[Marxism-Thaxis] Re: M-TH: Fiji Up-date
Speight 'not the real coup leader' From an AFP correspondent in Suva THE AUSTRALIAN19aug00 FIJI'S George Speight was not the real leader of the May 19 coup that bought down the Chaudhry government, a cabinet minister held hostage for 56 days said yesterday. His revelation came as Speight and his top 12 henchmen made another brief appearance before a Suva magistrate. Poseci Bune, deposed agriculture minister, in an interview with the Fiji Sun, said that minutes after being taken hostage Mr Speight told them he was not the leader of the coup. He was waiting for the leader to come. "So we had to wait about 40 minutes as he was answering calls and at the same time making calls, and telling us that we will be surprised that he is not the leader as the real leader will arrive for us to see him," he told the newspaper. "But then he got another call. Then he turned to us and said: 'I think he is going to be late, well, I have to take it on from here.' " Mr Bune said he realised that the leader's failure to turn up meant "there was a big hiccup or something had gone wrong in the operation". "I could only guess that the turning up of that mysterious man may have been dependent on whether the army was behind it or not. Maybe when the army was not in a position to support the coup this man backed out immediately and left those guys in limbo." Asked if Mr Speight had mentioned that there were people backing them up, Mr Bune said: "Yes, definitely. He said there were people very high up, well known to us, and he said: 'You will be surprised.' " It was a coup that had gone wrong, Mr Bune said. Meanwhile, Speight and his 12 top henchmen appeared briefly in the Suva Magistrates Court yesterday on a series of minor unlawful assembly and arms charges. Mr Temo remanded Speight and the men until August 25, when they are also due to reappear for procedural issues related to the charges of treason, misprision of treason and waging war on the people of Fiji. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: M-TH: Smith and Cuckson on Lenin philosophy
A good read, Hugh - and one I can't do justice on grounds of great dollops of ignorance and very few dollopettes of spare time. So I leave chunks of your argument out - point it out if I misrepresent you as a consequence. I've a few quibbles, anyway, natch. Just for clarity's sake, here's your thesis again: This time the attack is on the face of it directed at Lenin in attempt to drive a wedge between him and Marx, but the real attack is on Marx -- and on Hegel and philosophy itself!!! So you give an account of the Hegelian dialectic that doesn't disagree with - actually supplements - SC's. Fine so far. There's plenty left to snipe at. So you go on: ... S C get stuck on Hegel's concluding sentences in the Logics, whereas Lenin proceeds straight back to Marx. For Lenin those final sentences were a bit like tying a bow in the ribbon once you'd completed wrapping the present. Pretty, but not essential. I don't really know what you mean, but submit the whole idea is to show that Lenin proceeds straight back to Marx. That's the bone of contention here - for you, it should be a conclusion, not a premise. Hegel's definition of freedom is "Bei sich sein", being with yourself, ie knowing what you're doing as you do it. And the ultimate freedom for him was the freedom of the Absolute Spirit as it realized itself in the unfolding of the world. For humanity, freedom in Hegel's view is understanding human participation in this process of the realization of the spirit. Yep. The predicate doing the knowing, and the subject thus becoming the object of knowledge. So do I read that bit on H's dialectic in EPM. Hence the need to I reckon you did something like that in that 'proceeding back to Marx' bit above, too, btw. ... the self-evident unity of mind and nature in the human production and reproduction of society had become so predominant and so pervasive that the fetishizing separation of the two and the maintenance of a fundamentally theological system of explanation of the world was becoming a sharply felt obstacle to the sharpest young minds of the radical bourgeoisie studying under Hegel. The unity of mind and nature does not mean they unite as physical nature though - that'd be a subsumption, and the kind of physicalist manouvre I think SC criticise Lenin for. Social relations are the basis we're looking for, I think. - very roughly explicable within a scope delineated by the residual and the emerging elements of how the society physically produces (a requisite for reproduction), but, we have to remember, not simply caused by that. And of course it had to be emanicipatory, since the reality of society was contradictory. From the earliest preparatory work, through the fanfare of the Communist Manifesto to the mature work of the Grundrisse and Capital (ie work based on the scientific discovery of the role of the commodity labour-power in the process of capitalist exploitation and hence the formation of capitalist society), Marx and Engels sought to get to the bottom of human social reality, ie the concrete character of the problems obstructing fuller human development. Obviously, the fundamental characteristic of human society was the way it had been and was still being shaped by processes of class struggle. The contradictions between the great classes of society and their resolution formed the subject matter of Marx's scientific and philosophical investigations. Nice paragraph, but I'm not sure SC take issue with this stuff. And from the Communist Manifesto on, it was the fundamental position of Marx that human freedom at the present stage of human social development could only be achieved by expropriating the expropriators, by removing the bourgeoisie from its ownership of the means of production, by abolishing capitalist relations of production and replacing them with socialist relations of production. In other words by a socialist revolution abolishing the class of capitalists and thus necessarily at the same time the class of wage-slaves, and establishing a society of cooperative immediate producers jointly owning society's means of production. This is crushingly obvious in practically everything that Marx and Engels wrote, and nowhere more so than in the Communist Manifesto. Right. So? However, S C mention none of this. They are extremely abstract and vague in their descriptions of revolutionary praxis, which, however, paradoxically enough, they still wish to see as an important goal of human activity. Perhaps their disagreement is not with Marx. They profess to be writing about someone they reckon is very different. We could examine in detail the dialectical repercussions of Marx's philosophical ideas being modified by the concrete history of their incorporation and embodiment in the great socialist movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (the First International, the Paris Commune, Lassalle, the Gotha Programme, the Second International etc). The point
M-TH: Re: Smith and Cuckson on Lenin philosophy
G'day Hugh, I see Robert Service's new biography of Lenin is, whilst much more generous and sublte than, say, Pipes's hatchet job, also pretty damning of Lenin's philosophying. Reckons he was nothing special as a theorist. That said, when Lenin got to apply his book-learning to reality, reality was cruelly unobliging. Service reckons he was very happy in that role - but as far as I'm concerned, it would have taken a strange customer indeed to enjoy the shape of things after 1919 ... Anyway, coming from the Fromm/Jakubowski/Lefebvre side of the argument, I am naturally quite comfy with the Smith and Cuckson piece. I do reckon there's too much of the 2I in Lenin, too much the denier of 'the sociality of practice', too physicalist the diamatist, too much the natural scientist in his approach to his species being, too much the demagogic saviour, and, ultimately, the paver of the road to hell (down which Stalinism and robber-baron capitalism were ultimately to march, alas). For mine, there is no more reason to jettison the whole Lenin corpus than there is to burn all our Kautsky (the 2I was buggered philosophically, but the beauty of one-sidedness is you do get an awful lot of good stuff on that particular side) - there are great insights aplenty left in both (and, as SC remind us, ol' Plekhanov) - and maybe Smith and Cuckson are being so urgently peremptory because they feel the need to pre-empt the inevitably big splash Service's book'll make - but I hope we focus on the categories SC make salient, rather than do that old "Lenin was Marx in practice!" / "No he wasn't!" quote-mongering dance, again. We've an archive choc-full of that stuff already, I reckon. Your starter for five, Hugh! Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Smith and Cuckson on Lenin philosophy
G'day again, A quickie before bed ... Gidday to you too, my slippery eel! Fair go! You've been known to daub yourself with the Johnson's Baby Oil, yourself, Hugh! I hope we focus on the categories SC make salient, but fail to tell us just what these might be... Er, SC make 'em SALIENT. Stuff like the nature of freedom, the (gulp) diamat/histomat stoush, the humanism/antihumanism (and what kinda humanism) set-to, the posited gap between 'What is to be Done' and the aforementioned list, the spectre of crude physicalism, and contending interpretations of, say, 'Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right' - leading to the question that, I submit, sumsumes lots of the above: *exactly* what did Marx mean when he claimed he turned Hegel upside down? You blinked when you tried to pre-empt the practice argument, Rob! That wasn't a blink - I was just proffering the white piece. Well mannered chap, me. Obviously smelling a weak spot or two in S C... So I'll double that! Yeah, it's a short piece which tries desperately to get an awful lot of self-distancing in. That'd make for a couple of fissures big enough for the odd imaginative Leninist to slip through. But I'm of the opinion Smith knows his Hegel (he wrote a lovely book which fellow Progressive Labour Partier Andy Blunden has on his beaut site), and Lenin was still saying right up to 1921 that he was having trouble getting his head 'round Hegel, and wasn't sure how to teach it to the comrades - poignantly honest and, as SC note, productive of some late shifting of ground. PS And please, Rob, don't make quoting as such an issue, there's a good lad! Let's relate to the, how-shall-we-put-it, saliency of any quotes given, rather than doing the old "All you can do is quote!" vs "Where's your proof, then?" dance again. Whatever. I honestly just want to see you take on this (and everybody else's, natch). I reckon you'd find more wrong with it than I would, after all. Hope there's something redly indignant here when I crawl out of the cot! Best to all, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Inter-bloc lesions and Echelon
G'day Thaxists, So the ill-disguised mutual distrust between the continental Euros and the US has taken another significant turn ... Echelon has been doing just what you'd expect of a cold-war system in a post-cold-war setting: industrial spying. And now the US is going the route usually taken by those caught red-handed: 'He started it!' Globalism looks ever less the smooth transition to functional global integration, eh? And, sadly, ever more like a huge shit-fight in the making (which, I suppose, is sorta what Lenin was getting at). And, as it complicates the theory of globalisation, it rather simplifies the theory of the state, the autonomy (or impotence) of which seems ever less convincing ... And Britain must seem very much the Trojan Horse within the Euro walls, no? So what's the prediction, Thaxists? Is the ultimate wedge going to rest between Washington and London? Or will it be the old one; straight down the English Channel? Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Livingstone backs Euro
G'day Chris, Yeah, it's a tad precious to criticise political leaders/administrators of small polities for playing the game in which they, and their constituents, find themselves. London's economy does, I'd have thought, depend more than most directly on the finance sector, though, and I'd be surprised if Livingstone joined Monks in so explicit and particular a choosing of sides. For mine, I find the integration of finance and manufacture so complete, I'm not sure I understand what Monks has in mind, anyway - to support industrial capitalism is to support their need to show competitive stock value appreciation, no? And that means supporting manufacturing and supporting finance are one and the same. While the world has about 20 million cars sitting forlorn and unloved in its caryards (a realisation crisis, perhaps?), that's gotta mean protecting the jobs of one's constituents by (a) condemning those of others, and (b) colluding in the assurance or expansion of surplus value at home, no? I don't blame Livingstone for this - indeed, I'm relatively glad he's there (if he gets the chance to prove with his underground rail plan that, even today, there ARE alternatives if one looks for them) - but social transformations do not issue from the mouths of mayors, eh? I'm all for European integration, myself. It won't be easy (European history and aspects of some cultural identities are huge hurdles, for a start), but it might help workers to identify with their counterparts abroad, er, given time. Then maybe they'll regain the quasi-internationalist insights that highlight mutual interests and struggles, make the 'race-to-the-bottom' dynamic a little easier to see, and integrate their organisations. And from such developments might well issue a social transformation ... Cheers, Rob. Ken Livingstone is already supping with capitalism with not too long a spoon. Due to be formally invested on Monday as London Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone told GMTV's The Sunday Programme that he was in discussion with major international firms who have investment programmes planned in the UK. "They are all working on one assumption, that is we will be in the Euro by 2003," he said. "If we are not...they will be rethinking their investment plans, I have no doubt about that. Any sign that we were pulling back from that assumption we are on our way in would be devastating for jobs in London." "We have got to play on a world stage. One third of firms in Britain now link in to International Corporations. You can't opt out of the world. You can't stop the world because we want to get off and go back to the 1950s." His argument, and that of John Monks, head of the British Trades Union Congress, is to support industry, including industrial capitalism, against finance capitalism. And not just national industrial capital. Nissan warned earlier this week that jobs could be under threat unless Britain joins the single currency. Mr Monks said that there were "quite a lot of Nissans. Toyota have been saying the same sort of thing and we know it was a factor behind the BMW decision in relation to Longbridge. Is this a compromise too far? ust because Lenin said it, does not make it right, but he did say "From their daily experience the masses know perfectly well the value of geographical and economic ties and the advantage of a big market and a big state." That of course does not mean that people with socialist credentials should become the cheer leaders of industrial capital. But do not the arguments of Livingstone and Monks stand on their own merits? Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Next steps re future of utah listsn
G'day Hans/comrades, I, for one, am happy to go with what you think is best. You're the one putting in all the effort, you're the main reason we're here together, and you know the people concerned best. And I dare say all here would agree with me that both your intentions and decisions have hitherto proven themselves to be beyond criticism. I hope the new lot won't take exception to the existence of one or two moderators who might not themselves be wed to Leninism on one or two of the lists. It doesn't affect the constitution or conversation of those lists, after all. I shall pass on your post to Thaxis forthwith. Thanks again, Hans, for everything. And have a wonderful holiday, mate! Cheers, Rob. Dear comrades: This July and August I will be taking an extended vacation for the first time since hosting the utah marxism lists. I will take my 10-year old daughter on a 5-week trip to Europe. Therefore I had to think about how the utah lists could continue to function in my absence. When I was a member of the spoon collective trying to defend the existence of marxism space among left liberals, the argument of the liberals was often: why do the marxists come to us, why can't they manage their own lists? To me, the answer was clear: marxists do not trust each other. Marxists want liberal list administrators, because they are afraid that if their list is technically controlled by a competing organization, then they may be booted out, or their subscriber base may be misused, or just the fact that the other organization provides this list makes it look like the list is merely a front for that organization. When the spooners unceremoniously kicked the marxists out, I took it upon myself to host them from my office. My hope was that the Utah server would become just one of a network of servers located around the world, organized in such a way that if one of those servers would be shut down others would be able to step in, because we keep current copies of the subscriber lists at various different locations. I still think this is how it should be done. But there are not enough marxists with the skills and the time and the internet access for this to be feasible on a personal basis, therefore it all became dependent on my person. I had to re-think this because of my upcoming vacation, and I think I know now what my error was: instead of individuals it should be organizations! I spoke to an acquaintance at the Workers World Party, which seems to be the largest and one of the sanest Party organization in the US, and put the following question to him. I will never do anything like this without the consent of you all list adminstrators, therefore it was all hypothetical: assuming I get the approval of my list administrators, would he be willing to step in and help administering the list. Originally I just wondered if he might be willing to do the remote administration of the lists here in Utah, with some kind of emergency preparation in case the server here has hardware failure (which I am doing from here too: all the lists and archives are copied to a backup system nightly, therefore we will never lose more than a few hours). I knew that he was a linux administrator, and therefore he had the skills to do this. My acquaintance came back very agreeably, and he even made a further-going offer: the wwp would be willing to host the lists, together with web pages, on their server. The addresses of the lists would then be [EMAIL PROTECTED] etc. I thought this was an interesting proposition, therefore I wrote him a long email, in which I said among others the following: It is absolutely essential that marxists of all stripes should have free access to these resources. ... Especially comrades in the developing world should be invited to use these resources. If the WWP were to host these lists, they should not consider it their revolutionary duty to assign subscribers to each of these lists to argue the WWP point of view. The scientific discourse on these lists is self-cleaning and does not need monitoring or manipulation. ... Certain rhetorical tricks simply don't work any more if you can read them repeatedly in the archives. Here is my question: Would the WWP be willing to host these lists on this basis, not as an organizational tool but as a service to the infrastructure of the movement? I argued along the following lines: If these lists, which have been known to be independent under the sponsorship of spoon and myself, now migrate to wwpublish and maintain their independence, then this will be a step forward since we are starting to build an information infrastructure which is truly independent of private businesses and academia, and which overcomes some of the splits and distrust among communist organizations. Maybe we can even become the catalyst by which these organizations start to talk to each other? Here is another literal quote: Perhaps we should form a
M-TH: Re: Next steps re future of utah listsn
Beaut words, Hugh! Onwards and upwards! Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Almost entirely irrelevant response to Bill
G'day Bill, Hope you've recovered from the Brumbies choking during the big one. I would never have recovered had the Brumbies choked. I have recovered. Ergo: The Brumbies did not choke. Referee Watson was the Crusaders' best contributor by far - especially in his stoic refusal to react to all that professional fouling by the Crusaders' defence in the second half. And anyway, what's a North Island Blue like you doing coming over all South Island Crusadish? You're reaching a bit, aren't you, comrade? S'pose you're rather obliged to just now ... That said, Bill, thanks for the following. It all sounds quite right, for mine. Any other takers? Cheers, Rob. I think one of the really interesting things about reportage on Fiji has been the lack of class in the pundits analysis. The way I read it is the post independence constitution perpetuated and strengthened the racial fix in Fijian politics. This fix pretty much guaranteed the ethnic Fijian elite's hold on power. The labour party, always multiracial but with strong Indian support, broke this fix when a substantial number of the urban working class/poor ethnic Fijians began voting for it on essentially class lines. This is obviously intolerable to the ethnic Fijian elite who have been trying to recreate, with little success , the racial straight jacket that under pins their power. I think their efforts are doomed long term as modernisation will depopulate and educate the rural areas on which their power is founded while at the same time creating a growing pool of proletarianised urban ethnic Fijians who will vote increasingly on class lines. If I where them I'd do a deal now as medium long term they could lose big time due to anything from the above to the Indians simple out numbering them greatly and winning a show down to outside intervention from say India (no more Uganda's) in a crisis in say ten years. I know this isn't fashionable but I'd give 2 and 1/2 cheers for capitalist pseudo democracy over traditional society any day. Cheers Bill --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Russian 'intervention' in Afghanistan
Morning all, I see Moscow is threatening to drop some bombs on Afghanistan because the Taliban is allegedly (and unsurprisingly) helping out the Chechen separatists. If that's their logic - and they may well have embarked on a road whence there is no exit for Putin - they'll end up having to waste great chunks of real estate across quite a few borders, no? This could be bigger than Russia's economy (and her mothers) can handle, doncha reckon? What got Putin in could yet take him (and a few thousand countrymen) out. And I've no faith in what and who might follow in a defeated, poverty-stricken erstwhile superpower - the historical record on that kind of thing is not quite on the side of the angels (not least because the hegemons du jour prefer their foreign radicals to be of the right - as Trotsky warned when the boy Hitler first came under notice - and as Caspian oil projections might recommend). Nervously yours, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Download entire ISO/SWP squabble!
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Length: 615 Subject: Re: M-TH: Download entire ISO/SWP squabble! Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Precedence: bulk Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Length: 615 Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Originating-IP: 12.78.156.231 Subject: Re: M-TH: Download entire ISO/SWP squabble! Love to, Bob, only I'll be alphabetising the spicerack for the foreseeable future ... Yours-in-search-of-a-party-who-reckon-agreeing-on-the-social-ownership-and-contr ol-of-the-means-of-production-is-more-than-enough-reason-to-be-friends, Rob. The entire 49 page internal squabble between the American and English Cliffite organizations is now easily downloaded in a zipfile at the homepage of Cockroach! Just click on the link; "The entire ISO/SWP squabble! " and download it and read the entire sordid history in your browser... --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Download entire ISO/SWP squabble!
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Length: 1090 Subject: Re: M-TH: Download entire ISO/SWP squabble! Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Precedence: bulk Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Length: 1090 Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Originating-IP: 12.78.156.231 Subject: Re: M-TH: Download entire ISO/SWP squabble! Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Length: 615 Subject: Re: M-TH: Download entire ISO/SWP squabble! Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Precedence: bulk Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Length: 615 Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Originating-IP: 12.78.156.231 Subject: Re: M-TH: Download entire ISO/SWP squabble! Love to, Bob, only I'll be alphabetising the spicerack for the foreseeable future ... Yours-in-search-of-a-party-who-reckon-agreeing-on-the-social-ownership-and-contr ol-of-the-means-of-production-is-more-than-enough-reason-to-be-friends, Rob. The entire 49 page internal squabble between the American and English Cliffite organizations is now easily downloaded in a zipfile at the homepage of Cockroach! Just click on the link; "The entire ISO/SWP squabble! " and download it and read the entire sordid history in your browser... --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Download entire ISO/SWP squabble!
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Length: 1567 Subject: Re: M-TH: Download entire ISO/SWP squabble! Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Precedence: bulk Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Length: 1567 Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Originating-IP: 12.78.186.139 Subject: Re: M-TH: Download entire ISO/SWP squabble! Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Length: 1090 Subject: Re: M-TH: Download entire ISO/SWP squabble! Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Precedence: bulk Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Length: 1090 Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Originating-IP: 12.78.156.231 Subject: Re: M-TH: Download entire ISO/SWP squabble! Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Length: 615 Subject: Re: M-TH: Download entire ISO/SWP squabble! Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Precedence: bulk Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Length: 615 Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Originating-IP: 12.78.156.231 Subject: Re: M-TH: Download entire ISO/SWP squabble! Love to, Bob, only I'll be alphabetising the spicerack for the foreseeable future ... Yours-in-search-of-a-party-who-reckon-agreeing-on-the-social-ownership-and-contr ol-of-the-means-of-production-is-more-than-enough-reason-to-be-friends, Rob. The entire 49 page internal squabble between the American and English Cliffite organizations is now easily downloaded in a zipfile at the homepage of Cockroach! Just click on the link; "The entire ISO/SWP squabble! " and download it and read the entire sordid history in your browser... --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: (Hopefully) all fixed
G'day Thaxists, I've hopped off the fence for a minute to uns*bscribe the offending e-dress and all should be fine again. Sorry for the bandwidth hassle, comrades! Cheers, Rob . --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: List problems
Me, too, David. Can't do anything about it right now, though. If it's still playing up in the morning (antipodean time), we'll get on to it, then. 'Night all, Rob. -- From: David Welch [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: M-TH: List problems Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 14:42:50 +0100 (BST) Hi, I'm seeing lots of duplicate messages from the marxism-thaxis list with the headers included in the body of the message, so the subject is blank for example. It might a problem at my end but I'm seeing it on both of my emails addresses that are subscribed. On Mon, 15 May 2000, Jim heartfield wrote: [...] --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Download entire ISO/SWP squabble!
