Somewhere in this exchange someone (probably Jim) already argued that
scarcity can be artificial; I do not remember any response by Gil as to the
nature of or the reason for the scarcity of the means of production.
As I understand it, only in the earliest stages of capitalism was there a
real
In yet another stimulating set of posts, Gil has attempted to differentiate
between profit as scarcity rent and as a natural price.
a payment over and above the amount necessary to elicit supply of the
exchangeable item under discussion--in other words, a payment over and
above the item's
Eric asked whether there is
any other work seeking to measure the extent/growth of
decommodification in other countries? (Alternatively, is
there any other work that measures the size/growth of the
"social wage" in countries outside the United States?)
Here are the contents of the International
Does anyone recall the original (or any) use of the term
"superexploitation" in Marxist literature?
Thanks,
Walter Daum
This is interesting, that Walter Daum whose book *The Life and Death of
Stalinism: A Resurrection of Marxist Theory*, truly one of the most
profound works in Marxian theory in
It's just a hunch that neoclassical economics has done little more than
give scientistic legitimacy to Comrade Weston's arguments against the
working class' wage struggles. If so, perhaps then Marx's refutation of
Weston in *Value, Price and Profit* still has some contemporary relevance.
(Marx
of academics) and the effects this has had on the
status of professionals and the quality of the services they provide. It
seemed to be a major study, with a great deal of comparative research.
Rakesh Bhandari
Grad student
Ethnic Studies
I only took first-year genetics and biology many years ago, so if anyone
wants to clarify the arguments I try to make below, please do.
Sickle cell, Tay-Sachs and other ailments can be tied directly to parts of
the DNA. So can several phenotypical variations among peoples. However,
1)these
I (Rakesh Bhandari) am forwarding this from the marxism international line;
the post was written by Rahul Mahajan.
_
Yes, race is a biologically incoherent category, but many of the arguments
that start here miss the point or make incorrect assertions out
Tom Walker asked:
And, what lessons might be learned from
the passage of proposition 209?
That, ironically enough, the more people become alike in terms of universal
criteria, the more virulent discrimination will become in order to maintain
a racialized hierarchy of labor?
Or is it that the
Bill worries that I have rescinded into racism myself, that I have turned
"white" into an inherently oppressive category. Bill can do this only by
distorting what he quotes and ignoring most of the rest (where I mention
such things as divide and rule strategies, though Bill reminds me in an
Bill Mitchell wrote:
perhaps you better consult the pen-l archives and go back to the french strike
period before you stereotype me.
I remembered well your analysis of the role of unions in the french strike.
I wasn't trying to stereotype you, only trying to make sure you remained
consistent in
Carl Dassbach, PEN-L participant, uses the concept of super-exploitation in
his contribution to a new book entitled, I believe, North American Auto
Unions in Crisis. I hope that Carl sees this and fills in the details.
Rakesh
Ethnic Studies
UC Berkeley
Ever since *The Bell Curve*, those of us in ethnic studies find ourselves
needing to know more about wage inequality in the US. Well, I have been
following this debate between Paul Krugman and Ethan Kapstein and others;
Krugman has recommended the work of Robert Lawrence. So I read about half
of
As the debate continues as to how measure the price level in order to determine
the movement of the real wage and the proper level of cost of living
adjustments, I think it is important to remember that this is quite a
limited way to ascertain the conditions of the working class. For example,
Doug H noted in response to Maggie C
Don't those two sentences contradict each other? The innacurate pictures of
welfare mothers were built on anecdotes. Welfare "reform" was done in
blatant disregard of social science - indeed, it was led by people who hate
social science and social scientists
Almost as if he could read my mind, Barkley submits questions which I have
been struggling to articulate.
4) If it happens, it will be Schumpeterian and
clearly led by the computer/info tech technology cluster.
5) The more serious issue remains the incredible
inequalities that seem
Anthony asked me:
What exactly do you mean by investment goods? Capital goods, like
self-reproducing machinery? Or more "knowledge-intensive" goods, such as
medical equipment? I don't have the most recent data but a beakdown of US
exports by type of goods shows that US exports (a small % of
the
"globalization" of investment demand allowed US capital to escape the
limits of insufficient domestic consumer demand and thus terminate the
Marxian contradictions?
