. Brad D: I could say that there is nothing Chinese about Lin Biao's language: the pattern for this form of Communist rhetoric was set by Stalin, and Lin Biao is simply following in the tradition of Molotov and company. Hence accusations of racism are absurd. (( Charles: Right on point are the accusations that you are misrepresenting the intellectual content of the writings of communist leaders and communists intellectuals in general in comparison with the writings of bourgeois leaders and bourgeois intellectuals. The pattern of bourgeois rhetoric is not indicative that bourgeois intellectuals such as yourself are more critical or mindful in your thinking than communist intellectuals. What you do not respond to is my assertion that implied in your mocking of the half-quoting of Lin Biao was the stereotypcial western and liberal claim that western liberal thought is more critical and mindlful than eastern and communist thought; and that this is a false claim on your part. Lets start comparing some typical mindless, uncritical western liberal rhetoric with fuller passages from Lin Biao and Mao Zedong, as Henry has started to do. Then western liberal rhetoric will be seen to be as dogmatic and uncritical as any you can find. By the way, you say Lin Biao was assassinated. So was Kennedy ( both of them). Charles Brown
[PEN-L:8534] Re: Socialism, Social Democracy, Democracy
I don't know what to make of Louis' post. Louis claims the evidence suggests to him that socialism is superior to capitalism. Then he cites statistics that speak volumes that show that Canada is superior to socialist Cuba in life expectancy, GDP per capita, and education index. Is Canada supposed to be socialist ! Of course these statistics are very imperfect indicators of anything. GDP per capita tells nothing about inequality of income distribution. The number of poor children in Canada is growing by leaps and bounds. Life expectancy is an average. If you took an average for aboriginals you would get a much lower figure. And so on. Cheers, Ken Hanly Louis Proyect wrote: Michael Keany: I wouldn't describe Dewey as timid in outlook. Of course, the implication here is that timid equates to a basic acceptance of the social relations of production prevalent in his time, and our own. I don't believe this to be an accurate portrayal of Dewey's position, most especially in his latter years. John Dewey, like John Maynard Keynes, was an honorable man. He was one of the few liberals in the US who had the guts to stand up to Stalinist political hegemony and defend Trotsky. The timidity I am referring to does not have to do with taking courageous stands on civil liberties questions. It is rather connected to the tendency of middle-class intellectuals to stand in awe of capitalist instititutions. With all of the blandishments that go along with an academic career, it is very unusal for such figures to attack these institutions at their root like Chomsky does. In some ways, Chomsky with his blend of anarchism and libertarianism is less timid than the averaged tenured Marxist professor. They have been trained to write in a lofty, non-judgemental manner about history and economics, but rarely in the exhortative manner found in Chomsky's writings. And I think "socialists" would do well to attend to matters pertaining to the liberation of individuals - after all, it's the people we're doing it for, isn't it? Replacing one capitalist machine with another non-capitalist one is not much use if the individuals expected to work it still have no say in its design, construction, use and modification. Unless we're talking about the dark days of Soviet Stalinism, most non-capitalist societies have tremendous amounts of control from the bottom. Randy Martin, an editor at Social Text, comments that Cuba has had more significant policy changes over the past 20 years than the US has had in the entire 20th century. The only logical explanation for this is that the rank-and-file of Cuban society have better channels to express their ideas about "design, construction, use and modification" than we give them credit for. In my view, the fundamental issue is democracy, not what we label our system of economic organisation. Noncapitalist systems are not necessarily better simply for being so. I am old-fashioned on this question. My examination of the evidence convinces me that socialism is superior. Here are some statistics that speak volumes: From UN Human Development Index 1998 by rank: 1) Canada Life expectancy at birth (years) -- 79.1 Adjusted real GDP per capita in dollars -- 6230.98 Education index -- 0.9933 85) Cuba Life expectancy at birth (years) -- 75.7 Adjusted real GDP per capita in dollars -- 3100 Education index -- 0.8592 139) India Life expectancy at birth (years) -- 61.6 Adjusted real GDP per capita in dollars -- 1421.99 Education index -- 0.529 174) Sierra Leone (in last place) Life expectancy at birth (years) -- 34.7 Adjusted real GDP per capita in dollars -- 624.85 Education index -- 0.3089 Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:8535] Re: Re: Re: Re: Thomas Friedman an economist?
The underlying assumptions in this discourse make no sense to me. I made a number of comments re Brad's stuff but there was no response. Just a few random notes. 1) What is utility? 2) Is utility measurable in cardinal terms? 3) Are interpersonal comparisons of utility possible? Well, we make them all the time: any government policy--any political program--makes such interpersonal utility comparisons. I myself don't think that Benthamite utility exists. But I do think that it is useful for thinking about distributional questions to suppose that it does exist--and that people try to maximize it. This is a matter of taste, I agree. But it seems to me that going down the non-utility road ultimately traps you into a language of "rights" that can become very inhumane, or risks giving too little weight to the preferences that people express... Brad DeLong
[PEN-L:8537] Re: On Prevarication ( not about racism)
Brad De Long [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/29/99 02:22PM Brad De Long wrote: To take a document and replace all appearances of the string "Mao Zedong" by the string "Max Sawicky" is hardly a lampoon--callous or otherwise. You see, the thing about such "totalitarian" language is it makes fun of itself: it does not need lampooning by others. ( Charles: However, when one reads the other passages written by Lin Biao in the very same text, which Henry sent to the list, the passages you sent don't sound totalitarian. Puh-leeze. There are no "other passages written by Lin Biao in the very same text." What I originally posted was the *whole* *effing* *thing*. Brad DeLong, shaking his head, muttering "dumber than dirt..." and off to the library...
[PEN-L:8538] Re: Re: Re: Socialism, Social Democracy, Democracy
Louis Proyect wrote: that is the time you choose to allow them to reprint your LBO musings on the left and its problems. Actually James Heartfield asked me to write the article for LM. It wasn't a reprint of anything. Pathogenetically, Doug
[PEN-L:8540] Socialism, Social Democracy, Democracy
Ken Hanley wrote: I don't know what to make of Louis' post. Louis claims the evidence suggests to him that socialism is superior to capitalism. Then he cites statistics that speak volumes that show that Canada is superior to socialist Cuba in life expectancy, GDP per capita, and education index. Ken, I didn't think I'd have to supply the context on PEN-L, but let me go ahead and do so. The context is that Canada is an imperialist nation and Cuba is a third-world country struggling with an economic blockade. It's numbers, however, are starkly different from India's or Sierra Leone's who have not broken with capitalism. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:8542] the offending piece
By the way, here's the piece I wrote for LM that made Lou Proyect sick. This is what I sent them; there may have been minor edits in the published version. Doug IN LOVE WITH DISASTER by Doug Henwood Back in 1992, I wrote an article in the newsletter I edit http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/Financial-crisis-averted.html saying that it was pretty likely that the U.S. financial system wasn't going to implode. After the roaring eighties peaked around 1989, the U.S. economy fell into stagnation, and bank failures and bankruptcies reached frightening proportions. Since by most ordinary measures, the financial structure was as bad as or worse than 1929's, it wasn't at all alarmist to fear the worst. But George Bush's government came up with hundreds of billions (no one really knows for sure how many) to save the wrecked savings loan industry, and Alan Greenspan's Federal Reserve pushed real interest rates down to 0% and kept them there for years. State action saved capital from itself, and I thought it was time to say that there would be no second Depression. Saying so evoked a fair amount of mail and phone calls, ranging from those expressing concern about my sanity to those expressing outright hostility. Last fall, I said pretty much the same thing about the Asian financial crisis - that, thanks to state intervention (mainly an indulgent U.S. Fed and the ministrations of the IMF), the worst of the 1997-98 melodrama was probably behind us. I made it clear that I didn't think the worst was over for the workers and peasants of Asia - just that the systemic meltdown of the global financial system was looking pretty unlikely. This too evoked reactions similar to 1992's all clear. I recount this not to brag about my prescience; I've made lots of bad calls in my life too, though they're a lot less pleasant to think about. One of those bad calls was to take the 1987 stock market crash all too seriously - I thought it was the overture to a rerun of the 1930s, when it turned out to be the financial equivalent of a summer thunderstorm. That made me think a lot about catastrophism. The left, Marxist and non-Marxist, has long shown an unhealthy affinity for disaster. Bank runs, currency crises, oil spills get radicals' blood running. But this hasn't proved a very fruitful passion. Of course it goes without saying that a system so prone to crisis - where it's become routine that a major country go under every couple of years - has, by definition, serious systemic problems. But despite the turmoil and misery that come with these crises, capitalism has shown a remarkable capacity to heal itself, and even to turn crisis to its advantage. The bourgeois state has become remarkably skilled at socializing losses, and shifting the burdens of adjustment onto the poor and the weak. The terminal crisis, the death agony of capitalism, just refuses to arrive. Let's think back for a moment on some of the great financial disasters of the last 20 years. * There was the Third World debt crisis, that even respectable people thought might be a system breaker. Instead, the creditor countries, led by the U.S. Treasury and the IMF, used the crisis to force debtor countries to dismantle protectionist development machinery, open up to foreign trade and capital flows, and privatize state enterprises. The human consequences have been severe - massive impoverishment and polarization - but the system emerged not merely intact but strengthened. * There was the (now-forgotten) U.S. leveraging mania of the 1980s, which I mentioned at the beginning of this article. Not only were several hundred billion dollars of public money expended with almost no debate - at a time when we were constantly told there was no money available for social spending - the Fed's low-interest-rate policy set the stage for the great bull market in stocks of the mid- and late-1990s. That bull market has not only greatly enriched the 5% of shareholders who hold 95% of all stock, it's also contributed to the broad prestige of U.S. capitalism. That prestige and the bull market probably won't last forever, but it's been quite a lovely run so far. * And there were the two great "emerging market" disasters - Mexico in 1994-95 and Southeast Asia in 1997-98 - both of which looked like potential system-breakers, especially the Asian melodrama. But again, the combination of emergency funding and engineered depression in the crisis countries kept the system together. Mexico was further "liberalized," and the developmentalist state regimes of Southeast Asia, particularly Korea, have been placed under siege. It's too early to tell whether Asia will undergo a complete neoliberal renovation, the way Latin America did during its years of crisis, but Western banks and multinationals have been buying up choice properties that were long off-limits to foreign investors. Now I'd never want to argue that this approach
[PEN-L:8543] Re: On Prevarication ( not about racism)
So, you quote about three or four lines of a preface that even in western culture is the place where kudos and praise are the appropriate form, and you try to pawn it off as typical of Lin Biao's and communist writing. That makes your little trick even more dishonest. Where is your response to all the mindful , critical quotes Henry posted ? Here we go with the "dumber than dirt" line again. Hurling insults does not substitute for argumentation, and your argument is in tatters. One thing, I'm not so dumb that I can't see through your intellectual dishonesty. Charles Brown Brad De Long [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/29/99 04:00PM Brad De Long [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/29/99 02:22PM Brad De Long wrote: To take a document and replace all appearances of the string "Mao Zedong" by the string "Max Sawicky" is hardly a lampoon--callous or otherwise. You see, the thing about such "totalitarian" language is it makes fun of itself: it does not need lampooning by others. ( Charles: However, when one reads the other passages written by Lin Biao in the very same text, which Henry sent to the list, the passages you sent don't sound totalitarian. Puh-leeze. There are no "other passages written by Lin Biao in the very same text." What I originally posted was the *whole* *effing* *thing*. Brad DeLong, shaking his head, muttering "dumber than dirt..." and off to the library...