Love to, Bob, only I'll be alphabetising the spicerack for the foreseeable future ... Yours-in-search-of-a-party-who-reckon-agreeing-on-the-social-ownership-and-contr ol-of-the-means-of-production-is-more-than-enough-reason-to-be-friends, Rob. The entire 49 page internal squabble between the American and English Cliffite organizations is now easily downloaded in a zipfile at the homepage of Cockroach! Just click on the link; "The entire ISO/SWP squabble! " and download it and read the entire sordid history in your browser... --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: British intervention in Sierra Leone
G'day Jim, Sez you: As I read it Lenin's characterisation of imperialism was not simply a euphemism for military intervention, but precisely the predomination of capitalism's reactionary side over its progressive. Lenin proposes as an example of the progressive side, the application of science to production, with large monopolies. But the struggle for the division and re-division of the world by the decadent nations, he counts as reactionary, and I tend to agree with him. Not sure we can make so clear a distinction between the two, comrade. Large monoplies need a certain amout of ever-growing sway for their ever-more-efficiently produced goodies. The rules of 'resource dependence' in general, and IP regimes/English language/low transaction costs in currently important particular, kinda point to imperialism as a technology of, and fundamental to, large-scale monopoly capitalism, no? This refusal to discriminate between positive and negative policies of imperialism is consistent with the Trotskyist view that opposed participation in the Second World War, As one who (impotently) opposed the NATO business from the off, but (irrelevantly) eventually came to support intervention in East Timor (albeit still long before anyone actually got there), I reckon the question is usually one (given the general nonviability of the territories involved) of, well, which option delivers the least cadavers, rape victims and brutalised kids in the foreseeable future? It's a hard one (history kinda going on and on as it does - eventually making fools of us all), but ya gotta act in the moment, eh? Anyway, my thinking was as simple as that. I still reckon I scored 2/2. so I guess I'm still that simple. On Sierra Leone, well, the Brits are fighting on behalf of one side already, aren't they. Let's hope they picked the winners. Because there ain't no peacekeeping option in this one any more. Well, I'm all for nylon, passenger flights, nuclear power, computers, radar and all the other progressive spin-offs of the Second World War. I find less to celebrate in Churchill's instruction to General Scobie to occupy Athens as if it were a conquered power, disarm the partisans and hand the country over to the fascist generals who ruled it until the 1970s. It seems to me that the active participants in the Second World War, the partisan movements of Europe were cynically abandoned by the allies, who hung back while Hitler finished them off. Only when the Yugoslav and Russian forces threatened to defeat Germany on their own did Churchill and Roosevelt open up a Western Front, out of sheer panic. Russia did a fair bit of their own hanging back. Wottabout Warsaw? I'm interested to know whose side should we be on between, say, Subbhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army and the British Empire? Was the defeat of the British in Singapore by the Japanese a blow against democracy, or did it rather dislodge British imperialism from East Asia? Were Stafford Cripps and Rajani Palme Dutt right to tour India in 1941 pleading with Congress supporters not to strike against the British Crown? I take an unorthodox view on this. As at 1941, Britain was a less awful imperial master than Japan, for mine. And I don't see, given how third-world nationalism was excited and how it took its course, that something very like the proliferation of independence that followed the war, would not have followed one in which the allies had prevailed at Singapore. You'd have to take the counterfactuals an awful long way to get from that to a significant change in the events that brought Mao to power in China, f'rinstance. And that was the biggest item on the Asian menu, as it turned out, no? And what about the engineering apprentices and Bevin boys who went on strike in Britain during the war. Was the Communist Party right to denounce them as fascist agents, and supply their leaders' names for employers blacklists? A hard one, and mebbe I'm too much the George Orwell about this, but give me Westminster and Bond St over the Reichstag and the SS any day. Again, you'd have to get very counterfactual indeed to get to a Russian takeover of Britain - a thought that had entered Orwell's mind, so it might have entered those of the Bevins, but I reckon British involvement had a fair bit to do with Russia's victory, meself. I know Chas wouldn't agree, but Britain-as-landing-strip, Britain as staging-point-for-war-supplies, and Britain as constant threat, all had a lot to do with Russia having the chance to restructure behind the Urals in 1942 and come a hunting in 1943, I reckon. Idle speculation all, but that's what you seemed to be asking for, no? Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Membership etc
G'day George, There is a way to do this, but I'm not sure whether everyone has access to it (I really don't grasp the technology's workings, I'm afraid). I don't think this list has discussed a policy on disclosing the e-identities of subscribers. For my part, I am happy for such disclosure to happen, but maybe that's an issue for Thaxists to discuss first. My reservation is based on the tendency of most Thaxists to remain in lurk mode. This may, I suppose, be for a good reason (although a few more contributors would greatly be appreciated). If Thaxists don't wish to make their feelings known on-list, please drop me a line off-list. Or if the information has always been publicly available, it'd be good to know that, too. Moderators should know that sorta stuff, I s'pose ... Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Occasional Moderator's Report
G'day Thaxists, Thaxis has 103 edresses s*bscribed to it. Ya can't tell much about nation of origin from edresses these days, as many s*bscribe through US-registered edresses from all over the world. That said, I spy Australians, Brazilians, Russians, Bulgarians, Britishers, Kiwis, Turks, Finns, Kiwis, Canadians, Swedes, Argentinians, Irish, Danes, Germans, French, Italians and USAers. I don't know just now which countries are denoted by 'il' and 'sg', but a warm thaxalotl g'day to you, too. Now, if only we could harness a bit more of that multicultural potential on-list, eh, comrades? Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Samir Amin on C20 (and C21?) #3
Title: Samir Amin on C20 (and C21?) #3 US HEGEMONY ATTACKS --THE 21ST CENTURY WILL NOT BE AMERICAN: In this chaotic conjuncture, the US took the offensive once more to reestablish its global hegemony and to organise the world system in its economic, political and military dimensions according to this hegemony. Has US hegemony entered its decline? Or has it begun a renewal that would make the 21st century "America's"? If we examine the economic dimension in the narrow sense of the term, measured roughly in terms of per capita GDP, and the structural tendencies of the balance of trade, we will conclude that American hegemony, so crushing in 1945, receded as early as the 1960s and '70s with Europe and Japan's brilliant resurgence. The Europeans bring it up continuously, in familiar terms: the European Union is the first economic and commercial force on a world scale, etc. The statement is hasty, however, for, if it is true that a single European market does exist, and even that a single currency is emerging, the same cannot be said of "a" European economy (at least, not yet). There is no such thing as a "European productive system"; such a productive system, on the contrary, can be spoken of in the case of the United States. The economies set up in Europe through the constitution of historical bourgeoisie in the relevant states, and the shaping, within this framework, of autocentric national productive systems (even if these are also open, even aggressively so), have stayed more or less the same. There are no European TNCs: only British, German, or French TNCs. Capital interpenetration is no denser in inter-European relations that in the bilateral relations between each European nation and the US or Japan. If Europe's productive systems have been eroded, therefore, weakened by "globalised interdependence" to such an extent that national policies lose a good deal of their efficiency, this is precisely to the advantage of globalisation and the forces that dominate it, not to that of "European integration", which does not exist as yet. The US's hegemony rests on a second pillar, however: that of military power. Built up systematically since 1945, it covers the whole of the planet, which is parcelled out into regions, each under the relevant US military command. This hegemonism had been forced to accept the peaceful coexistence imposed by Soviet military might. Now that the page is turned, the US went on the offensive to reinforce its global domination, which Henry Kissinger summed up in a memorably arrogant phrase: "Globalisation is only another word for US domination." This American global strategy has five aims: 1) to neutralise and subjugate the other partners in the Triad (Europe and Japan), while minimising their ability to act outside the US's orbit; 2) to establish military control over NATO while "Latin-Americanising" the fragments of the former Soviet world; 3) to exert uncontested influence in the Middle East, especially over its petroleum resources; 4) to dismantle China, ensure the subordination of the other great nations (India, Brazil), and prevent the constitution of regional blocs potentially capable of negotiating the terms of globalisation; 5) to marginalise the regions of the South that represent no strategic interest. The favoured instrument of this hegemony is therefore military, as the US's highest-ranking representatives never tire of repeating ad nauseam. This hegemony, which guarantees in turn that of the Triad over the world system, therefore demands that America's allies accept to navigate in its wake. Great Britain, Germany and Japan make no bones (not even cultural ones) about this imperative. But this means that the speeches with which European politicians water their audiences --regarding Europe's economic power --have no real significance. By placing itself exclusively on the terrain of mercantile squabbles, Europe, which has no political or social project of its own, has lost before the race has even started. Washington knows this well. The principal means in the service of the strategy chosen by Washington is NATO, which explains why it has survived the collapse of the adversary that constituted the organisation's raison d'ètre. NATO still speaks today in the name of the "international community", thereby expressing its contempt for the democratic principle that governs this said community through the UN. Yet NATO acts only to serve Washington's aims --no more and no less --as the history of the past decade, from the Gulf War to Kosovo, goes to show. The strategy employed by the Triad under US direction takes as its aim the construction of a unipolar world organised along two complementary principles: the unilateral dictatorship of dominant TNC capital, and the unfurling of a US military empire, to which all nations must be compelled to submit. No other project may be tolerated within this
M-TH: Samir Amin on C20 (and C21?) #2
Title: Samir Amin on C20 (and C21?) #2 AFTER THE WAR --FROM TAKE-OFF (1945-1970) TO CRISIS (1970-PRESENT): The second World War inaugurated a new phase in the world system. The take-off of the post-war period (1945-1975) was based on the complementarity of the three social projects of the age: a) in the West, the welfare state project of national social-democracy, which based its action on the efficiency of productive interdependent national systems; b) the "Bandung project" of bourgeois national construction on the system's periphery (development ideology); c) finally, the Sovietist project of "capitalism without capitalists", relatively autonomised from the dominant world system. The double defeat of fascism and old colonialism had indeed created a conjuncture allowing the popular classes, the vic tims of capitalist expansion, to impose the forms of capital regulation and accumulation, to which capital itself was forced to adjust, and which were at the root of this take-off. The crisis that followed (starting in 1968-1975) is one of the erosion, then the collapse of the systems on which the previous take-off had rested. This period, which has not yet come to a close, is therefore not that of the establishment of a new world order, as is too often claimed, but that of chaos, which has not been overcome --far from it. The policies implemented under these conditions do not constitute a positive strategy of capital expansion, but simply seek to manage the crisis of capital. They have not succeeded, because the "spontaneous" project produced by the immediate domination of capital, in the absence of any framework imposed by social forces through coherent, efficient reactions, is still a utopia: that of world management via what is referred to as "the market" --that is, the immediate, short-term interests of capital's dominant forces. In modern history, phases of reproduction based on stable accumulation systems are succeeded by moments of chaos. In the first of these phases, as in the post-war take-off, the succession of events gives the impression of a certain monotony, because the social and international relations that make up its architecture are stabilised. These relations are therefore reproduced through the functioning of dynamics in the system. In these phases, active, defined and precise historical subjects are clearly visible (active social classes, states, political parties and dominant social organisations). Their practices appear solid, and their reactions are predictable under almost all circumstances; the ideologies that motivate them benefit from a seemingly uncontested legi timacy. At these moments, conjunctures may change, but the structures remain stable. Prediction is then possible, even easy. The danger appears when we extrapolate these predictions too far, as if the structures in question were eternal, and marked "the end of history". The analysis of the contradictions that riddle these structures is then replaced by what the post-modernists rightly call "grand narratives", which propose a linear vision of movement, guided by "inevitability", or "the laws of history". The subjects of history disappear, making room for supposedly objective structural logics. But the contradictions of which we are speaking do their work quietly, and one day the "stable" structures collapse. History then enters a phase that may be described later as "transitional", but which is lived as a transition toward the unknown, and during which new historical subjects are crystallised slowly. These subjects inaugurate new practices, proceeding by trial and error, and legitimising them through new ideological discourses, often confused at the outset. Only when the processes of qualitative change have matured sufficiently do new social relations appear, defining "post-transitional" systems. The post-war take-off allowed for massive economic, political and social transformations in all regions of the world. These transformations were the product of social regulations imposed on capital by the working and popular classes, not, as liberal ideology would have it, by the logic of market expansion. But these transformations were so great that they defined a new framework for the challenges that confront the world's peoples now, on the threshold of the 21st century. For a long time --from the industrial revolution at the beginning of the 19th century to the 1930s (as far as the Soviet Union is concerned), then the 1950s (for the Third World) --the contrast between the centre and peripheries of the modern world system was almost synonymous with the opposition between industrialised and non-industrialised countries. The rebellions in the peripheries --whether these were socialist revolutions (Russia, China) or national liberation movements --revised this old form of polarisation by engaging their societies in the modernisation process. Gradually,
M-TH: Wallerstein on 21C Leftism #1
G' day Thaxists, A contentious piece but well worth a quiet half-hour in the pub with a thoughtful pint. Shan't chance my own half-arsed response yet, but think it well worth having a solid chat about. Please have a peek, comrades! Plenty here for us to chew on, I reckon. Best to all, Rob. "A Left Politics for the 21st Century? or, Theory and Praxis Once Again"* http://fbc.binghamton.edu/iwleftpol.htm by Immanuel Wallerstein Fernand Braudel Center 1999 There is said to be a Yugoslav aphorism that goes like this: "The only absolutely certain thing is the future, since the past is constantly changing."1 The world left is living today with two pasts that have almost totally disappeared, and rather suddenly at that. This is very unsettling. The first past that has disappeared is the trajectory of the French Revolution. The second past that has disappeared is the trajectory of the Russian Revolution. They both disappeared more or less simultaneously and jointly, in the 1980s. Let me carefully explain what I mean by this. The French Revolution is of course a symbol. It symbolizes a theory of history that has been very widely shared for two centuries, and shared far beyond the confines of the world left. Most of the world's liberal center also shared this theory of history, and today even part of the world's right. It could be said to have been the dominant view within the world-system throughout most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its premise was the belief in progress and the essential rationality of humanity. The theory was that history could be seen as a linear upward process. The world was en route to the good society, and the French Revolution constituted and symbolized a major leap forward in this process. There were many variants on this theory. Some persons, especially in the United States, wished to substitute the American for the French Revolution in this story. Others, especially in Great Britain, were in favor of substituting the English Revolution. Some persons wished to eliminate all political revolutions from the story, and make this theory of history the story of the steady commercialization of the world's economic processes, or the steady expansion of its electoral processes, or the fulfillment of a purported historic mission of the State (with a capital S). But whatever the details, all these variants shared the sense of the inevitability and the irreversibility of the historical process. This was a hopeful theory of history since it offered a happy ending. No matter how terrible the present (as for example when the fortunes of Nazi Germany seemed to be riding high, or when racist colonialism seemed at its most oppressive), believers (and most of us were believers) took solace in the knowledge we claimed to have, that "history was on our side." It was an encouraging theory even for those who were privileged in the present, since it offered the expectation that eventually everyone else would share the privileges (without the present beneficiaries losing any) and that therefore the oppressed would cease annoying the oppressors with their complaints. The only problem with this theory of history is that it did not seem to survive the test of empirical experience very well. This is where the Russian Revolution came in. It was a sort of codicil to the French Revolution. Its message was that the theory of history symbolized by the French Revolution was incomplete because it held true only insofar as the proletariat (or the popular masses) were energized under the aegis of a dedicated group of cadres organized as a party or party/state. This codicil we came to call Leninism. Leninism was a theory of history espoused only by the world left, and in fact by only a part of it at most. Still, it would be fatuous to deny that Leninism came to have a hold on a significant portion of the world's populations, especially in the years 1945-1970. The Leninist version of history was, if anything, more resolutely optimistic than the standard French Revolution model. This was because Leninism insisted that there was a simple piece of material evidence one could locate if one wanted to verify that history was evolving as planned. Leninists insisted that wherever a Leninist party was in undisputed power in a state, that state was self-evidently on the road to historical progress, and furthermore could never turn back. The problem is that Leninist parties tended to be in power only in economically less well-off zones of the world, and conditions were not always brilliant in such countries. Still, the belief in Leninism was a powerful antidote to any anxieties caused by the fact that immediate conditions or events within a country governed by a Leninist party were dismaying. I do not need to rehearse for you the degree to which all theories of progress have become suspect in the last two decades,
M-TH: Wallerstein on 21C Leftism #2
2. Systemic Transition What does it mean to say that a system enters into systemic crisis? It means that the secular trends are reaching asymptotes that they cannot cross. It means that the mechanisms that have been used up to that point to return the system to relative equilibria no longer can function because they require moving the system too near to the asymptote. It means, in Hegelian language, that the contradictions of the system can no longer be contained. It means, in the language of the sciences of complexity, that the system has moved far from equilibrium, that it is entering into a period of chaos, that its vectors will bifurcate, and eventually a new system or systems will be created. It means that the "noise" in the system, far from being an element that can be ignored, will come to the forefront. It means that the outcome is intrinsically uncertain, and is creative. This description of crises in systems applies to any and all systems, from that of the entire universe to that of subatomic worlds, from physical to biological to historical social systems. It applies most fully and with greatest complexity to historical social systems, since they are the most complex of all systems other than that of the cosmos itself. Using such a model is not reducing social phenomena to physical phenomena. It is exactly the reverse. It is interpreting physical phenomena as though they were social phenomena, with agents, imagination, self-organization, and creative activity. I have always found it curious that this description has been thought to be mechanistic and, even more strange, pessimistic. It is a form of analysis that directly denies the validity of what we have termed "mechanical" in the social thought of the last few centuries. And it is not at all pessimistic because it is necessarily neutral in its prediction of outcome. Neither good nor bad outcomes are predicted. No outcomes can be predicted, since alternative outcomes depend on an infinity of unknown and unknowable choices. The way we might think about a chaotic period of systemic transition is that it is one in which "free will" more or less reigns supreme, unfettered (as it normally is) by the straightjacket of custom and structural constraints. The French Revolution and the Russian Revolution were both incredible efforts to transform the world, engaging the mobilized energies of many, many people in many parts of the world, and over a long period of time, and yet they changed so much less than they were intended to change. And to the extent that they thought they were implementing changes, many of these changes were later reversed or subverted. By the yardstick of their hopes and their proclamations, they cannot be said to have been notable successes, despite the fact that they left indelible marks on everything that has occurred since their time. The politics of the transition are different. It is the politics of grabbing advantage and position at a moment in time when politically anything is possible and when most actors find it extremely difficult to formulate middle-range strategies. Ideological and analytic confusion becomes a structural reality rather than an accidental variable. The economics of everyday life is subject to wilder swings than those to which we have been accustomed and for which we have easy explanations. Above all, the social fabric seems less reliable and the institutions on which we rely to guarantee our immediate security seem to be faltering. Thus antisocial crime seems widespread and this perception creates fear and the reflex of the expansion of privatized security measures and forces. If this sounds familiar, it is because it is happening, and in varying degrees throughout the world-system. One has to ask what are the likely reactions of different political forces in such a situation. The easiest to predict is the reaction of the upper strata of the world-system. They are of course a complex mix and do not constitute an organized caucus. But they probably can be divided into two main groups. The majority will share in the general confusion and will resort to their traditional short-run politics, perhaps with a higher dose of repressiveness insofar as the politics of concessions will not be seen as achieving the short-run calm it is supposed to produce. And then there is the small minority among the upper strata who are sufficiently insightful and intelligent to perceive the fact that the present system is collapsing and who wish to ensure that any new system be one which preserves their privileged position. The only strategy for such a group is the Lampedusa strategy - to change everything in order that nothing change. This group will have firm resolve and a great deal of resources at their command. They can hire intelligence and skill, more or less as they wish. They will do so. They may have already been doing so. I do not know what this group will come up with, or by what means they will seek to
M-TH: Bolivia's Banzer reverts to type
