I had my cursor on the wrong post. This was supposed to go to lbo-talk,
responding to a post on Obama. But it applies on this list too I guess.
Carrol
I think the point has been made sufficiently re both Obama Clinton so
when they inevitably MORE THAN disappoint their fans* we will be free to
say I told you so and keep saying it until we have to make the same
predictions in 2012 about whoever is running then. Of course I don't
know whether at
This seems to be a fundamental _western_ (probably _not_ just u.s.*)
strategy for maintaing hegemony going back at least to the dismemberment
of Yugoslavia in the early '90s. And it's a strategy which dres in
_many_ left liberals to support it, as reflected in the terms
cruise-missile liberals and
A quick footnote to the conversation between Dan Jim.
I think it's obscurantist to use the word conspiracy in _any_ context
in which it is not essential. Dan's point, I think, can be made without
wording that raises conspiracist reverberations. The DLC and its
planning were right out in the open
Jim Devine wrote:
Carrol wrote:
[clip] Then it will make sense to talk of HOPE.
Julio Huato wrote:
In other words, you are HOPELESS.
I know it's a cliché, but whatever happened to optimism of the will,
pessimism of the intellect?
That is what was echoing through my mind as I typed.
Jim Devine wrote:
do we really grow rice in California? (I may have reported this, but
I'm not convinced it's true.)
Yep. I've seen two or three articles over the years describing
rice-growing in California, irrigating with government-subsidized water.
Quite a racket.
Carrol
Doyle Saylor
Matthijs Krul wrote:
One can say that Al Sharpton carries some real baggage, but what is
the primary baggage that Jesse carries relative to Obama? Jesse is
divisive *because* he represents black demands for equality.
--ravi
Well, black voters have turned out in vast
Michael Perelman wrote:
Young voters turned out for Howard Dean with great enthusiasm, yet he was a
pretty
conservative governor. Obama is absolutely correct. Voting is about hope,
but the
hopes are sure to be dashed. All it takes is a nice delivery, some focus
groups,
a good
Jim Devine wrote:
It's true that a lot of the emptiness of the DP is fake populism or
reflects the shortcomings of true populism. (Much of what Edwards
said fits in either or both categories.) But amazingly, the real
primaries run by the donors filters theses populisms out too.
I would
Greens are on the ballot in Illinois this year. I'll go only to cast a
symbolic vote for the Green candidate for Congress in this district.
Anyone on this list is going to have as much influence on the electoral
income as would a sports fan sitting before the TV and rooting for a
team. Mere
Doug Henwood wrote:
On Feb 5, 2008, at 1:19 PM, Jim Devine wrote:
Obama (or Clinton) versus McCain (or Romney or
Huckabee) will be a bit like the 1964 LBJ/Goldwater election.
So the peace candidate will escalate the war?
Probably. The War is so unpopular that I don't see how it can be
Doug Henwood wrote:
On Feb 5, 2008, at 12:48 PM, Max B. Sawicky wrote:
That was a while back. I'm now convinced of the opposite;
BHO is likely to be more liberal than HRC.
Why? This is the most amazing case of mass wishful thinking I've ever
seen. At least a lot of people who voted for
Charles Brown wrote:
CB: I'm thinking the majority of Americans will still vote for a white
man over a woman or a Black person.
I think this oversimplifies how _subjective_ racism works, and the form
that subjective racism has increasingly taken. The stereotypes have
changed, and while
Perelman, Michael wrote:
If the choice were between me an Obama, I would donated thousands of
dollars to his campaign.
O come now. You could emulate Chomsky and have yourself arrested as a
war criminal.
Carrol
It's odd how so many hstorians and amateur histoians as well cannot tell
the differnce between a Gerber Baby Food plant and sexual intercourse.
Carrol
Charles Brown wrote:
guards and dealers definitely produce use-values; otherwise no-one
would pay them. But, at least in Marxian political economy, they do
not produce surplus-value. The guard simply preserves property rights,
while the cashier transfers them. The worker who produces
Simon Ward wrote:
productive capital is drained away and
whatever capital is left is slowly but steadily transferred to unproductive
conditions - ever more luxurious housing for example or golf courses.