[PEN-L:8545] Re: Re: Re: Re: Socialism, Social Democracy,Democracy
jf noonan wrote: For those of us not up on the diabolical machinations of crypto-facist Henwood, what publication are you talking about? LM, formerly known as Living Marxism, the former publication of the former Revolutionary Communist Party (the British one, no relation to Bob Avakian's cult). The RCP dissolved itself in December 1996. They kept the magazine going, and relanuched it as LM, completely purified of its former Marxism. Its main obsessions are around the various social panics, from food scares to global warming. Sometimes they have a point, but it's way overdone, and their anti-environmentalism in particular is nuts, as is their antifeminism. Still, the editor that asked me to write the piece, James Heartfield, is a very smart guy, even when he's wrong. LM is being sued by the ITN television folks in Britain for having reported in their magazine that the famous Serbian concentration camp pictures were faked. You can find that whole story, and a good taste of the rest of the LM experience, at http://www.informinc.co.uk/index.html. Doug
[PEN-L:8547] Re: the offending piece
In Doug's article, he writes; That faith in inevitable self-destruction has deeply unfortunate political consequences. Even if catastrophist predictions _do_ work out, and the US falls into a Depression-type disaster (pulling the rest of the world in even deeper than they already are), without a mass movement ready to replace capitalism with something else (and hopefully better), capitalism will recover, just as it did in the 1930s. And a collapse might encourage fascism rather than socialism. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
[PEN-L:8550] Re: LM magazine
Louis, don't you think it is a mistake to use "guilt by association techniques" against Doug? After all, should we dump on Doug because he gets published in the lily-livered liberal NATION magazine? (to its credit, the NATION mostly opposed the Grand Patriotic War Against the Serbs.) Can we criticize you for working for Columbia University? On the other hand, LM doesn't claim to be Marxist, so it can't be accused of apostasy or false advertising. At 04:55 PM 6/29/99 -0400, Louis wrote: 1) LM Magazine published Ron Arnold, shortly after Doug Henwood connected them with him: The Unabomber took his cue from the anti-technology rants of the US environmental lobby, suggests RON ARNOLD A darker shade of green It was over before it began. At the last minute, Theodore Kaczynski admitted he was the anti-technology Unabomber who terrorised the USA for etc. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
[PEN-L:8551] LM magazine
Jim Devine wrote: Louis, don't you think it is a mistake to use "guilt by association techniques" against Doug? After all, should we dump on Doug because he gets published in the lily-livered liberal NATION magazine? (to its credit, the NATION mostly opposed the Grand Patriotic War Against the Serbs.) Can we criticize you for working for Columbia University? Jim, I don't think you know the history of this outfit well enough to draw such analogies. They are viewed as an upscale version of Larouche's outfit by the British left that I have been in touch with for the past 3 years since I have begun studying them. This is not like Alex Cockburn publishing a column in the Wall Street Journal. The group around the magazine has an activist component that has worked to discredit the British left over the past decade. During a bitter strike by miners in which everything was on the line, this outfit chose that time to open up a campaign against Arthur Scargill, the miner's leader. This was around the time people first started wondering if they were getting paid by the bosses. Also, despite what Doug says, they still have an interest in pretending to be leftists of some sort. Jim Heartfield is a self-avowed "Marxist" despite his basically libertarian ideas. They bamboozled Monthly Review into publishing one of their books, which Harry Magdoff regretted deeply. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:8552] LM magazine
RAVING MARXISM by Matthew Price Lingua Franca, March 1999 OVER THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS, THERE HAVE been few magazines more hostile to the concerns of transatlantic liberals and leftists than the glossy, in-your-face British political monthly LM In recent months, for example, LM has accused environmentalists of peddling "phony health worries, hollow compassion, and cod-socialist proposals" and of harboring a desire to purge humanity from the earth in a redemptive act of "environmental annihilation." The magazine attacked a proposed gun-control policy in Britain as one of a series of "authoritarian measures" based on "a knee jerk reaction to a climate of hysteria and fear." And it has savaged those who claim that global capitalism is in crisis: "This outlook can only serve to frustrate the development of economic and human potential." One might think that such a magazine was backed by a pro-business think tank or a right-wing media baron. But the truth could not be more different: LM is an outgrowth of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), a small Trotskyite splinter group; for most of its life, the journal was known as Living Marxism. Now in its eleventh year of publication, with a circulation of barely fifteen thousand, the magazine dropped the word "Marxism" from its name two years ago and completed its strange trip from the dour, sectarian world of the far left to a Day-Glo-colored, rave-music-inspired cyberlibertarianism that involves a peculiar, and sometimes creepy, mixture of unfettered capitalism, scientist worship, and even pro-Serb apologetics. One thing is certain: LM has never looked like the typical publication of a British Trotskyite sect. It has always been a glossy and smartly put-together monthly review rather than a drab party newspaper. But looking good was always a priority for the RCP; after new recruits passed an exam, which tested them on "correct" party ideology, they received a clothing allowance. For a time, the RCP was known in left circles as the "Socialist Workers Party with hair gel." Living Marxism hit newsstands in 1988, under the stewardship of Mick Hume, who previously edited the party weekly the next step. Soon it was publishing a dyspeptic series of articles on fin de siècle culture, grandiosely titled "The Midnight in the Century Thesis." "We live in an era of reaction, an essentially dark hour for those who support human liberation," intoned a 1992 article by Frank Richards (the nom de plume of many LM contributors, including Frank Furedi, LM's main theoretician and a sociologist at the University of Kent). Abandoning traditional Marxist belief in class struggle, Richards lamented the failure of "dynamic forces" to emerge, though he never identifies what shape these new forces might take. Meanwhile, Living Marxism was endorsing an eclectic blend of causes. The magazine has taken aim at animal rights: "enough of this monkey business," one writer inveighed. "A critical defense of humanism and the human potential is long overdue." And in 1992, it stridently opposed Western intervention in the Bosnian war, jeering that "many of the erstwhile liberal critics of western colonialism have now become the loudest supporters of the West invading other countries in pursuit of its bogus 'humanitarianism."' In 1995 the magazine defined a new enemy. "Relativism," it declared, "provides the intellectual underpinning for the new authoritarianism." Castigating ruling elites for their "avant-garde cynicism," and "liberal anti-extremist sentiment," Living Marxism adopted some of the language of right-wing cultural critique. The shift in emphasis was ratified by Living Marxism's "manifesto for our times," The Point Is to Change It. As Hume characterized the tract, "It bears little resemblance to a manifesto from the familiar radical tradition. It is not a book of complaints about the problems of exploitation, unemployment and poverty created by the problems of capitalism." And indeed, the manifesto sounded more like Ayn Rand than Karl Marx--a harbinger of things to come. In 1996 the RCP folded, and the project lost its Trotskyite mooring. At that time, Living Marxism metamorphosed into LM Turning to a high-tech, rave aesthetic and an editorial tone that owes more to the cyberanarchism of Wired and Mondo 2001 than to the earnest leftism of The Nation, the magazine took on a new motto. No longer a party organ, LM now "takes to the stand in defense of life, liberty and having it all." Appropriately, the magazine sports a lively alt.cukure section, which surveys the books, styles, music, and technology of the moment: In recent issues, former Face editor Sheryll Garatt praised club culture, and "dissident technologist" Nigel Burke defended Microsoft CEO and "global hate figure" Bill Gates. A section called Futures celebrates scientific progress in all its forms, including animal research and genetically altered food. In 1997 LM made a considerable stir in Britain when it defended
[PEN-L:8553] Re: Re: disutility of work
Good post, Brad, especially about England and France. Do you have a reference to Card Krueger's take on compensating wage differentials? Peter Brad De Long wrote: Tom Walker wrote: Case in point: I've asked the question three times "how does one 'adjust appropriately' for the disutility of work?" I don't know. I do have two observations. First, output per worker--as measured by national income accountants--in the U.S. south fell by about a quarter after the Civil War. But by *any* social welfare function (save the one that gave the overwhelming weight to ex-slaveholders utility that was implicitly maximized by the pre-Civil War market economy) the post-Civil War U.S. was better off. Freedmen preferred being their own bosses--sharecropping--to being regimented (and lashed) gang laborers. Freedwomen withdrew from the... I can't call it the "paid"... labor force to focus on household production tasks. The fall in material output per capita was associated with an increase in human happiness because the disutility of work was lower. Second, the old comparison of France and England: England where peasants lost rights to land early and had no early incentive to restrict fertility, and thus saw a rapidly-growing rural population that was pushed out of the countryside into the cities where it became the reserve army for the textile factories of the industrial revolution. Manchester 1844. France where peasants acquired rights to land and found themselves with a substantial incentive to restrict fertility, and thus saw a slowly-growing rural population that had to be pulled out of the countryside by the promise of relatively high urban wages. England wins the race as far as national product per capita, indices of industrialization, and industry-driven military power are concerned. France seems to me to win the nineteenth-century race as far as being a more pleasant place to live. Once again, lower material output per capita is associated with greater human happiness because the disutility of work was lower. Econometric attempts to estimate disutility of work today (and in the past) have, however, been largely unsuccessful. As David Card and Alan Krueger explain it, you just cannot find people who are choosing between less-pleasant and more-pleasant jobs and demanding a wage premium for the first in order to identify your coefficients. Instead, all your statistical procedures discover is--now surprise--that poor people with few options and little formal education get jobs that are (i) low paid and (ii) hard (and often unpleasant) work. Brad DeLong
[PEN-L:8556] Re: Re: Re: STOP! STOP! STOP! Racism
Michael Perelman wrote: Fine, but then it must be addressed in a mature way. You mean like the following by DeLong: "But instead I will simply say that you have defecated into the stream of discourse for too long." I can respond in kind, but its not acceptable in Chinese culture to invoke bodily functions as an insult, for it insults the user and no one else. Henry
[PEN-L:8558] Re: Re: On Prevarication ( not about racism)
Point of order, what I quoted was from DeLong's post quoting Lin Biao, not another source. That makes Charles point even stronger. Henry C.K. Liu Brad De Long wrote: Brad De Long [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/29/99 02:22PM Brad De Long wrote: To take a document and replace all appearances of the string "Mao Zedong" by the string "Max Sawicky" is hardly a lampoon--callous or otherwise. You see, the thing about such "totalitarian" language is it makes fun of itself: it does not need lampooning by others. ( Charles: However, when one reads the other passages written by Lin Biao in the very same text, which Henry sent to the list, the passages you sent don't sound totalitarian. Puh-leeze. There are no "other passages written by Lin Biao in the very same text." What I originally posted was the *whole* *effing* *thing*. Brad DeLong, shaking his head, muttering "dumber than dirt..." and off to the library...
[PEN-L:8559] Re: On Prevarication ( not about racism)
Charles, I missed the Lin Biao assassinated part. That's another DeLong fabrication. Perhaps he got it from his buddies at the CIA. Lin Biao was killed in a plane crash as his plane was shot down over the Chinese border in 1973 as he was fleeing to the Soviet Union after a failed attempt to assassinate Mao over a policy split on US China détente. May be we should leave this DeLong guy alone. His ignorance of Chinese history is showing more by each post. When people begin to mouthing defecation, its time to leave them to drown in their own verbal diarrhea. Henry Charles Brown wrote: Brad De Long [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/29/99 02:22PM Brad De Long wrote: To take a document and replace all appearances of the string "Mao Zedong" by the string "Max Sawicky" is hardly a lampoon--callous or otherwise. You see, the thing about such "totalitarian" language is it makes fun of itself: it does not need lampooning by others. ( Charles: However, when one reads the other passages written by Lin Biao in the very same text, which Henry sent to the list, the passages you sent don't sound totalitarian. They sound comparable to enthusiastic praise that we hear all of the time in U.S. political speeches promoting a candidate. Sticking to the non-racism issues, your post amounts to prevarication in the service of anti-communism. Brad D: I could say that there is nothing Chinese about Lin Biao's language: the pattern for this form of Communist rhetoric was set by Stalin, and Lin Biao is simply following in the tradition of Molotov and company. Hence accusations of racism are absurd. (( Charles: Right on point are the accusations that you are misrepresenting the intellectual content of the writings of communist leaders and communists intellectuals in general in comparison with the writings of bourgeois leaders and bourgeois intellectuals. The pattern of bourgeois rhetoric is not indicative that bourgeois intellectuals such as yourself are more critical or mindful in your thinking than communist intellectuals. What you do not respond to is my assertion that implied in your mocking of the half-quoting of Lin Biao was the stereotypcial western and liberal claim that western liberal thought is more critical and mindlful than eastern and communist thought; and that this is a false claim on your part. Lets start comparing some typical mindless, uncritical western liberal rhetoric with fuller passages from Lin Biao and Mao Zedong, as Henry has started to do. Then western liberal rhetoric will be seen to be as dogmatic and uncritical as any you can find. By the way, you say Lin Biao was assassinated. So was Kennedy ( both of them). Charles Brown
[PEN-L:8561] Re: Re: getting back on track
I am still trying to wade through everything. I am afraid that if things continue this way, I will have to do some unsubbing. I do not like to see pen-l turn so nasty. Brad De Long wrote: ... and is likely to remain racist for a long time to come--unless America's left can unify and organize... Doug Henwood responded: I just read a quote attributed to Ronald Reagan, of all people, in today's paper. He said that someone who agrees with you 80% of the time isn't your enemy. Maybe I'm just entering my dotage a few years behind the Gipper, but I think he's got a point. What Doug and Brad wrote above is right on target. I cannot think of anybody on the list with whom I agree 95% of the time. Henry was offended that Brad referred to him defecating into the stream. No, I don't like to see that sort of nasty exchange, but then Henry has been less than polite to Brad -- who is also taking heat on the economic history list. Charles was offended that I mentioned him as well. I meant no harm, only to say that this discussion must stop. I also must ask for a halt to the personal insults regarded Doug and Louis. Again, I don't care who threw the first stone -- although I mentioned to one of the participants that I thought that he did, but I could be wrong. I must insist that we put an end to the nastiness on all of these threads. Henry suggested that it has to do with my objective of maximizing the number of people -- well, not exactly. I would like to see more people, but also better, more useful material. I suspect that if I were a sensitive person -- and I am not all that sensitive -- I suspect that I would not dare to speak up for fear of having abuse heaped on me, as has been the case of Henry, Brad, Max and others who have waded into the fray. I know that there are more than 400 people out there lurking who do not speak up, and I would like to hear from them. Finally, if X says Y, then attack Y, not X -- I wrote that way intentionally so that I can recall what it is like to write like an economist. Please, no more personal attacks. If you hate somebody, write to them directly. Please, I don't want to unsub anybody. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
[PEN-L:8563] Re: Re: Re: RE: The Theory of Cultural Racism
Well, Rob, We have been down that road a few times. And we has learned the program: "let gather under the big umbrella" does not work if someone else in holding the umbrella. Even when capitalism finally dies, a few capitalists will be planning to make profit from the funeral. My point is simple: If I have to accept racism, you can keep your revolution. Henry Rob Schaap wrote: Says Henry: This is precisely why Hegel, though his views were not racist, could easily lend themselve into logical racism. People can and are diffierent without being better or worse. To insist otherwise will lead towards a dangerous and inhuman path. And substantial chunks of Marxism have proven to be but some of many moments that have shown there are vital standards on which profound and motivating agreement is possible across a plethora of cultures, identities and bodies, Henry. Let's get with the programme, eh? (I might have to use Yank slang, but buggered if I'll use Yank spelling). Capitalism is either dead, as Tom would have it, coughing up blood, as I would have it, or with a few shots still left in the locker, as Doug would have it - but, corpse or no, and no matter how varied its forms, 'tis but a single content confronting a single world, of which our singular species is part. Didn't the big fella say capitalism was supposed to unite its gravediggers somewhere? Doesn't that assume decisive shared standards of apprehension, judgement and aspiration? Your neighbourhood practical humanist, Rob.