Rakesh Bhandari
Ethnic Studies
UC Berkeley
Question:
What are the classic/standard references on the question
"What are workers' interests"? (That is, beyond work
of Lukacs, Gramsci, Poulantzas) Is there any good recent
discussion of this question?
Thanks.
Eric
Revolutionary workers are most interested in the abolition of wage labor
Consumers "are like roaches -- you spray them and spray them and they get
immune after a while," says David Lubars, chief executive of the Los
Angeles office of BBDO
-- Yumiko Ono, "Marketers Seek the 'Naked' Truth in Consumer
Psyches," WALL STREET JOURNAL, May 30, 1997.
Well,
What seems to me to be downplayed in the economists' discourse about
globalization is what is emphasized by business school types like Michael
Jensen and Robert Hughes at Harvard. Is it not quite significant that
plants in the third world are now up to 85% productive as US plants
(Jensen); isn't
Not having read through all the messages, I shall just make a few quick points:
1. I share Laurie's frustration with the attempt to assign a partial
coefficient to globalization and technological change in the explanation of
the dependent variable of income inequality, specified either in terms
Marx's valid
insights into the operation of capitalist firms are obscured by, rather than
dependent on, his value-theoretic categories.
Gil, have you read Hans-Dieter Bahr's "The Class Structure of Machinery:
Notes on the Value Form" in Outlines of A Critique of Technology, ed. Phil
Slater.
Though Galbraith does not advance your straw man--
that ownership is totally irrelevant--he does discuss
the formation of power based upon bureaucratic
functions.
There is a wonderful discussion of Drucker, Galbraith, Berle and the
managerial thesis generally in Scott R Bowman, The Modern
As summarized by Jeffrey Sachs in the penultimate Foreign Affairs, Paul
Krugman had warned in the same journal a few years back that as Asian
growth was driven by capital accumulation rather than pure productivity
gains, the marginal productivity of capital would be likely to decline as
the
"One of the hangovers from Southeast Asia's boom turned bust is what to do
about the millions of foreign workers who helped make the economic miracle
happen--but who now find themselves political dead weight. Thailand and
Malaysia, once the region's favorite destinations for Indonesians,
On Thu, 8 Jan 1998, Michael Perelman wrote:
Does anybody have any thoughts on the critique of the IMF by Stiglitz
and Sachs -- that the IMF is creating a deflationary economy to save the
banks?
There is still faith in the Keynesian panacea?
Rakesh
On Fri, 23 Jan 1998, Tom Walker wrote:
11:18 W. HOUSE OFFICIAL DENIES MARKET RUMOR OF TREASURY'S RUBIN TO RESIGN.
Tom, there has been a lot of talk about this odd coalition against US
participation in the IMF bail-out of South Korea, Indonesia, etc. Aside
from labor dinosaurs and
Has anyone read Greider's chapter "The Ghost of Marx" in which he
propounds a quasi-Schumpeterian analysis--that despite endemic excess
capacity, there is ever more investment and 'creative destruction' of
existing capacity. As crises of apparent overproduction/underconsumption
are overcome
After briefly discussing Stuart Kauffmann, Wolfgang Stolper discusses the
possible relation between chaos theory and the Schumpeterian system:
"First when evolution is rapid--both the number and kinds of elements
change rapidly, and so do the 'rules' by which the elements interact--we
may not
In an extremely helpful review of Sichel's book, Doug wrote : "Even if you
assume that computers yield superprofits, above the "normal" rate (as some
studies have claimed), their overall contribution would still be minimal,
given their small share of the overall capital stock. But if they were
largely the result of the exploitation of the periphery. My
notes on O'Brien are somewhat disorganized, but here's another
discomforting stats: He estimates that commodity
trade with the periphery in 1800 amounted to only 4 percent of the
aggregate gross national product of W.Europe.