This is wrong; these are luxury commodities and the production of them
generates surplus
into unproductive conditions in the home economy.
And back to Carrol's point - does a house or a golf course create surplus
value? - are they productive uses of capital?
Simon
- Original Message -
From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: PEN-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2008
So?
Capitalist economies regularly get in serious trouble, and just as
regularly get out of it, though a lot of non-capitalists suffer in the
process.
Carrol
Leigh Meyers wrote:
So, you're saying everything is hunky-dory for the capitalist economy?
What ARE you saying?
If you don't hit it, it won't fall. There is no organized mass
movement at present to hit it. CapitalistS are in trouble; even more
workers are in trouble. There is nothing to
Leigh Meyers wrote:
According to a recent report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics -
released on June 30, 2006 and revised in July 2007 - there are over 2
million people behind bars in the United States.
I may be reading an intention not in the post, but . . .
If Leigh thinks this is
Jim Devine wrote:
Sure, I'm in favor of fewer hours per week, but I don't think slogans
or programs organize people well. (Some of my old friends were
Trotskyists who believed that a well-crafted slogan or a new
(improved!) version of the transitional program could spark a
prairie fire --
Jim Devine wrote:
Or is there really a lot of forest fire fuel piling up somewhere so
that there will be a really big one ?
it's mostly in the form of excessive and shaky consumer debt and bank
assets that turn out (or will turn out) to be bad.
Ordinary recessions do not, I think, have
Is it not correct that fairly frequent recessions are a necessity of the
capitalist system? And certainly, in practice, they have been happening
every five to ten years for a couple of centuries.
But both on this list and in the financial columns of the media everyone
is fussing about whether or
Perhaps this is relevant to a current thread.
Carrol
Original Message
Subject: Howie Klein: How To Destroy A Profitable Industry In Just A Few
EasySteps
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 09:35:31 -0500 (EST)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
How To Destroy
Jim Devine wrote:
Louis Proyect wrote:
Speaking of credit cards, something really puzzles and pisses me off at
the same time. Like you, I get spam all the time for Canadian pharmacies
selling Vicodin, etc. All of them allow you to use Visa, Mastercard and
sometimes American Express. Why
Jim Devine wrote:
Doug Henwood wrote:
Sam Gindin said two striking things in that Brecht Forum
debate with Brenner: 1) the crisis isn't in capitalism, it's in the
left; 2) if you'd told him in 1975 that the U.S. working class would
take 30 years of falling real wages, union busting,
Jim Devine wrote:
agreed. I think, however, that the phenomenon is bigger than
Reaganism. It's part of the world-wide neoliberal policy revolution,
led not only by Reagan but by Thacher and Pinochet.
Thatcher became Prime Minister in May of 1979; Carter appointed Volcker
Fed Chairman in
Charles Brown wrote:
From Truthout: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120707G.shtml
Capitalism Cannot Satisfy Us
Daniel Fortin and Mathieu Magnaudeix interview Pascal Lamy
Challenges
But what good does it do to criticize capitalism? Isn't it
accepted by everyone?
I would
Sandwichman wrote:
Or, think of the evolution of language. Does anyone believe that
language -- and the physiological capabilities that enable speech --
evolved for the purpose of communicating information or ideas? Yet
that is what we typically, perhaps unreflectively, assume that
language
raghu wrote:
Maybe there is a basic problem about using insurance to provide health
care. By definition insurance is about protecting people from
unpredictable rare events. In health care, the service requirement is
neither really rare nor unpredictable. It is not surprising that the
Jim Devine wrote:
from HARPER'S WEEKLY, November 13, 2007:
new frontiers in diplomacy:
At an Ibero-American summit in Chile, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
called Spain's former prime minister a fascist, adding, fascists are not
human. A snake is more human. Why don't you shut up?
The Buffalo In Da' Midst wrote:
So what about BushCo BushWars...?