**BOLIVIA UNDER MARTIAL LAW** As of 10 am Saturday morning Bolivia was declared under martial law by President Hugo Banzer. The drastic move comes at the end of a week of protests, general strikes, and transportation blockages that have left major areas of the country at a virtual standstill. It also follows, by just hours, the surprise announcement by state officials yesterday afternoon that the government would concede to the protests' main demands, to break a widely-despised contract under which the city of Cochabamba's public water system was sold off to foreign investors last year. The concession was quickly reversed by the national government, and the local governor resigned, explaining that he didn't want to take responsibility for bloodshed that might result. Banzer, who ruled Bolivia as a dictator from 1971-78, has taken an action that suspends almost all civil rights, disallows gatherings of more than four people and puts severe limits on freedom of the press. One after another, local radio stations have been taken over by military forces or forced off the air. Reporters have been arrested The neighborhood where most of the city's broadcast antennas are located had its power shut off at approximately noon local time. Through the night police searched homes for members of the widely-backed water protests, arresting as many as twenty. The local police chief has been instated by the President as governor of the state. Blockades erected by farmers in rural areas continue across the country, cutting off some cities from food and transportation. Large crowds of angry residents, many armed with sticks and rocks are massing on the city's center where confrontations with military and police are escalating. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Revolution and the tasks of the day
G'day Dave'n'Hugh, A really really quick 'un ... Sez Hugh of the little disagreement of late: it's part of the struggle for the leadership of the working class, It might be an analogue of some such struggle in some place and time, but I doubt anyone here really seeks to lead the working class. I don't anyway. Need to qualify this: true, revolutionary Bolsheviks -- there's a lot of fakes around, causing problems until a clear and trustworthy international leadership crystallizes. 'Clear and trustworthy' to whom, Hugh? Whilst purported socdems may purportedly 'lead' the class now, an awful lot clearly don't trust 'em. Yet no other international leadership' has arisen of late. Why's that, d'you think? Dave taxes my like thusly: SDs are sectarian because they substitute themselves for the proletariat, betray it, and generally shit on it as unable, incapable, unprepared etc for the holy state of SD enlightenment. How do we do that? And Hugh agrees with Dave: Bureaucratic, moralizing and intolerant are words that spring to mind to describe the disorganizing activities of the Social-Democrats. And the bureaucrats (of whatever school) can always be told by the vitriol they spray on the working class for being "unable, incapable and unprepared". Well, Hugh blames poor or treacherous leadership. And I reckon the western working class is not willing, or feels it would be too risky, to overthrow the capitalist system. I certainly don't think the vast majority of the world's people is 'unable' to do, or 'incapable' of doing, anything. 'Unprepared' I'll go along with. They must be, else they'd recognise the enduring Truth of at least one of the schools of Trotskyism - no, Hugh? If prepared they are, where is their leader? The most recent name for this enlightenment seems to be 'market socialism' - well actually that has been overtaken by 'radical democracy'. Reckon I might be happy with the tag 'radical democrat market socialist', but ... My favourite is the "New Realism" of the British Labour Movement. Marvellous phrases they think up to cover their capitulation to capitalist exploitation. You see, they never ever consider the capitalist system as one based on exploitation. Well, I'm certainly convinced by Marx's theory of exploitation (so was market socialist Justin Schwartz, incidentally). SDs and Bolshelviks can bloc in defence of workers democratic rights, Let's settle for that then. but as soon as a pre-revolutionary situation emerges, SDs sellout, witness Luxemburg and Liebknecht. So because I favour a market socialism scenario, I'd murder the likes of Rosa Luxemburg? How dos that follow? I don't think Rob, for instance, is really very aware of the similarities between some of his own principles and the principles of the leaders he understands to be betraying the historical needs of the class. Fair comment. I haven't a clue as to what I have in common with 'New Labour' or the ALP ... Bolsheviks can claim responsibility for the only socialist revolution in history. It seems ahistorical to take the credit for October, but not a deal of the responsibility for what happened afterwards. Cut the shit and get down to some serious politics. Like that sad list of splits and purges on the new web site of your new party, Dave? You see, the degree of agreement you demand of others (generally before the event of the shared practice in which theory is supposed to be constituted) will ever lengthen lists like that. I can't discuss anything to do with market socialism, because it's treacerous to do so. So I can't get in for a start, and no interested lay person gets to weigh the arguments - nor would s/he feel tempted to chance a speculative post on the question. Just as nearly 90 Thaxists don't. Serious politics requires contact with the shit -- that's part of the price to be paid. That much is very true, Hugh. Then you say of my argument that: Cos what he writes here is largely irrelevant. The subjective consciousness of the working class is not what determines a scientific view of how society works or what needs to be changed to make it better. Hiding behind distorted mass consciousness is apologizing for the shit. To recognise something, and to consider it important, is not quite the same thing as hiding behind it. And I don't think a fear of bolshevik takes on 'scientific socialism' constitutes a 'distorted mass consciousness'. But that'd be because I've a distorted subjectivity, I s'pose. But obviously to make serious progress in politics, these distorted elements of working-class consciousness have to be taken into account I'm 'hiding' when I say that, but you're being scientific, eh? is made very clear in the outline of the transitional method in the Transitional Programme. The transitional method is the interface between the masses with their distorted consciousness (instilled in them by the miseducation system and their treacherous mass leaders, naturally) and the
M-TH: Re: Market socialism the 90s
Just a quickie while I watch Australia play the Czecg Republic (the latter lead 1-0 just after half-time in a cracking good match), Thinking about Hugh and Doug's latest posts, it occurs to me that market socialism may actually play a part in the mass mobilisation process itself (should one come along). By and large, people don't oppose the idea of state ownership of necessarily large or particularly crucial enterprises, especially in those sectors where a 'natural monopoly' argument might be made (at least privatisation is having a hard time of it here). They realise lots of conscious planning is necessarily going on already, as huge conglomerates threaten their operations here (like the newly merged Mitsubishi seem to be doing in a world full of unbought cars), and would much rather that the planners be accountable to a democratically constituted assembly (we are democrats at heart). They like the idea of cooperatives - indeed can get rather moved by the idea (the recently revived communitarian reflex to currently felt modes of alienation). They are wed to the idea of 'moms'n'dads' small businesses in sectors where something like a continuum of traders and low market thresholds apply (yeah, they're quite romantic about 'small business'). They'd see themselves as far more securely placed under an income-policy regime and would approve of prioritising employment over micro profitability (because politicians and CEOs can bang on about 'consoomers' all they like (we all know we're workers, too - and for more of our waking life than we're shoppers at that). Not everyone, of course, but lots nonetheless. Not only would they be able to imagine such a world; they might even still silently subscribe to some 'moral economy' notion whereby they see this sort of arrangement as their birthright. And once credible people give voice to this sort of social option, questions might arise as to what's happened to make it all so unlikely an option. I reckon there's real mass mobilisation potential in a platform of this sort - and one that would make sense to Europeans (on both sides of the erstwhile Curtain) and even some Anglo-Saxon political cultures (mebbe all except the US). Add a global recession to the mix (and I'm inclined to think Wall Street could conceivably fall enough to start a credit crisis of monstrous proportions - indeed, I submit that anyone who subscribes to the economic orthodoxy of a century, and the valuation formulations that attend it, would be expecting a pretty big and enduring crisis), and you have not only a profound legitimation crisis, but also a dramatic realignment of people's perceived material interests (as so many of the western proletariat and petit bourgeoisie lose that overly-cherished stock-market nest-egg). People might just be prepared to risk a mass stink in such circumstances. But they have to believe there's something believable at the other end (I think they'll risk a lot for what may seem to some here as very little - and not believe enough in , nor even want, any more than that). And if, like me, they daren't hope beyond that sort of world, well, fine. If those who do dare hope for more turn out to become more convincing in the context of this new world, well, that's fine, too. I'm happy to explore our potential to its (historically contingent) limits if a lot of other people are. That said, I tend to agree with Hugh that the sort of world I have in mind is itself a scenario that would meet concerted and violent opposition from corporate capital and current parliamentary parties alike. While those two keep their interdependent mutually-supportive institutional positions, even real social democracy seems beyond reach. I keep rereading Marx's optimistic speech at The Hague in 1873, about revolution by constitutional action - and keep trying to convince myself that a new party (built from the grassroots up to the level of international alliances) could perform that suddenly Herculean task. And I have to believe it can happen, no matter how doubtful it seems to me at the moment. The trouble with wholly extra-constitutional violent revolution (aside from heaps of dead people) is you tend to need a war economy and martial law if you're gonna win it and hang on to your gains - all of which generates a centralised hierarchy, replete with both economic and political power. And I don't reckon the formguide makes for very good reading when it comes to post-bellum single-party regimes. A old-fashioned left-social-democrat is a homeless creature in this day and age, eh? What's worse, the Czechs have just won 3-1. Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: (Fwd) LM NEWS: The end of LM magazine
Commiserations, Jim! You're too bloody talented to stay out in the cold for long, I know. But I'd been enjoying those LM e-mails ... All the very best, comrade! --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong (production for sale, or not)
G'day again Thaxists, Quoth Hugh: a) that Trotsky is in fact arguing for market socialism as an *alternative* to the dictatorship of the proletariat with centralized planning and centralized control of finance and foreign trade; No, he's arguing for market socialism as crucial part of 'the dictatorship of the proletariat' (which latter can mean whatever one likes). I say 'crucial' because Trotsky clearly recognised that something in the economic system was needed to signal 'needs and their relative intensity'. However one tries to apply the law of value stuff to a socialist system (a law Marx had formulated to explain the dynamics of *capitalism*), one must remember the 'use value' category when running an economy of any description, and the onus on anti-market-socialism Marxists is to explain how this might be done such that the interaction of supply and demand might be obviated. b) that Bolshevism-Leninism had on its programme the immediate liquidation of the market from day one of the October Revolution; Lenin called this sorta thinking an infantile disorder, did he not? Incidentally, I happen to reckon that it is also infantile to claim that an age of abundance will follow our short transitional reliance on market signals, and that this will take care of niggly little questions about the optimal/adequate production and allocation of use values. Either that, or I'm missing something pretty important about the ways Marxists use Marx's theorising of capitalism to fashion their post-revolutionary society. c) that market socialism is more than just another way of saying that market mechanisms will have an important but not decisive role to play in the operations of proto-socialist society. Well, they'd certainly be important. I tend to believe we'd have a pretty sick economy pretty quickly (ie one that would not respond well to people's needs) if we abandoned market mechanism altogether. So to that extent, I reckon 'decisive' is an appropriate word. As I believe democracy must always prevail over profit (such that we not produce shit we're better off without; such that we not spend our lives doing 'necessary' labour; and such that everybody gets to participate - and gets at least what we'd deem to be 'enough'), I could not hold with the market as decisive in the sense it be allowed to work against these overriding principles. This will make it clear to me, to yourself and to everybody else if we're just playing with words or in fact talking about an *alternative* regime or even an *alternative* state to what was available in the early Soviet Union. Reckon we might be talking pretty serious alternative, meself ... If we're talking alternatives then we can get down to discussing what the Bolsheviks should have done instead, ie criticize their programme and their methods of implementing it. There are a few things we can learn - I've never argued otherwise. But the stream is ever in train, and we never step in the same water twice. From the huffing and puffing going on it sounds as if there's more at stake than the realistic acknowledgement made by Trotsky here and by the Left Opposition in general including Preobrazhensky in the New Economics that the market will have a role to play in regulating some aspects of supply and demand under proto-socialism. Is there?? I don't reckon there's very much huffing and puffing going on, Hugh! And my suspicion 'that the market will have a role to play in regulating some aspects of supply and demand under proto-socialism' is hardly new to Thaxalotls, is it? If there isn't, why all the aggro? If I've been sounding aggro (I haven't, have I?), then I'm misrepresenting myself, Hugh. I was just enjoying myself and looking to pick up a few clues ( now THERE'S a list charter, eh?). For a perspective during the actual wars nothing can beat Trotsky's book "Terrorism and Communism" (against Kautsky's book of the same name), preferably read in conjunction with Lenin's polemic against Kautsky from the same period The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky. Have read this last. Also read a bit of Kautsky in my time (he's a lot harder to get hold of, mind), and liked what he had to say about the sustainable revolutionary qualities he anticipated in the event of a more modern established and educated proletariat kicking up a stink in the context of a liberal democracy - in his *The Dictatorship Of The Proletariat* - a good read, I reckon - mebbe all the more so in light of the fact we are such particular people, living in this particular context. Anyway, that's what I reckon. Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong (production for sale, or not)
C'mon Hugh! I argue that a socialist economy might need the market mechanism (for I can see nothing else that would do the particular job of producing and distributing use values) and you tell me there's going to be abundance, that "there is *no* scarcity", that "Market socialism is no socialism. If you have the power to coerce the market to behave in a socially responsible way, then you have the power to dump the bourgeoisie and its relations of production, and you don't need half-measures," and that "Market socialism is a cowardly utopian cop-out." And now you seem to be saying you always agreed with me on substance, but that the mere reliance upon the market mechanism for the little matter of allocating use values does not constitute 'market socialism'! That's a pretty dry old argument about semantics, I reckon, and I'm too busy a boy. Cop-out. I've criticised everything from the April Theses to the NEP on this very list. Ask Chas'n'Dave! They went to no small effort in trying to put me back on the straight'n'narrer on this stuff. Good on 'em, too. But it didn't take. "A role to play in regulating some aspects etc" sounds fine, but does it constitute Market Socialism?? What about all the Bruno Bauers and Austro-Marxists etc with their virulent hatred of Bolshevism -- how would their kind of Market Socialism ever bring about the necessary transfer of ownership to the organized working class? It's not theirs I was suggesting. Not that I'm a Bolshevik. But I do hold we'd need something of the magnitude of a revolution to attain market socialism, yeah. That's my lot, I'm afraid. I've a lecture to write and a bed to crawl into - in that order, alas. Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong (production for sale, or not)
Hi again, Hugh. Just a quick reprise on the ol' chestnut at hand: You: Market socialism is a cowardly utopian cop-out. Anything to avoid the life-and-death confrontation with the bourgeoisie that creating the preconditions for real socialism will involve. Me: Market Socialism ain't gonna come about without fundamental and traumatic social change, Hugh. And it might just be a promising candidate for just the precondition of which you speak. You: See above. Fundamental social change that stops short at market socialism is a dry-as-dust academic illusion worthy of a Kautsky. And Trotsky: 'It is necessary for each state-owned factory, with its technical director, to be subject not only to control from the top ... but also from below, by the market, which will remain the regulator of the state economy for a long time to come.' (at 4th Comintern Congress 1922) And Trotsky again: 'The innumerable live participants in the economy ... must make known their needs and their relative intensity not only through statistical compilations of planning commissions, but directly through the pressure of demand and supply. The plan is checked and to a considerable extent realised through the market. The regulation over the market must base itself on the tendencies showing themselves in it, must prove their economic rationality through commercial calculation.' (*Byulleten Oppozitsii* November 1932) Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong (production for sale, or not)
But to say this is to say that productivity is a purely bourgeois concept. Yes, it is. Which is crap. No, it isn't. The whole driving force behind history according to Marx's perspective is the development of the forces of production bursting the fetters placed upon them by the various relations of production they operate within -- with each new change of skin, the creature growing apace (human social production) is able to move a bit more freely and live a bit more richly. But as the new skin (the most recent mode of production) grows tighter and tighter -- failing to expand with the growth of the creature inside it -- then the freedom and wealth become more and more contradictory, until this restrictive skin bursts in its turn. Capitalism has proved to be a more flexible skin than slavery or feudalism, but at the moment it's about as conducive to human happiness as a condom the size of a thimble or a tight bra with spikes lining the inside of the cups. So to speak. Well, without being quite so rude to any thimble-dicked Thaxists who might be listening, I'd agree with all that, but I don't see what this has to do with intensifying exploitation, Hugh. And who's going to handed the responsibility and power to drive us that bit harder, anyway? Talking about productivity is not giving ground to bourgeois economics, it's removing the mat from under the feet of the utopians, who think that we can just proclaim joint ownership, democratic management and fairly planned production and have done with it. I thought that's what the lessons of the Soviet twenties were all about. Stalin and Bucharin thought they could *proclaim* Socialism at a snail's pace, but then discovered they were being given no time at all to do this by the resurgence of commodity relationships as the NEP affected more and more of Russian society and began to encroach on the commanding heights of the centrally planned economy. That was a *proclaimed*, utopian zig. To be followed by an equally *proclaimed* utopian zag -- forced collectivization -- more in tune with the needs of the dictatorship of the proletariat, to be sure, but carried out in a way that did nothing to develop the voluntary associative relations of production needed if the new proto-socialist economy was to be coaxed along till it could stand on its own two feet against the hostile pressures of the world market. These hostile pressures, in one simple word, were productivity. Preobrazhensky's book on the New Economics makes this abundantly clear. I don't see how a situation in which the bourgeoisie has already been expropriated, should be one in which we are to be made to work harder. Commodity production is historically speaking a very efficient way of getting things made for less and less cost in terms of materials and labour. In my humble opinion, it's the most efficient way there'll ever be. As long as you confine yourself to their way of measuring stuff. What's cost for them? Money. What's efficiency for them? Exploitation. What's a product for them? Anything from a depleted uranium round to nose-hair clippers. Cost for us should be infingements on people's freedom. Efficiency should be about the balance between self-fulfillment and meeting the needs of physical social self reproduction. And products should be about doing somebody somewhere a bit of good. What's inefficient about capitalism is that it takes our time and energy away and makes us produce a heap of shit we don't need. The only possible way for a mode of production to supersede any mode of production based on commodity production is to outproduce it, otherwise it'll be discarded. That'd be true if we were talking about socialism-in-one-country, coz then we'd have to match a system bent on beating us down. If we're not talking about that, who'd give a shit? Most of us would be getting more (balancing the benefits of free time and of course goods) than we had before anyway! And I reckon we could live without a few things, too. Better for it, in fact. That said, one contribution to productivity would be assured merely by drawing the unemployed back into society's bosom (that is, if we evaluate 'productivity' such that this would appear productive.) But the Soviet experience shows that it's the aggregate productivity and the total response of the economy to people's needs that is important, not just productivity in one or two branches of industry -- 'People's needs' is a hard one, I'll admit. But time to live a life is one such - I'm sure of that. otherwise the Soviet Union would never have survived as it did. Nor would Cuba or China, for instance, have put up such resistance as they have to capitalist restoration, regardless of the avarice with which their bureaucracies are heading in that direction. I don't reckon socialism can beat capitalism in a productivity race, Hugh. Productivity as a high priority necessarily reduces people to a low priority. Socialists
M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong
G'day Thaxalotls, Was cleaning out my backlog when it suddenly occurred to me that George might have a point (although I don't know how important a point it need be). Is a 'commodity' something that distinguishes itself from its hypothetical being under another economic system purely on the criterion that it was produced with the sole raison d'etre of being sold (after all, surplus produce, for instance, was bought and sold thousands of years ago - and publicly built infrastructure also comes to mind as an example)? If not, why not? If so, how would a factory (quite probably assembled out of things themselves made to be sold), which may be sold at any time, but is not necessarily produced with that objective in mind, be different from anything else that was made with sale not uppermost in the processes that built it? It is built from commodities, by way of labour power, in order to produce commodities, and it can be sold at any time. For Jim, that makes it a commodity. Certainly, it *presents itself* as a commodity, as capitalist relations are such that all things have a price and are so measured. So the sentence George dislikes rings true to me. That central alienating relation certainly pertains. But does it matter that it may not have been produced to be sold? And if so, why? Sorry to be so dense, but I've suddenly come over a bit vague. Cheers, Rob. A factory when used as a factory is a use value that is not a commodity. It is only a commodity when it is sold. George misses the point of Marx's comment. All wealth takes the form of commodities. The fact that something is not being sold at that moment does not stop it from being a commodity. (More to the point, George only recognises consumer goods and not capital goods as commodities). A factory that remained unsold throughout its lifetime would be a rare exception. Forgetting that the original site would be bought from one vendor, and the building from another, once constructed and in operation the factory, as the property of a business would be traded every day on the stock exchange (or more precisely, parts - shares - of it would be). It is also false to think that the commodities that rest unsold on the shelf of the supermarket at the end of a busy day are not therefore commodities (they only cease to be when they perish). A commodity that is not being sold at any one moment is not thereby any other kind of property than a commodity. Marx's point is very precise, and I am surprised that George want to quibble with it. Under capitalism all forms of wealth are commodities. In message 002d01bf8b47$b93d3b80$8afe869f@oemcomputer, George Pennefather [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes Jim is making a mistake. A factory when used as a factory is a use value that is not a commodity. It is only a commodity when it is sold. Factories can exist for years and years -indeed for their entire life span-- as use values --as forms of fixed capital. The dirty hanky in my pocket is a use value --snot rag. But if I am prepared to sell it to you and you buy it from me because you have a use, say, for my snot rag then it eh presto a commodity. Warm regards George Pennefather Be free to check out our Communist Think-Tank web site at http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/ Be free to subscribe to our Communist Think-Tank mailing community by simply placing subscribe in the body of the message at the following address: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] George is making a mistake. A factory is a commodity that can be bought or sold, just as it can be used in the hands of its owner. Factories are bought and sold all the time. -- Jim heartfield --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- -- Jim heartfield --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Oz and East Timor
Agence France Presse March 13, 2000, Monday 3:13 AM, Eastern Time SECTION: International news HEADLINE: UN losing its way in East Timor: top official BYLINE: Kate Webb DATELINE: JAKARTA, March 13 A British UN official who resigned his post in East Timor out of frustration, said Monday that setting a date for full independence could now be the only way to salvage the UN mission there. Professor Jarat Chopra also charged he was not alone in throwing in his job because top men in the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) were using "Stalinist tactics" to prevent him doing his job as director of district administration. UNTAET, he said, was obsessed with bureaucratic empire building, had lost contact with, and the trust of, the East Timorese people and had tried to sabotage grass roots programs designed to give the people more control over their own lives. These men had smothered UNTAET's mission, which was to prepare the East Timorese for full independence, and had not woken up to crucial problems until too late, Chopra said. The smiles that welcomed the peacekeepers had now turned into resentment, he said, speaking in a telephone interview with AFP from the East Timorese capital of Dili. Chopra, a Briton, is considered one of the most experienced of the UNTAET administrators. He designed East Timor's district administration policy on a strategy developed for the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. A research fellow at Brown University in the US, he has worked as a special assistant in peacekeeping at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. In his resignation letter March 6, he charged that without a date and strategy for independence set, nothing meaningful could be done. "Without a meaningful timetable and methodical stages for a transfer of power, this mission will drift, hold an election as an exit strategy next year and leave the Timorese with no genuine capacity built. We will have replicated the overnight decolonisations of decades past." Chopra told AFP the straw that broke the camel's back was that he could no longer work. "I had made a commitment to come out here for two or three years." But when he had finished fighting top UNTAET officials from stopping a long-planned and World Bank-funded community empowerment project (CEP), he found he had no telephone, no computer, no mailbox, no desk and no vehicle. "Puniative Stalinist depersonalization," was how he characterized the fate of anyone who spoke out. The battle for the CEP was won, but only at an enormous price, he said -- the embitterment of the East Timorese, the Xanana Gusmao-led Council for East Timorese resistance (CNRT), and of the World Bank. "Timorese were left with the impression that UNTAET was reluctant to take the next steps ... for some sort of methodical transfer of power. "Now they are thinking they made a mistake in accepting the UN, and will reject it." "They are going to have to declare independence or an early election," he added, saying the UN could remain in as an assistance mission to the new government. Under its current mandate the UNTAET is supposed to rule for two or three years until East Timor is ready for full independence, but the way things are going, the East Timorese had no chance to become involved. Asked if he felt UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was aware of the tensions in UNTAET, Chopra said he felt he must be, because of the resignations, and because of pointed questions Annan asked on his first visit there last month. Chopra said part of the cause of the dispute within UNTAET was an interdepartmental "turf battle," when the UN program for East Timor was derailed by the wave of violence that followed the August 30 vote for independence from Indonesia. In addition a ruling that planning be done in New York meant that there was "no detailed UNTAET campaign plan that related to the reality on the ground." "I think this was fatal in dealing with CNRT -- they were not involved at all, they didn't have the opportunity to understand what it (UNTAET) would mean to them." Asked if anything would make him withdraw his resignation, Chopra said -- yes, if I could do my assigned task." --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong
G'day Chas, CB: I could go with you are right and Marx is left. I don't agree with George at all, but I do reckon a leftie is not obliged to agree with Marx, nor with others' interpretations of Marx. And I don't reckon there's anything particularly right-wing about refuting the predominance of the commodity form - it just ain't Marxist, that's all. Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: London mobilization -- if it moves, kill it!