[PEN-L:8566] Re: First Review of My Book
I guess the reviewer's point in this pointless review is that he doesn't like your book. I get more information about what the book is about from the title than the review. What is this story that you apparently add nothing too? Is there some sin in making comparison to the biological sciences. The reviewer doesn't even explain what you are comparing with them. I think it would be understandable if you unsubscribed the reviewer if he or she is on Pen-L :) Cheers, Ken Hanly michael wrote: Here is my first review from Amazon for my new book, The Natural Instability of Markets.. A reader from Harvard University , June 23, 1999 This Book is nothing more than anecdotal nonsense!!! This book was easy to read and kept me reading for a reason: I was looking for the point!!! Dr. Perelman quotes so many other economists and non-economists without ever bringing anything new to the story. He even goes so far as to provide comparisons to the Biological Sciences, which cloud his point even more. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:8567] Re: First Review of My Book
You're lucky, Michael. Your detractors can spell. Here's what they're saying about the time-work network: "People who are spineless pussies need gov't regulations to stand up for them. Weak, coddled, sniveling refugees from Mama's apron strings dream of some loser on the Federal tit, comming into their workplace and making things easier. This proves that these people have never had to deal with the Gov't, or they would know the Feds never do anything." You know Tom, if you could just stand up for yourself or become self employed, you wouldn't have to waist your time on this drivel. All this proves is that you don't understand economics or even math. It is not some grand vision, it is simply a statement of your own ignorance. Michael Perelman wrote: Here is my first review from Amazon for my new book, The Natural Instability of Markets.. A reader from Harvard University , June 23, 1999 This Book is nothing more than anecdotal nonsense!!! This book was easy to read and kept me reading for a reason: I was looking for the point!!! Dr. Perelman quotes so many other economists and non-economists without ever bringing anything new to the story. He even goes so far as to provide comparisons to the Biological Sciences, which cloud his point even more. regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
[PEN-L:8568] Re: Re: Re: STOP! STOP! STOP! Racism
Henry, Two quotes from Lenin (which I can't locate now in his writings, but both sound like him): 1. There are 3 revolutionary virtues: 1. Patience. 2. Patience. 3. Patience. 2. (roughly, from memory) The sight of petty bourgeiois youth driven to a frenzy by the horrors of imperialism is all too common. You are not, of course, a petty bourgeois youth. But you are allowing yourself to be driven to a frenzy, and it does not make for good revolutionary politics not for following the CPC advice of "Uniting all that can be united" -- which always allowed for a good deal of flexibility within that "all who can be." Mao was correct to postpone for a long time the struggle with Deng, even though when it came he (posthumously) lost it. You need to postpone for a while some of the struggles you are engaged in -- to widen for the time being your definition of the "all who can be united." That doesn't mean you can't fight some of them -- but it's got to be more like a contradiction amongst the people, less like a fight to the death. There is, true, no better issue than racism to draw sharp lines on -- but as Michael says this fight is no longer drawing lines. It is merely kicking up dust and obscurring lines. Fight them, but within limits, and don't let them push you to a frenzy. From another angle. I think I've had close to 400 posts today from just 3 maillists. I can't read them all. Unless the traffic is a little better controlled, nothing gets heard. Carrol
[PEN-L:8569] LM magazine
louis, so, you're going to send this puffball little recommendation for moby's new cd to the list (moby? did i read you right? with that soporific cheezball mirthful-dirge-cum-moog "everything is wrong" crap? the guy who peddles his meat-bad-jesus-good politics for warner brothers? ... ), and then try to tag doug for publishing an article in LM? come on. it would be different if doug weren't right--in fact, what's so amazing is how scrupulously you actually avoided talking about the content of the piece. correct me if i'm wrong, but you seem to be pissed because doug published a piece that skewers marxist romanticization of crisis in a journal that skewers the left in general. or that's apostolic about its relation to rcp. so what's your point? if you're trying to say that doug isn't a genuine revolutionary (z), or not really marxist (yawn), or doesn't have good political judgment (?), how bout just saying so? at least then we wouldn't have to wade through all of this innuendo. and maybe there might be something else to say about the politics of publishing (something not already covered in the thread about your o'connor review), eh? best christian
[PEN-L:8573] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Thomas Friedman an economist?
Since I wrote "the book" on these questions, my position has been evolving. Here is how I see it now. There are at least three general "modern" value systems (modern in the sense that they do not rely on local traditions for validation), personal utility/well-being, social justice, and substantive well-being (e.g. the lists produced by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum). Each is capable of being defined rigorously and, if not measured rigorously, at least measured up to the limit imposed by known distortions. Any rounded view of what it is we want to achieve in this world should give at least some weight to all three of these, recognizing that there are often conflicts between them. I've written a few papers developing this perspective in the context of occupational safety and health policy. Really, you could pick any other aspect of the political economy and do pretty much the same thing. I began by trying to critique the NCE obsession with utility uber alles, but now I think that any monolithic approach is seriously flawed. Peter Of course, true believers in any of the three approaches would say that any and all considerations worried about by the others are already properly incorporated into their system... Brad DeLong
[PEN-L:8572] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Thomas Friedman an economist?
Comments are after selected passages: Brad De Long wrote: The underlying assumptions in this discourse make no sense to me. I made a number of comments re Brad's stuff but there was no response. Just a few random notes. 1) What is utility? 2) Is utility measurable in cardinal terms? 3) Are interpersonal comparisons of utility possible? Well, we make them all the time: any government policy--any political program--makes such interpersonal utility comparisons. COMMENT: But this confirms my point doesn't it? Isn't it a core assumption of neoclassical economists that it is impossible to make interpersonal comparisons of utility? Am I wrong in thinking that? Isn't it standard that among most that only cardinal rankings of utility by individuals is possible? If you as a neo-classical economist resort to making interpersonal utility comparisons, how can you do this consistently with neoclassical theory?Of course you are right that some sort of assessment of the general good is necessary for any government policy. But to do this would involve one in questions about the nature of the good. Where is all the sophisticated ethical theorising in neoclassical economics. There doesn't seem to be any. Closest thing is Scitovsky's (ignored) _The Joyless Economy_. The way it seems to me to work is that neoclassicals follow this chain of argument: (a) we can't make interpersonal comparisons of utility. (b) so adding up individual utilities in some Benthamite social welfare function is unscientific. (c) but we still need a way to evaluate policies (d) so let's do it by maximizing GDP (or getting to the Pareto frontier from where we are, which is much the same thing). And you have just done something very bad. If people did have identical utility functions over the consumption of commodities, and if their corresponding indirect utility function was a logarithmic function of income, then it is clear what you have done: you have just weighted everyone's individual utility by the value of their endowment... But if people don't have identical utility functions (or if they are not simple functions of commodities purchased), then it is harder to figure out just how bad what you have done is... Brad DeLong
[PEN-L:8571] Re: Re: Re: disutility of work
Let me see if Alan Krueger has written it down anywhere. I've heard him say it three times (once attributing it to David Card)... Brad DeLong -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- "Now 'in the long run' this [way of summarizing the quantity theory of money] is probably true But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. **In the long run** we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again." --J.M. Keynes -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- J. Bradford De Long; Professor of Economics, U.C. Berkeley; Co-Editor, Journal of Economic Perspectives. Dept. of Economics, U.C. Berkeley, #3880 Berkeley, CA 94720-3880 (510) 643-4027; (925) 283-2709 phones (510) 642-6615; (925) 283-3897 faxes http://econ161.berkeley.edu/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:8564] First Review of My Book
Here is my first review from Amazon for my new book, The Natural Instability of Markets.. A reader from Harvard University , June 23, 1999 This Book is nothing more than anecdotal nonsense!!! This book was easy to read and kept me reading for a reason: I was looking for the point!!! Dr. Perelman quotes so many other economists and non-economists without ever bringing anything new to the story. He even goes so far as to provide comparisons to the Biological Sciences, which cloud his point even more. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:8562] Foreign Policy In Focus
New at Foreign Policy in Focus Military Industrial Complex Revisited: How Weapons Makers are Shaping U.S. Foreign and Military Policies By William D. Hartung As a result of a rash of military-industry mergers encouraged and subsidized by the Clinton administration, the "Big Three" weapons makers, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon, now receive over $30 billion per year in Pentagon contracts. The Clinton administration's five-year budget plan for the Pentagon calls for nearly a 50% increase in weapons procurement, from $44 billion per year now to over $63 billion per year by 2003. On issue after issue--from expanding NATO, to deploying the Star Wars missile defense system, to rolling back restrictions on arms sales to repressive regimes--the arms industry has launched a concerted lobbying campaign aimed at increasing military spending and arms exports. These initiatives are driven by profit and pork barrel politics, not by an objective assessment of how best to defend the United States in the post-cold war period. www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/papers/micr/index
[PEN-L:8560] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Thomas Friedman an economist?
Comments are after selected passages: Brad De Long wrote: The underlying assumptions in this discourse make no sense to me. I made a number of comments re Brad's stuff but there was no response. Just a few random notes. 1) What is utility? 2) Is utility measurable in cardinal terms? 3) Are interpersonal comparisons of utility possible? Well, we make them all the time: any government policy--any political program--makes such interpersonal utility comparisons. COMMENT: But this confirms my point doesn't it? Isn't it a core assumption of neoclassical economists that it is impossible to make interpersonal comparisons of utility? Am I wrong in thinking that? Isn't it standard that among most that only cardinal rankings of utility by individuals is possible? If you as a neo-classical economist resort to making interpersonal utility comparisons, how can you do this consistently with neoclassical theory?Of course you are right that some sort of assessment of the general good is necessary for any government policy. But to do this would involve one in questions about the nature of the good. Where is all the sophisticated ethical theorising in neoclassical economics. There doesn't seem to be any. Anything that I have seen does not look anything like Spinozas ETHICS even though Spinoza also claims to be demonstrating his ethical system along the lines of a deductive mathematical model. I myself don't think that Benthamite utility exists. But I do think that it is useful for thinking about distributional questions to suppose that it does exist--and that people try to maximize it. COMMENT. Benthamite utility certainly does exist. Why would you question that? Utility for Bentham is the quality of things that produces pleasure. Certainly some things do produce pleasure and hence have utility. Bentham was no doubt cavalier about his ability to measure utility but certainly defenders ofpractices such as CBA are just as goofy as Bentham ever was in some of their methods for assigning monetary values to many things. What is this Benthamite utility that people are trying to maximise? Obviously it is not what Bentham called utility? Apparently people are seeking to maximise something that you say doesn't exist. This is a matter of taste, I agree. But it seems to me that going down the non-utility road ultimately traps you into a language of "rights" that can become very inhumane, or risks giving too little weight to the preferences that people express... Brad DeLong COMMENT: While traditionally rights based types of ethics are contrasted with utilitarianism, it is possible to regards rights themselves as among the matrix of values to be maximised. This may involve a conceptual error but that is a matter I will not comment upon. There is no reason not to adopt a mixed theory such as W.D. Ross for example in which maximisation of the good is one prima facie obligation but there are others based not upon consequences but past acts. Duties such as gratitude, fidelity, promise-keeping. One is obligated in these instances because of what has happened in the past and not just because the good would be maximised. Justice in distribtution seems to be a value that is difficult to incorporate into a standard utilitarian system. So do you not want to be trapped into speaking of the right to vote, the right to a job, to medical care, etc. Why not? Are the preferences that people express to be considered identical with their utility? So again I ask what of alcoholics, pedophiles, mass murderers? X prefers Y doesnt mean that Y maximises X's utility or even adds to his or her utility. Cheers, Ken Hanly
[PEN-L:8557] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Thomas Friedman an economist?
