[Marxism] The Trouble with Psychological Darwinism

[Andrew Pollack via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

By Jerry 
Fodorhttp://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n02/jerry-fodor/the-trouble-with-psychological-darwinismThis
 isn't new - it popped up in an LRB email with a selection of past 
philosophical articles - but it's unfortunately still very necessary in the 
battle against sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, selfish-gene and other 
reductionist fantastical theories.Next time you see an article in the Science 
Times headlined something like "scientists find gene that explains predilection 
for reality-show watching!" re-read Fodor's takedown of such nonsense.PS: Then 
if you want an extended materialist, sophisticated view of evolutionary 
hierarchies and processes, get Niles Eldredge's latest, "Eternal Ephemera." 

No Branches = Great Rates
High Yield CDs & Savings Accounts. 24/7 helpful customer service.
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/560567a87db0167a8308est02duc
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Fwd: Chess as Metaphor

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

Review of 3 films about chess:

"Pawn Sacrifice"
"Endgame"
"Dark Horse"

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/25/chess-as-metaphor/
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Fwd: The economic theory and policies of Swedish social democracy | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

Trying to understand the evolution of the economic theories underlying 
Swedish social democracy is no easy task. There is not only a dearth of 
English-language material but in Swedish as well. In “Seven Figures in 
the History of Swedish Economic Thought”, a specialized text on some of 
the leading economists associated with the “Swedish model”, author Mats 
Lundahl refers to their output as “unknown” or “forgotten”.


If the “Chicago School” summons up images of Milton Friedman consulting 
with Pinochet, what does the “Stockholm School of Economics” evoke? 
Founded in 1909 as a business school largely from donations by Knut 
Wallenberg, it was intended to churn out experts who could help Sweden 
modernize its economy and develop international trade. The Wallenbergs 
were the Rockefellers of Sweden and well equipped to shape the doctrines 
that would govern the nation’s future. As it turns out, the Rockefeller 
Foundation had considerable interest in Sweden’s politics as well, 
donating large sums to set up a Social Science think-tank under the 
jurisdiction of the University of Stockholm and that would study the 
impact of wage levels in the labor market among other things. Among the 
earliest benefactors of Rockefeller funding was Gunnar Myrdal, a 
Stockholm School graduate, who would later on be referred to the 
Carnegie Foundation for the funding he needed to write “American 
Dilemma”, widely considered a seminal work on civil rights.


So how did Sweden’s social democracy get hooked up with a business 
school funded by Sweden’s most powerful capitalist dynasty?


full: 
http://louisproyect.org/2015/09/25/the-economic-theory-and-policies-of-swedish-social-democracy/

_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] Gabriel Ash on Assad

[Thomas via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

A huge amount of material reality in a few words.

What's the source of the quote please?

Thank you for posting!

T


-Original Message-
>From: Louis Proyect via Marxism 
>Sent: Sep 25, 2015 8:08 AM
>To: Thomas F Barton 
>Subject: [Marxism] Gabriel Ash on Assad
>
>  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
>#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
>#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
>#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
>*
>
>The immediate problem is indeed Assad. But that is the tip of the 
>iceberg. Assad has been a stellar prince. He has fully grasped the 
>potential of the current historical moment, the fortuna that opens 
>possibilities for virtù, and acted on that understanding singlemindedly. 
>Bombing one's own country to the stone age and expelling the majority of 
>the people is a very high risk strategy, and few tyrants have survived 
>it. But Assad has grasped where the world is today. He has correctly 
>understood that defeating the threat of expanding democracy, everywhere, 
>but especially in the Middle East, is not only the point of unity of all 
>the world's powers, but even the dominant intellectual and cultural 
>mood, and if he positions himself at that very point, he will be 
>untouchable. He understood that none of his adversaries, not Turkey, nor 
>the US, nor Israel, would risk his downfall if it meant an opening for 
>popular empowerment. And the more he murders, the more he destroys, the 
>more impossible it is it remove him without conceding the revolt. Syria 
>is the 21st century Paris Commune. It is a flash of lightning that 
>illuminates a furious global counter-revolution. Even hundreds of 
>thousands of refugees are unlikely to change that. the EU would much 
>rather build new concentration camps for them than risk inadvertently 
>helping a popular victory against tyranny. About the left, the less one 
>says the better.
>Gabriel Ash
>_
>Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
>Set your options at: 
>http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/thomasfbarton%40earthlink.net