G'day Bob'n'Hugh, I realise I'm probably giving Bob a bat with which to beat Hugh here, but I find myself pretty well completely in agreement with Hugh on this one (which proves anything can happen in this world). Get with the critical mass, help that mass discover in itself the capacity to transform politics (the whole boojie-bipartisan model could be in for a public unclothing, with any luck), and then society is that step closer to thinking in terms of more radical alternatives. Of all the Anglo political cultures, Britain seems to offer the best chance we have that such a pressure could actually come from the left for once (sorry if I seem to have given up on NZ too quickly, Bill). Livingstone isn't the issue here, for mine. He might just be the thin edge we fatter wedges are looking for ... Sorry if the alignment of a menshie opportunist causes you pain, Hugh! Cheers, Rob. "No vote to the anti-communist Livingstone" is a complete loser. It'll take the bullets out of the electoral gun being held to Blair's head in London, which is at the moment one of the very best chances we've had of alienating the mass of the workers from the political fraud of the present party set-up and the betrayal of socialism represented by New Labour. This must be the main focus -- the concessions to parliamentarism, reformism etc that are constituent parts of Livingstone's politics are a secondary focus that will come up in the discussions among the more politically advanced workers and activists as these aspects of Livingstone's campaign become clearer, with Livingstone doing a Lula and hobnobbing with the capitalists to show he's a "serious" politician able to do right by "business". But the main focus must be massive electoral rejection of Blairism and New Labour on principles of basic democratic rights and good services for the people. This will show people in a very concrete way that they can say no to reactionary forces and hurt them electorally, maybe even clip their wings a bit in refusing them certain arenas for profit-gouging. Only then will it be possible to take up the questions of the inadequacy of Livingstone's (ie left reformism, lip-service radicalism) policies for solving the problems facing the mass of working and poor people. Massive strike action against privatization can be argued for even during and as part of a campaign supporting a vote for Livingstone. This is the case even if the figure-head himself tries to oppose it, which would be dangerous for him however as the people striking will be the ones voting for him, because the rank-and-file union support for a Livingstone candidacy has been enormous. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: London mobilization -- if it moves, kill it!
G'day again, Bob.
Nope Rob. It just don't work that way.
You'd be hard pressed to prove it works by way of that vanguard of yours,
Bob! Especially in first world settings. We don't have those well-drilled
collectively conscious proletarians on whom your mate Lenin was so keen. We
have a heap of well educated, well-fed, (for now, anyway) individualistic
liberal democrats with whom to work. You have to work with such people
rather than offer them leadership, coz they've had a gut-full of leaders
(one of Livingstone's greatest electoral virtues is that he is neither Haig
nor Blair, I reckon) and coz they have feel for once that they own their
route to (what you and I would consider) enlightenment.
An off-again/on-again but incremental route seems the least unlikely route
to a bit of social transformation, for mine. Livingstone might just turn
out to be that single step with which that thousand-mile journey starts.
And he might not, of course. But a lot of featureless decades of unbroken
dissolution are the historical signature of vanguard politics in western
settings, I'm afraid. Of these two options, I'd have to opt for the former.
Mebbe not with optimism, but at least not with despair.
You don't start at the tail of movements in society and jump on the train.
That is why Lenin as well as the ICL
understand the need of a revolutionary party as the driver of the
locomotive. The mass will time and again become
"ceritical" for different reasons and at different points of history. The
party is the vanguard which interpets,analizes the whys and wheres and acts
along a line to interest these movements winning the best elements in the
process to its
understanding of things and its program and tactics.
You forget that the popular insurrection in Russia took the Bolshies as much
by surprise as anyone else, Bob! They joined the indignant throngs before
they got to go on to lead 'em - or at least that's how I read my history.
If the western masses ever hit the streets in serious numbers (ie.general
strikes and million-person demonstrations) it won't be because of our like.
Where I think we have something decisive to offer is when everybody begins
to realise the future is theirs for the taking - a moment as scary ('fear of
freedom' ) as it is thrilling (that first taste of freedom). It is this
which I take to be the Bolshie contribution to 1917 and the world, by the
way. Their great moment, for mine (after that, of course, I discern far
fewer good moments than you do).
You sound a lot like your were writting a review for the old cultfilm "The
Blob"!
Never saw it. I might, now ...
Cheers,
Rob.
--- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Capital is wrong
G'day George, You claim: To say that the "wealth of those societies presents itself as an immense accumulation of commodities" is not true. Much of the wealth is in the form of industrial capital which is not capital in the form of the commodity. This mistaken premise renders the validity of making the commodity a starting point questionable on that basis. I tried my hand at justifying 'the commodity' as explanatory platform on another list a while back - I'd appreciate Thaxian thoughts on it ... If one posits the dialectic as a way of seeing, one is effectively positing relations as one's basic unit of analysis. And it seems to follow that both what we're used to calling 'subject' and 'object' are constituted by those relations. Capitalism as descriptive term, has meaning (ie such that it may be taken to be something in particular, and therefore nothing but that) only insofar as the relations characteristic of it are demonstrably unlike those of any other empirical or thinkable social mode of organisation. When Marx introduces us to the linen/coat comparison in Section 2, he stresses that the coat comes into existence by way of 'a special sort of productive activity, the nature of which is determined by its aim, mode of operation, subject, means, and result'. It is because 'coats are not exchanged for coats' (ie. use values are not generally exchanged for the very same use values) that actual labour may be differentiated (different work produces coats than produces yards of linen). So far, he has simply afforded us truisms for all societies which make stuff. What is it, then, that makes capitalism capitalism? I reckon Marx uses this example precisely to point us to THE capitalist relation - ie. THE relation without which there can be no capitalism, and THE relation no other order needs. It is that we do not relate to the two products as those of two different qualities of labour but of 'mere homogeneous congelations of undifferentiated labour'. Not labour, then; but rather, a universally commensurable magnitude ... a representation of 'labour in general' - an abstraction (1) insofar as it APPEARS universally fundamental, but IS (if generalised throughout the society) historically specific (to capitalism) and (2) insofar as it DOES NOT actually exist anywhere (in the sense that no particular worker anywhere is ever labouring 'in general'), but DOES underpin every capitalist transaction. This relation, then, represents an exchange of one magnitude for that same magnitude. Obviously that magnitude is not a use value, for we already know we do not bother to swop a use value for its identical self. It is obviously a value facilitating exchange that makes no reference to the use value of the thing exchanged. Therefore it is entirely contingent upon a conventional measure, yet the thing measured is an abstraction, both from real labour and from use value. This means that the conception of labour required to substantiate this calibrated value is not empirically demonstrable in situ (at the point of exchange). This means that no vendor or purchaser can fix exactly on that value. But it means also that the consequently notional measures cannot long greatly deviate from the (unknowable but omnipresent - sorta like God used to be) actual value. So, economy-wide, there IS an invisible hand (necessary labour time - *du juour* [hence the hidden hand is a rather more pressing and shaky thing than the one Smith posited] - to produce the use value being exchanged). That said, *none* of the empirical phenomena involved (producer, his/her actual labour, vendor, buyer, the act of exchange, the thing exchanged, and the price paid) would seem to present themselves as singularly heuristic categories from which an explanation might start. A dialectician would expect nothing else - relations are the invisible ties between people, other people, groups of people, things and groups of things - and the invisible ain't the province of the empiricist. A dialectcian is a rationalist. S/he appeals to reason as his/her platform insofar as s/he sees in every empirical phenomenon an underpinning web of constituting relations - relations are *a priori* in the sense that they are the conditions which must pertain for the phenomena discerned to have come about as they did. So where would a dialectician start if s/he is to explain capitalism (ie differentiating it from all other modes of social organisation) *to an audience thoroughly encultured in the ways of empiricism*? Would s/he not look for the empirical category which *best* represents the specific abstracting relations upon which capitalism depends AND why it is that capitalism depends on them? And would that not have to be a thing that has about it not only the sort of value that has existed since the Rift Valley days, but ALSO the sort of value it only has within a capitalist context? And would it not have to represent both the relations that give it
M-TH: Re: LSA welcomes Livingstone's decision to stand for major
G'day all, Quoth RD of the WSM via the SPGB: Nah, just plain bloody daft. Simple question - how can voting for Livingstone lead to Socialism? Surely, it should be axiomatic beyond doubt that socialists should not engage in any activity that does not clearly have the possibility of leading to Socialism. Er, surely you don't purport to see the future so clearly that you know what might lead to socialism? Nobody else on this list seems to have a clue. And I bloody know I don't. So I'd probably vote for the left-most non-psychotic candidate available. Where's the harm in in helping highlight the disgusting hypocricy and totalitarian proclivities abroad at Number Ten? And, whilst Ken can smell the chance of victory enough to desert his erstwhile comrades for the purposes of the election, I'd rather he were there than a Blair lackey or a Tory. And don't say it doesn't make a difference. Livingstone's GLC was no oil painting, I'll allow, but it was better than most of the rest of Maggie's Britain (and this from a confirmed Londonphobe). Anyway, I'd like to have a video of that ghastly smug little school prefect of a primeminister copping a sound public thrashing for once. Poor solace, perhaps, but go for what you can get in the short-term, I reckon. Voting for Livinstone just because he is against Blair is moronic in the extreme - after all, the BNP are against Blair, are we going to back them? Livingstone has no programme beyond administering capitalism with bells and whistles. And neither, alas, does anyone else. And Livingstone is to the left of Blair. I dare say we won't have too long to wait for the 'new economy' suddenly to look rather old - and when it does, I'd rather be living in Livingstone's London than in Blair's. Doncha reckon? Tuberculosis is pretty horrible, but it's a meaningfull alternative to lung cancer - if you know what I mean. Yours just-a-tad-demoralised, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Monthy Review - friend or foe
G'day John, I've never had the pleasure of reading an MR (not a single Oz newsagent stocks it), but I've read several of Wood's books (the latest being *Democracy Against Capitalism*) and at least one article. She's genuine, clever and a good writer (renewing my confidence in the Marxian take on things every time). Like me (and, alas, this is about the only point of comparison) she may spend too much time shooting at postmodernist quasi-theorising (whose multifarious identities would fragment unto nothingness all the more quickly if we just ignored its unreadable opacities, I've come to decide), but I reckon she's terrific. And she's one of the few editors who's not about a hundred years old, too, no? And I hear a lot about what MR has been doing during her stewardship - no problem there, either, I'd've thought! Ego wars, perhaps? Time for Doug (to whom, many thanks for letting Hugh's little gratuity glide past) to put his finger to the pulse, I reckon. Wassa story, Doug? Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Our Mainstream
G'day Tony, I'm no Catholic, but it seems to me even the Pope has realised - rather late in the piece - that his vicious anti-leftism (especially in Latin America) and uncritical pro-Reaganism has produced a cruel and godless Mammon every bit as inimical to him as that fanciful red dawn. Anyway, the ol' bloke looks bound for the pearly gates now, and while much depends on his successor, the sad ol' fella's recent tirades may have served to put some lead back in LT pencils. And I agree with what I take to be your point. Where the local left-humanism is predominantly Catholic, there be the station where our train must start its journey. Lefties tend to focus on where they're heading (and we tend to fight each other about the menu of destinations quite a lot), but aren't always too discerning about their very specific point of departure. Maybe it's a crass example, but I reckon Che had his theory half right when he went off so pathetically to die. The half that he got wrong was thinking a rudimentary assessment of local class relations was enough to get the locals reaching for their musketry. New ideas are fine (well, fundamental), but they only make sense to the locals in the context of the ideas they already have - that's what culminates in a transformational practice - and it is that practice which develops the idea beyond the limits of the initially thinkable. I reckon the bringer of the new ideas then finds his/her ideas have developed quite a bit, too, btw. So while others are enmeshed in Kosovo or East Timor, the practical question down this way, is how to build a movement where the largest component of activists are nuns?! What's even worse, these nuns and priests are the most active people working nationally for building an antiwar movement in the US, or ending the death penalty! Well, on those two issues at least, it's not too complicated - as editors tell rooky journalists everywhere - 'go with what you've got'! A movement can start out as a religious one and transform into something more rounded and practical. A few nuns and a granny still warm in her box is at least somewhere to start! Look at what had happened in Nicaragua before Paul'n'Ronnie put the fear of God and a few rounds into 'em! Trouble is, it goes the other way, too. International Women's day (but a week away, incidentally) started out as an explicitly socialist event (central to the Russian Revolution, too), and has now been expropriated by another brand of feminist altogether - one unfortunately better versed in Helena Rubenstein than Clara Zetkin. And one who is happily contenting herself with aspiring to an equal share of the alienation and exploitation 'won' by men half a millenium ago. Even here, I reckon, we should support her - but whispering in her ear all the while ... Thanks again, Rob, for inviting me to participate in Thaxis. Thanks for coming! But what an unfortunate name this is, to attract more plebian types to talk. We have lots of plebians, Tony! But yeah, they're being eerily quiet of late ... It sounds like some sort of disease. I kinda like it. But if the more gifted marketers present (not that one expects too many of them in these parts ... ) think we should change the brandname, let's do it! Nite all, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: The Fourth Way (or the first, without make-up)
G'day Thaxists, Escaped the heat this arvo by bolting into the newsagents. Saw a mag on the rack called The Australian Rationalist, which I usually take, but the pub was next door and I'd resolved to spend my fiver there. Until that is, I saw the cover. For there, writ large, was as neat and succinct a summary of the tide of human progress as I'd ever seen. 'ABOLISH 'WELFARE DEPENDENCY' ... REINTRODUCE SLAVERY! Well, all thoughts of beer (well, nearly all) left my mind as I chucked my fiver at the counter and made for my shed for an enlightening read. I wasn't disappointed, either. 'The Third Way' excoriated by a page, the proposal ably defended with a few deft references to current 'issues' in another, namby pamby objections demolished by the third, the teleology of hegemonic logic proclaimed 'free market barbarism' by the fifth, and a compelling case closed by the sixth. Lovely. And co-authored, I notice only now, by one Ian Hunt, articulate critic of Australian education policy, polished philosophical pedagogue ... and Thaxist. Good on ya, Ian! Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: The Freedom Party
Is it a popular misconception that the Freedom Party in Austria is really a fascist party. You're onto something that's vaguely bothering me, too, George. What little I know of far-right parties is that their support is made up of malcontents of many a stripe (with fascists among 'em, no doubt). But this exceptionalism (that somehow the Freedom mob is very different from the Turkish National Actionists or the Israeli far right parties - even our own [rapidly disintegrating] Hansonites - all of whom have seats in parliaments - well I find this disconcerting. Maybe it's because they're Germanic - with all its connotations. Anyway, people who know a lot more about this than I should get into print on this. We just might be waddling down a counterproductive and mystifying path, here - indirectly legitimating all kinds of entrenched scum in all kinds of places by seeking to make enduring martyrs of (what might be) a few Austrian nonentities - whose leader strikes me as a bit of a George W Bush, insofar as a few months in the media glare that attends their new salience should be enough to take the shine off him. The man's clearly a populist vacuum, for mine. I'm prepared to be proven wrong - but that's my first take on it. Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re: Kosova revisionists let NATO off the hook
G'day Kim, In his polemic against Kautsky and in Socialism and War, Lenin argues that socialists need to look at whether particular wars benefit imperialist powers or the working class struggle. If they do not then socialists can and should support them. It's not as if East Timor was ever going to be a sovereign nation-state in any meaningful way, was it? I argued thus against Hugh on the matter of Kosovo, as I remember. East Timor's people were fighting against one imperial master (and Indonesia could easily have become an even worse master - still can, really) in circumstances where they could not prevail unless they successfully appealed to the Anglo-Saxon powers - that's how I read CNRT policy, anyway. Fine, let's be honest about it. With Wiranto's power looking likely to prevail at the time (he pretty well controlled Habibie and he looked, for a while at least, to have a realistic shot at Junta control if he played the incident right), why not opt for the lesser evil (as it demonstrably must have appeared to thousands of cringing woman as they faced sudden widowhood and a phalanx of drunk M-16-wielding militia-members grimly undoing their trousers)? Lenin's polemic seems too simplistic for the particularities of such a moment, I reckon. This is the case with East Timor ... UN intervention went against 24 years of Indonesian and Australian imperialist policy. Without it, Indonesia would have continued its scorched earth policy of murder and destruction. Er, it was the materially unsupported referendum proposal that started the scorched earth policy of the Indonesians/militias, Kim! There WAS a time for armed peacekeepers, and that was when something approximating a peace pertained - before and during the vote! Habibie wasn't up to allowing that, of course (although, personally, he seemed all for it), and concerted foreign pressure (of the kind the US is happily exerting now) would have been necessary 18 months ago. Australian and UN intervention started the slaughter, for mine (and, I suspect, CNRT complicity, too - they didn't lift a finger to help their people when the chips were down, as a good bit of 'murder-of-the-innocents' footage was politically awfully useful - just a suspicion, mind). And Australia's imperialist policy has been impeded exactly how? We seem nicely ensconced in the chair, for mine. You know I didn't oppose intervention - but that was because I saw only one alternative future once the vote had been cast (for ET and Indonesia alike), and it promised to be far worse than imperialist rule from Canberra. It's still imperialist rule from Canberra though, innit? But I guess that would have been okay, because then dogmatists could say "well, isn't it terrible that the East Timorese were massacred, but at least we stuck to our principles ..., we have a cut and dried absolutist position that says no compromises with imperialism, to bad this meant that any chance of working class revolution that may have exist will not occur now because there is no working class because they have all been massacre. But hey, we did stick to our 'on principle' objections". Here I agree with you and the GLW completely - but, as I think Bob's position is not usefully nuanced here, so do I think yours is lacking. Yours ever-compromisingly, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re: Kosova revisionists let NATO off the hook
Before I get into needless trouble, I'd better point out that I'm agreeing with Lenin on the quoted bits of *Infantile Disorder* (not that I quite agree with the whole book) - and only disagreeing here with the application of Lenin's polemical poke at Kautsky [on evaluating wars] to the East Timor situation. Cheers, Rob. In his polemic against Kautsky and in Socialism and War, Lenin argues that socialists need to look at whether particular wars benefit imperialist powers or the working class struggle. If they do not then socialists can and should support them. This is the case with East Timor ... UN intervention went against 24 years of Indonesian and Australian imperialist policy. Without it, Indonesia would have continued its scorched earth policy of murder and destruction. But I guess that would have been okay, because then dogmatists could say "well, isn't it terrible that the East Timorese were massacred, but at least we stuck to our principles ..., we have a cut and dried absolutist position that says no compromises with imperialism, to bad this meant that any chance of working class revolution that may have exist will not occur now because there is no working class because they have all been massacre. But hey, we did stick to our 'on principle' objections". Kim B --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re: Kosova revisionists let NATO off the hook
Hi again, To claim as the Green Left does that the E Timorese were in danger of extermination is to echo the imperialist line that the E TImorese were helpless at the hands of Wiranto. This is not true, if they were rendered helpless it was at the hands of the imperialists. If Djakarta had seriously suspected no foreign displeasure would be forthcoming, they could have kept the East Timorese independence forces down quite easily - as indeed they had done for a quarter of a century (I doubt they'd ever have wiped 'em out militarily without huge cost - but then it was never really necessary to go that extra yard as long as the Anglo-Saxons kept their noses out of it - the money had been getting to the right places reliably enough). This is why we say imperialists hands off! Arm the resistance fighters! There are quite a few of those. There always have been. I suspect some will quietly be armed (after they're legitimised over a year or two) ... and some will not (amongst whom, I confidently predict, shall be numbered the rapidly growing Socialist Party membership). For a Constituent Assembly in East Timor! Until, I suppose, a bolshevik party develops and has to dissolve it on account of how it alone represents the working class, be the members of that class witting or otherwise. Doesn't matter, really. East Timorese would as likely end up shooting East Timorese as under my own sad expectations. Imperialism has long ago created its beneficiaries, its victims and its associated fragmenting identities. All a new hegemon can do is rearrange the lifeboats on a Titanic thoughtfully pre-holed by the manufacturers. Keep the Prozac handy and watch this space. Anyway, I do actually agree with the slogan, Dave. I just think the timing is more important than it might suggest. If a formally sovereign constituent assembly were voted in over the next few months - before the occupying force has a chance to put some lead in the appropriate saddlebags - I reckon East Timor has a half-chance of relative peace as an essentially social-democratic republic, integrated into a world system that will feed it in return for its immanent potential. If a parliament takes two foreign-authored years to come about, I reckon we'll have a robber-baron-cum-compradorial elite at the despatch box, and gunfire at the treeline. I tend not to hold great hopes for a socialism-in-one-microscopic-dot project. Surely it is not ours to look to the East Timors of this world for democratic-socialist sovereignty? World change is where it's at, I reckon. The bourgouisie with which accounts must be settled don't live atop the local hill anymore, and the dangerous linkages capitalism has produced between the workers of the world are no longer decisively those of the shop-floor. As our BHP workers confront the local manifestation of the world-bourgeoisie's war against workers, they know it will not be won somewhere in the West Australian desert, but rather by workers around the world perceiving their own interests in those of the Australian few. Workers of the world actually can unite nowadays. Let's hope such unity might be forthcoming before once again workers have nothing left to lose but their chains. And, by the way, this rigorous definition of imperialism doesn't cut it, for mine. Imperialism is a relationship rather than a status. Sure, Indonesia relates to the US and Japan as colony to empire - but so did East Timor relate thus to Indonesia. Australia is both imperial and colonial, too, I reckon - depends on which relationship you're looking at. Yours morosely pedantic, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Nation