Since I wrote "the book" on these questions, my position has been evolving. Here is how I see it now. There are at least three general "modern" value systems (modern in the sense that they do not rely on local traditions for validation), personal utility/well-being, social justice, and substantive well-being (e.g. the lists produced by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum). Each is capable of being defined rigorously and, if not measured rigorously, at least measured up to the limit imposed by known distortions. Any rounded view of what it is we want to achieve in this world should give at least some weight to all three of these, recognizing that there are often conflicts between them. I've written a few papers developing this perspective in the context of occupational safety and health policy. Really, you could pick any other aspect of the political economy and do pretty much the same thing. I began by trying to critique the NCE obsession with utility uber alles, but now I think that any monolithic approach is seriously flawed. Peter Brad De Long wrote: The underlying assumptions in this discourse make no sense to me. I made a number of comments re Brad's stuff but there was no response. Just a few random notes. 1) What is utility? 2) Is utility measurable in cardinal terms? 3) Are interpersonal comparisons of utility possible? Well, we make them all the time: any government policy--any political program--makes such interpersonal utility comparisons. I myself don't think that Benthamite utility exists. But I do think that it is useful for thinking about distributional questions to suppose that it does exist--and that people try to maximize it. This is a matter of taste, I agree. But it seems to me that going down the non-utility road ultimately traps you into a language of "rights" that can become very inhumane, or risks giving too little weight to the preferences that people express... Brad DeLong
[PEN-L:8554] RE: On Practice
[PEN-L:8555] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Unions Weigh 'CHARLIE CHAN dispute
Brad De Long wrote: Brad DeLong, looking for an on-line copy of Yao Wen-yuan's review of "Hai Jui Dismissed from Office." I know exactly why he is looking for it. To be accurate, it was an editorial in the Shanghai newspaper, Wen-hui Pao, November 10, 1965, written by Yao Wen-yuan, the youngest of the so-called Gang of Four, attacking a historical play written by Wu Han, Vice Mayor of Beijing, entitled: The Dismissal of Hai Jui (Hai Jui pakuan). The play described the downfall, through internecine court intrigue, of an upright official, a Confucian, who had interceded for the peasants and which ended with a demand that the peasants be given back the land by the Emperor, set in the Ming dynasty. The play was part of a moderating tendency by an attempt of CPC policy to introduce diversity into the intellectual life of the country with a second "Small Hundred Flowers" movement in 1960-62. the movement was initiated by Zhou Yang, Deputy Head of Propaganda of the Central Committee, to partially rehabilitate the progressive segment of Confucianism (a subject I posted on quite extensively on other list, but will be happy to post on Pen-l if requested), which had been sharply criticized by radical students in previous years. In November, 1962, a symposium was convened at the tomb of Confucius at the foot of Taishan, the epic center of Confucianism. Aside from reviving subjectivity in classical Chinese philosophy, open discussions concerning literary style were encourage if the condition of serving the workers and peasants was not abandoned. Soon, intellectuals began reactionary attacks on Mao's policies of 1958-59. Chinese political debate is often couched in historical allusions and irony. A revisionist group emerged and gained control of the official press in Beijing and started to lampoon Mao writings and poems and ridiculed Maoist terminology in classical language, though sans racist overtones ;-). It was in this context that Wu Han's play was written and received. The audience could not avoid recognizing in Hui Jui, the Peng Dehuai whose rehabilitation Wu Han had pleaded for in the play. The group soon transformed itself into a political force that sharply attacked Mao's concept of development, accusing it of setting back rather than advancing China. The group declared Mao's "politics in Command" as idealism devoid of relationship to objective economic laws. The Great Leap Forward, they alleged, had produced "disproportions" and undermined the economy. The revisionists demanded a fundamental decentralization of industrial administration, a profit inventive allocation of resources, free markets and de-collectivization. Socialism is but a long range destination of multiple stages of devilment. This group was led by Liu Xiaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. It was very similar to the policy China is following today. A to-the-death struggle emerged between the Left led by Mao and the Right, led by Liu and Deng. The left insisted on simultaneous development of industry and agriculture. The Right opted for a new rubric of preferences in development policy whereby agriculture and agricultural auxiliary industries were given priority over heavy and consumer goods industries. The Left wanted to promote modern and traditional methods of production simultaneously. The Right stressed unequivocally the gradual mechanization of agriculture, and the consolidation of a modern industrial sector. The Left decentralized agriculture and local industry at the People's Commune level without impairing the system of central administration of the modern industrial sector practiced hitherto. The Right favored the decentralization of the whole economy to the level of regions and provinces. The Left pushed for collectivization starting from the Commune as the basic unit of production. The Right pushed for decentralization back to the household level. The Left aimed to accumulate capital through mass mobilization of human labor, thrift and sacrifice. The Right look for capital formation through other means, albeit at this time, the Right dared not openly mention foreign capital. The Left aimed to encourage productivity through consciousness raising. The Right relied on material incentives. The Left was willing to promote projects that were inefficient to promote revolutionary social change. The Right insist on profit as the sole criteria for development. The Left demanded a monolithic socialist culture. The Right tolerated a diversity approach as long as direct political opposition is not the result. The Left insisted on ideologically elite leadership. The Right argued for pragmatic collective consensus. The Left aimed to change undesirable reality with revolutionary consciousness. The Right accepts that consciousness is framed only by reality, thus discounting revolutionary zeal. Yao Wen-yuan's editorial in Shanghai was the first salvo fo this ideological civil war which
[PEN-L:8549] Clueless
Doug: in particular is nuts, as is their antifeminism. Still, the editor that asked me to write the piece, James Heartfield, is a very smart guy, even when he's wrong. Breathtaking. This is an outfit that just doesn't have "wrong" ideas. They worked to defeat the most powerful miners strike in recent British history, their P9 as it were, by supporting a vote on a settlement, which was Thatcher's position. The entire British left considers them provocateurs. And all Doug is interested in is their IQ. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:8548] LM magazine
1) LM Magazine published Ron Arnold, shortly after Doug Henwood connected them with him: The Unabomber took his cue from the anti-technology rants of the US environmental lobby, suggests RON ARNOLD A darker shade of green It was over before it began. At the last minute, Theodore Kaczynski admitted he was the anti-technology Unabomber who terrorised the USA for two decades, killing three and injuring 29 others. His plea bargain averted the death penalty, but he will spend the rest of his life behind bars. By avoiding trial, the Unabomber left many haunting questions unanswered. But court documents reveal an astonishing fact that did not make the headlines: Kaczynski's anti-technology rage was fed and even inspired by the anti-technology philosophy of environmentalism. Reproduced from LM issue 108, March 1998 2) How David Helvarg views Ron Arnold and the "wise use" movement: The Wise Use/Property Rights response to the crisis has been to argue that environmental protection is costing jobs and undermining the economy. This appealingly simple argument doesn't always hold up in the face of complex economic realities, but for out-of-work loggers in dying timber towns, workers in polluting factories being challenged by vocal community activists, or struggling farmers unable to fill or sell off wetland acreage, it answers the question of why the American dream seems to be slipping from their grasp. For people in desperate circumstances whose needs are not being met by the system, Wise Use has provided an identifiable enemy, "the preservationist," on which to focus their anger and vent their rage. If, as Ron Arnold has put it, Wise Use is engaged in a "holy war against the new pagans who worship trees and sacrifice people," it's the pagans who have suffered most of the casualties. "We were told if we killed any of them there was $40,000 that was there to defend us in court or to help us get away," says Ed Knight, an ex-logger and Hell's Angel describing how he was hired to lie in ambush with an Uzi, waiting to shoot Earth Firsters in the California woods. "I was driving home from a concert and saw a glow in the mist. By the time I got to my house a mile and a half in from the highway it was burned to the ground," recalls Greenpeace USA's toxics coordinator Pat Costner of the arson fire that destroyed her Arkansas home of almost twenty years. Maine antilogging activist Michael Vernon recalls another arson fire, which destroyed his house and almost cost him his life. "I'm not sure if it was the smoke alarm that woke me up or if it was just light in the house," says Vernon, "but I jumped in my boots and threw my coveralls on and I opened the door and the flames were starting to come up the stairs. There was a porch right outside the door, so I ran out and jumped off the porch into the snow." 3) The Guardian report on LM magazine: Until 1996, Living Marxism was the organ of the Revolutionary Communist Party, splinter group of a splinter group. Now, the magazine has renounced the old party and re-emerged as LM, glossy opinion-former and sponsor of high-brow celebrity seminars. But is the aim still the same - finely calculated outrage? By Andy Beckett. It was the water jug that did it. There it was, in the middle of the panellists' table, at the very first session of the conference organised by Living Marxism. The jug was large and thick-sided and stylish, not the glassware you might expect at such a marginal-sounding gathering. The stage lights made it sparkle; a Habitat window-dresser would have been proud. What was most noticeable, though, was the large, blocky logo printed down the side. Today's revolutionary vanguard recommend Absolut Vodka. And Perrier, too, to judge by the panellists' tumblers. And Waterstone's, which had a stand in the hall outside. And the Royal Shakespeare Company, which was sponsoring a seminar. And the Times Literary Supplement, which was giving away free copies. And a right-wing think tank called the Education Training Unit, which was sponsoring another seminar, to "explore the part which markets can play in meeting educational needs". Being a modern Marxist, it seemed, was a surprising business. The magazine's conference was not about late capitalism or the Irish Question. It was not held in some draughty meeting hall or tobacco-stained L-shape above a pub. It was about "standards in the arts, education and the media", and took place at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, on an expensive stretch of the Thames, with Jeeps and the odd Mercedes parked nearby. On the first day, a Friday, proceedings had to wait for Chris Evans to finish filming his weekly TV programme. Outside in the street, there were no sellers of political newspapers or rival radical factions or collectors of petitions for the usual causes. Inside, nobody heckled. Nobody said the word "struggle" or "poverty" or "injustice". Instead, one session was titled, "What's wrong with cultural elitism?"
[PEN-L:8546] Re: Neoclassical economics
Rod Hay writes: And although I said that there was truth content in neoclassical economics. It is not all true (or I wouldn't be here). It is also useful. A good part of what passes for economics is politics dressed up in economic jargon. It pushes the economic agenda of a particular group. Imagine the surprise if a banker denounced monetarism I'm sure that some bankers denounce monetarism, since some of them had liquidity problems in 1982 due to Volcker's nominally monetarist policies. And, in practice, Greenspan denounces monetarism (though obviously not in words). His policies are very activist -- fine-tuning, in fact -- and focus on interest rates (rather than monetary aggregates) as operating and intermediate targets. He's an anti-monetarist, though he's very conservative (an erstwhile follower of Ayn Rand). I would guess he's also not a neoclassical in the sense of Phil Mirowski's definition. Thus, though I reject their perspectives, I think it's a mistake to get too involved in trashing the monetarists and even the neoclassicals. What's important is to criticize the powers that be. And presenting a coherent and meaningful alternative to the neoclassicals is the best criticism. Critiquing monetarism in the 1990s is like critiquing a fad that has passed. Of course, it's a matter of the definition of monetarism, but my impression is that most of monetarism has been folded into the school called "the New Keynesians" (a bit like Blair's New Labor?) or into its competition, "the New Classicals." While neoclassical economics in effect apologizes for capitalism by presenting an idealized (cleaned-up) vision of it as the scientific Truth, it's not simply a special-interest ideology. It's also a product of academia, complete with a full-blown Mandarin mentality. Whereas the Chinese Emperor's bureaucrats rose to the top by taking examinations which emphasized calligraphy and other matters irrelevant to preservation of the Empire, neoclassicals succeed by presenting extremely abstract and formal models that are often totally irrelevant to business. Though sometimes business groups will bring in Chicago School types to give speeches in defense of the free market, they find Chicago-school ideas useless when it comes to business operations and government policy. (They often find the more "liberal" versions of neoclassicism more useful.) What's scary is that the IMF pushes this Chicago ideology. But of course, they're doing it to people who don't have the power to resist. (I hope that I have not misrepresented the Mandarins. If so, I apologize ahead of time.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
[PEN-L:8544] Re: STOP! STOP! STOP! Racism
michael [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/29/99 12:35PM If I were to happen on to pen-l accidently and see a list filled with such a thread, I certainly would not subscribe. People like Henry or Charles have too much to contribute to waste their time in repeating such things. (( Charles: I disagree that anything I have written on this thread was a waste of time ( in the sense that anything on e-mail is not a waste of time). I also protest that you imply that the others in this dispute said anything less a waste of time, repetitive or personal. Leaving aside racism , since that is a forbidden topic, the issue of anti-communism and the caricature of communist rhetoric and pronouncements as mindless and uncritical, is a major bourgeois propaganda method. I have throughout focussed on this issue. It is in fact a major ECONOMICS topic, completely appropriate for debate on a progressive economists' list. Afterall, Marx's major work was in economics. Brad D. and earlier Max, are have been trying employ this propaganda technique, and challenging them on it is not at all a waste of time.