They ...marshall(ed) international support for that coup (in the
U.S). (9/11)), and invaded a foreign country that had done nothing
(No, not Poland, Iraq).
Which makes him (THEM!) something pretty despicable, fascist
Jim Devine wrote:
in my never-ending battle against the use of clichés, I'm looking for
a new synonym for neoliberal and neoliberalism. I think
marketron is a good replacement for neoliberalism, but
marketronism is too clumsy. Any ideas?
in Solidarity with the Global War on Cliché,
I
Crises are never more than momentary, violent solutions for the
existing contradictions, violent eruptions that re-establish the
disturbed balance for the time being. K Marx, CIII
Michael Perelman wrote:
The outcome is predictable. The Dems will inherit the war unless can manage
to find
a way to blow the election. They will have to bow to the public and leave
Iraq
(mostly). Then they will get hammered for losing Iraq. All this for not
having a
spine a little
Doug Henwood wrote:
On Nov 5, 2007, at 9:47 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
They are courageous and they are committed.
It's just that the commitment is to u.s. imperialism.
But, structurally, by playing the role of the left party they have
to act otherwise, which ties them in knots. I know you
Jim Devine wrote:
what are all the strange abbreviations (IC19, C19, etc.?) I think C19
is the 19th century, but what is IC19 or eCl9?
Early (ec19) and late (lc19). C18/C19 are quite common in much
historical writing, particularly in works that resemble a dictionary
(Williams) or an
Michael Smith wrote:
On Fri, 2007-10-26 at 18:06 -0700, Jim Devine wrote:
Please _tell me_ why you think that theories of cognition are as bad
as phlogiston theory. Why, specifically, do you reject the idea of
multiple intelligences?
Cart before the horse. I'm not rejecting anything --
Jim Devine wrote:
you'd think that of all people, he would know about Shockleyism and its
dangers.
This 'case' underlines a point of profound importance for leftists:
highly intelligent, even brilliant, men women, however learned, can be
unbelievably both stupid and ignornant. Except in
Marvin Gandall wrote:
The hope is that the new super-fund will be able to regain investor
confidence [clip]
Rescue Readied
By Banks Is Bet
To Spur Market
The high-stakes plan to rescue banks from losses on mortgage securities
amounts to a big bet that a consortium of financial giants --
If I recall correctly, John D., Sr. in his early days had the oil wells
of competitors in Ohio dynamited. Is that correct, and are any details
on it in Josephson's book?
Doug Henwood wrote:
On Aug 19, 2007, at 10:08 AM, Louis Proyect quoted:
Americas reliance on dubious credit goes all
Bill Lear wrote:
On Saturday, August 18, 2007 at 09:33:21 (-0700) Jim Devine writes:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070827/pollitt
subject to debate by Katha Pollitt
Who's Sorry Now?
[from the August 27, 2007 issue]
Why Saddam? Saddam was an evil dictator, but Iraq was not the world's
Michael Perelman wrote:
Here was the ridiculous part:
in search of a livelihood.
Whether the remainder is sheer nonsense or partially valid, this is a
hoot: billion dollar+ outfits needing a livelihood indeed.
Carrol
Jim Devine wrote:
On 8/14/07, Eugene Coyle [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Wasn't it Henry Cabot Lodge that was behind Diem's death?
and John F. Kennedy. It turns out that JFK liked to dabble in the
overthrowing of foreign leaders and/or their assassination.
It was the assassination of Diem that
raghu wrote:
So instead of giving it away they have to invest or to
make aid grants instead, and basically become another colonial
power.
That was Mao's prediction of what would happen if China ever changed
its color -- it would become an oppresdsor nation.
Carrol
-raghu.
The Buffalo In Da' Midst wrote:
I don't feel sorry for the professional bourgeoisie at all. For the
most part, their expectations led to their own problems,
psychological, sociological, and financial.
This belief should make the capitalists happy, since it guarantees
disunity in the working
raghu wrote:
On 8/2/07, Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
This belief should make the capitalists happy, since it guarantees
disunity in the working class.