I am very happy to receive Barbara Laurence's message. I will have to think
about it. Just a cheap comment for now:
Gulick: Nothing new about this schlock -- straight-up blueblood
"feminism" of turn-of-the-century Progressivism. It used to be
Irish, Southern and Eastern European immigrants who
Hi, does anyone have any favorite readings about Darwin in relation to
political economy from which he derived analogies, homologies, and/or
metaphors for the development of his theory of descent with modification
through the mechanism of natural selection? There is of course a chapter
review in
Thanks Jim for this website. There has been a lot of talk about how
imperialist financial institutions were seduced to 'cover Asia with cash'
or about the unique moral hazards posed by Southeast Asian intermediary
financial institutions. Just from a layperson's perusal of the New York
Times and
Essays by and about Pannekoek, as well as other council communists, can be
accessed at http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/2379; this is the
collective action notes website, the description of which follows:
Collective Action Notes is a quarterly publication from Baltimore which
I am pretty sure that William Darity, among others, has convinced both
O'Brien and Engerman to take much more seriously the Eric Williams'
thesis of the importance of slavery in the emergence of industrial
capitalism (one of Darity's essays is in a book which I can't find--The
Atlantic Slave
as long as the EC central
bank does not resemble the Bundesbank ?
John, will not a strict interpretation of the Maastricht convergence
criteria ensure that the Euro will indeed be managed according to an
economic policy reflecting and fostering the interests of German capital.
E.g., the single
From today's NYT, 11/15/98.
James Wilson:
'There is nothing in the manifesto that looks at all the like the work of a
madman. The language is clear, precise and calm. The arugment is subtle and
carefully developed, lacking anything even faintly resembling the wild
claims or irrational
JoAnn Chesimard's (sp?) autobiography Assata is very worth reading. I
don't don't agree with Assata's call for an independent black party
(it's the anti-Leninist in me; anways she raises some very good
criticisms of the Black Panther Party), but the need for radical
autonomous black politics is
From a Marxian point of view, it also matters where productive labor is
concentrated. Since sales remain concentrated in the imperialist world,
one would imagine that a greater percentage of the workforces there is
engaged in unproductive labor, e.g., retail, advertising,capitalist
accounting etc
Madrick wrote:
All this requires greater use of the one
characteristic that machines cannot
replace: human
imagination. The modern economy, I
would argue, may be returning to a
high-technology version of a crafts
economy, based on worker skills,
thinking, and inventiveness, rather than on
the
Technical change in one sector or a few sectors could definitely lead to
increased competitiveness for two reasons: (1) within that sector the firms
with older technology will find hard to maintain their profitability; (2)
the sector with latest technical change would have higher rate of profit
Western German unemployment would be roughly 7%, if not for the annexation
of the former GDR.
Oh, one would have thought that as a result of the annexation growing
numbers of people, engaged in a more intensive division of labor, would
have have faciliated a growth in productivity which would
take on the ex-Axis powers is way too optimistic, but we have the OECD's
latest estimates of market and PPP figures, as well as the IMF's latest,
contradicting you. Has something happened in the last 6 months to turn this
all upside down?
In terms of those figures does the Japanese GDP per
forwarded by Michael Hoover
IBM's board of directors thanked chairman and CEO Louis Gerstner for
restoring Wall Street's faith in the company with a $4.5 million bonus
and stock options in 1997
What has that well paid accountant done to the R and D budget? I need to
read Veblen's The
"They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes on them,
the present system simultaneously engenders *the material conditions* and
*the social forms* necessary for an economic reconstruction of society.
Instead of the *conservative* motto: 'A fair day's wages for a fair day's
Perelman's strength is that his overview is historical as well as social.