[PEN-L:8541] Re: Re: STOP! STOP! STOP! Racism
Henry C.K. Liu wrote: It seems to me that you recently revived the racism thread yourself when it wa dying down. You may well be right. When I returned I had an enormous mass of e-mail and had a poor idea of the flow. I was disgusted with the type of dialogue that I saw. I understand your responsibility as a moderator to maximized subscribers, but unless you are prepared to substantiate Yoshie's accusation that racism is not treated as a serious issue in America, there is no intellectual basis for you to try to stop "this racism stuff". I would be happy to see a productive discussion on the subject, but what I see is not productive. It is a matter of people jibing at each other to win debating points. I drew the list's attention to last evening's Nightline on ethnic profiling and racial discrimination relating to Asian Americans, Chinese American specifically. Racism is not some obscure anomaly. It is a pervasive everyday affair in American society. It is real and direct. And denying it does not make it disappear. Whoa, Henry. I am not denying the existence or the importance of racism. My concern was more with style than the subject. To nonwhites, racism is not a casual issue that should be put quietly away after a respectable mention so that more serious issues can resume their more deserving attention. Racism is the most pressing and important issue for a majority of the world's population. Fine, but then it must be addressed in a mature way. You ask to be shown how we can get rid of racism, the first step is not find a debate on the subject boring. If racism is off limits, there is not much else worth talking about. I would say that we should put aside the subject for a period of say, 2 weeks, at least, until people are ready to address the subject in a way that shows any promise. One of the first steps would be to be more careful in identifying what is or is not racist. Then we would want to see how racism is used. For example, I think that racism was an important component of affirmative action -- meaning that early applications, such as Nixon's Philadelphia plan, were used to stir racial animosity and weaken the unions. The motives were economic -- to throw more people into the labor force. Racism was a means to an end. Merely calling people racist does not do anything positive. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
[PEN-L:8539] Re: Re: Re: Socialism, Social Democracy, Democracy
On Tue, 29 Jun 1999, Louis Proyect wrote: Look, Doug. Let's cut the shit. You and I have nothing to talk about. You are writing "critiques" of the Marxist left for the same rightwing libertarian cult that publishes Ron Arnold, leader of the wise-use movement. This is the same Ron Arnold that David Helvarg has accused of inspiring armed attacks on Earth First! activists. Not only that, you introduced Arnold to them. The Guardian newspaper in England and Lingua Franca have sounded the alarm about this group, who some people speculate is the beneficiary of a rightwing South African millionaire's largesse, while others wonder about their ties to the cops. This is a neo-Larouchite rag that promotes every disgusting corporate attack on the environment under the sun, from Genetically Modified crops to nuclear power plants. So just at the time that the entire left is mobilizing to put a skull-and-bones over the magazine and warn people away, that is the time you choose to allow them to reprint your LBO musings on the left and its problems. You literally make me sick. Louis Proyect For those of us not up on the diabolical machinations of crypto-facist Henwood, what publication are you talking about? -- Joseph Noonan [EMAIL PROTECTED] "I think everybody knows (or should know) about x-ray crystallography -- I do."
[PEN-L:8536] Re: Re: disutility of work
Second, the old comparison of France and England: England where peasants lost rights to land early and had no early incentive to restrict fertility, and thus saw a rapidly-growing rural population that was pushed out of the countryside into the cities where it became the reserve army for the textile factories of the industrial revolution. Manchester 1844. Recent comparative research on the peasantries of England and France questions this old view: 1) through the medieval period there were regions in England where a peasantry free of any feudal obligation prevailed and where higher yields per seed were achieved. And it was these prosperous small farmers who later became the tenants of large estates, and who consolidated their farms through a process known as 'engrossing'. 2) copyholders, not just freeholders, had a lot more security of tenure against enclosing landlords than previously argued, with Parliament many times intervening in their favor against landowners. 3) the agricultural revolution of the 16th-17th centuries - associated with increases in total grain output and yields - was in many ways initiated and led by this well-to-do (yeomen) peasantry. Yes. But the not well-to-do peasantry? The rate of population increase--and of rural poverty increase in eighteenth and early nineteenth-century England is astonishing. 4) meanwhile, in France, to quote Croot and Parker "the real crime of the French Monarchy was *not* that it bolstered peasant ownership but that (together with the church, seigneurs and landowners) it depressed it so brutally. The consequence was that the countryside lost its most dynamic force - a class of truly independent peasants" I'm not so sure about that. I once found David Landes downing Sauterne and asked him why he thought weaving rough cotton cloth was a higher technological achievement than French winemaking. He didn't answer... Brad DeLong
[PEN-L:8533] RE: Re: David Colander
-Original Message- From: DOUG ORR [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, June 29, 1999 11:39 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:8524] Re: David Colander Jim Craven wrote: Dave's work is very deep and somewhat molelike. As an editor and final technical reviewer on Colander's Economics 3rd Ed., I had many exchanges with Dave on incorporating non-linear dynamics, the spread of ideas and institutional resistance to development/critique of theory, the "education" of new economists etc. He thought some of my proposals for Economics 3rd Edition would kill the book in less than a week (some were indeed somewhat outrageous like using the metaphor of a singles bar to explain various forms of "efficiency" (technological, economic, productive, consumer, exchange and allocative) e.g. maximizing output per unit of input or minimizing input per unit of output--the dance of maximization common in all singles bars. But Colander is a very deep thinker whose writings often do for his CV and career what Jaws I,II and III did for ocean bathing. - I agreee that much of Colander's book is very good for teaching an intro course. But one thing keeps me from using the book. He shares the view that you cannot teach intro without some historical background. I start every micro class with 1 1/2 weeks of econ. history. I can't use his book because his history chapter is TERRIBLE. It is written from the perspective that markets have always existed, so capitalism is different from feudalism and slavery only in some minor details. If your view of history comes from that chapter, it is impossible to bring in the idea of different modes of production, different class relations, etc. He may be critical of some of the neoclassical tools, but he shares their view that one can use those tools to analyze slave and hunting and gathering societies. It seems to me his critique of NC comes out of the Austrian school. But we have to remember that the enemy of our enemy is not our friend. Austrians have developed some great rhetoric to attack NC, but thier views are more anto-social and anti-human than the NC views. Doug Orr [EMAIL PROTECTED] Doug, I cannot disagree with anything you have said. One of the first things I do with Dave's book is ask my class to go immediately to the index and look up the word "imperialism". It isn't there. And here we again get to the tyranny of "dominant paradigms", who and on what basis defines and enforces "dominant paradigms", and who and on what basis adopts textbooks. I accept as given that something like "The Capitalist system" by Edwards, Reich and Weisskopf etc etc will not be around long or adopted widely. This is one more aspect of the ongoing effects of "dominant paradigms" in terms not only of training future teachers and what they don't know/care about and/or what they know for sure that just ain't so, but also in terms of the extent of mass demand for more substantive texts that allow them to even be published or survive for possible adoption. I use the first part of Colander--and other parts--to set up the critique and others that you mentioned. Dave also knows the critique that you have mentioned. Again, the purpose of textbooks is not to teach but to make profits for the publisher; profits depend upon effective demand and derivative prices and revenues as well as costs and therefore adoptions and therefore content likely to produce adoptions... Jim C
[PEN-L:8532] Re: Re: Socialism, Social Democracy, Democracy
And over the past couple of years I've gotten to know a few of the younger Marxist cult stud scholars, the kinds of people you Eric Alterman like to make fun of. Most of them are serious people who do real political work - prisons, labor organizing, antiwar. So who are all these frivolous, self-indulgent tenured radicals anyway? Doug Look, Doug. Let's cut the shit. You and I have nothing to talk about. You are writing "critiques" of the Marxist left for the same rightwing libertarian cult that publishes Ron Arnold, leader of the wise-use movement. This is the same Ron Arnold that David Helvarg has accused of inspiring armed attacks on Earth First! activists. Not only that, you introduced Arnold to them. The Guardian newspaper in England and Lingua Franca have sounded the alarm about this group, who some people speculate is the beneficiary of a rightwing South African millionaire's largesse, while others wonder about their ties to the cops. This is a neo-Larouchite rag that promotes every disgusting corporate attack on the environment under the sun, from Genetically Modified crops to nuclear power plants. So just at the time that the entire left is mobilizing to put a skull-and-bones over the magazine and warn people away, that is the time you choose to allow them to reprint your LBO musings on the left and its problems. You literally make me sick. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:8530] Re: disutility of work
Second, the old comparison of France and England: England where peasants lost rights to land early and had no early incentive to restrict fertility, and thus saw a rapidly-growing rural population that was pushed out of the countryside into the cities where it became the reserve army for the textile factories of the industrial revolution. Manchester 1844. Recent comparative research on the peasantries of England and France questions this old view: 1) through the medieval period there were regions in England where a peasantry free of any feudal obligation prevailed and where higher yields per seed were achieved. And it was these prosperous small farmers who later became the tenants of large estates, and who consolidated their farms through a process known as 'engrossing'. 2) copyholders, not just freeholders, had a lot more security of tenure against enclosing landlords than previously argued, with Parliament many times intervening in their favor against landowners. 3) the agricultural revolution of the 16th-17th centuries - associated with increases in total grain output and yields - was in many ways initiated and led by this well-to-do (yeomen) peasantry. 4) meanwhile, in France, to quote Croot and Parker "the real crime of the French Monarchy was *not* that it bolstered peasant ownership but that (together with the church, seigneurs and landowners) it depressed it so brutally. The consequence was that the countryside lost its most dynamic force - a class of truly independent peasants" France where peasants acquired rights to land and found themselves with a substantial incentive to restrict fertility, and thus saw a slowly-growing rural population that had to be pulled out of the countryside by the promise of relatively high urban wages. England wins the race as far as national product per capita, indices of industrialization, and industry-driven military power are concerned. France seems to me to win the nineteenth-century race as far as being a more pleasant place to live. Once again, lower material output per capita is associated with greater human happiness because the disutility of work was lower. Econometric attempts to estimate disutility of work today (and in the past) have, however, been largely unsuccessful. As David Card and Alan Krueger explain it, you just cannot find people who are choosing between less-pleasant and more-pleasant jobs and demanding a wage premium for the first in order to identify your coefficients. Instead, all your statistical procedures discover is--now surprise--that poor people with few options and little formal education get jobs that are (i) low paid and (ii) hard (and often unpleasant) work. Brad DeLong
[PEN-L:8528] Re: Re: Re: Thomas Friedman an economist?
The underlying assumptions in this discourse make no sense to me. I made a number
of comments re Brad's stuff but there was no response.
Just a few random notes.
1) What is utility?
2) Is utility measurable in cardinal terms?
3) Are interpersonal comparisons of utility possible?
Unless utility refers to some feature of "things" that is value producing and
unless one has some theory as to what that value is, e..g. pleasure, happiness,
etc. this theory has zilch to do with utilitarianism except for its historical
links to it.
6) Why would willingness to pay to avoid work be a measure of any
sort of
utility where "utility" refers to some value? This seems to assume that somehow or
other
the amount one is willing to pay for something represents it value or is it "value
for me". One can see why ideologically this nonsense might be regarded as
sensible. If it were true
degree of value will be a function of income. Prices reflect values. THe
disutility of work, pollution etc. will be greater for the rich than the poor
since they will be willing to pay more to avoid it. I gather that some leftists try
to remedy this bias by using willingness to be paid, or weighting poor and rich
dollars differently. But the basic fault is not in the ideological bias built into
the theory and the solution is not to correct that. The basic fault is the
incoherency of the theory. Utility is not measurable according to neo-classical
doctrine and yet seems to be measured in dollars, as in cost benefit analysis or
measurement of disutility of work. Insofar as "utility" has any substantive sense
at all it seems to be explicated in terms of preferences, but what is preferred or
desired is not necessarily a good even for the individual concerned,
and if preferences are to be somehow aggregated into a welfare function some
preferences will have to be "laundered" ie. those of mass murderers, ethnic
cleansers, pedophiles. Economsts as a whole seem just to ignore all this.
Cheers, Ken Hanly
P.S. Of course I am not denying that some practical economic techniques such as
Cost Effectiveness analysis have utility.
PPS: The view that everyone is out to maximise what they take to be their own
good, preferences, etc
is not utilitarianism but PSYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM. The empirical evidence is against
it so long as
the theory is not formulated, as it sometimes is, in a manner which makes it
consistent with any behavior.
A common ethical theory associated with the psychological theory is that one
ought to maximise ones own good, preferences, etc. A view held by a number of
philosophers- Hobbes, and Epicurus among others. It is not utilitarian at all.
Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that holds that one ought to maximise
the general good. In classical utilitarianism this is the greatest happiness of the
greatest number. In the case of Bentham this is in some sense a maximisation of
pleasure. Later theorists point out that it must be decided if you aim at
maximising total or average pleasure or happiness. A theorist who took GDP per
person as a measure of welfare may very well think of themselves as in this
tradition. But if they are
they surely must have some defence for the view that dollar value of goods produced
per person is some measure of the good. Where is that argument? Many philosophers
chide Bentham for having a simplistic theory of value. But at least he had one and
argued for it. He didn't ignore the problem.