Happy New Year, Thaxists! Sez Jim F. Our friend Bob is always disparaging Kautsky but couldn't it be the case that Lenin was right concerning pre-WW I Europe whereas Kautsky's concept of a super-imperialism may well have validity for the world we live in now? Well I like a bit of speculation as much as anyone (btw, hope you've all noticed my crystal ball-gazing on Russia is on track - the succession, both moment and man, has been beautifully manufactured, no? Well, for now, anyway.). I realise Baran and Sweezy go back a bit, but didn't they paint a planet on which the Fortune 500 organise the world very cozily - which fits a Kautskian framework pretty neatly. But contradiction remains if you look, as they looked, at the consequently large surplus rather than at the tendency for the rate of profit to fall (a fading corollary of the competitive capitalism currently in retreat before The Merger?). Consumption doesn't grow as fast as the surplus does, we have a period where The Marketer rises to the top of the heap (I read in a *Monthly Review* that between seven and eight cents in the dollar goes on managing demand / promoting consumerism), and, when even The Marketer's sterling efforts pale before the mountain of unrealisable surplus, we all cop a dose of underconsumption-driven stagnation. If memory serves, BS theorised that a primary tactic for a large economy so blighted (given that $ 100 billion mergers ever come to an end), is for the state to whack the surplus into F22s and sundry arse-kicking items (well, they'd hardly spend it on the health or education sectors in the political cultures they themselves created, would they?). Then you're back to desperate searches for new markets (eg China), new rounds of enclosure (eg communications spectrum, public service broadcasting, libraries etc), and all in the context of squadrons of F22s looking for ways to, er, valourise themselves (as their predecessors have been doing beautifully; or so Mogadishuans, Panamanians, Baghdadians and Belgradians would have it). And here, perhaps, we get back to tensions between capitals, as those who benefit from wasting some foreign place confront those who stand to lose by it. Not quite Lenin, I'll admit, but no longer cozy Kautskyism either. Of course, some of this has the potential to compose something like an effective class response (bags of surplus amidst want always has possibilities, as, I hope, might numbingly repetitive televised incinerations of thin brown people begin to irk, no matter how exotic the host of settings - you need very good PR indeed to immortalise a B2 crew back from twenty air-conditioned minutes in the Serbian stratosphere as you might a company of bandaged marines back from a tour of Guadalcanal or Normandy.) Any of that hold any water, ya reckon? Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Liberalsim and Socialism today
Hi again Thaxists, Neil and Doug point us at the difficult question of what it is to be socialist - whilst such questions generally generate more heat than light on mailing lists, I do think the distinction between left-liberalism and socialism is no sharp divide at all. In fact, I tend to think someone who identifies as a liberal is someone who does not realise what her commitment to democracy, freedom, equity and rights actually entail. All are contradicted in the unequal control of the means of production, I reckon, and that's why we have a society in which democracy, freedom and equity can never venture far beyond a merely formal status. And rights are merely the name we give whatever compromises capital can be made to make within the context of its drive to accumulate. In short, I reckon anyone committed to democracy, freedom and equity - with *substance* - IS a socialist, no matter how they might like to identify themselves. And this makes them revolutionaries by definition - because they're invoking an entirely different set of relations - between people and production and hence between people and all other people - than currently pertains. What they demand and what they strive for simply can't be had under an order based on the differential ownership of the means of production - while we all depend on a socially regulating principle (exchange) not within our concious and democratic control, and while the future of ourselves and our environment are hostage to the profiteering of the few rather than the needs and desires of the many. So I hope Hugh's warm greetings were extended to us all. I reckon we'd get a lot more self-identifying left-liberals identifying themselves as socialists as soon as we can persuade them that a society is realistically possible that does a lot better on the criteria of democracy, freedom and equity - and that a path in that direction is realistically possible that does not effectively undermine those ends via its means. So I reckon we could do worse than ask ourselves what it is about the dynamics of high capitalism du juour that paves such a path? I reckon they're all related to communications, myself, but that's moot. Here's a provisional list: - information technology itself is one (democratic planning becomes ever more realistic a scenario - from the point of view of both its subject and its object); - the sheer size, internal complexity and diffused ownership of 'the firm' might offer interesting possibilities; - the central dependence of a whole system on the chaoplexic tyranny of international finance; - extant 'southern' underconsumption; - the promise of several hundred million disgruntled Chinese workers contributing much more to production and productivity than to consumption; - the systemically necessary commodification of stuff that doesn't lend itself easily to enclosure is another (communication); - the unprecedented general level of education and expectation; - diminishing social distances (at least within western economies) between workers on criteria of skin colour and gender; - increasing political polarisation in many polities (Sweden, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Australia have all experienced this politically educative challenge to institutional legitimation; - and the systemically necessary diffusion of information technology throughout western society is another (we have a new organisational medium, and MAI's chequered career, J18 and N30 are just three clues as to its potency). Anyway, my contention is that those of us inclined to peek beneath surfaces live in the most interesting of times. Tectonic plates are quietly grinding away and magna is boiling upwards; and all beneath a serene vista of unprecedented fecundity. The nature of those invisible dynamics is an appropriate, nay necessary, cause for argument - but I guess I'm rather hoping we don't turn that into charges of 'liberalism' or 'reformism' from one side and 'dogmatism' or 'left-lunacy' from the other. After all, the ingredients which have gone into today's dish could culminate in anything, and it'd be good to have as wide a range of possibilities and suggested responses before us as possible. So let's find out who reckons what about where we're headed today - and let's not worry too much about whether one's reckonings qualify one as a revolutionary or not, eh? Who knows, we might even entice a few of our quieter Thaxists into helping us diagnose and constitute the new century ... Best to all, Rob. -- From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: M-TH: The Nation magazine Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2000 16:38:57 -0500 Peter Farruggio wrote: This is a request for information. I am not a regular reader of The Nation magazine, published in the USA. For some reason, I have formed the opinion that the magazine as a whole has a social-democratic or "socialist" perspective, although many of its pieces are written by
Re: M-TH: Re: Ali BBC sportsperson of the century
has been IMF-restructured to the point of bankruptcy, for instance. Write off a few hundred billion now, and the suits might be able to keep the African body alive long enough to squeeze a couple of billion out of it in the medium term, eh? Sorry, make that 'write off a few hundred Million now ... '. Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Ali BBC sportsperson of the century
G'day Hugh, Agreed with your take on debt relief - a little orgiastic and very public gesture of generosity now is not only good PR, but also helps obviate massive across-the-board defaults not too long down the track. Doug tells me Zimbabwe has been IMF-restructured to the point of bankruptcy, for instance. Write off a few hundred billion now, and the suits might be able to keep the African body alive long enough to squeeze a couple of billion out of it in the medium term, eh? But I tend to agree with Chris that everything that happens within capitalism is very relevant. Anything that makes publicly thinkable an identification between black and white, male and female, prol and 'reserve army', prol and peasantry, prol and pb etc is of historical significance. After all, systems do a lot of their transforming, indeed their revolutioning, while we're not paying attention. It's plebeian and democratic and rebellious in a limited sense (against blue-rinse Lincoln-driving country-clubbing Republican zombies), and the democratic aspect, as usual in cases like this, is completely castrated. A vote is held, but the institution it's channelled by is rigged in advance. As John said, if voting could change society, it'd be banned. Everything is part of the mix that rings inevitable change. The vote can put Buchanan in the White House (already a realistic, if still unlikely, scenario). In Oz, it can give the balance of formal power to the radical right - in Switzerland and Austria this is all the more evident, after all. And look at the polarisation Bob tells us of in your part of the world! The vote matters, alright, Hugh. I agree with John it's a gesture within a tendentiously closed and stasis-oriented system, but that system is never closed nor complete. The vote is ever part of change. As is the brave black personality who consciously contributes to the dissolution of the racism that has survived the slavery system that spawned it by well over over a century - or the visionary northerner who (perhaps unconsciously) dissolves the 'gentlemen' v. 'players' dichotomy that survived the formal aristocratic rule that spawned it by many decades. Charles and Trueman were good examples, I thought. His special award should also be shared by the crowds in the West Indies and Oz, whose barracking liveliness galvanized the atmosphere of the game. Not everything one hears on those boisterous terraces gladdens the heart, Hugh. I'm all for playful nationalism (I've had a good time of it lately - especially sticking it to South African and Kiwi list-mates - eh, Bill?), but it ain't all playful and it ain't all devoid of racism. And don't get me going on the gradual decay of things cricketerial! Our chanting gets orchestrated, our behaviour gets regulated (kicking up the right degree of boisterousness whilst directing and constraining its expression), our pockets get poached, our patience gets decimated, our strategic sense subverted by the manufactured moment, and meaning is transformed to spectacle. The sway of Albion may have given us cricket, but that doesn't mean it didn't have its wondrous virtues. Those virtues are being eroded now - as is what cricket meant in and did for the steadily fading West Indies ... And anyway - how nice it is to respect, and take moral sustenence in the salience of, a mainstream hero like Ali! Our heroes are surely a marker of our shred values and aspirations? And how rare it is for lefties to share modern day heroes with everybody else! Enjoy the moment, say I. And good on Chris for bringing this little glimmer up. Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Keller the leftie
G'day Kim, Yeah, I'd heard this, too. See below. Cheers, Rob. http://chumbly.math.missouri.edu/harel/quotes/keller.2.html " Oh, ridiculous Brooklyn Eagle! What an ungallant bird it is! Socially blind and deaf, it defends an intolerable system, a system that is the cause of much of the physical blindness and deafness which we are trying to preventThe Eagle and I are at war. I hate the system which it represents...When it fights back, let it fight fairIt is not fair fighting or good argument to remind me and others that I cannot see or hear. I can read. I can read all the socialist books I have time for in English, German and French. If the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle should read some of them, he might be a wiser man, and make a better newspaper. If I ever contribute to the Socialist movement the book that I sometimes dream of, I know what I shall name it: Industrial Blindness and Social Deafness." From p.338, Helen Keller, in reply to the editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, of whom she said: "But now that I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and especially liable to error" --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: wouldabeen nice to talk about, eh?
A Philadelphia Medical School discovered the chain of damaged genes complicit in breast cancer a little while ago, and set to developing a breast cancer screening system. Some mob called Myriad from Salt Lake City then sent 'em a letter saying you can't do that coz we hold a twenty-year patent on two of the involved genes. And the WTO's brief is to spread TRIPS (trade-related intellectual property something) around the world (at the moment you can only cop a patent in one country at a time). Sounds like another arrow for the anti-WTO quiver (if anyone's still having to field queries of the "waddya got against free trade and better conditions for third world workers, you looney left pillock" variety. Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Response to John on the dialectic
G'day Thaxists, John has prodded me back to *Anti-Duhring* - and what a good read it is, too (I've always maintained that, whilst Marx could deliver himself of some world-historic passages, Engels was the better read over any distance). Anyway, I reckon a would-be historical materialist, such as my but recently apprenticed self, can even find sustenance in this book. Funny thing is, over on LBO, I'm pretty well locked in as hopeless defender of crass old-fashioned materialism (at least I think this is the case - they can be pretty hard to follow over there), whilst here my ascribed tag seems that of boojie idealist. Of course, I reckon I'm arguing from the same spot on each list - but what's avowal when it's up agin ascription, eh? Anyway, to business ... In chapter nine, Engels divides 'the realm of knowledge' into 'three great departments'. The first encompasses what may be known as something approximating eternal truth and is necessarily confined to the inanimate world, which is wont eternally to repeat its motions in a patterned way (not at all a dynamic which would fall under 'dialectical motion', I submit). The second is the biological department. Here we may arrive at very few 'big T' truths (only females menstruate or give birth are some of the few examples that present themselves), for: "In this field there is such a multiplicity of interrelationships and causalities that not only does the solution of each question give rise to a host of other questions, but each separate problem can in most cases only be solved piecemeal, through a series of investigations which often require centuries; and besides, the need for a systematic presentation of interconnections makes it necessary again and again to surround the final and ultimate truths with a luxuriant growth of hypotheses." Engels moves on thusly: "But eternal truths are in an even worse plight in the third, the historical, group of sciences, which study in their historical sequence and in their present resultant state the conditions of human life, social relationships, forms of law and government, with their ideal superstructure in the shape of philosophy, religion, art, etc. ... *In social history, however, the repetition of conditions is the exception and not the rule, once we pass beyond the primitive state of man, the so-called Stone Age; and when such repetitions occur, they never arise under exactly similar circumstances*." ***And THEN Engels writes this: "We might have made mention above also of the sciences which investigate the laws of human thought, i.e., logic and dialectics."*** Seems to me he's saying the dialectic is a science which investigates the laws of human thought ... And I find the quote reproduced below interesting, too. I agree with it, for a start - but find also in it an implicit definition of nature as the product of human reflection upon human sensuous activity. On this view, we can never get that 'overall picture' the dialectical materialist posits in his/her 'all moves through contradictory unity, and all is knowable thus'. We can but see within the bounds set by our epoch and the limits of our own being. Thus, I reckon, sprach the historical materialist. Here's Engels, then - see what you think. "The perception that all the processes of nature are systematically connected drives science on to prove this systematic connection throughout, both in general and in particular. But an adequate, exhaustive scientific exposition of this interconnection, the formation of an exact mental image of the world system in which we live, is impossible for us, and will always remain impossible. If at any time in the development of mankind such a final, conclusive system of the interconnections within the world -- physical as well as mental and historical -- were brought about, this would mean that human knowledge had reached its limit, and, from the moment when society had been brought into accord with that system, further historical development would be cut short -- which would be an absurd idea, sheer nonsense. Mankind therefore finds itself faced with a contradiction: on the one hand, it has to gain an exhaustive knowledge of the world system in all its interrelations; and on the other hand, because of the nature both of men and of the world system, this task can never be completely fulfilled. But this contradiction lies not only in the nature of the two factors -- the world, and man -- it is also the main lever of all intellectual advance, and finds its solution continuously, day by day, in the endless progressive development of humanity, just as for example mathematical problems find their solution in an infinite series or continued fractions. Each mental image of the world system is and remains in actual fact limited, objectively by the historical conditions and subjectively by the physical and mental constitution of its originator." Waddyareckon? Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Spittle-wits
Superb post, Russ! HM posits a self-reflective humanity, for whom reality is the sensuous activity through which said reflection and reality constantly transform each other. Action, history and politics are all there. Hope that means I'm allowed to party! I've a weekend straight out of 1977 coming at me - it's all Cascade Lager, The Saints, Buzzcocks and Pistols for me till Sunday! I'll reflect on any sensuous activity that might ensue when I get back from Casualty. To quote the bard: Get Pissed ... Destroy ... Cheers, Rob. Russ had devastated the Lysenkoist hordes thus: So then this argument goes, man is part of matter and since man's engagement with that matter is dialectical, matter itself is dialectical, hence we should all be dialectical materialists and be spending our time seeking out its dialectical laws. This at best repeats the folly of the mechanical materialists and at worst is a recipe for a quest for the holy grail. For, for our dialectical materialists it is not enough that Marx reveals the riddle of history they want him to reveal the riddle of existence. As this riddle unfolds, unfolding in sub-atomic matter as much as in twinklin' galaxies we can all sit back and let it unfold in our tiny corner of matter. Forget action, forget history, forget politics, the old mole Dialectics is grubbing away. Let's forget it all and just party. Apart that is, that in their observations, our dialectical materialists, like Hegel himself, must always arrive post festum... --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Historical vs Dialectical materialism.
G'day Charles,
It takes an extreme contortion not to see that Marx's correspondence and
much other work is literally dripping with evidence that he considered
his work to be joint with Engels's.
The two consciously disagreed about many things, Charles! From the
personal (lovers and bereavement), to the economic (capitalists on
differential depreciation rates), to how best to write certain arguments
and what those arguments were for. It's in their letters. Friends
disagree more than others, I reckon ('coz friendship allows it more,
especially in polite boojie Victorian circles). And those letters also
show that Marx was economically dependent on Engels. Shannon disagreed
with Weaver (rightly), but out came their seminal (and consequently
damaging) theory of human communication anyway. Gilbert and Sullivan
didn't talk to each other at all but worked on some notable joint projects
(not all of which culminated in pieces both liked, by any means). Einstein
and Oppenheimer disagreed on the limits of gravitational collapse.
Einstein used his theory of relativity to show that systems could not
collapse all the way to the point where light itself could not resist the
consequent gravitational attraction. Oppenheimer used the same to show
that they could. In short, I don't reckon this line takes you far.
But of course, nobody here has refuted the direct quote I gave of Marx
espousing dialectics of natural science.
Natural science is a reflection on a necessarily sensuously engaged cosmos.
Part and parcel of such a process might be wondering whether all change was
a function of contradictory unities etc, and then deciding it might not be.
Charles: As Engels formulates it, dialectics is the principle of atheism.
If you don't think nature is dialectical , then you believe in the
equivalent of God, because it would mean you think there is something in
nature that is unchanging and eternal, and that would be the same as God.
What? This only makes sense if you conflate 'change' and 'dialectic'.
You're presuming the conclusion you want and making of it the premise your
argument needs (I'm sure there's a neat Latin term for this, but I don't
know it). That change occurs without humanity in the mix is self-evident
(else the processes that brought our species here can not be entertained),
but you're setting yourself the job of establishing that these unconscious
processes were, in themselves, dialectical. I reckon that you're positing
the god - for you don't make sense unless the dialectic sits on that
divinely eternal throne!
Cheers,
Rob.
--- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Historical vs Dialectical materialism.
G'day Simon, Thaxis had a pretty good go at the 'materialist conception of history' interpretation question a little while back - which may explain the paucity of responses to this question. Not surprisingly, some of us defended the necessary social basis of HM and some didn't. But those who didn't (amongst whom yours truly was not numbered) saw their defence of diamat as Leninist, Engelsist AND Marxist. So, if you do manage to kick-start a thread here, it'd probably be about how Marxist Lenin was - which is rather a round-about way (and potentially no way at all) to get to the philosophical guts of the HM v DM issue. So why not tell us exactly what you see as wrong with the DM case - either as philosophy in general or guide to practice in particular? That way, you give us something more productive upon which to chew. Waddya reckon? Cheers, Rob. Dear Russ, This was something I thought I would have to demonstrate after hours of painstaking argument, given the state of play here re Leninism. Maybe if i rephrased the question, to be absolutely clear: if you go along with Russ and myself, and assert that Marx never used the "dialectical materialism" concept, are people prepared to stick with Marx or deny him in favour of Lenin and Engels? Simon -- Towards this, I suggest a debate on the real issue behind all of this - historical materialism vs dialectical materialism. Only the former can be found in Marx's writings. Russ __ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: wouldabeen nice to talk about, eh?