Mark, I would add that this seems to be the strenth of everything Michael
writes, e.g., The End of Economics
Best,
Rakesh
I have been looking through Gabriel Kolko's Anatomy of Peace; it is quite
informative on economic policy, labor and general social conditions in
Vietnam.
rb
On the issue of whether lean production enables true consumer sovereignty
for the first time--the consumer becoming "the sun around which the lean
production system turns"--Tony Smith has developed a critique in "The
Capital/Consumer Relation in Lean Production" in *The Circulation of
Capital:
Why is the theft of alien labor time a miserable foundation for creation of
wealth? One reading of this *Grundrisse* passage is the one I offered:
while the utilization of machinery has indeed been inspired by the need for
relative surplus value (and for this no one had a greater appreciation
In yet another bolt of clarity Wojtek reminded us
It is one thing to say that Marxist theory explains some important aspects
of capitalist relations of production (which I think it does), quite a
differnt thing to determine to what degree those capitalist relations of
production ar implemented
difficult attempt to differentiate intensification
from productivity increases, their differing impacts on total value
produced and the movement of unit values, and the rate of exploitation in
Geoffrey Kay, 1979. The Economic Theory of The Working Class. London:
Macmillan: 72ff.
Rakesh Bhandari
Ph.D
iam Darity, Jr in "The
Undesirables, America's Underclass in the Managerial Age: Beyond the Myrdal
Theory of Racial Inequality", *Daedulus* (Winter 1995) and *The Black
Underclass: Critical Essays on Race and Unwantedness* (New York: Garland
Publishers, Inc. 1994)?
Rakesh Bhandari
P
important for those with the competence
(Jerry, Blair, you and others) to continue this discussion about
productivity, intensification and the theory of the wage. I'll be listening
in...
Rakesh Bhandari
the *New Statesman* essays by George Brockway, whose
*The End of Economic Man* I have not yet read. Third Edition. New York:
Norton, 1995.
There is also a spirited book by Guy Routh, 1975. *The Origin of Economic
Ideas*. New York: Vintage.
Rakesh Bhandari
Ph.D. Candidate
UC Berkeley
fears and
support for pro-white politicians who promise to look after future white
interests? The priviliged status of race in social studies surely
fertilizes support for such politicians." Y Webster, Racialization of
America. NY: St Martin's, 1992: 31.
Rakesh Bhandari
Ethnic Studies
U
the most powerful theory of the
transformations in the labor process?
Rakesh Bhandari
Ethnic Studies
. Military keynesianism seems to be far
from dead.
Rakesh Bhandari
iency of capital (productivity of capital)..."
From The Economics of Hope: Essays on Technical Change, Economic Growth and
the Environment. London: Pinter Publishers, 1992, p. 167
Rakesh Bhandari
Ethnic Studies
.. It is something to the effect that "the handmill give
us ..."
feudalism, and the steam engine gives us industrial capital. It's in *the
Poverty of Philosophy*, as Gil just pointed out.
Perhaps the more important example of 'technological determinism' is
Marx's discussion of the change
I recently saw a book entitled Privtopia. Can't remember the author. From
my cursory glance, I think there was relevant info. Think it also won a
major award in the political science profession.
Rakesh
Ethnic Studies
Professor Rosser wrote:
It is long-run real capital investment that must deal with
fundamental uncertainty, and thus requires "animal spirits" being
enthusiastic in order to happen, whether the source of that
uncertainty is war, revolution, or just a "mere" economic variable's
value 20
Eugene's last post reminds me of William J Blake's eloquent note about the
abstract nature of the neo-classical understanding of the market; William J
Blake was an American novelist, who also dabbled in economics (e.g.,
Marxian Economic Theory and Its Criticism, NY: Corden, 1939):
"One cannot
ed Francis Galton
(!) as one of the three greatest sociologists (Vico and Marx being the
others), thought it important that ability, as well as wealth, runs in
stocks.
Thanks in advance,
Rakesh Bhandari
John wrote:
Liberals in this country have focused on "jobs, jobs, jobs" and under
Clinton's watch "the economy" (reified) has generated lots of jobs, and
where has that got us ? I have not heard or seen Jospin utter one word
about the social and ecological use-values of these 700,000 new jobs.
Attempting at present to follow the path blazed from Pascal to modern ideas
about probability and statistics, I found myself coming across an
interesting little book which I have been glancing through. Just thought I
would mention it.
J.E. Barnhart, 1977. The Study of Religion and Its Meaning:
Louis P:
What does this mean other than there is a large Maoist contingent in India?