Peter Dorman wrote:
That's the version of the theory that says you can read the willingness to pay
for disutility (such as physical risk) directly from wage data. There is a
somewhat softer version (which is critiqued in the book) that admits that labor
markets don't work this way, but through surveys ("contingent valuation
methods") combined with axiomatic utility analysis the willingness to pay could
still be estimated.
Peter
Tom Walker wrote:
Peter Dorman wrote,
FWIW, I wrote a book about the neoclassical approach to calculating the
disutility of work what's wrong with it. (Markets and Mortality) There
is a theory out there, it is sophisticated, and I think it's wrong.
It's worth a lot to me. Would it be safe to take the following quote from
your October 1998 article in ILRR as indicative of the neoclassical theory?
"The theoretical case for wage compensation for risk is plausible but
hardly certain. If workers have utility functions in which the expected
likelihood and cost of occupational hazards enter as arguments, if they are
fully informed of risks, if firms possess sufficient information on worker
expectations and preferences (directly or through revealed preferences), if
safety is costly to provide and not a public good, and if risk is fully
transacted in anonymous, perfectly competitive labor markets, then workers
will receive wage premia that exactly offset the disutility of assuming
greater risk of injury or
[PEN-L:8525] Re: Re: quoth Doug...
Louis Proyect wrote: quoth Doug, from LBO #90, which I received today: One of the depressing things about this war [against Serbia] is all the side-taking that's been going on. Well, of course Doug would write something like this. He is a journalist above the fray. And where are you, on the front lines? Last I checked, Belgrade was 4,510 miles from New York. Really, this militancy through identification is a bit out of control. We had liberals cheering B-52s, and, dissatisfied with a mere air campaign, David Rieff volunteering to lead NATO's land campaign that never was to be. We had the News Letters crowd offering to arm the KLA. And we've had the Proyect-Jones axis making the most extraordinary claims that a murderous, kleptocratic regime represented the last bastion of European socialism, with Jones himself (safely in London, of course) even endorsing the expulsion of Albanians from Kosovo. Michael Perelman was concerned about ceaseless repetitions of Serb atrocities, which I agree are redundant and one-sided, but so are the ceaseless repetitions of defenses of the Serbs. No doubt NATO lied about the war many times, as Knightley argued, but so did the Serbs. This is repulsive stuff all around. Doug
[PEN-L:8524] Re: David Colander
Jim Craven wrote: Dave's work is very deep and somewhat molelike. As an editor and final technical reviewer on Colander's Economics 3rd Ed., I had many exchanges with Dave on incorporating non-linear dynamics, the spread of ideas and institutional resistance to development/critique of theory, the "education" of new economists etc. He thought some of my proposals for Economics 3rd Edition would kill the book in less than a week (some were indeed somewhat outrageous like using the metaphor of a singles bar to explain various forms of "efficiency" (technological, economic, productive, consumer, exchange and allocative) e.g. maximizing output per unit of input or minimizing input per unit of output--the dance of maximization common in all singles bars. But Colander is a very deep thinker whose writings often do for his CV and career what Jaws I,II and III did for ocean bathing. - I agreee that much of Colander's book is very good for teaching an intro course. But one thing keeps me from using the book. He shares the view that you cannot teach intro without some historical background. I start every micro class with 1 1/2 weeks of econ. history. I can't use his book because his history chapter is TERRIBLE. It is written from the perspective that markets have always existed, so capitalism is different from feudalism and slavery only in some minor details. If your view of history comes from that chapter, it is impossible to bring in the idea of different modes of production, different class relations, etc. He may be critical of some of the neoclassical tools, but he shares their view that one can use those tools to analyze slave and hunting and gathering societies. It seems to me his critique of NC comes out of the Austrian school. But we have to remember that the enemy of our enemy is not our friend. Austrians have developed some great rhetoric to attack NC, but thier views are more anto-social and anti-human than the NC views. Doug Orr [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:8522] Re: Re: STOP! STOP! STOP! Racism
The title of this thread is great ambiguity. Moving the third exclaimation mark would be progressive. Yes, Stop! Stop! Stop Racism! The following is taken from another list on the history of war: From: "Sandler, Stanley DR" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 08:29:38 -0400 On 25 June, The Wall Street Journal carried an article on the contention between those relocated Japanese-Americans who volunteered or accepted the draft during World War II, and those who resisted. The article went onto state that the Japanese-Americans "were stripped of their U.S. citizenship." I've looked into the limited resources we have here on the subject and can find nothing to this effect. On the surface, it also seems improbable: could an executive order just strip someone of his/her citizenship, even in wartime? And wouldn't Congress have passed legislation to restore that citizenship when the Japanese-Americans were compensated in the 1980s, if not earlier? If it had, I must have missed it. (I know that some gave up their citizenship while interned, but wouldn't that simply reinforce the argument that they had citizenship to give up?) Would the Japanese-American community have waited until the 1980s for the restoration of something so cherished as citizenship? Would the American people even have stood for this for four decades? After all, many Americans, probably a majority in time, came to support strongly the case of justice for these innocent people. As early as 1948, there was a Supreme Court ruling (Koremetsu, I think) in their favor. Is there any truth to this allegation? Let's hope not. Regards, Stanley Sandler I would very much like to hear Yoshie's view on this. Henry "Henry C.K. Liu" wrote: Michael, It seems to me that you recently revived the racism thread yourself when it wa dying down. Charles had moved the thread to another list. But even now on Pen-l, Charles and I are debating the issue of Mao in a historical context with DeLong, and Brad DeLong's one racist act has become only collateral damage. I understand your responsibility as a moderator to maximized subscribers, but unless you are prepared to substantiate Yoshie's accusation that racism is not treated as a serious issue in America, there is no intellectual basis for you to try to stop "this racism stuff". I drew the list's attention to last evening's Nightline on ethnic profiling and racial discrimination relating to Asian Americans, Chinese American specifically. Racism is not some obscure anomaly. It is a pervasive everyday affair in American society. It is real and direct. And denying it does not make it disappear. To nonwhites, racism is not a casual issue that should be put quietly away after a respectable mention so that more serious issues can resume their more deserving attention. Racism is the most pressing and important issue for a majority of the world's population. You ask to be shown how we can get rid of racism, the first step is not find a debate on the subject boring. If racism is off limits, there is not much else worth talking about. Henry michael wrote: I want to stop this whole thread right now! It is repetitive. It is personal. Show me a way that we can get rid of racism and make the world a better place -- fine. I do not agree with Brad's interpretation of Mao, but it is not racism. Am I a Black Nationalist if I dislike Clinton's policies? [I better be careful, or I will reignite another boring thread from LBO]. If I were to happen on to pen-l accidently and see a list filled with such a thread, I certainly would not subscribe. People like Henry or Charles have too much to contribute to waste their time in repeating such things. Let's get on to something more substantial. In any case, I want this racism stuff to stop NOW. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:8517] Re: STOP! STOP! STOP! Racism
Michael, It seems to me that you recently revived the racism thread yourself when it wa dying down. Charles had moved the thread to another list. But even now on Pen-l, Charles and I are debating the issue of Mao in a historical context with DeLong, and Brad DeLong's one racist act has become only collateral damage. I understand your responsibility as a moderator to maximized subscribers, but unless you are prepared to substantiate Yoshie's accusation that racism is not treated as a serious issue in America, there is no intellectual basis for you to try to stop "this racism stuff". I drew the list's attention to last evening's Nightline on ethnic profiling and racial discrimination relating to Asian Americans, Chinese American specifically. Racism is not some obscure anomaly. It is a pervasive everyday affair in American society. It is real and direct. And denying it does not make it disappear. To nonwhites, racism is not a casual issue that should be put quietly away after a respectable mention so that more serious issues can resume their more deserving attention. Racism is the most pressing and important issue for a majority of the world's population. You ask to be shown how we can get rid of racism, the first step is not find a debate on the subject boring. If racism is off limits, there is not much else worth talking about. Henry michael wrote: I want to stop this whole thread right now! It is repetitive. It is personal. Show me a way that we can get rid of racism and make the world a better place -- fine. I do not agree with Brad's interpretation of Mao, but it is not racism. Am I a Black Nationalist if I dislike Clinton's policies? [I better be careful, or I will reignite another boring thread from LBO]. If I were to happen on to pen-l accidently and see a list filled with such a thread, I certainly would not subscribe. People like Henry or Charles have too much to contribute to waste their time in repeating such things. Let's get on to something more substantial. In any case, I want this racism stuff to stop NOW. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:8516] Re: Cuba's changes of policy
There's a Brecht Forum book party tonight on "Democracy in Cuba" cosponsored by the CofC. I'll try to get down there and report back. Here's a review on amazon.com: "Democracy in Cuba and the 1997-98 Elections" by Arnold August A first-hand account of Cuba's experience with democracy. Democracy has been briefly defined as the "rule of the people". This book offers you a profound historical view followed by a thorough inside look at how this "rule of the people" is now working in Cuba. The examination of two weather vane constituencies - one in Havana and another in the countryside of Cienfuegos Province - helps the author to present a detailed description of the nomination of candidates and the elections at all levels, as well as accountability of the elected to the citizens. The author, Arnold August, is the first non-Cuban who has directly attended virtually all the steps of the contemporary Cuban electoral process in order to write a book on the subject. He has based the content of this volume on many months of painstaking research, personal observation and interviews in Cuba. Several academics have mentioned that this book contributes to the analysis of Cuba's history with regards to its striving for democracy, as well as synthesizes for the first time so minutely the entire electoral process. The 416 page book contains 135 photographs, the majority taken by the author during the course of the 1997-98 elections. About the Author Arnold August was born in Montreal, Canada in 1944. He obtained his Masters in Political Science in 1970 from McGill University, Montreal. He has worked for a research institute, specializing in constitutional and electoral issues and has written articles for the Canadian press on these subjects. The author is presently involved in a specialized Canada-based travel agency whose objective is to send foreigners to visit Cuba in order to directly find about the Cuban reality through their own experience. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:8514] Cuba's changes of policy
Louis writes: Unless we're talking about the dark days of Soviet Stalinism, most non-capitalist societies have tremendous amounts of control from the bottom. Randy Martin, an editor at Social Text, comments that Cuba has had more significant policy changes over the past 20 years than the US has had in the entire 20th century. The only logical explanation for this is that the rank-and-file of Cuban society have better channels to express their ideas about "design, construction, use and modification" than we give them credit for. The "only logical explanation"? Don't corporations, which are the ultimate in top-down institutions, regularly change their policy, often significantly? The late Ernest Mandel point to the bureaucratic twists and turns of the old USSR: couldn't the changes in Cuba's policies also fit within that rubric? In addition, note that we're talking about a relatively poor country with little control over its constantly changing international environment: isn't it reasonable to see a country in that situation regularly change its policies significantly, no matter the degree of rank-and-file involvement in decision-making? That said, of all of the "actually-existing socialist countries," Cuba is the one that has had the _most_ input from the rank-and-file (partly because of the small size of the population and its active involvement in defense at Playa Giron and afterwards, and the exit to Miami of the opposition). It's also provided the basics, despite its poverty and dependency (as seen in Louis' statistics). But I wouldn't say that the rank-and-file has control over Castro or the CCP. Note that I am not blaming Castro for this, since his actions are typical for rulers of countries in similar situations: Cuba's situation (the US blockade, dependency on the USSR until 1989, etc., etc., etc.) makes democracy extremely difficult if not impossible. (I'm in favor of more democracy, but it has to be the Cubans who create not, not some yanqui in LA.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
[PEN-L:8512] Socialism, Social Democracy, Democracy
Michael Keany: I wouldn't describe Dewey as timid in outlook. Of course, the implication here is that timid equates to a basic acceptance of the social relations of production prevalent in his time, and our own. I don't believe this to be an accurate portrayal of Dewey's position, most especially in his latter years. John Dewey, like John Maynard Keynes, was an honorable man. He was one of the few liberals in the US who had the guts to stand up to Stalinist political hegemony and defend Trotsky. The timidity I am referring to does not have to do with taking courageous stands on civil liberties questions. It is rather connected to the tendency of middle-class intellectuals to stand in awe of capitalist instititutions. With all of the blandishments that go along with an academic career, it is very unusal for such figures to attack these institutions at their root like Chomsky does. In some ways, Chomsky with his blend of anarchism and libertarianism is less timid than the averaged tenured Marxist professor. They have been trained to write in a lofty, non-judgemental manner about history and economics, but rarely in the exhortative manner found in Chomsky's writings. And I think "socialists" would do well to attend to matters pertaining to the liberation of individuals - after all, it's the people we're doing it for, isn't it? Replacing one capitalist machine with another non-capitalist one is not much use if the individuals expected to work it still have no say in its design, construction, use and modification. Unless we're talking about the dark days of Soviet Stalinism, most non-capitalist societies have tremendous amounts of control from the bottom. Randy Martin, an editor at Social Text, comments that Cuba has had more significant policy changes over the past 20 years than the US has had in the entire 20th century. The only logical explanation for this is that the rank-and-file of Cuban society have better channels to express their ideas about "design, construction, use and modification" than we give them credit for. In my view, the fundamental issue is democracy, not what we label our system of economic organisation. Noncapitalist systems are not necessarily better simply for being so. I am old-fashioned on this question. My examination of the evidence convinces me that socialism is superior. Here are some statistics that speak volumes: From UN Human Development Index 1998 by rank: 1) Canada Life expectancy at birth (years) -- 79.1 Adjusted real GDP per capita in dollars -- 6230.98 Education index -- 0.9933 85) Cuba Life expectancy at birth (years) -- 75.7 Adjusted real GDP per capita in dollars -- 3100 Education index -- 0.8592 139) India Life expectancy at birth (years) -- 61.6 Adjusted real GDP per capita in dollars -- 1421.99 Education index -- 0.529 174) Sierra Leone (in last place) Life expectancy at birth (years) -- 34.7 Adjusted real GDP per capita in dollars -- 624.85 Education index -- 0.3089 Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:8510] Heritage Foundation backs debt cancellation, trashes HIPC