G'day Hugh, What Rob is describing in Seattle is what Bob M and me have been describing in Sweden, and what me and Bob and Dave have been going on about for years now. You go on about it during the recess breaks between retreads of the ol' 'I'm a good bolshie, you're a bad pb menshie, and all we need is leadership' refrain. Or so it seems to me. It's called an upsurge, and we have been very explicit about it as being an expression of a worldwide tendency (mind you Dave thought it was all a bit exceptional in a "reactionary" period, but that was then, maybe), perhaps clearest in relation to Albania, the Congo and the Oz wharfies' struggle. Er, we got creamed in the Wharfies' strike, Hugh! And after that it was as if nothing had ever happened. Seems our elected betters are preparing to pull the same stunt on our one remaining strong politically-aware union as we speak (the CFMEU, check 'em out at: http://www.ifbww.org/~fitbb/INFO_PUBS_SOLIDAR/Information.html ). I'll be putting up Marx's views on Free Trade and Protectionism from 1847 soon, again, for the umpteenth time, too, so we can all see that Free Trade and Protectionism are not at all where it's at for the working class -- they're purely bourgeois concerns and always have been. We have other fish to fry. Fry fish when you have fish, I reckon. I'm going with the 'whither democracy' line on WTO just now. Sorta furnishing the tacklebox, if you like. And I think it's weird that Rob "generally" agrees with Simon on unspecified issues, I made it pretty clear just on which specific - and important - points Simon and I seemed to agree, did I not? while he agrees (tends to agree) with me on the fundamental scientific issue of the character of the bourgeoisie and its relation to the productive forces of society at the present time, surely one of the most important matters in the class struggle -- like, know your enemy... I mean, it does sound as if Rob regards the imperialist bourgeoisie as his enemy too, doesn't it? Doesn't Simon? You're disagreeing on other things, I reckon. I tend to your view on finance as decisive structure/engine of our day - and the role of this development in highlighting to the suddenly resurgent populace its role as functional object of exploitation. But Simon is getting at something important, though. The attitude of a world in which the financier's view of capitalism is replacing that of the factory-owner-manager's view, IS an attitude of blissful consumption, insofar as decisive price signals are ignoring the C that separates M1 from M2. That'd distort production in the short term and separate stock values from assetts/price-earnings ratios/sustainable productivity projections to such a degree as to make the system vulnerable to a credit crunch of possibly unprecedented intensity and durability. We can only guess at the decisive kick-starter of such a crisis. But it'll come. Big finance has proven itself very good at managing crises geographically (destroying foreign brown capital/people), but a popped bubble on Wall St would demand bailouts in the first instance - bailouts contingent on having lots of precisely what a popped bubble would make scarce - public funds and lines of credit. Perhaps we should ask Rob to give us his definition of an enemy, him being a sociologist and all, after a cold one on the porch of an evening has subdued the fevered heat of yet another Oz summer's day... It WAS bloody hot today (34 degrees and a cloudless sky, but I was sweating in the shed with cups of tea, alas). Another warm one tomorrow, but mebbe something for the water tanks come evening. No coldies until next week, I'm afraid. And I guess the socialist's enemy is the capitalist relation. Right now, the fight is about minimising creeping (charging?) commodification of what's left of our human lives. So that'd be the enemy du juour. If all goes well, capitalism shall have produced for itself an enemy worthy of it. One which has proven to itself its ability to defend (Bill Woodfull-style), thus coming to entertain the thought of some aggressive strokeplay - at first pursuing the first-innings deficit with a few cuts and hooks (Stan McCabe-style), and then ruining the enemy's line and length altogether, and taking the lead with some flourishing drives (Don Bradman-style). Jardine (finance) would have Larwood (the state) charging in from the fence by then, and it'd be on for young and old. Sorry to go so far into the archives for my summery metaphor, but I needed to invoke an English cricket team worthy of the might of capital. One place you and Simon do disagree is to do with how'd you handle capitalism's bodyline tactics? Do you emulate Jardine (as McCabe advised), and emulate your enemy (grab the state and deploy its mechanisms) or do you do a Woodfull (see the state as inimical to your raison d'etre and deploy an unprecedented global integration in the context of unprecedented forces of production to
M-TH: Re: Meszaros article: Communism Is No Utopia
I enjoyed and appreciated the Meszaros article very much (as I seem to whenever he puts pen to paper). Thanks to Jim for the post. Writes John: It was not political control that was at the heart of Communism but the control of the means of poduction, short and simple. Communism is effectively about people controling there own production. In fact, in the sense he seems to be inferring, political control (i.e. via the state) is precisely what communism seeks to surplant. The phrase 'the withering away of the state' as a definition of communism comes to mind. I'd remind John that, given the circumstances that pertained, and given Bolshevik responses to those circumstances, 'actually existing socialism' in the SU was indeed marked by close political control at the centre - throughout its 70-year history. Economic control resided there, too. And there was trouble in Moscow's streets by 1920 for this very reason. I'm not interested in rearguing whether there was any alternative to the April Theses and to what I see as their bureaucratically centralist legacy, I just suggest that the communist rhetoric vis the death of the state was not quite what happened in fact. Communism is exactly about the question of production. Without large scale production (regardless of its relation to other countries) it would be impossible to bring about the radical shift necessary from a largely backwards, peasant-ridden, mostly agricultural society (as almost all these countries were) into an industrial one. But perhaps Meszaros' view of communism has more in common with Proudhon and some anarchists view of small farmholds. A sort of peasant society without the feudal lords and other classes bothering them. There can be no move to what Marx's means by communism except in relation to the improvement of production to provide for all and not just a few. I happen to think 'socialism in one country' was not ever gonna cut it in the SU. It's just what they were stuck with. And communism is about the democratic control of production, John - or at least a path coherently laid in that direction. I dunno if that's what was happening in the SU. The other problem with Meszaros' obsessive attacks on so-called Stalinist communism is that he does what many do when attacking these countries and that is to start out by attacking first a hate-figure like stalin and then the communist parties and then to slip un-noticed the 'fact' that these countries were Communist. Meszaros is a real comrade, for mine. This article is not anti-communist, John. For Meszaros, communism is humanity's only hope in the long run, I think. It is not a mere oversight that the Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics was not the USCR as it made no claim to have attained Communism, the state had far from withered away (in fact it was quite openly a dictatorship of the proletariat). We all seem to have different ideas as to what a dictatorship of the proletariat means. That transition is a difficult and fragile time, requiring organised responses and much vigilance, is fair enough. Muscovite proletarians and a lot of hitherto loyal sailors and an awful lot of peasants quickly got to find out that whatever kind of dictatorship was in train, they were most definitely not part of it. They did not claim that one could build 'communism in one country'. Fair enough. They got left holding the baby after Germany went pear-shaped, and no mistake. Eventually it was officially decided that this was to be the new revolutionary warcry, and Lenin's name was invoked in its defence. What they achieved was not communism but what they did show was that a break from Capitalism in the intense period of Imperialism was no longer merely a Utopian pipe-dream. Less so now than then, I reckon. But for now the problem is not one of sustaining the revolutionary project; it's one of seeing if we can't help people to see their interests and potential as we see them (we're not at third base in terrible times; we're reaching for first in times that seem politically tantalising to some - well, to me, anyway). That's the bit concerning Meszaros now, I reckon. It bothers the hell outa me, anyway. Those who condemn these countries out-of-hand (such a Simon's 100 year old SPGB) have to come to terms with the fact that their belief in the transition to Communism - if not a Utopia - has not got off the planning stage. Where I am with Simon is the sensibility that we're not at the planning stage until lots'n'lots of people are engaged. And then they'll be part of the planning, too, eh? I've never worn that 'saviours waving the programme at the masses' stuff. Don't reckon it gets you to democratic socialism, you see. Also don't reckon it'd be as useful an agitational banner as it once was, either. But that's me. Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: SV: M-TH: Re: Washington and Moscow
Hi again, Bob, What did ya do turn on the tele or look in your cristalball to predict this? You want a crystal ball? A few weeks down the track Grosny will be a hole in the ground, Moscow will have reluctantly agreed to Wasington's 'moral' pleas to withdraw their regulars, Bislan Gantamirov will be in charge of a puppet government in Chechnya, and Vladimir Putin will be Russia's new president - saying lots of proudly nationalistic, independent and butch things to keep Russia's rediscovered sense of potency alive, whilst doing exactly what Washington requires of him. Everyone who effectively matters just now would be more than happy with that, doncha think? And, yeah, telly, a coupla papers, and years of disappointment in how things turn out constitute my crystal ball. Sad, eh? Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Washington and Moscow
G'day Thaxists, I don't think it matters whether trying to hang on to the prizes of past expansionism constitutes an act of imperialism today or not, really. I reckon we might be missing the point of all this! I don't reckon Russia can win this war, and I don't reckon it could ever have thought it could. Sure, it's always handy to tell other seccessionists in other areas that there'll be a ghastly price to pay for trying it on (or support others, as some Chechens did the Dagestanis); and sure, war's a great way to get the elite's outrageous corruption off the front pages; and sure, war is good for cohering a grumbling populace, across class lines, behind the banner in volatile times. But what a war of this sort is not, is a good idea in its own terms. After all, oil sourcing will be as fraught after this as it was before, and the chances of further terrorist acts shan't be diminished one iota either. I'm sure some brave mujihadeen types are digging in at Grosny for the last big show, but I'm equally sure the balance of the Chechen guerilla force is a long way away. That's the nature of the guerilla, innit? Not to get caught in decisive pitched battles against overwhelming forces? When the masonry stops smoking and the bodies stop rotting, there'll still be a significant guerilla presence and, if anything, it'll have a more sympathetic milieu within which to swim around and reproduce. And Russia is certainly in no position to garrison Chechnya with thirty or forty divisions for the foreseeable future. Nope, western mediation was always gonna be quietly invited in to do the dealing that would allow a 'peace-with-honour' scenario for Moscow. I reckon they'll flatten what's left of Grosny to make their point, and then allow themselves to be talked out of the ruins of Chechnya. I give it three weeks, meself. The weather gets very nasty after that, for one thing. So I reckon this war is very much about the now - and an issue so pressing as to make the likely longer term price one worth paying. And thus do I get back to my opening paragraph. Is it A, B or C? Or a combination. Or something else altogether? Mebbe setting up a succession in Moscow? Installing a pro-Muscovite/West puppet government so that Chechens will be too busy with a civil war to organise against their oppressors? Moscow joining the West in some global putsch against Islam - Chechnya but a world-political football? All very risky plays, for mine - but then mebbe the situation is so fraught that big risks are tenable. [Even a possible post-bellum popular revulsion against Moscow which might (just might) help foster some class solidarity with left-inclined malcontents in Eastern Europe - I can't see any ensuing between Russian workers and Chechens for a generation or so - anti-Chechen racism is rife in Russia, I'm told). Anyway, when was the last time demonstrably resolute guerillas with reliable sources of munitions and moral support in the region and significant support among the people, were decisively beaten on their own patch? What's going on here? And what is it pointing at? Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: IT stocks?
G'day Chris,
I am glad you reposted this. In view of the volume of correspondence on
LBO-talk I think there is often a role for the issues to be discussed on a
specifically marxism list. And unlike Louis Proyect, you and Bill do not
censor the debate.
But at this stage just a question please. What is moral hazard, and is
there a marxist equivalent for it?
The way Doug tells it (or rather, the way I read Doug telling it), it's all
about a dangerously poor fit between likely pay-off and possible downside.
If, as in the 'melt-up' scenario described in the article, 'investors' come
to think the stock market bubble has got so big that the US government would
simply pay any price to avoid a major 'correction' (for fear of a massive
credit crunch and an ensuing depression), they'd feel safe in throwing money
at the markets regardless of productivity trends and profit projections
('coz public funds would always be there to bail the markets out - so,
costs/risks are socialised, and profits nicely privatised).
So 'the price mechanism' values stuff way wrong, signals are way off, we
have a market failure on our hands, huge sectoral distortions, and perpetual
danger of ever bigger crisis. The neoliberal would blame government for
such a market-distorting role, I s'pose - but then we'd be right to ask 'em,
'isn't government interfering precisely because the unregulated 'hidden
hand' did not eventuate in a rational valuation in the first place?'
I guess this can happen with very large corporations, too. I mean, d'you
reckon the Justice Department would force an uncompensated divestiture order
on Microsoft? And wouldn't you factor your suspicions that they wouldn't
into your 'investment' decisions? The DJI seems to have done this, coz MS
has bounced back well from its original little hiccough after the
provisional monopoly call.
I'd argue that the same is true of large privatisations: government would
be politically motivated to protect the profitability of all those new
stock-holders it has produced, and institutional investors would invest
accrodingly. Any good that's supposed to come out of untrammelled
competition is thus obviated. Predictably so - but short-term national
accounts and blind anti-public sector ideology are the focus at
privatisation time, not long-term sectoral health in an environment of
entrenched behemoths, unequal government oversight and natural monopoly
enterprise.
As for a Marxist reading of all this (beyond the standard socialisation of
costs and risk stuff) might also critique the idea of moral hazard itself.
In my innocence, I read it as a very neoliberal sort of invention. The
unspoken assumption being that if there were such a thing as a completely
undistorted market (which any political economist of any stripe would tell
you there is not, else they wouldn't be a POLITICAL economist), values would
settle precisely where likely pay-offs and risks are balanced. Marshall's
supply-demand curve joins Smith's 'invisible hand' and Hayek's 'rational
signals' in perfect equilibrium. I guess we'd counter that none of this
would ever seem so without capital's executive committee providing
stabilising 'certainty' for the individual at the cost of the many.
Stand by for Doug's necessary corrections ...
Cheers,
Rob.
--- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Washington and Moscow
I am surprised to read Rob's arguments that Russia is not going to win. This war is well-supplied logistically and they are already digging in and are prepared to surround Grozny and shell it throughout a long winter. They persist in ruling out negotiations. Well, they might call it a win in the sense that NATO's silly slaughter in Yugoslavia got carded as a win, I s'pose. There, as here, the actual military campaign itself soon (and predictably) reached the point of publicly apparent untenability, and an intrusion from outside was brought to bear. There, too, negotiations were persistently ruled out until there was one. In the terms, as I understand them, that this slaughter was justified (eg. to stabilise Dagestan, to rid Russia of allegedly Chechen terrorism, possibly to protect important oil sources, and mebbe to nip Muslem seccessionism in the bud), this adventure is a joke, for mine. I predicted intensified instability, impoverishment and blood'n'guts in Yugoslavia in April, and I'm predicting it for Russia, Chechnya and Dagestan now. I also predict that, as we have a healthy Serbian military still in place in Belgrade, we shall have a healthy Chechen guerilla force in Chechnya a year from now (of course, both Serbia and Chechnya have been ruined in the process, but that's not what we're talking about). I also suspect (mebbe 'know' is a better word) that there is no tenable exit strategy available to Moscow other than some sorta external intervention. If they're seen to flatten Grosny, wave a few bearded heads on pikes about, and then leave again - all at their own behest - they're gonna look foolish to the point of political untenability, I reckon. A shattered treasury, a few hundred dead Russian boys, and not one initially promulgated objective assured. The one thing that can be said for them is unlike in Kosovo and East Timor, the local population has not been terrorised by para-military fascists. Do we know enough about how the guerillas were behaving in Chechnya before this ghastly business? I don't. All I know about Chechnya really comes from generalising from some basic principles to do with conventional large-scale military adventures in effectively foreign climes against a determined guerilla foe. That much I'll admit. Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: IT stocks?
G'day Bob, Doug's probably fast asleep just now, so here's an interesting piece he posted on his list the other day. I'd be interested in Thaxist views on this meself. Cheers, Rob. [From the bear's den at http://www.LeMetropoleCafe.com] Frank Veneroso - Veneroso Associates - November 19, 1999 The US Economy: The Stock Market Shades of the Souk al Manakh Is This the Moral Hazard Meltup? Probably Not. Executive Summary * Valuations in the high tech sector are unprecedented. So is the degree of speculation, despite serious underlying deterioration in the sector's fundamentals. Nothing in the history of the G-10 stock markets can compare---not even Japan. Nothing except the greatest bubble of them all---the Souk al Manakh. * Global semiconductor revenues peaked in 1995. Even with a good bounce this year, they will be below 1995's level. * Two and half years ago global PC revenues began to stagnate despite advance purchases to meet Y2K compliance. All the consulting firms predict a nuclear winter with down revenues in 2000. * Fred Hickey looked at 130 interent companies that reported in October. Of these 130, ten reported a profit. Two---AOL and Yahoo---reported a material profit. Of the eight remaining internet companies with reported profits, profits were only marginal. Of the 110 companies that reported losses, revenue growth was very rapid, averaging 100% over the last year. But, of the greatest importance, on average losses for these companies grew by 200%. The number of companies where losses are simply soaring relative to revenues is astonishing. * Part of this is due to sheer speculation by uninformed household investors who extrapolate a once in a lifetime bubble in stock prices forward forever. This is reinforced by a new era hype fostered by Wall Street, the media, and that ever-loquacious new era apostle, Alan Greenspan. But much of it is due to cynical relative performance money managers who feel compelled to go where the action is for, if they do not, they will lose performance and their jobs. * The peak of every such bubble is marked by stock fraud. The internet stock craze is perhaps the greatest stock fraud in history. Most of these companies have been hatched simply as objects of stock market speculation with the intention of bilking the public through IPO's . * Many, if not most, of the institutional money managers that are kiting these high tech marginals light years from reality know there is no defensible investment case for their holdings. They know they are involved in a stock scam. * One of these days one or several of the current ubiquitous internet stock scams will come definitively to light. Then, fund managers, realizing they have no justification as fiduciaries for owning such stocks, will fear suit and will try to sell. Others, realizing their trustees and shareholders are beholden to explore similar actions, will try to sell as well. Under such conditions, there may be no bids. Hear it from someone who witnessed it first hand: that is the way the Souk ended---with no bids. -- Defiant Speculation The Fed tightened. That was largely, but not completely, anticipated. The Fed raised the discount rate. It issued a warning that the labor force is depleting and the economy continues to grow unsustainably above trend. These were not expected. The bond market was supposed to like such stern Fed resolve. Instead it sold off a half point. But the stock market proved to be another thing. The Dow rose 173 points. The Nasdaq, which had been up for 10 out of 12 days after making a new high, soared another 73 points. Perhaps 20 stocks, most of whom you had not heard of a year ago, rose more than 20 points. One stock rose 1000 % in a day. Its name was China Prosperity. We understand it is Hong Kong-China maker of toilet paper. It rose from a dollar to ten dollars because of the news that China will be admitted into the WTO. Today it rose further to 81. Today, 2.9 million shares traded by noon. Yesterday 521,000 shares traded. From October 19th through November 12, daily trading volume averaged 300 shares a day. People ask us, "Is this the moral hazard meltup?" We have hypothesized that an unprecedentedly overvalued market amid rising interest rates, serious fundamental deterioration at its rotten heart---high tech, and record deterioration in breadth would be subject to incipient crashes. If government moved to bail out the stock market at all costs at such a juncture, it would become apparent to all market participants that the stock market is too big to fail. A seller's strike would ensue and the market would melt up. That has sort of, but not quite, happened. The Dow fell 13% when it broke 10,000 on an intra day basis the Friday before the anniversary of the Monday October 1987 stock market crash. Over the prior week the market had entered a crash
Re: M-TH: Re: C'mon you lot!
G'day Russ,
I can't remember whether you're on LBO or not. In case you're not (and in
case other Thaxists might be interested), here are a couple of perhaps
edifying (and mebbe not) snippets from there.
G'day all,
Well, the 'minimalist' republican option took a 54-46% kicking. It seems
the richer and the more formally educated the cluster the more enthusiastic
the republican sentiment (well, it was their sorta republic), and the
poorer and the less formally educated, the weaker the support. Women, too,
voted much more strongly against it than men.
Them's the tea-leaves. I'll leave it to my compatriots to read 'em.
I reckon any analysis should factor in just how much this is the
consequence of marketing from both sides that, I submit, has been the most
offensive load of crap I've yet had the misfortune to gag at. The further
we sink into this power-suited, spin-meistered, populace-loathing,
slogan-chucking mode of public discourse, the ... well, I don't actually
know.
One thing (it has occurred to me) that we should inform interested
Americans about, is that the Australian constitution (the effective focus
of today's expensive embarrassment) is unknown to all but a dozen lawyers
and a handful of lonely academics. Our system is the product of a sorta
common-law process - entirely run on convention, and almost entirely
without recourse to the actual (and astonishingly dated and incongruent)
constitution - only almost no-one knows that either.
Still, if anything good has come out of this, it is that Australians still
won't know anything about the constitution in whose name they cast their
vote. None of that hands-on-hearts stuff for us! Well, except for this
nauseating Olympics business, which is only gonna get worse, I s'pose. If
I stop smoking, d'ya reckon I could get a seat on the space-shuttle?
Cheers,
Rob.
G'day Ange,
just look at the referendum result in australia. most people voted 'no' to
the republic question. only 9% of people in australia are monarchists.
rob noted that the people at the end of the scale voted 'no', but even he
couldn't bring himself to say that overwhelmingly it was the working class
who voted 'no'. and we didn't vote 'no', those of us who did, because we
wanted a monarchy, but (as well as many other reasons), the kinds of
representational structures and organisations of working class aspirations
are not in place in australia that would have asserted itself as an
_identity_ within the framework of the referendum. to put it another way,
the working class existed only as a resounding 'fuck you'.
If you mean there's nothing in the institutional setting, no channel for
expression or will-formation, no sense we're relevant to anything, no
respect for us whatsoever implicit in the glossy lying pap beamed at us by
PR professionals, nothing we're discussing featuring in any of the
orchestrated coverage, no connections being made between our material lot
and the contentious word changes - that the whole thing seemed like a tiff
about nothing, between our distant betters, with our money but not about us
- well, yeah, I agree with you. Had their been a 'fuck you' box, I reckon
it would've got up.
a strongly-felt (as the pundits keep calling it) chasm between 'leaders'
and 'led'.
Which crisis, I reckon, either produces polarised collective politics, or
reduces us to a sullen aggregate of self-privatised individuals and
grouplets. The far right's demonstrably better at the former, and the rest
of us are demonstrably inclined to the latter.
and there's no 'identity' because the prior forms of working class identity
have proved themselves to be little more than mechanisms of integration and
subordination.
Well, I passionately agree with this - but I don't reckon most saw this in
such a finely tuned beam - we simply hate all authority more every day.
The 'no' brigade traded on this throughout, and it resonated. 'Course,
their particular deployment was both deceitful ('direct election' alone
would just get us more of the corporate party thing) and incoherent ('don't
fix what ain't broke' is an ill fit with 'don't trust your institutions').
which explains why traditional Labor Party electorates
voted overwhelmingly 'no' -- as did National Party (rural) electorates
Not to my satisfaction, Ange. A bit of insecurity overload (generally a
conservative force); a bit of 'fuck all this
symbolism-for-the-cafe-au-lait-set shit' (an impotent bleat from a proudly
practical and unpretentious political culture which has to choose from two
words to express itself); and a dash of 'we the people should be trusted to
choose our president' (although we're happy not choosing our
primeminister). That's my instinct, anyway.
you can't explain that without pondering the history of the collapse of
traditional forms of representation, organisation and identity, and
indeed without thinking a little of the ways in which working class
identity is being
re-shaped.