Carrol
Are foreigners on work visas part of the working class? Does setting
domestic workers against foreigners not guarantee
Marvin Gandall wrote:
By the way, downward or upward pressures on pay and benefits on one group of
workers do tend to affect other groups. Workers, especially union members,
habitually compare their pay movements to others in their workplace and
industry, and employers are required to pay
Jim Devine wrote:
On 8/1/07, Sandwichman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The third, and more likely, scenario is that things will continue going on
just as they have been going on for years. That is, conditions will
deteriorate but they won't come to a head.
they might come to a head in the US,
Rich Wagner wrote:
He does not count any more, he graduated in 1958, when Chico was just a
college!
Does this mean I'm not an alumni of Western Michigan University, since I
graduated from Western Michigan College of Education?
Carrol
Jim Devine wrote:
I would complain about him taking over the Wall Street Journal, but
its editorial line is already so wacky that Mr. Murdoch's may actually
be an improvement. -- Juan Cole.
That's true -- but I think irrelevant because it is the news pages of
the WSJ that count, not the wacky
Responding only to the subject line.
Opposition to the wisdom or the legality of a president's action places
the burden for change on Congress or the elections.
Questioning his mental stability could conceivably be the grounds for
the Vice President to declare himself president. I don't recall
Michael Perelman wrote:
Now, the answer to Bush's war is to retreat to the permanent bases in Iraq,
so that
the US can control the country with bombs dropped from altitudes, just as
Clinton was
doing without the convenience of bases in the country.
I have always argued that as
This is a response to the subject line, not to anything in the post.
Has the anti-war movment failed? It has not stopped the war -- but
neither has any anti-war movement in modern history stopped a war
(unless you consider the Bolsheviks an anti-war movement).
The fundamental political fact of
raghu wrote:
An excellent
not-too-technical presentation of this idea is in Evelyn Keller's The
Century of the Gene where the author (who is a physicist turned
feminist-historian of biology) traces the history of the gene metaphor
through the 20'th century and argues for retiring the term
Jim Devine wrote:
But I do get you point (I hope): if a mode of production -- such as
the one that used to prevail in the old Soviet Union -- cannot get the
job done of producing and distributing goods and services with a
reasonable degree of efficiency compared to other existing modes of
I agree pretty much with Jim's response to my post; the post itself is a
first and bumbling attempt to formulate what I think is a crucial matter
for u.s. leftists to try to think through. The ineffectiveness of left
activity over past decades has generated a widespread urges to find
short cuts.
Doug Henwood wrote:
But averting climate catastrophe involves changing the way people
live their daily lives, the sooner the better. This sort of stance -
we can't do anything until we do everything - could result in stasis
and despair. If Americans gave up their SUVs for hybrids, walked
Paul Phillips wrote:
But what it does say is
that private property rights is no answer to collapsing fish stocks,
particularly as long as Japan, Spain, etc. defy international regulation
and refuse to abide by the social regulation of the commons by their
destructive overfishing,
Personal attacks are not ad hominem arguments. Ad hominem arguments are
a logical fallacy. To illustrate:
John believes X. X is wholly false. Anyone who believes it is an
asshole. John is an asshole. This is a personal attack but it is NOT an
ad hominem argument.
John is an asshole. John
Jim Devine wrote:
On 6/22/07, Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Such violence (as
practiced by Weatherman or by most anarchist tendencies) is
counter-revolutionary: it divides and weakens the revolutionary forces.
It is every bit as bad as pure electoralism.
I think that's more than
sartesian wrote:
There is no argument about the destruction and brutality, the poverty,
produced in the extraction of the commodity of oil. Actually, I think
it's the industrial capitalist equivalent of the plantation sugarcane
economy.
I don't know, however, what that has to do with peak
Leigh Meyers wrote:
...
What is likely to happen? I'd suggest four possible scenarios:
Economic crashes are terrible for people and good for capitalism. They
are the way capital crashes beyond the barriers it creates for itself.
Carrol
michael a. lebowitz wrote:
He and EB probably
survey the same folks and see the same things.
(Could be that, like a friend of mine here, he
rents a room from an opposition family and gets
regular reports on the revolution from them.)