_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Obama's Two-Step U-Turn down the Memory Hole of Syria

[Clay Claiborne via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

New from Linux Beach:


 Obama's Two-Step U-Turn down the Memory Hole of Syria
 


Many of us have been saying that *US President Barack Obama* was 
two-faced from the earliest days of the Arab Spring. As the revolution 
in Syria developed, we said Obama's claim of support for it was a lie. 
When he echoed the call of the Syrian masses for /"regime change,"/ we 
pointed to the military-to-military relations that Obama's Pentagon 
had re-established with Syria and the use of Assad's torture 
facilities in the CIA's /"War on Terror."/ In September 2012, I 
published /"Barack Obama's Courtship with Bashar al-Assad 
,"/ 
which made public 21 new WikiLeaks sourced documents and laid out in 
excruciating detail [17k words] Obama's support for the Assad regime. 
I warned the thuwar that Obama was just playing /"Good Cop"/ to 
Putin's /"Bad Cop",/ that the promised military support would never 
arrive and that in the end game all would see that Obama, Putin and 
Assad were on the same side.
*More...* 



_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Turkey?

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

Eric Draitser, in your CounterPunch article today you write: "With 
respect to Syria, Turkish intelligence is directly implicated in 
collusion with jihadis of the Nusra and ISIS variety, smuggling both 
fighters and weapons into Syria in the ongoing attempt to implement 
regime change against the Syrian government."


Perhaps you missed the latest news:

"Syrian transition could include Assad: Turkey's Erdogan" 
(http://news.yahoo.com/syrian-transition-could-assad-turkeys-erdogan-155431961.html)


I also wonder how you missed the latest entrant into the war on terror:

"After Netanyahu-Putin meeting, Israel military says it is coordinating 
with Russia on Syria" 
(http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/09/24/after-netanyahu-putin-meeting-israel-military-says-it-is-coordinating-with/)


Surely all this is good news for a rock-ribbed anti-imperialist like 
yourself. Isn't there something inspiring about this new crusade for 
Human Freedom that is like the FDR-Churchill-Stalin united front against 
Hitler? In the fight against Islamofascism to defend Western 
civilization, there is every expectation that victory will be ours since 
God is on our Side.

_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Gabriel Ash on Assad

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

The immediate problem is indeed Assad. But that is the tip of the 
iceberg. Assad has been a stellar prince. He has fully grasped the 
potential of the current historical moment, the fortuna that opens 
possibilities for virtù, and acted on that understanding singlemindedly. 
Bombing one's own country to the stone age and expelling the majority of 
the people is a very high risk strategy, and few tyrants have survived 
it. But Assad has grasped where the world is today. He has correctly 
understood that defeating the threat of expanding democracy, everywhere, 
but especially in the Middle East, is not only the point of unity of all 
the world's powers, but even the dominant intellectual and cultural 
mood, and if he positions himself at that very point, he will be 
untouchable. He understood that none of his adversaries, not Turkey, nor 
the US, nor Israel, would risk his downfall if it meant an opening for 
popular empowerment. And the more he murders, the more he destroys, the 
more impossible it is it remove him without conceding the revolt. Syria 
is the 21st century Paris Commune. It is a flash of lightning that 
illuminates a furious global counter-revolution. Even hundreds of 
thousands of refugees are unlikely to change that. the EU would much 
rather build new concentration camps for them than risk inadvertently 
helping a popular victory against tyranny. About the left, the less one 
says the better.

Gabriel Ash
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Commodifying water

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

NY Times, Sept. 25 2015
Investors Are Mining for Water, the Next Hot Commodity
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

CADIZ, Calif. — Gazing out of a turboprop high above his company’s main 
asset — 34,000 acres in the Mojave Desert with billions of gallons of 
fresh water locked deep below the sagebrush-dotted land — Scott Slater 
paints a lush picture that has enticed a hardy band of investors for a 
quarter-century.