Now we can add a "Heritage Foundation test" to the "Sachs" test for NGOs. June 29, 1999 HOW CONGRESS SHOULD RELIEVE POOR-COUNTRY DEBT BRETT D. SCHAEFER AND DENISE H. FRONING http://www.heritage.org/library/backgrounder/bg1300.html --- Robert Naiman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Preamble Center 1737 21st NW Washington, DC 20009 phone: 202-265-3263 fax: 202-265-3647 http://www.preamble.org/ ---
[PEN-L:8507] Socialism, Social Democracy, Democracy
Louis Proyect wrote: Nietzschean ideology, channeled through pomos such as Deleuze-Guattari, views the socialist project as one of self-liberation. Structural, economic tasks fade into the background. When all is said and done, the post-Marxists really represent a highly sophisticated version of social democracy which has also tended historically to put structural, economic tasks into the background. Classical social democracy has looked to other philosophical currents for inspiration, such as John Dewey but the newer versions need newer and more exciting ideas to bolster what is essentially a very timid outlook. I'm not sure you do justice to the many positions mentioned above. I share your lack of enthusiasm regarding the pomos, although I had not come across a description of them as "a highly sophisticated version of social democracy" prior to your post. I am more familiar with the fears expressed by some concerning the fascist undertone to much pomo theorising, derived from their apparent reliance upon Nietzsche, Heidegger, and their rehabilitation of Carl Schmitt. Reading Samuel Huntington doesn't make me a Cold War realist - however, I can appreciate (in an objective sense) what he has to say without descending into the almost mystical veneration which many of our pomo colleagues engage in - witness the contortions Derrida performed in defending Heidegger from justified accusations concerning the latter's Nazi sympathies. In practice, however, Derrida has supported workers' struggles in France, rather more conscientiously than Alain Touraine, for example. Nevertheless taking the "con" out of deconstruction leaves one with its practical effect. I have tried on more than one occasion to grapple with Derrida's writings: the genuine insights therein are almost buried beneath a surfeit of chaff. It's too much like hard work, and there are better things to do, better authors to read anyway. Richard Rorty seems to be a confused case. On the one hand, he has done much to advance the cause of the pomos in American academe (and elsewhere), yet now he decries the disconnectedness of American radical intellectuals from the masses they purport to represent. It's as if having vanquished the former foundationalist orthodoxy with antifoundationalism, he must now somehow rid us of the latter's fruits. He further confuses matters by citing Dewey, in places "strongly misreading" him in order to articulate something for which Dewey's support is neither existent nor necessary. What's the point of that? I wouldn't describe Dewey as timid in outlook. Of course, the implication here is that timid equates to a basic acceptance of the social relations of production prevalent in his time, and our own. I don't believe this to be an accurate portrayal of Dewey's position, most especially in his latter years. And I think "socialists" would do well to attend to matters pertaining to the liberation of individuals - after all, it's the people we're doing it for, isn't it? Replacing one capitalist machine with another non-capitalist one is not much use if the individuals expected to work it still have no say in its design, construction, use and modification. One of Dewey's great contributions was his insistence on the artificiality of the separation of means and ends. It is a point not lost on Daniel Singer, whose "Whose Millenium?" is notable for its attention to the human as much as to the structural and economic. In my view, the fundamental issue is democracy, not what we label our system of economic organisation. Noncapitalist systems are not necessarily better simply for being so. Sheldon Wolin has written good stuff on the deleterious effects of Western culture's elevation of the economic over the political. That Marx is implicated by this does not mean that he ought to be ditchedfar from it. But we could be a little more critical of the unidirectional causality of the base/superstructure model without having to dispense with it entirely. Cheers, Michael ps Many thanks for posting the Colander piece.
[PEN-L:8506] China
Howdy y'all Please forgive me if I'm missing something, but a little clarification would not go amiss. I have been following the discussions re Mao and Lin Biao et al. I would like to know whether Charles and Henry believe that the present government of China is at all representative of the kind of vision typical of Mao and other Marxist revolutionaries, as has possibly been implied in some of the exchanges. What about the struggle for power during the caretakership of Hua Guo-Feng between the "Gang of Four" and Deng Xiao-Ping? Did this not signify some significant sea change in the direction of Chinese policy? I am under the impression that such a change (I assume it exists) was away from the ostensibly socialist and towards a form of state capitalism. In addition, how connected is the present administration to the masses? I am also uncomfortable with the ease with which the Tiananmen Square episode was brushed away, given the democratic aspirations so obviously expressed by its participants and suppressed by its targets. To excuse tanks rolling over citizens by means of attributing contamination of the originally egalitarian purpose of the demonstration to the corrupting influence of US television is a little too trite. That US TV, in typical fashion, chose to sensationalise and make stars out of a few "lucky" individuals hardly alters matters for the vast majority of those involved, other than to provide the Chinese power elite with a few handy propaganda weapons to discredit the demonstrators. It worries me that the Tiananmen demonstrators can be so casually written off because of their obvious value to US propagandiststhe same propagandists who cheerfully ignore the Al Sharptons and Cesar Chavezes. I do appreciate the contributions of both Henry and Charles, and the opportunity they provide for critical self-examination with regards to implicit racism. I certainly do not want the above to be interpreted as evidence of it, because it is not my intention to cast aspersions of that kind on anyone. But let's not defend the otherwise indefensible because it is somehow less ugly than a racism it is not entirely clear has manifested itself in the list. In friendship, Michael
[PEN-L:8501] STOP! STOP! STOP! Racism
I want to stop this whole thread right now! It is repetitive. It is personal. Show me a way that we can get rid of racism and make the world a better place -- fine. I do not agree with Brad's interpretation of Mao, but it is not racism. Am I a Black Nationalist if I dislike Clinton's policies? [I better be careful, or I will reignite another boring thread from LBO]. If I were to happen on to pen-l accidently and see a list filled with such a thread, I certainly would not subscribe. People like Henry or Charles have too much to contribute to waste their time in repeating such things. Let's get on to something more substantial. In any case, I want this racism stuff to stop NOW. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:8500] Re: racism
Brad De Long [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/28/99 08:25PM Yes, it seems something of an exaggeration to say Lin Biao was saying that all are to think as one ABOUT EVERYTHING as, Brad sort of implies. No. It is not an exaggeration. Go reread your copy of the little red book: Mao Zedong thought is Marxism-Leninism of the era in which imperialism is headed for total collapse and socialism is advancing to world-wide victory. It is a powerful ideological weapon for opposing imperialism and for opposing revisionism and dogmatism. Mao Zedong thought is the guiding principle for all the work of the party, the army, and the country. Note. Not *some* of the work. *All* of the work. Not the work for the party. The work for the party, the army, and the country. (( Charles: Seems to me you are leaving out the meaning of "guiding principle". That is like "broad outlines". Your phrase "thinking as one" from a previous post , is a serious distortion of the passage you quote above. The above sounds like a perfectly logical expression of the organization of society as a whole in it main or broad principles based on Mao's broad principles. Your "thinking as one" sounds like a Jim Jones religious cult. Maoism and Marxism Leninism emphasize dialectics and materialism , which is the complete opposite of religious, cult and dogmatic thinking. ( Thus, interpreting "thinking as one" in a less absolute sense, in other words, using common sense, makes it seem like not an insult to the Chinese people or Chinese people , as I said. It is rather impressive to others seeking unity and self-determination against racism and imperialism. Nope. You are wrong. In the little red book--and even more so in the context of China during the Cultural Revolution--it is not impressive, it is really scary. Charles: Where is "thinking as one" in the passages you quote ? The connotation of "thinking as one" is a distortion of what you have quoted. "Mao Zedong thought as the guiding principle of all the work of the army, party and country" sounds like "national unity" to me , much more than the religious cult connotation of "thinking as one". How about the U.S. pledge of allegiance to the flag, republic and God ? Is that promoting thinking as one about everything ? (( Some of the other "paraphrases" or translations , such as all that is good originates from the mind and blessings, etc. sounds like a distortion and exaggeration. Nope. Have you ever *read* the little red book? ( Charles: A long time ago. Are you saying your words "all that is good orginates from the mind and blessings.." (your words) is a quote from the Red Book ? I don't recall that. )) Is that what Lin Bao said, or is that the Brad D. translation? It is the officially-sponsored translation. Charles: But you have said somethings that are not in the translation from what I can tell . Is "thinking as one" from the Red Book or is that your characterization of the translation ? ( You should know that if you ever read the little red book. I don't distort translations. And I don't accuse people of distorting translations just because I'm having a bad day. I think the more likely correct translation is more like "on some main principles of the revolution and politics and economics, and on major strategies for hundreds of millions of people, Mao was the paramount correct thinker at that time in history, not that on every subject under the sun he was the source of truth " You are wrong. Certainly the *officially* *sponsored* translation was... infelicitous. Charles: From what you have said in this post and the last, my paraphrase above sounds better than "thinking as one" and the other commentary you have done on the translation. "Guiding principle for all the work of the army, party and country" sounds like what I am saying above, not a mysterious "thinking as one". But there are political reasons that the officially-sponsored translation was... infelicitous: the Cult of Personality has its own logic, and one piece of that logic is to sacrifice political effectiveness vis-a-vis foreigners in order to demonstrate one's bootlicking servility to the autocrat. It is a very old story. Charles: "Bootlicking servility to the autocrat" is clearly Brad D. , not in the translations you have given. ( To imply as Brad D. does that so many Chinese would be in Brad D's version of a 800 million person mindcontrol cult or that the Chinese leaders could get away with such a ridiculous pronouncement is in itself an insult to the Chinese people. Only the imperialist enemy would characterize unity and self-determination as an insult to the Chinese people. Charles But they did it. They did get away with it--for years. In fact, they are getting away with it now (albeit
[PEN-L:8495] Re: Re: Re: Re: Whiteness Studies and Its Discontents
Doug Henwood wrote: This is utter crap, Henry. I never tried to stop discussion of race on lbo-talk; the only thing I wanted to stop was the trading of personal insults. When I asked you and your interlocutors to stop insulting each other, you took this as an affront to your dignity and asked to be unsub'd. For her part, Yoshie has declared it worthless to attempt a discussion on race, which is a bit of a limit on discourse. She can be as ungentlewomanly as she likes; I don't have adecorum fetish. Evenhandedness is important in moderating. I did not ask, I chaallenged the moderator to punish the guilty, and you chose me. I think Brad's critique of Lin Biao's prose style, and with it the critique of Maoism, has some substance to it. It's an odd conception of socialism that thinks the masses should revere the Great Leader, and treat his writing with scriptural reverence. Instead of dismissing his critique as racism, you might tell us why this isn't a hierarchical, patronizing philosophy of governance. Denouncing him as a racist enemy of the people does more to confirm the critique than refute it. Please read my latest reply to DeLong re Charlie Chan. Regards, Henry
[PEN-L:8493] Re: Re: Re: getting back on track
It depends what issue the remaining 20% is focued on. If it includes you right to live, he is your enemy. How are you, Doug? Henry C.K. Liu Doug Henwood wrote: Brad De Long wrote: ... and is likely to remain racist for a long time to come--unless America's left can unify and organize... I just read a quote attributed to Ronald Reagan, of all people, in today's paper. He said that someone who agrees with you 80% of the time isn't your enemy. Maybe I'm just entering my dotage a few years behind the Gipper, but I think he's got a point. Doug
[PEN-L:8490] Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Australia]
It makes a fella proud to be an Amurrican. The US and its IMF and World Bank push free trade onto the world, but at the same time threatens protect its sheep ranchers. (Of course, the generally depressed world economy, not the competition from Oz and elsewhere, is the problem, as it is for most of US agriculture.) This reflects the US tradition: having built up an industrial economy behind steep tariff walls (from the Civil War to WW 2), it tries to deny other countries the ability to engage in import-substituting industrialization... US bleats over lamb quota attack From DENNIS SHANAHAN Political editor, in Auckland 29jun99 ANGRY US trade ambassadors have hit out at attacks on Washington's proposed barriers to Australian and New Zealand lamb exports as the issue threatens to overshadow APEC talks on trade. After a concerted campaign against plans to limit lamb imports to protect American sheep farmers, US trade ambassador Richard Fisher publicly expressed concern and frustration at accusations the US was becoming protectionist and hypocritical over trade. US President Bill Clinton is overdue to make a decision on American sheep industry appeals for quotas and tariffs to be applied to Australia's $100-million-a-year lamb exports to the US. Trade ministers and representatives of member-economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum began meeting in Auckland yesterday ahead of the annual APEC summit in September. In a private meeting last night, the US ambassadors told Australian Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer that the delay was unprecedented and related to the strength of the Australian lobbying campaign. Richard Fisher also moved to separate the preliminary APEC trade talks and lamb quotas as well as suggesting the rest of the world owed some gratitude to the US because of the size of its economy and buying power. At a forum where Tim Fischer, the Trade Minister, was one of the speakers, Richard Fisher, who is heading the US delegation to the APEC trade ministers' meeting in Auckland because senior trade negotiator Charlene Barshefsky had to cancel, said he was "concerned by the implications we are protectionist". "There is no correlation between the lamb issue and the success of this (APEC) meeting," he said. "The US strongly supports the APEC agenda on free trade. APEC has been a leader on this front." On Sunday, Tim Fischer and New Zealand International Trade Minister Lockwood Smith criticised the US quota proposal at a farm rally in Christchurch, describing it as hypocritical and totally unacceptable. Yesterday, while acknowledging Australia's "miraculous economic growth rate", Richard Fisher said the Asian region was still recovering from the financial crisis and as always the US had become the market of "first, last and only resort". "We buy $US1 trillion in goods from the rest of the world," he said and agreed to a suggestion that the rest of the world owed the US gratitude. His fellow trade ambassador, Susan Esserman, defended the US quota proposals as "fully consistent" with World Trade Organisation sanctions where there was a "threat of injury" to an industry. A recent International Trade Commission inquiry found that the Australian and New Zealand lamb imports were not damaging the small US sheep industry although there was the potential for future market share to be affected. Ms Esserman also said the delay in the White House decision on the lamb quotas and tariffs indicated the seriousness with which it was being handled. Tim Fischer said there had been more steps taken in recent days on the lamb issue that continued to give him some hope. He said he was disappointed Ms Barshefsky could not come because of family problems, but said "we are continuing". Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/JDevine.html
[PEN-L:8485] RE: Re: Re: good news!