An anecdote from 70 years ago. My first wife was the
I haven't been following this thread closely, and I'm involved in too
many things to give it much thought, The following, therefore, is a mere
observation, not a developed argument.
I would reject any theory of the origins of language -- or the
interpretation of language as it is used today --
Doyle Saylor wrote:
Doyle;
I would think language began much further back than 40 50 thousand
years ago.
There can be no proof, so anyone is free to speculate as he/she pleases.
But we do _know_ two things.
1. Biologically modern humans -- humans with the brains and physiology
we have now
Marvin Gandall wrote:
Julio wrote:
From the inside, things don't look the way you describe *at all*.
If there has been any ideological shift to register in the last
decade, it's been precisely one in the opposite direction. And this
is not surprising given the persistence of poverty
Doug Henwood wrote:
On Jun 1, 2007, at 2:07 PM, Marvin Gandall wrote:
I don't believe Carrol understands that ruling classes have made
concessions
throughout history in order to preempt the development of economic and
social crises
Prevent? Or deal with those already underway? In the
michael a. lebowitz wrote:
At 16:21 01/06/2007, sartesian wrote:
Just a point, and I don't think it's minor or just
semantic. There is no Marxian political economy.
There is no Marxist political economy. Marxism begins
with a contribution to the end of political economy.
says who?
Though there is little chance of ever changing the terminology,
altruism is as ill-chosen a term as hardwired -- it was coined by
the Auguste Comte, and implies a conception of humans as a collection of
isolated individuals.
Carrol
If only the 9/11 conspiracists would focus their energies on discovering
how the DP leadership worked out who got to vote against who had to
vote for it. ;-
Louis Proyect wrote:
10 Democratic Senators voting against war funding:
Boxer
Would this fit Becker's model?
Calculating what is lost by death at (say) 81 vs what is lost by 9 years
of dementia starting at 82 or 83. And of course the odds on either.
Carrol
If one starts out with the _relationship_ rather than the people it
might clarify things. There is no such thing as a capitalist in
isolation; there is no such thing as a worker in isolation. One has a
capital-labor _relationship_; that is one moves from that to discovering
who in a given nation
Jim Devine wrote:
I try to respond to all threads that involve me, but I'm not going to
do so for this one (even though I let it sit in my in-box for weeks).
I just don't have the constitution for scholasticism, the quoting and
interpretation of Authorities. I prefer the method of folks like
Michael Perelman wrote:
Solow says large industrial economies have sprouted a more stable structure
Of course, he wrote a catty review of Parker's Galbraith bio. Nobody should
ever
stray off the beaten path. If they do, they shall be declared a heretic
all their
good ideas converted
s.artesian wrote:
At some point, I would like to comment on Ted's linkage of
Hegel and Marx and what Marx actually did with Hegel'
categories and linkages, i.e stages of the human mind.
My view is very different than Ted's, but the discussion
might not be of interest to the rest of the list.
Jim Devine wrote:
it depends on how you define depression.
At any one time _somewhere_ within the capitalist societies (or any one
capitalist nation) is suffering (locally) utter economic collapse. Hence
if we went by localities it would be correct to say that capitalism has
been one continuous
s.artesian wrote:
The passions are products of market dependence, with the markets
themselves transformed from simply arenas of consumption to the
circuits essential for the realizaton and reproduction of exchange
value.
The industrious innovative efficient yeoman, land leaser, merchant
Jim Devine wrote:
Since as far as I know, tea can't be grown in W. Europe and thus would
play no significant role in revolutionizing social relations there.
(Perhaps it gave workers extra energy to work, however, like coffee
does. Also, global warming might allow tea cultivation in W.
What do the economists on this list have to say about a micro text
written by David Besanko and Ronald Braeutigan? I promised a person
enrolled in a class using that text that I sould find out about it.
Carrol
Leigh Meyers wrote:
On 5/13/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Why be depressed, or feel like the economy is in one, when you can
just take this little pill and stop worrying about *anything*?