Yes, Mr. Slater admits, his company, Cadiz, has never earned a dime from 
water. And he freely concedes it will take at least another $200 million 
to dig dozens of wells, filter the water and then move it 43 miles 
across the desert through a new pipeline before thirsty Southern 
Californians can drink a drop.


But tapping cash, as opposed to actual water, has never been a problem 
for Cadiz. “I think there’s plenty of money out there,” Mr. Slater said.


Real profits may be nearly as scarce as snow in the High Sierra, but 
Wall Street, as it is wont to do, smells profit as California endures 
its worst drought in decades.


“Investing in the water industry is one of the great opportunities for 
the coming decades,” said Matthew J. Diserio of Water Asset Management, 
a New York firm that is a major backer of Cadiz. “Water is the scarce 
resource that will define the 21st century, much like plentiful oil 
defined the last century.”


Articles in this series explore the impact of the drought that has hit 
states from the Pacific Coast to the Great Plains.

So far, though, this veritable Gold Rush has mostly turned up fool’s gold.

Over the last decade, Cadiz has accrued $185 million in losses, and 
revenue from the lemon groves and vineyards it owns in the Mojave has 
added up to only a trickle: $7.1 million total since 2005.


To develop the project, the company burns through $10 million to $20 
million annually, paying for a never-ending battle in courthouses and 
conference rooms across California to win make-or-break government 
permits and to cover the salaries of its 10 full-time employees.


Cadiz has generated that money by borrowing and regularly issuing more 
shares, prompting skeptics to wonder if it will ever actually deliver 
any water, much less any profits.


“It’s a tough game,” said John Dickerson, chief executive of Summit 
Global Management, a 20-year-old San Diego firm that invests in water 
infrastructure companies, local water suppliers and water rights, both 
in the United States and overseas.


“Cadiz has promoted the dream and for years Wall Street has pumped 
optimistic paper water for Cadiz,” he added. “But now the hard question 
for them is, Where is your real water and when can we drink it?”


Other water ventures have also promised more than they have been able to 
deliver, at least so far. Obstacles abound in the forms of skeptical 
regulators, wary customers and implacably opposed environmental groups.


But some projects are finally nearing fruition. Near San Diego, the 
privately held Poseidon Water is getting ready to flip the switch on a 
new desalination plant that it built after 15 years of battling lawsuits 
filed by environmental groups and waiting for go-aheads from cautious 
regulators.


The drought, however, hasn’t softened local opposition to private 
players like Cadiz or Poseidon entering California’s water market. A 
main reason is money.


After Poseidon’s new plant begins producing desalinated water late this 
year, the monthly water bill for a typical consumer in the San Diego 
area will rise by about $5, to $80, according to the San Diego County 
Water Authority.


Located on the grounds of a power plant in Carlsbad facing the Pacific 
Ocean, the facility should produce as much as 50 million gallons of 
drinking water a day, if not more, expanding the region’s water supply 
nearly 10 percent.


Nonetheless, for Adam Scow, California director of Food and Water Watch, 
a nonprofit environmental group that opposes the desalination project, 
any private control over the water supply is too much.


“Water is a public trust, and it shouldn’t be privatized,” Mr. Scow 
said. “It can’t be managed for the benefit of a few people like 
Poseidon’s investors. The rates are unjustified.”


Poseidon officials reject arguments from critics like Mr. Scow that they 
are taking advantage of consumers.