Wojtek, This is a bit of a muddle. Ormerod was an accomplished econometric modeler in Britain. Built up a business around it, then sold it for big bucks, so he knows what he's talking about, but you tripped up in a few places. His argument can be summarized as follows: Prediction in economics means translating cause-effect relationships into equations (cf. y=a+bx where y -represent the outcome x represents the cause and b is the coefficient specifiying the relationship between cause and the outcome). Since outcomes have multiple causes, realty is modeled by a system of equations each one corresponding to a relatively simple underlying cause. No. A single equation can contain multiple factors which are thought of as 'causes.' None of these need be 'simple.' That multiplicity creates a problem that in linear algebra is called "underdtermined systems." In plain english, it means that there is not enough information in the system to find unique solution for all the equations. Multiplicity per se has no necessary implication for 'underdetermined' systems. What matters is how the system of equations is constructed. For X unknowns you need X equations, but even then the equations cannot, to keep terminology simple, be redundant in the mathematical sense. Too many non-redundant equations, on the other hand, can also be a problem, since mathematically the system can be over-determined, which means conceptually the model is not internally consistent. Your illustration is correct, though its equations only had one 'cause' each. One solution of the problem involves restricting certain parameters . . . The more likely solution is to complete the model! In other words, to fill in the missing equation(s). The rest of your post is valid, in general. There are lots of problems with econometrics, including its practical use. Ormerod is worth reading. (another liberal, BTW). One of my favorite professors, Mancur Olson (a prolific neo-classical economist), used to tell us that econometrics never settled anything. He had little use for it. Marxists have some models like this too. I ignore all of that stuff (Neo-C and marxist), and so do many neo-classical types. On the other hand, the business uses of econometrics in forecasting are typically based on Keynesian models, hence a better guide to the economy than much of what is being done in the name of macro-theory. (I'm told the new, right-wing theories can't be implemented in practical forms.) mbs
[PEN-L:8484] Re: MR debate on Brenner
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 10:59:34 -0700 To:[EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:8423] Re: Re: MR "debate" on Brenner Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Just because you seem to have personal animosity towards Comninel (and Wood?) does not seem to be an adequate reason to trash him (and her?) publicly on pen-l. It is doubly inexcusable since you provide no logical or empirical or methodological critique of his work. This approach seems designed to combine personal dislikes, academic rivalry, and sectarianism, a bad mix. I don't know Comninel personally (and haven't read much of his work), but I found his book on the French Revolution to be very useful. Among other things, he provides a useful critique of the inevitabilist "Marxism of the 2nd 3rd Internationals." (Beyond that, I don't know enough about the French Rev. to say anything more.) If you consider that trashing that's because of your own "personal animosity" towards me. As far as I am concerned, I am still on friendly terms with Comninel, however difficult that is (or was) given his intransigent approach to historical materialism. Same goes for Wood, though I just audited her one semester seminar. I also wrote something on Comninel's work, where, I might add, I defended the classical Marxist interpretation of 1789 as a 'bourgeois revolution'.
[PEN-L:8482] Re: Re: Thomas Friedman an economist?
On Mon, 28 Jun 1999, Rod Hay wrote: RH: But individuals exist and they do sometimes act selfishly (in fact in capitalism selfish activity is strongly encouraged. The social relations of production would not make any sense if there is not something to relate. I.e., how do individual relate in production. Again we are dealing with a particular distortion of Marxism pushed for political reasons. What we want is a dialectic of the individual and the group. Neither is prior to the other and neither makes any sense without the other. The denial of the individual is just the sort of philosophy that would allow the sacrifice of the individual to the "necesities of history". I would imagine that most of us would want to avoid that. Even if it is a "Western value". Actually postcapitalist societies have grappled with this problem every minute of their existence. One might even say that Mao's Cultural Revolution was a stubborn attempt to transcend the persistence of individualism in such societies, a utopian hope perhaps. The NEP was a conscious attempt to make socialism feasible by allowing peasants to "enrich themselves". Lenin recognized that it was impossible to motivate them to cultivate the land unless there were material incentives. Those by definition could only come through the marketplace. Bukharin's mistake was to go overboard and tolerate the capitalist impulses of the rich peasants. Stalin, who became alarmed by the threat such peasants posed to Soviet hegemony, lurched in the opposite direction and made war in the countryside. All agriculture was collectivized and the results were catastrophic. In the 1950s and 60s, Soviet economists experimented with individual incentives. "Liebermanism" became widespread in Eastern Europe. Yugoslavia, which had its own unique history, granted factory workers the right to make their own decisions at the plant level so as to maximize profit and, hence, efficiency. Cuba seems to have been the lone hold-out against individual incentives, but the collapse of the Soviet Union has forced it to adopt all sorts of NEP-type mechanisms. As I reported a couple of months ago, they seem to have been able to withstand imperialist pressure to transform their economy along capitalist lines. All these practices represent the dialectical interaction between Marxist theory and objective conditions. What needs to be preserved, however, is the SOCIAL basis of socialism which has been under attack from all quarters in recent years, especially from post-Marxist currents. The underlying core of such beliefs is that the individual supersedes society. Nietzschean ideology, channeled through pomos such as Deleuze-Guattari, views the socialist project as one of self-liberation. Structural, economic tasks fade into the background. When all is said and done, the post-Marxists really represent a highly sophisticated version of social democracy which has also tended historically to put structural, economic tasks into the background. Classical social democracy has looked to other philosophical currents for inspiration, such as John Dewey but the newer versions need newer and more exciting ideas to bolster what is essentially a very timid outlook. Louis Proyect
[PEN-L:8480] Re: Re: Unions Weigh 'CHARLIE CHAN dispute
At least Stern and Imus, unlike DeLong and Max, are honest and out front, and they don't hide behind the love for freedom and democracy and independence of mind. Read any of Kennedy's campaign speech, its not much different than the Lin Biao preface Henry C.K. Liu I don't see the similarity. Compare: This day, devoted to the memory of Robert Frost, offers an opportunity for reflection which is prized by politicians as well as by others and even by poets. For Robert Frost was one of the granite figures of our time in America. He was supremely two things--an artist and an American. A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers. In America our heroes have customarily run to men of large accomplishments. But today this college and country honors a man whose contribution was not to our size but to our spirit; not to our political beliefs but to our insight; not to our self-esteem but to our self-comprehension. In honoring Robert Frost, we therefore can pay honor to the deepest sources of our national strength. That strength takes many forms, and the most obvious forms are not always the most significant. The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the nation's greatness. But the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested. For they determine whether we use power or power uses us. Our national strength matters, but the spirit which informs and controls our strength matters just as much. This was the special significance of Robert Frost. He brought an unsparing instinct for reality to bear on the platitudes and pieties of society. His sense of the human tragedy fortified him against self-deception and easy consolation. "I have been," he wrote, "one acquainted with the night." And because he knew the midnight as well as the high noon, because he understood the ordeal as well as the triumph of the human spirit, he gave his age strength with which to overcome despair. At bottom he held a deep faith in the spirit of man. And it's hardly an accident that Robert Frost coupled poetry and power. For he saw poetry as the means of saving power from itself. When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. for art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgment. The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the lass champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary figure. He has, as Frost said, "a lover's quarrel with the world." In pursuing his perceptions of reality, he must often sail against the currents of his time. This is not a popular role. If Robert Frost was much honored during his lifetime, it was because a good many preferred to ignore his darker truths. Yet in retrospect we see how the artist's fidelity has strengthened the fiber of our national life. If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. And as Mr. MacLeish once remarked of poets, "There is nothing worse for our trade than to be in style." In a free society, art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the sphere of polemics and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society--in it--the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost's hired man--"the fate of having nothing to look backward at with pride and nothing to look forward to with hope." I look forward to a great future for America--a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose. I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our national environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past, and which will build
[PEN-L:8478] Re: Re: getting back on track
G'day Brad, You write: ... and is likely to remain racist for a long time to come--unless America's left can unify and organize... And woebetide anyone who's depending on that for some justice and welfare, eh? These lists have added to my knowledge, maybe even my wisdom, to a sudden and profound degree (I'm learning to ask the right questions and occasionally answer them, and also that some profound change is both likely and necessary) . But at the price of an abiding sadness (given the way the left tends to exacerbate its individual differences rather than synthesise its arguments collectively, it's likely that the necessary changes aren't the ones that are likely). And you write: We could keep doing what we have been doing--putting the wrong (or zero) prices on the environment and on resources. Or we could move to a centrally-planneed environmental policy of pollution control and allocation from the center. Neither of these alternatives, however, fills me with joy... It's not us pricing the environment inadequately is it? I thought it was supposed to be the hidden hand? How do you get the hidden hand to change its mind? Come to that, how do we get it to put enough buying power into the hands of the poor to ensure that it'll put food in their mouths? You're talking conscious intervention by way of an authority with coercive discretion, aren't you? I think you have been doing this all week (and good on you). Just how democratically constitituted and centralised it is depends - aw shit - on how unified and organised the left is. Oh well, there's always the chance of a charismatic saviour, I s'pose ... Cheers, Rob.
[PEN-L:8475] Re: disutility of work
Tom Walker wrote: Case in point: I've asked the question three times "how does one 'adjust appropriately' for the disutility of work?" I don't know. I do have two observations. First, output per worker--as measured by national income accountants--in the U.S. south fell by about a quarter after the Civil War. But by *any* social welfare function (save the one that gave the overwhelming weight to ex-slaveholders utility that was implicitly maximized by the pre-Civil War market economy) the post-Civil War U.S. was better off. Freedmen preferred being their own bosses--sharecropping--to being regimented (and lashed) gang laborers. Freedwomen withdrew from the... I can't call it the "paid"... labor force to focus on household production tasks. The fall in material output per capita was associated with an increase in human happiness because the disutility of work was lower. Second, the old comparison of France and England: England where peasants lost rights to land early and had no early incentive to restrict fertility, and thus saw a rapidly-growing rural population that was pushed out of the countryside into the cities where it became the reserve army for the textile factories of the industrial revolution. Manchester 1844. France where peasants acquired rights to land and found themselves with a substantial incentive to restrict fertility, and thus saw a slowly-growing rural population that had to be pulled out of the countryside by the promise of relatively high urban wages. England wins the race as far as national product per capita, indices of industrialization, and industry-driven military power are concerned. France seems to me to win the nineteenth-century race as far as being a more pleasant place to live. Once again, lower material output per capita is associated with greater human happiness because the disutility of work was lower. Econometric attempts to estimate disutility of work today (and in the past) have, however, been largely unsuccessful. As David Card and Alan Krueger explain it, you just cannot find people who are choosing between less-pleasant and more-pleasant jobs and demanding a wage premium for the first in order to identify your coefficients. Instead, all your statistical procedures discover is--now surprise--that poor people with few options and little formal education get jobs that are (i) low paid and (ii) hard (and often unpleasant) work. Brad DeLong