Rakesh raised the question of Soviet "exploitation" of India over on the
Spoons list in a "state capitalism" thread, but could provide no numbers
only a reference to a book that did. Does anybody believe
patience and toleration and then exercised your responsibility. Otherwise,
what is the point have having a moderated list at all? If, rather than
sexism, Karl had expressed equally damaging racism, would those who have
spoken in favor of allowing him to remain continue to be so inclined? Karl
If I read yesterday's WSJ correctly, it seems that Clinton has agreed that
whatever the upper limit on income for qualification for this $500 per
child tax credit, so-called "very poor" families ($19,000yr) will not be
able to receive it putatively because they already receive other offsets.
As
Wojtek's rhetoric may be overblown, but I think he puts the debate in a new
light. Indeed how characteristically petit bourgeois to valorize the
barbaric accumulation of useless test knowledge *only* to demonstrate both
superiority over others and acquiesence to the rules of the game
The NYT devotes much ink to Ward Connerly, the black man appointed by
California Gov Pete Wilson to the University Board of Regents to speak in
favor of the destruction of affirmative action.
Connerly notes that on the SATs blacks whose parents earned $60,000 a year
were outscored by whites and
OK, Max, this is what I don't understand. If Clinton wanted the kiddie
credit to be refundable, why has he agreed to disqualify those with incomes
$19,000 and reduce its amount below $500 per kid for families below an
income of $25,000?
What do you think of the reasons given for doing so--that
As it has been suggested to me privately that I have misunderstood this
child tax credit, I reproduce what I read in the WSJ:
"Neither Mr. Clinton nor Congressional Republicans are interested in
subsidizing the very poor. Families who make less than $19,000 or so
wouldn't benefit from White
credit. There will be no deal without at least some gains for the
working poor. The Administration has been pretty strong on this
particular point so far.
Max, this is disturbingly evasive. For Clinton, the "working poor" does not
include "very poor" families--that was the whole point of my
Juan Perea, ed. Immigrants Out
Nigel Harris, The New Untouchables
Alan M Kraut, Silent Travelers
Sarah J Mahler, American Dreaming: Immigrant Life on the Margin
Alejandro Portes and Ruben Rumbaut, Immigrant America
Aristide Zolberg, Escape From Violence: Conflict and the Refugee Crisis
Lydia
Of course, there is a broader issue of the role of the academia in
reproducing the class and power structure in a society; and it is a well
known facts that economists and political scientists are, for the most part,
the "organic intellectuals" of the ruling establishment, not just in the US
I would like to submit for analysis this passage by Joesph Kahn from
today's WSJ "China's Overcapacity Crimps Neighbors:Glut Swamps Southeast
Asia's Exports, Roiling Currencies" (A10):
"Fed by overinvestment, China has built up a glut of manufacturing capacity
so huge that the country could
What about Leo Huberman's Man's Worldly Goods: The Story of the Wealth of
Nation? Huberman being wrong about the working class having conquered
1/6th of the world (ch 21) does't diminish the greatness of this text as a
historical-conceptual introduction for the lay reader, in my humble
opinion.
.
Indeed this substitution has probably happened at the expense of a few good
white men.
All the best,
Rakesh Bhandari
Ph.D Candidate
Ethnic Studies
I have three friends (in economics) whose publication/teaching/service
records were objectively better than their white "peers" - all three w
Now Max thought that
. It would follow
that to improve the gene pool, when the nubile daughters of
gentiles come of age they should be impregnated by Jews of Eastern
European descent with Ph.D's. Actual marriage, of course, would not
be necessary because nature overrules nurture.
Anything to
Max wrote:
"For this to go on indefinitely, it would seem that assets must
be permanently and increasingly overvalued. At some point the asset
price gets obviously out of whack with the cash flow from ownership
of the asset. For a permanent bubble, there has to be an endless
supply of idiots
Doug asks:
So if this Marxian cycle
theory doesn't apply to the most important capitalist country over the last
50 years, where does it apply?