The welfare state
Re: M-TH: Re: Whither the discussion
G'day Thaxists, Simon sez: I think that the difference here is that I am not arguing for a Marxist revolution, but a socialist one: i.e. that while Marx provided one of the first expositions of socialist theory, you don't have to have read a word of Marx to be a socialist. Eliciting from Jerry: Note the inference that while he is arguing for socialist revolution, I am not. It's not there to be noted, Jerry. If a premise holds you don't have to be A to be B, it does not follow that if you are A you can not be B. A bit touchy, old son! Agreed. Your inability to listen to what others have to say and your creation of strawmen to argue against shows not only your arrogance but your inability to engage in a worthwhile discussion. Simon's posts have been more substantial (in that he generally tries to flesh out his claims) than have some of those levelled against his position, for mine - F'rinstance, Jerry's ill-tempered post and this, from Dave's last: "There seems to be a lot of lost souls on this list who claim to be Marxists yet endorsed NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia, or who claim to be world socialists without having read a word of Marx. Do they think that this is the groucho marx thaxist theatre? They could save a lot of time and energy by reading the Communist Manifesto and then whipping themselves." We're hear to talk about stuff to do with Marx and Marxism constructively - that's all you need to wanna do to get in. I'm a much bigger fan of the big fella's than Simon is (and I'd like to know what the grounds are for Simon's reservations), but I've a lot of sympathy for his mob's stance, too (not sure there's the necessary incompatibility between Marx and the WSM that Simon and Dave - from their, er, differing points of view - think there is. But we're gonna have to get a bit clearer on concepts before useful argument can ensue, eh?) Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Virtual Capitalism
Hi again, Living in a country proudly anticipating 'catching up with the first world' by way of introducing a goods'n'services tax, I can't help but notice this model supports the intuitive take on such a manouvre most compellingly. Take out the UK's VAT, whack up the marginal income tax rate on the over 40K brigade, index everybody's entitlements, whack a few compensatory bob on baccy, wine, liquour, fuel and cars (which gets me where I live, but ya gotta be selfless when you're chancellor, eh?), and you have a lovely set of arrows. A little 'scary' early deflation, but an altogether nicer place to live. Anyone else picked anything interesting up? http://www.bized.ac.uk/virtual/economy/ Really must get back to the marking ... Cheers, Rob --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: C'mon you lot!
G'day Jerry, Jerry, what we'd like is for you just not to talk about this particular non-subscriber's personal traits on Thaxis *at all*. It's just about all you do here, and it's all the more annoying for the fact you have much to offer - if only you thought us worthy of your finer efforts. We all know how you feel now, so I reckon we're within our rights to ask, just this LAST one time, that you desist. Seriously. 'Night all, Rob. If you check the precise wording that I agreed to last month, you will see that I have lived up to my end of the agreement. The agreement, though, was violated when certain subscribers forwarded posts from another list to this one by the non-person in question. At first I let it pass, then after several occasions, I responded (without, btw, mentioning the name of the non-subscriber). If you want me never to raise this issue again on thaxis, just ensure that that non-subscriber's name never appears on this list again. [There might be a technical way of doing this, btw, by ensuring that said name is automatically deleted from any posts.] Jerry --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Oz and East Timor: a telling timeline
September 13: John Howard proudly proclaims he has 'no regrets' over East Timor: "If I had my time over again, I would not have handled things any differently." Now back to a summarising timeline as gleaned from John Lyons's article 'The Secret Timor Dossier' (*THE BULLETIN* October 12 1999, pp 24 to 29) October 1998: Australia has evidence that a militia has been dedicated to intimidating pro-independence voters in the case of a vote. Oz doesn't pass this on to the Yanks, but US official Stanley Roth foresees 'internecine violence' anyway. December 1998: Primeminister Howard writes the struggling President Habibie to congratulate him and encourage him to pursue his offer to the East Timorese of 'autonomy'. This strengthens the hand of those close to Habibie who want rid of a one-billion-dollar lemon. January 27: Habibie goes the extra yard, and a vote for self-determination is on offer. The US and Portugal want peacekeepers then and there. Downer strongly argues against it - it'd be undiplomatic to evince distrust of the Indonesians. Even ET leaders Xanana Gusmao and Bishop Belo think it's all going too quickly. February 23 1999: Questioned about this, Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas not only does not parry Downer's question about the arming of the militias, but calls this 'a legitimate arming of auxiliaries'. (see March 9) February 25: Downer asks that, in the event of the vote for independence he expects, Indonesia's military behave itself. US official Roth foresees the possibility of a provocateur-led bloodbath and, ultimately, a Wiranto presidency. Downer recommends both of 'em be sweet to Wiranto and talks Roth out of challenging Wiranto and Prabowo. Roth recommends a peacekeeping force and Downer declines (Peter Vaughese of the Primeminister's Department chimes in on Downer's side - yet a few weeks later, Howard himself will insist he was always arguing FOR such a force). The prescient Roth avers there'll ultimately have to be one, anyway. February 27: Downer again argues against Portugese Foreign Minister Jaime Gama's stance that a fully fledged peace-keeping force should oversee the vote. March 4: DIO tells Oz government that the Indonesian military are helping the militias and that Wiranto is turning a blind eye. Downer now suddenly expresses reservations that the militias are being armed at all. March 9: Downer tells journalist Laurie Oakes that Alatas has assured him the militias are not being armed. March 29: The UN Secretariat warns of a 'precarious' transition and some pressing 'security issues'. April 6: Liquica slaughter. April 14: Oz Foreign Affairs official Neil Mules repeats Oz's anti-peace-keeping stance to the concerned Portugese. April 17: Slaughter in Dili. Roth says it's getting 'out of hand'. April 19: ALL Oz's intelligence agencies have now told Howard that large scale violence is likely. Howard rings Habibie and expresses disappointment at ABRI performance in ET. Wants a meeting. April 21: ABRI and some Easat Timorese people formalise peace between them. Oz Foreign Affairs internally calls this 'unnegotiated' and 'short on delivery', in short 'a substitute for real action by TNI'. April 27: Bali summit. Habibie promises stability and Howard asks for an international police presence - the UN will fix the strength of this force, and Habibie agrees. April 30: Downer tells Albright 2-300 cops should be about right. April 28: Howard says on radio that 'there isn't any doubt that the Indonesians through this process are committed to the laying down of arms'. He said he was 'delighted' with 'em. Lyons writes that, in actual fact, Australia now considers it has 'overwhelming evidence' that Wiranto is directly linked to the East Timorese militias. May 21: DSD presents the Oz government with persuasive evidence of the Wiranto/militia link. June 14: Downer presents this evidence to the UN. June 16/17: Downer tells Roth that the UN don't want the vote postponed. It'd only encourage the militias. June 21: Oz Defence No. 2 Air Marshall Doug Riding confronts the Indonesian military chiefs with proof of their establishment, support and coordination of the militias (through their Kopassus regiment). Apparently makes Lt Gen. Bambang Yudhoyono rather cross. June 29: First militia assault on UN bases at Maliana, Liquica and Viqueque. July 10: Kofi Annan expresses increasing concern. July 16: Fateful voter registration commences. July 28-31: Downer visits Djakarta and Dili. Exerts diplomatic pressure - and then pops off to London to watch the cricket (editor's note). August 16-17: Oz and US officials meet and agree to not to do anything that might upset 'a sensitive period'. August 19: Oz Foreign Affairs recommends police and military liaison be ready for early commitment. August 30: 98.6% of registered voters turn out, and 78.5% of 'em vote for independence. Foreign Affairs calls this a threatening and
Re: M-TH: Re: Hot Pursuit
G'day Dave, You write: What do you mean "hang around"? The terms of the UN resolution requires the disarming of Falintil! Well, 'peacekeepers' refute their brief in practice all the time (often with their political leaders' tacit approval). I'd have preferred a bit of honest lying, meself (ie. 'diplomacy'): the peacekeepers go in under public orders to disarm everybody (so Habibie can let 'em in and so they don't have to do anything honest like openly pick sides), don't try too hard to divest Falintilists before the November ratification (the Ghurkas allowed a garrison to keep theirs the other day - pity it got out, really), and then let 'em (as the new sovereign provisional government) have their shooters back, and hang around until East Timor has had an election. Call me a sentimental old fool (well, actually I s'pose you do), but I did dare hope this was the idea, if not on Cosgrove's part, on that of the non-coms on the ground that matters. I spoke to a territorial soldier here who was all keen to sign up to go. His perspective was that the UN troops would be their for "ten years" to protect the new Gusmao/Horta government - i.e. Aussie's client state. Well, let's face it. They were always going to be a client state. The only issue was how much so and in what ways. This is the bit where Oz is yet again acting against their own interests - 'we're' going for too much too obviously. I reckon Howard is taking bigger risk than you allow. But then he's not the sort of bloke who might have seen options and constraints in a complex political/cultural environment - just arrogant, anglo-saxon, neo-liberal 'right' and 'wrong'. He thought that part of the UN's role would be to train the E Timorese army. I told him that he was 25 years too late. If you think that the UN are going to allow any real independence fighters to remained armed, and then get out, you have big illusions. I share those illusions, Dave. Falintil won't hand over their best bits, and no-one's about to make 'em. It'll be seen to be done, but it won't actually be done. Same as with the KLA and for the same reasons. The UN is not up to it. Sure, Falintil hasn't enough, but if they get the chance to organise themselves in Dili, then I'm sure alternative sources can be found to supplement the arsenal. Aussie workers sound just as chauvinist as kiwi workers. The Australian workers' movement (such as it is) has been pretty consistent in its indignation at the way East Timor was treated by our governments - even at Labor conferences during Labor administrations. We're chauvinistic, but we have some romantic ties to the East Timorese (going back to WW2) and no small portion of guilt. The UN mission in E Timor is being painted up here as akin to the Rugby World Cup, America's Cup, and the Olympics, all wrapped into one, with massive hakas performed for the TV cameras etc. Defending democracy is so politically correct. Even the union support for E T is to get their governments to send peacekeeping troops to defend 'human rights', cutting across any Aussie or Kiwi class afilliation with the E Timorese freedom fighters and the Indonesian masses. Well, there's still room for the Indonesian workers to play a decisive hand, but I reckon things there are beginning to settle along theological rather than class lines. Rais and Wahid are pushing that line (the former got his promotion to house-chair), and Megawati's PDI liberals and the PRD social democrats are left rather flapping in the wind. In reality these are imperialist troops (or in NZ's case of a bloated semi-colony) prepared to back up the Indonesian military if it can't keep the lid on the upsurge of mass struggles. The cross class backing they are generating at home now will serve the imperialists well if it comes to that. I don't think for a minute we'll see Kiwi soldiers siding with Indonesian troops against East Timorese (it'd be political suicide back home) - and I don't reckon we'll see a Kiwi in Ambon or Aceh either. Perhaps, a while hence, in West Irian, though - that one is very close to the public agenda, in Australia, anyway. Who's the "we" that "went in"? This is the language of nationalism and not class Whatever ... This is the language of nationalism and not class. Another way of putting this is that upward of 300,000 people are dead because Aussie and Kiwi workers did not oppose the rotten jackal servility with which their successive bourgeois governments sucked up to the Yanks and Indonesian dictators. By going in, as you put it, the bourgeosie are trying to excuse their rotten role by claiming some redemption for "our" past by "our" present actions. I agree absolutely. I'm just not as sure as you that dodgy motivations are what's gonna be decisive here. The road to (an exceedingly modest) heaven might well be paved by bad intentions ... Its high time that we chucked this whole history of bloody complicity and "our" western racist moral
M-TH: East Timor and the Western Left
A pretty useless document, Bob. Yeah, Australia is a minor imperialist nation state. Yeah, we're a paternalistic bunch, with some racism in our soul. Yeah, we check with Uncle Sam first. Yeah, Aboriginal Australians have been hideously treated. And, no, the executive levels of our union movement are not mostly genuine class fighters. And no, a UN force can not be seen to arm one side in a conflict. So what else is new? The UN intervention is still saving lives, isn't it? And they're not killing anyone (this is NOTHING like Kosovo). Well, not yet, anyway. We can but guess how this is going to pan out. And that may well have little to do with the dodgy aspirations of the big boys involved. An engaged left, with a sense of where things stand and whither they might be nudged, might be just what's needed now. Which - if the cyber-left is anything to go by - is a real pity. Why don't you tell us what a good job the Russians are doing in razing a plethora of Chechen villages to the ground and shredding hundreds of Chechen civilians and Russian conscripts coz of some trouble ... over in Dagestan? Or has it more to do with distracting people from the murderous corruption being inflicted upon them? Russia is no longer the champion of proletarian emancipation, y'know, Bob. And in Chechnya, murder IS being done! Or tell us about how good things are in Ambon, where those murderous UN troops have deigned not to spread that poisonous imperialism of theirs? I mean, what is it with you blokes? What did the East Timorese ever do to you? Doesn't what THEY want count for just a little? I don't know about anybody else here, but I'm getting well tired of pro forma blurts like this. A tempest is descending about us, and all the left seems to be able to do - indeed, all it seems inclined to do (and not just on this list) - is launch smug predictable boring malodorous little farts at it. And in the name of praxis, too. Sad. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Hot Pursuit
What could have worked "quite nicely" Rob? Just garrison the towns and feed who's left (btw: I see elsewhere that some believe the casualty figures are surprisingly low - a strange thing to say at a stage when nearly half a million people are still missing. I'm still inclined to suspect a real genocide programme was under way - and I reckon awful news awaits). Hang around while Falantil tries to make something of what's left. And then pull out, leaving East Timor to economic dependence and the mercies of whomever and whatever lies in the bush beyond the West Timorese borders (and how things pan out in Djakarta). But now Australia has seen fit to give Asia a 'white man's burden' speech, and has compounded it with some guff about being America's local arse-kicking representatives. And then they've started talking about entering sovereign Indonesian territory, and fanning the very nationalistic bellicosity I reckon the Indonesian military hopes to exploit to bend the presidential process to its will. Howard has already been flying the old 'national service' kite, and Costello is already contemplating 'reappraising the social welfare system' to pay for a spot of rearming. Nice. Ignore the Australian working class for 25 years, and then make 'em pay for it when it's time for someone to reap what's sown. A lot of people are alive right now (I reckon, anyway) because we went in. Amelioration - possibly only short-term amelioration at that - seemed the limit of possibility from the off. That doesn't mean you don't give it a go - but their longer term fortunes seem to me, and always did seem to me, firmly in the hands of questionable others. I meant 'nicely' in, shall we say, a rather qualified way. Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Hot Pursuit
G'day George, Yep. I have to agree. Canberra is going with the military on tactics, and with the Yanks on strategy. 0/2 for mine. We're busy making something that could have worked quite nicely into something that might well get very ugly for all involved. To torture an old Australian insult, if brains were dynamite, John Howard still couldn't blow his nose. Cheers, Rob. Canberra's "hot pursuit" statement concerning invasions into West Timor ties in with the views I have expressed concerning the imperialist invasion of East Timor leading to the conflict widening to increasingly include all of Timor. As I have already said the situation is more complicated than it may appear and could lead to a very messy situation for Canberra. The Australian's Defence Minister blunder is a further indication of how unprepared and inexperienced they are diplomatically and militarily for their new role as Washington rotweiler in the Indian/ Pacific region. Warm regards George Pennefather Be free to check out our Communist Think-Tank web site at http://homepage.tinet.ie/~beprepared/ --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: [PEN-L:11711] Re: Re: M-TH: East Timor
G'day all, I hear Ambon has been isolated by the Indonesian authorities. No transport or public communications in or out. Just a bunch of well-armed troops, some very poorly armed Christian seccessionists, and lots of people whose views on the matter just aren't going to matter. The drawn-out angst-ridden denouement of the great Indonesian saga is at hand, I reckon. And we're gonna hear very little about it while East Timor is kept bubbling along. Which takes but a couple of killings here, a bit of burning there ... Neat. Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Some tenative observations
G'day Thaxists, George reckons: A few tentative observations on East Timorese developments. It is clear that the imperialist forces that have descended on East Timor to ostensibly protect the civilian population against the pro-independence "militia" are a mere pretext for direct imperialist intervention to protect and advance the class interests of the imperialist bourgeoisie. [Yeah, but they ARE protecting the civilian population, George! If you're going to argue against intervening in East Timor, you'd have to select a domain (spatial and/or temporal) within which things would probably turn out better if outside forces did not intervene. I'm not sure a bit of outside intervention might not have been the go back in late 1975 ... but then, I'm not sure a simple refusal of permission by the USA wouldn't have been more than enough (a million Iraqis would still be alive if the US had simply said 'no' to Saddam in July 1991 ... but then they'd be alive if the US hadn't killed 'em, too). I just think we have to be context-specific when we analyse possible interventions by primarily imperialist forces, that's all.] Now that the cold war period is effectively over imperialism no longer relies in the same way on the kind of regime that has ruled over Indonesia. Consequently it can suffer a facade of East Timorese independence involving formal democratic structures. [The Djakarta line on 'voluntary integration' has been no less a facade.] Imperialism has directly intervened in East Timor in order to protect and develop its oppressive hold over the world. East Timor will be effectively another "invisible" colony of imperialism. [Which is what it's been since late '75, before late '75, and was always going to be in 2000.] Australian capitalism is required to do Washington's work for a variety of reasons. One of them is Beijing. If Washington was to walk into East Timor as the main player China would become increasingly worried concerning the former's strategic intentions. China is highly sensitive to any direct intervention by Washington in that part of the world. Consequently direct military intervention by the Americans would most probably lead to a deterioration in relations between Beijing and Washington. At a time when relations between them have already deteriorated after its intervention in Kosova and its bombing of the Chinese embassy Washington would merely reduce the options available. [Yeah, this makes a bit of sense. The US is on the nose in many a polity, I think. Mind you, by not helping an enthusiastic hand, Uncle Sam has annoyed a lot of other people, too. It can be lonely at the top.] Some other powers in that part of the world would experience greater uneasiness with a relatively large scale American military intervention too. Any direct military intervention by the US might encourage closer co-operation between Russia and China. Already these two powers have been drawing closer together in the face of the growing power of American imperialism. [Reckon a Russia/China co-operation would be pretty popular in those countries, and is effectively there already in many ways. Reckon there are decisive limits to this, though. Those countries' elites and their aspirations are inextricably tied to the USA.] In view of this the ideal player for the role of chief bourgeois crusader is Australia. It is an "Asian" power and has been conducting itself over the last while --before the current difficulty- within that context rather than as a Western power within Asia. [Well, I don't know too many Australians who think we're 'Asian', and I don't know ANY 'Asians' who think we are.] Jakarta, on the other hand, if forced could play the Asian card and thereby increase bourgeois instability in that region. This could only but upset Washington strategic plans. This is what Washington fears even though it is a highly unlikely scenario. Jakarta can play this card by making things difficult for Cosgrove in East Timor through its deployment and reactivation of --its Trojan horse-- the "militia" in East Timor. By re-activating this force it can make things so difficult for Australia as to undermine its ability to impose and maintain imperialist stability in East Timor. [I guess if the military get desperate about their capacity to bend the political process to their will - and I think they are pretty much so already, after that sterling demo in Djakarta yesterday - they might see if they can heat things up in East Timor, get some 'peacekeepers' to chase militia people on to West Timorese soil, whip up a bit of nationalistic fervour vis the 'aggressor', and go into martial law mode. I also note that most of the TNI are still openly unfriendly to the visitors - they are East Timorese members of the Indonesian military, and they could easily turn belligerent if they thought a little logistic support was on offer from the old mother country. But I'm sure
M-TH: Ali on Wheen on Marx