This is mostly bullshit. SSRIs (Prozac is one) have no immediate effect,
and they've
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
On 5/11/07, michael a. lebowitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Quick rule of thumb--- the opposite of 'protagonistic democracy' is
not 'antagonistic' but 'representative democracy'./m
True, but I've been thinking of relative absence of sharp antagonism
and emphasis on
ravi wrote:
On 9 May, 2007, at 11:57 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
While you're handing out assignments, as long as you're living in the
U.S. - and it's been more than 10 years now, hasn't it? - isn't that
your job too?
But she is doing that already. Insofar as you and others privilege
Ooops! I thought I was responding to an lbo-post. It's still good for
this list however.
Carrol
Find an effective way to determine whether a polynomial equation with
integer coefficients and one or more unknowns has any integer solutions.
(Sort of like the quadratic formula.)
I never went beyond elementary calculus, and didn't learn that very
well. But I can sort of vaguely see how solving
Jim Devine wrote:
where did Joan Robinson say that Keynes himself did not understand the
full implications of his theory?
Isn't it almost standard that the originator of any very powerful theory
does not understand its full implications. (This could be derived as a
necessity from the axiom of
The prediction, more accurately expressed, is that the more highly
skilled and paid sectors of the working class will begin to develop a
distorted class consciousness, thereby dividing the working class
against itself. The writers of the report, sharing the view of standard
sociology and crude
(In the name of God the Most Glorious Mr D'Arcy
is empowered to scratch through the sub-soil of Persia
until fifty years from this date...)
Canto XXXVIII
From _A Companion to the Cantos_:
In 1901 William Knox D'Arcy, an Australian oil explorer, obtained from
the shah of
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
The essential issue in Egypt today is democracy, whose outcome is
open. The Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, which has a range of views
within the organization, must be understood in that context. The
Brotherhood may turn out to be a liberal friend of America, but it may
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
I thought that Marx's formula was that, although religion is the sigh
of the oppressed, the development of capitalism tends to secularize
life. I believe he was too simplistic about the correlation between
capitalist development and secularization.
Capitalism _has_
Leigh Meyers wrote:
Cary is about 40 miles west of Chicago.
The reporter's geography is a bit suspect. Gary is in Indiana, south and
EAST of Chicago.
Carrol
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18353425/
Leigh Meyers wrote:
FWIW, there is a *Cary* Illinois.
So much for my close reading! :-)
Carrol
Perelman, Michael wrote:
Student work pressures are the most serious source of decline in our
university.
Yes. But ambitious administrators do come in a close second. The faculty
statement Seth quotes could apply to 2/3s of the campuses in the u.s.
Carrol
Julio Huato wrote:
Uh? I'm not sure what you mean, since a bunch of important economic
results have been derived without having preferences posed as
*functions*. They have been instead postulated as (mathematical)
relations. Gerard Debreu's proof of general equilibrium introduces,
not a
Didn't Bryan resign as Wilson's Secretary of State because of his
opposition to the u.s. entering the war.
That by itself makes him one of the true heroes of u.s. political
history. It certainly places him on a level with the various
slave-holding heroes of that history.
Carrol
Leigh Meyers wrote:
Marketers are hoping this is a fringe movement. The signs point
elsewhere. According to recent surveys by sociologist Juliet Schor, 81
percent of Americans believe their country is too focused on shopping,
while nearly 90 percent believe it is too materialistic.
Of course
Kenneth Burke argued, convincingly, that political rhetoric always went
the other direction from policy. His example was that he knew banks were
safe when FDR came out with a blast against the financial royalists and
their crimes.
I still maintain that of all the candidates McCain is the _least_
Doug Henwood wrote:
The very short answer from that book (and its very useful
introduction) is that populism is a doctrine that divides societies
into The People and The Other. It's almost by definition vague on
just who The People are. It was that I had in mind the other day when
I said
I have always been able to work in coalitions with _anyone_ who shares
the principles of the coalition, and that, in practice, has _always_
included working with vegetarians. Moreover, that has also been the
practice of every marxist that I have ever worked with. I have _never_
condemned any
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