From Mattick to Cogoy to Shaikh, there has been an attempt to examine how
crisis can be *deferred* through public and private credit. Of course
Mattick
Let's just take the basics of Marx's theory of the financial and monetary
aspects of the cycle. In the face of bankruptcy, Asian producers are trying
to honor financial obligations (sales having turned out to be at prices
lower than used in preceding obligations); they are ready to sell their
Perhaps someone could download the WSJ editorial from a few days ago by
Professor Meredith Cumings Woo of Northwestern University? Her analysis
seems to differ from Amsden's in important ways; for example, she seems to
be quite a bit more critical of the kind of state monopoly
capitalism that
Marty wrote:
And it is hard to see how greater freedom for
domestic and foreign capital to move money and operations is going to
promote a more domestically centered, nationally controlled, worker
centered, stable economy.
Do you mean by a "nationally controlled, worker centered,
As for Hayek, Fueredi's criticism of him in Mythical Past, Elusive Future
is pretty compelling. I tried to give you some good leads for criticism of
Living Marxism in terms of their support of green revolution solutions.
Not that I am persuaded by these criticisms, but they are interesting and
First, let's remember that Carrol referred to you as the Top Gun pilot of
the Marxist world--this was so ridiculous I didn't now how to respond. I
hate how people with the same line chime in to support each other with
insubstantial rah-rah just to give the impression of a majority building so
as
Here are two more takes on May 68.
rb
The first is from Rene Vienet (Enrages and the Situationists in the
Occupation Movement--France May-June 1968. Autonomedia Press):
"...in the space of a week, millions of people had broken with the weight
of alienating conditions, the routine of survival,
Doug, I didn't say there wasn't discrimination. I said that I found it
dubious that "race" explains the accentuation of income inequality itself.
If there are a lot more poorly paying jobs, discrimination both directly
and indirectly via conscious underdevelopment of so called productivity
There was a similar report on the equalisation of income for those
arbitrary categories of ethno-racial groups in the New York Times, Sept 30
1997. I seem not to have saved it.
It wouldn't be the claim that black gains explain white losses, that better
paid whites are being downsized for cheaper
How to explain FDI in the US? Higher rates of exploitation? Supersized
market which more than compensates for relatively slower growth rates?
Circumvention of explicit and hidden protectionism: voluntary export
restraints, trigger price mechanisms and targeted trade practices--all
devious
Although I have no degree in economics, I have doubts about your
claim that this issue is soluble in terms of "Marx's conceptual
distinction between value (labor time as a measure of wealth) and
wealth itself, the production of which has come indeed to depend less
on direct labor because of
Didn't Cockburn defend Moore in the pages of The Nation after he was axed
as editor of Mother Jones because Moore refused to publish an
analysis critical of the Sadinistas? What was the spat between Adam
Hochschild and Michael Moore all about? Didn't Cockburn defend Moore? I
think I remember
The reference to overpopulation on Marxism-International leads us into a
discussion of the Marxist critique of Malthus itself.
One of the most substantial discussions to date on the relationship between
Marxism and Malthusianism is in Marc Linder. The Dilemms of Laissez-Faire
Population Policy
Why do you say so casually that "no one has shown that
machinofacture makes direct
human labor superflous in the production of commodities - it just
changes the character of that labor"? Marx says as much in
the Grundrisse, as I showed in two previous missives. Here he writes
unequivocally that
This post will not be about Postone, for Gil's criticism of value theory is
quite confusing.
He argues quite rightly that individual capitalists are motivated by
profit, not surplus value. He notes as well that value operates at the
level of the system as a whole: on the one hand, he reduces
Jeffrey Fellows suggested: "the lower [black] quintiles may also be rising
because of sectoral shifts toward industries and occupations that are more
highly represented by blacks."
While it seems to me absurd to attempt to infer structural changes in the
economy based on comparative data on
Well, Tom, I always enjoy your posts. So I see that by "reproduction" you
were referring to strategic changes in the reproduction of total social
capital. I am wondering whether your analysis has been inspired by Tony
Negri's writings on the social factory, which I have myself not read.
There is
Once we enter the abode of production, isn't the experience of an
export-processing zone proletarian or a de-unionized trucker or a
telemarketing clerk qualitatively different from the overwork of a college
professor? Unlike the college professor, these proletarians are subjected
to and
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