“The Carlsbad desalination project is a true public-private 
partnership,” said Andrew Kingman, executive vice president at Poseidon 
Water. “Poseidon’s role in the project is that of a service provider. 
The Water Authority doesn’t have any payment obligations for the water 
until it is converted and delivered, and thereafter has full control 
over its 

[Marxism] Fwd: The far-right as a counter-hegemonic bloc to neoliberalism? The case of Jobbik (II) | LeftEast

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

So what is new about Jobbik? Jobbik’s novelty is its ability to mediate 
the anger and disillusions of Hungarian society with the regime change, 
successfully combining traditional fascist ideology with innovative 
ideas and practices to mobilise its supporters, Transforming class 
inequalities into ethnic and cultural antagonisms, the party proclaims 
to defend the interests of ‘ordinary’ Hungarians (i.e. ‘honest’, 
‘hard-working’, ‘white’, ‘Christian’, ‘conservative’, ‘middle-class’, 
heterosexual men). With its pseudo-revolutionary demands and 
non-compromising attitude, it has been able to present itself as a 
genuine, ’anti-systemic’ force, reaching beyond traditional far-right 
voters (predominantly older, socially-conservative men from the 
petty-bourgeois strata of society), making significant inroads among 
young, relatively well-educated people who are frustrated with the 
failures of the regime change and afraid of becoming déclassé. At the 
same time, the party’s emphasis on ‘law and order’ has been effective in 
mobilising support in north-eastern Hungary, where the impact of 
neoliberal restructuring has been particularly devastating and where 
there is a large Roma minority. Here, the party obtained around 30 
percent of the votes in the 2014 general elections and also holds 
several mayoral posts (including in Ózd, another former centre of state 
capitalist heavy industry, where they thrashed the local Fidesz candidate).


full: 
http://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/the-far-right-as-a-counter-hegemonic-bloc-to-neoliberalism-the-case-of-jobbik-2/


The Russian leadership and the media close to the Kremlin use Jobbik and 
its leaders specifically to promote the Kremlin’s current policy 
objectives and to support its anti-EU campaign. Béla Kovács served as an 
observer during Russia’s 2012 presidential election and during the 
referendum on Crimea’s status, while two Jobbik MPs, Márton Gyöngyösi 
and Adrienn Szaniszló, were among the far-right European politicians who 
helped legitimise the status referendums in Donetsk and Luhansk through 
their participation as “observers”


full: 
https://eu.boell.org/en/2015/05/05/i-am-eurasian-kremlin-connections-hungarian-far-right

_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Fwd: ISIS and the Assad dynasty | TLS

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

Review of:

Samar Yazbek
THE CROSSING
My journey to the shattered heart of Syria
Translated by Nashwa Gowanlock and Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp
288pp. Rider. £20.
978 1 84604 486 1

Jonathan Littell
SYRIAN NOTEBOOKS
Inside the Homs uprising
Translated by Charlotte Mandell
192pp. Verso. Paperback, £12.99 (US $24.95).
978 1 78168 824 3

Jean-Pierre Filiu
FROM DEEP STATE TO ISLAMIC STATE
The Arab counter-revolution and its jihadi legacy
328pp. Hurst. £15.99.
978 1 84604 486 1
US: Oxford University Press. $24.95.
978 0 19 026406 2

Charles Glass
SYRIA BURNING
ISIS and the death of the Arab Spring
156pp. OR Books. Paperback, £11.
978 1 939293 88 6

Christian C. Sahner
AMONG THE RUINS
Syria past and present
240pp. Hurst. £20.
978 1 84904 400 4
US: Oxford University Press. $27.95.
978 0 19 939670 2

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1610548.ece
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Fwd: Eastwood Babylon: Clint’s Cinematic Brutalism

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

As a member of the sixties’ New Left generation, McGilligan is more 
skeptical than most writers about film. McGilligan began his career with 
a circle of film obsessives who put out a journal called The Velvet 
Light Trap. He and his fellow leftist cinephiles were inspired by the 
cultural criticism of the West Indian Marxist C.L.R. James, who is 
reputed to have said, “Our duty is to see the film in the afternoon, 
picket it in the evening.”


full: 
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/25/eastwood-babylon-clints-cinematic-brutalism/

_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Fwd: Live from New York, It’s ‘Putin the Great’

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  POSTING RULES & NOTES  
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*

Pepe Escobar's latest piece is unabashedly nationalistic: "Russia will 
be recognized as the ultimate defender of civilization against 
barbarism." How in the world does this kind of chest-beating rant ever 
get identified with the left?


http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/25/live-from-new-york-its-putin-the-great/
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com