Book Reviews - Clear-eyed prophet. The basic ideas of Karl Marx have been ruthlessly parodied and vulgarised. But his critique of capitalism, argues Tariq Ali, has never been more relevant in our debased times. NEW STATESMAN Monday 20th September 1999 Karl Marx Francis Wheen Fourth Estate, 432pp, £20 ISBN 1857026373 France, in the last half of the 19th century, was the country most favoured as an exile by fractious German poets and philosophers. In 1844, two of their finest, Heine and Marx, were both at their desks in Paris. Heine was working on a poem, "Germany", in which he sees the Kaiser in a dream and they have a conversation. The poem is a savage, prescient and vivid lampoon of the Prussian ruling class: "And now it's the Prussian eagle! It grips /My body and pecks at my liver,/It gobbles the liver from out my breast,/I wail and moan and quiver." Marx, who admired Heine greatly, did not wail and moan like his friend; he tried to understand. In that same year, he was working on a set of essays which were discovered, edited and published almost a century later in Moscow by the great Soviet scholar David Ryazanov. He was subsequently arrested on Stalin's orders and executed, one of the numerous independent-minded Marxist victims of the cockroach moustache. Ryazanov's own biography of Marx was the best of a genre which degenerated rapidly into hagiography. There have been far too many of these and most of them are worthless. For over 50 years, the basic ideas of Marx, ruthlessly vulgarised, were taught as a secular catechism to millions of children in dozens of languages in Russia, China, Vietnam, North Korea and eastern Europe. Most of these ideas were presented in manuals written by hack academics, supervised by ideological committees, to ensure the extermination of critical reason. Marxism was transformed into a secular religion for the citizenry and so lost much of its pungency and meaning. Marx, who saw himself as a latter-day Prometheus implanting fire in the mind of the proletariat, would have found this religious colouring given to his work extremely offensive. It is barely worth mentioning that the hateographies are worse. Most of these are compendiums of slander and ignorance, concocted by unworthy opponents who have little idea of the dynamic in Marx's thought. In these he is always the devil who fathered Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. The cold war years did not encourage objectivity on either side. What, then, do they know of Marx who only Marxism know? Not very much is the assumption of this new biography, which comes as a pleasant and timely surprise. Francis Wheen's Marx is a thinker of deep and genuine passion, whose ideas shaped this century. It was a life replete with personal tragedies and intellectual triumphs. He was possessed of a reckless and deep-rooted scorn for the meanness of everyday bourgeois life and a great love for the classics of European literature, which he drew on heavily for his own work. Wheen's suggestion that the structure of Kapital was inspired by Tristram Shandy rather than Hegel may or may not be true. It is certainly original. What is extremely refreshing about this book, what gives it a certain integrity, is that Wheen comes to his subject without any dogmatic preconceptions. As the book proceeds and as one realises that the author has read more and more of Marx, one senses the surprise and excitement. We are informed that Marx, even if he had been nothing else, would have been remembered as the greatest journalist produced by the 19th century. His vivid lampoons of numerous enemies - his choleric and polemical temper - entertain his latest biographer as much as they did his close friends at the time. The result is a lively and well-written book, one that will appeal to any intelligent reader seeking refuge from the trivia that dominate the TV screens and airwaves of contemporary Britain and the US. Marx was a thinker ahead of his time; as Wheen reminds the reader, the current state of global capitalism would not have surprised him in the least. His world view was a synthesis of German philosophy, English economics and French politics. Of these three, the last was the most significant, with its cycles of revolutions and counter-revolutions. But the real originality of Marx and Engels lay in their insistence on the historic potential of the new class that had been created by capitalism and would become its grave-diggers. The economics and philosophy essentially underpinned this view of history, politics and class
M-TH: Re: Thaxis web site
G'day Russ, Well, we have had more sign up since than I've come to expect over a such a period, there's no doubt about that. But we're losing more than usual at the moment, too ... A net gain, though! I like the site very much. And am not sure as to what US law (which generally applies with US sites) has to say on hyperlinking addresses without consultation. I can't imagine the ones we have being a problem, but it's as well not to risk too many more without checking with the site-owners (this is the future of the anarcho-democratic net we were promised, comrades!). And should we resume discussion on a publicly accessible archive? Good on ya, Russ. Rob. You'd written: Are we getting new subscribers via the web site? I've tried to make sure that it gets picked up by the search engines but there's a lot of competing sites out there! BTW: Anyone got any tips on getting it better? What would Thaxians like to see included? --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: East Timor
G'day Thaxists, But Rob, do you really imagine that there can be any political situation, let alone a crisis , that does not team with numerous contradictions and different class interests? Oh, I don't doubt that for a minute, Chris. It's just that the particular contradictions in play at the moment either do or don't wipe out East Timor, Ambon, Aachi, West Irian, a host of places of which we've never heard, and the whole of the PRD - perhaps even a sizable chunk of Megawati's support base - with, er, extreme prejudice. That depends on the here and now, and it's why I favour going in mob-handed NOW - rather lend some gravitas and credibility to the sorely tried idea of a civilian president within a quasi-liberal democratic setting, than aid and abet in the whole idea's destruction by a remilitarised Golkar and a Wiranto 'presidency'. Of course, which ever of those two scenarios transpires (and I have Wiranto installed at 3/1-on), has a lot to do with contributing to a new dynamic of transformed contradictions. But we are talking megadeath here (sorry to bleat again, Bob), and I share with you the suspicion this might just be a significant criterion in this debate. I just don't see how a civilised person can say 'either a workers' vanguard or nobody' when it comes to crises like this. And, anyway, if East Timor is still a viable entity, it was NEVER going to be meaningfully independent. Neoliberal hegemony was ALWAYS its fate for the foreseeable future. To pretend different is to do your bit to help the powers-that-be to destroy these people completely. And whatever neoliberal hegemony is capable of, its capacity to destroy people completely is at least moot (neoliberalism breeds contradictions; death just breeds maggots). Instead of being fatalistic we have to struggle The left does more to nourish my fatalism than anything else ... a) to think globally, and then b) not to think like the transnational bourgeoisie. Well, while I await the contradictory unity of a global bourgeoisie and a concomitant global proletariat (unforeseeable whilst the left is constituted by the entropic assortment of jagged shards it is at present), I think I'd do well to remember that the institutional setting today does seem to offer a little more relevance at the level of the state. Not much, but at least some. But the more blunders the latter makes the more it will arouse the opposition of millions. One outcome of this could be Indonesia joining Malaysia is a strongly anti-IMF world stance. I think that's gonna have to take a massive default on Indonesia's part - and unless I have the sociology of the ideal-type Wiranto way wrong, he's not about to do that, Chris. He knows who butters his bread now, and he knows Indonesia will not have the butter for that job for a long time - if ever. Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Tue, 14 Sep 1999 00:59:30 PDT
G'day Macdonald, Thaxis has two moderators and I'm one of 'em. And how may I be of assistance? Cheers, Rob. Hi folks. I was wondering who moderated this list, can someone tell me? Macdonald --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Women in Afghanistan
G'day Bob et al, On the question of brutalised Afghan women, Bob declines to sign on the grounds that: No! And this is why..Leaving aside the incredible situation that women find themselves in in Afghanistan as well as other places.By the way the left was complicent in this in there support of the "Afghan Revolution"! STATEMENT: In signing this, we agree that the current treatment of women in Afghanistan is completely UNACCEPTABLE and deserves support and action by the United Nations and that the current situation overseas will not be tolerated. Women's Rights is not a small issue anywhere and it is UNACCEPTABLE for women in 1999 to be treated as sub-human and so much as property. Equality and human decency is a RIGHT not a freedom, whether one lives in Afghanistan or elsewhere. The positive consequences of struggle get called rights in Liberal-land. I don't care what we call 'em, and I don't care how 'culturally insensitive' I'm being. I don't want to share this planet with burned girls and butchered women - nor cultures which perpetuate and perpetrate such hideous practices. Plenty of Muslems get by without torturing and killing the women amongst 'em, and good on 'em. And plenty of liberals offer immediately progressive potential - as long as we're not too bloody precious to go along. And I don't give a toss who did or didn't support the Soviets/Afghans (as if that were ever a monolithic entity, eh?) either. As Chris has been arguing with respect to East Timor, some issues need instant fixes, and sometimes there just ain't the time to try to bend the process to the 'path to revolution'. We're gonna be too late for East Timor, I think. We effectively slaughtered its people and dissolved its viability. Now, saving lives and ameliorating unimaginable suffering is all we can do. We probably won't, because it doesn't suit those who reign to do so, or it doesn't suit them to take the risks of being quick about it (and who knows? They may have a point.). But that doesn't mean ideologically sophisticated calls for doing fuckall helped either these poor people or whatever we imagine 'the cause' is. How easy it is to demand the UN and its imperialistic agenda stay out, eh? Well, it is if you happen to live in Sweden, anyway ... Yours sad'n'grumpy, tailing whatever progressive little vestige I can find with all my yellow menshevik heart, and still managing to disagree with Chris on details (like what's possible and what might actually be progressive in the first place), and a little disappointed at Bob's unwarranted 'cretin' comment (nicely restrained reply, comrade Kim!) Rob --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Women in Afghanistan
VILLAZ, Grenoble, France 27) Pages Frederique, Dijon, France 28) Rodolphe FISCHMEISTER, Chatenay-Malabry,France 29) Francois BOUTEAU, Paris, France 30) Patrick PETER, Paris, France 31) Lorenza RADICI, Paris, France 32) Monika Siegenthaler, Bern, Switzerland 33) Mark Philp, Glasgow, Scotland 34) Tomas Andersson, Stockholm, Sweden 35) Jonas Eriksson, Stockholm, Sweden 36) Karin Eriksson, Stockholm, Sweden 37) Ake Ljung, Stockholm, Sweden 38) Carina Sedlmayer, Stockholm, Sweden 39) Rebecca Uddman, Stockholm, Sweden 40) Lena Skog, Stockholm, Sweden 41) Micael Folke, Stockholm, Sweden 42) Britt-Marie Folke, Stockholm, Sweden 43) Birgitta Schuberth, Stockholm, Sweden 44) Lena Dahl, Stockholm, Sweden 45) Ebba Karlsson, Stockholm, Sweden 46) Jessica Carlsson, Vaxjo, Sweden 47) Sara Blomquist, Vaxjo, Sweden 48) Magdalena Fosseus, Vaxjo, Sweden 49) Charlotta Langner, Goteborg, Sweden 50) Andrea Egedal, Goteborg, Sweden 51) Lena Persson, Stockholm, Sweden 52) Magnus Linder, Umea ,Sweden 53) Petra Olofsson, Umea, Sweden 54) Caroline Evenbom, Vaxjo, Sweden 55) Asa Pettersson, Grimsas, Sweden 56) Jessica Bjork, Grimsas, Sweden 57) Linda Ahlbom Goteborg, Sweden 58) Jenny Forsman, Boras, Sweden 59) Nina Gunnarson, Kinna, Sweden 60) Andrew Harrison, New Zealand 61) Bryre Murphy, New Zealand 62) Claire Lugton, New Zealand 63) Sarah Thornton, New Zealand 64) Rachel Eade, New Zealand 65) Magnus Hjert, London, UK 67) Madeleine Stamvik, Hurley, UK 68) Susanne Nowlan, Vermont, USA 69) Lotta Svenby, Malmoe, Sweden 70) Adina Giselsson, Malmoe, Sweden 71) Anders Kullman, Stockholm, Sweden 72) Rebecka Swane, Stockholm,Sweden 73) Jens Venge, Stockholm, Sweden 74) Catharina Ekdahl, Stockholm, Sweden 75) Nina Fylkegard, Stockholm, Sweden 76) Therese Stedman, Malmoe, Sweden 77) Jannica Lund, Stockholm, Sweden 78) Douglas Bratt 79) Mats Lofstrom, Stockholm, Sweden 80) Li Lindstrom, Sweden 81) Ursula Mueller, Sweden 82) Marianne Komstadius, Stockholm, Sweden 83) Peter Thyselius, Stockholm, Sweden 84) Gonzalo Oviedo, Quito, Ecuador 85) Amalia Romeo, Gland, Switzerland 86) Margarita Restrepo, Gland, Switzerland 87) Eliane Ruster, Crans p.C., Switzerland 88) Jennifer Bischoff-Elder, Hong Kong 89) Azita Lashgari, Beirut, Lebanon 90) Khashayar Ostovany, New York, USA 91) Lisa L Miller, Reno NV 92) Danielle Avazian, Los Angeles, CA 93) Sara Risher, Los Angeles, Ca. 94) Melanie London, New York, NY 95) Susan Brownstein , Los Angeles, CA 96) Steven Raspa, San Francisco, CA 97) Margot Duane, Ross, CA 98) Natasha Darnall, Los Angeles, CA 99) Candace Brower, Evanston, IL 100) James Kjelland, Evanston, IL 101) Michael Jampole, Beach Park, IL, USA 102) Diane Willis, Wilmette, IL, USA 103) Sharri Russell, Roanoke, VA, USA 104) Faye Cooley, Roanoke, VA, USA 105) Natalie Edwards, Charlottesville VA USA 106) Cyndy Williams, Charlottesville, VA USA 107) Donna Hall, Lynchburg, Va USA 108) Robin Hinkle, Lynchburg, VA USA 109) George Vass Venice, FL USA 110) Martha Ferris, Moncks Corner, SC USA 111) Teresa Smith, Charleston, SC, USA 112) Terry Longo, Orlando, FL, USA 113) Charlotte Downs, Orlando, FL, USA 114) Laura M. Connaughton, Orlando, FL USA 115) Ronit Doran, Tel Aviv, Israel 116) Iris Berenstein, Johannesburg, South Africa 117) Lynne Jeffreys, Johannesburg, South Africa 118) Sharon van Heerden, Johannesburg, South Africa 119) Lizelle Mc Mahon, Johannesburg, South Africa 120) Frik du Toit Suid Afrika 121) Glenda Warrin, Cape Town, South Africa 122) Andrew le Roux, Cape Town, South Africa 123) Nathea Beukes, Cape Town, South Africa 124) Johan Wiesner, Toowoomba, Australia 125) Retha Wiesner, Toowoomba, Australia 126) Leon de Villiers, Toowoomba, Australia 127) Leslie Willmers, Cape Town, South Africa 128) Wayne Jacobs, Cape Town, South Africa 129) Davlynne Lidbetter, Cape Town, South Africa 130) Gunnar Blondal, Oslo, Norway 131) Magnús Blöndal, Reykjavik, Iceland 132) Alan Hughes, Manston,England 133) Claire Page, Rochester, England 134) Cathy Smith, London, England 135) Nim Singh, London, England 136) Serena Bentine, London, England 137) Clare Fisk, London, England 138) Alexander Robinson, London, England 139) Darren Savage, London, England 140) Victoria Malim, London, England 150) Dotun Olanipekun-Mohamed, England 151) Raymond Au-Yeung, England 152) Wouter Barendrecht, Hong Kong 153) Choi Kam Chuen Hong Kong 154) JOyce Emons, Taiwan 155) Wendela Elsen, Taiwan 156) Arthur van Benthem, Jakarta, Indonesia 157) Mick van Ettinger, Rotterdam, Netherlands 158) Annemarie de Vries, Rotterdam, Netherlands 159) Steve Osborne, Amsterdam, Netherlands 160) Linda Mooney, Amsterdam, Netherlands 161) Don Kohlmann, Sydney, Australia 162) Nathan Cooper, Canberra, Australia 163) Corinne Salmon, West Midland, Australia 164) Graeme Fleming, Como, Australia 165) Michael Sergi, Cook, Australia 166) Rob Schaap, Canberra, Australia PLEASE COPY
M-TH: Re: East Timor
G'day George, Megawati got more votes than anybody else, but not a more than all others put together (I seem to remember a figure in the 35 -40 % range). Golkar came second, with about a quarter of the vote, and the outright Muslem party did quite badly, with less than 5 per cent (Indonesia is an idea based on religious unity-in-diversity - the *Panca Sila*, the official ideology of Indonesia asks only that all admit to but one god). But I hear a few fainthearts on the Megawati side are thinking of splitting - towards a male party member called Wahid - that'd be a distinctly Muslem step to take, and even then a particular strain there-of - ie. the strain that still feels women shouldn't rule men. Potentially divisive stuff - and the very sort of thing Habibie felt he could benefit from in the presidential race. It would never be enough to give him a really legitimate presidency, though, even if were to get lucky. And I think this might be why the military (probably Wiranto) is thinking of taking a more visible hand in proceedings. Such a step might be considered by US experts to be Indonesia's best chance for 'stability', but I think things have gone too far even for that (Indonesia has a very large, pro-western pb 'middle class', and juntas don't sit well with their fond dreams). So my call is that Indonesia's for a bust-up (sudden or gradual - that's still up for grabs). Given the forces involved, I'd expect a few months, mebbe a couple of years, of seemingly 'successful' oppression and repression, followed by some real blood'n'guts, I'm afraid. Cheers, Rob. -- From: "George Pennefather" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: East Timor Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1999 09:23:23 +0100 Hi Bob Interesting and informative. Can you tell me what --in the main-- was the outcome of the Indonesian elections. How did Megawatti fare etc. Warm regards George Pennefather Be free to check out our Communist Think-Tank web site at http://homepage.tinet.ie/~beprepared/ Bob writes A speculative answer to the very real weirdness of all this: 1) Habibie did want rid of East Timor - for both economic and foreign policy reasons. 2) Habibie gave the referendum the go-ahead in May. 3) Then comes the Indonesian election - it's everything the ideal-type Indonesian general would hate: --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: East Timor
G'day all, 'Turns out that someone in Djakarta had arranged for huge holding camps to be set up in West Timor at least four days before the referendum (camps that are apparently 'processing' 2 people a day - some dying mysteriously and many being sent to other islands). Making news also is an unconfirmed phonecall to Australian media that a huge mass killing if taking place in a town south of Dili. Just cleaning up before the humanitarian mission finally comes in, I expect. Hope they find some humans to be caring and sharing about. We can only hope that the 40 or so who apparently made it into the hills haven't already starved to death. And we can only hope some mechanism might be instituted by which the forcibly removed can get back home. This latter is the less likely, as I expect the media won't make too much noise about it. Sigh, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re: East Timor
G'day again, Some idle speculation I sent to Pen-l - for what it's worth: What i don't understand is when the Indonesian state and the military as well as all the members of the security council decided to have the referendum, what were they thinking? They simply couldn't be stupid enough not to know what the results would be. To me that very decision suggests that both the world and the Indonesian powers that be decided that it was no longer worth maintaining the occupation of East Timor. It would have been expected that the militias would create some violence given that they live in East Timor and would be losing all their privileges, and may get punished for their crimes as well. What is surprising is that how come there was no planning on the part of the UN security council as well as the Indonesian state to deal with the inevitable. I really don't think that the Indonesian state and the military are stupid enough to think that they could hold on to East Timor now. So i find the wholepolitics quite baffling. A speculative answer to the very real weirdness of all this: 1) Habibie did want rid of East Timor - for both economic and foreign policy reasons. 2) Habibie gave the referendum the go-ahead in May. 3) Then comes the Indonesian election - it's everything the ideal-type Indonesian general would hate: - inefficiently inconclusive (as a member of the Magalang generation, his technocratic instrumentalism is exceeded only by his 'Indonesianness'); - a contribution to the sorts of social cleavages he sees himself as being there to guard against (one of these is an empirical manifestation of religious differences - just like the one highlighted in East Timor, where a Catholic enclave would split from a Muslem West Timor/Indonesia); - a threat to his role and status as a salient guide in the entrenched 'guided democracy' regime (the Indonesian military has long been a beast tuned to 'internal security' rather than threats from outside); - Megawati is (a) a woman (a problem with some Muslems), (b) daughter of Sukarno (a problem with the right of the 'New Order'), (c) apparently a liberal democrat (a problem with the 'New Order' advocates of guided nation-building); Wahid and Raimsy are identified as Muslems above all things - dangerous in a nation with 20 million non-Muslems; Habibie has never been a military man, has never enjoyed genuine trust within the military, is implicated in scandal-mongering gossip; - Golkar, the civilian wing of the Indonesian military and THE one-party-state party has lost public respect (well, this has long been the case, but the disillusionment used to be difficult to express) as a consequence of Suharto's excesses (many of which had not been known about) and little election glitches - like when 110% of the Sulawesi electorate turned up to vote Golkar; - Aachi, Ambon, West Irian, and places we've not heard of in the west have been kicking up an unprecedented seccessionist stink, requiring a firmer 'guiding' hand than Habibie seems likely to extend; - the '97-'98 crash has shown just how vulnerable to the slings and arrows of core-finance Indonesia has become; - the ranks are grumbling, and even here provincial differences are becoming apparent. 4) It's too late to stop the referendum, so it's time to fire up the militias so thoughtfully instituted and armed by Suharto's now-disgraced son-in-law. That affords the required arms-length association and guarantees the sort of crisis that's gonna require explicit military occupation, martial law, big-time profile for said general (at possible rivals' expense) and then a chance to do efficiently what (a) the militias could not be relied upon to do efficiently, and (b) what the military has been very good at for decades - deporting populations to populate or depopulate according to the 'guides'' plans. 5) The job done (inculding loud-mouthed militia members going missing and lots of bodies burned/buried/feeding the fish), it's time to smell of roses and allow THE ally to look all humanitarian and effective. The UN is allowed in to put out the fires and wonder where everyone's gone. The media loses interest. And then get 'round to fixing the presidential election (either enter it, directly or indirectly - or just chuck in a hefty spanner to throw the whole process out). 6) Now for those ungrateful bastards in Aachi, Ambon, West Iria et al ... Does that wash? Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: History and institutional malignance
G'day all, I have to rant. Australia still hasn't a - withdrawn recognition of Indonesian sovereignty of East Timor b - expressed open support for Habibie against Wiranto c - withdrawn aid d - withdrawn our embassy staff from Djakarta and expel the Indonesian staff from Canberra e - stopped training and cooperating with members of the Indonesian military f - loudly proclaimed to the world that all should do the same g - done a single fucking thing Now, I admit these things might not all fit well together - but the fact of the matter is we've done nothing. I think Canberra expects Wiranto to enter the presidential race (directly or indeirectly) soon, and wants good terms with the anticipated junta. That's the way we did it in '75 and the way we've done it ever since. If we were a horse, that's where you'd have to put your money. The USA is similarly playing it just as it's always played it. Indonesia is at the heart of its regional policy, and the US has reamed the Australian lap-dog at every turn for decades. Mass slaughters not only don't worry Washington, but Washington happily supports them wherever a 'friendly' government seems a possible consequence. There, too, nothing has changed. The Indonesian military are slaughtering the men and removing the women and kids to other islands. That's what they've done for decades. No surprises there. Based on the media consensus that 4 women and children have been forcibly removed, we're talking about the deaths of about 15000 men right there. This is already so much bigger than Kosovo, the latter doesn't even deserve to be in the same sentence. We have to keep in mind just how *big* this is. Wiranto is doing the same thing the 'new order' did in 1965, when last a decisive section of the military didn't like the direction the government was taking. A million people were killed then and I reckon a number of the same order is not to be rejected as beyond possibility now. Oz and the US stood by (indeed actively helped) then, and, based on the above consistencies, are no less likely to do so now. The media are a bit more active now than they were in '75-'78, and certainly the Oz population is engaged, but the fact of the matter is that it's all too late. The need of editors to have punchy vision rather than talking-head incremental analyses (of even inevitable didasters) is such that it always was going to be too late. And thus to my second theme: just because the vast majority of people strongly hold a view on something, our institutional context is such that this sentiment has no hope of affecting anything. We are impotent in our own country and our own world. More than ever, what Washington decides, and what Canberra might expect it to decide, determines who lives and who dies. Because we ignore history, we are caught by surprise at every turn. Because we never think to look at the ideas that constitute us socially (like the sovereignty of 'the individual' and concomitant notions of 'democracy'), we have become helpless. Like rabbits caught in the headlights of an approaching truck. The extermination of a people is a lot more than the tolling of a bell, but it is that, too. If we can but sit by and watch such an obscenity, in full ghastly knowledge of what's happening, and if we find ourselves in an order that reproduces these nightmares relentlessly, then we should at least realise what it means. Someone will be next, and someone after that. And there'll be nothing we'll be able to do about it unless we go back to basics, learn the lessons of our history, and reject the sway of our institutions. Or one day, it'll be our turn. We're better than our institutions. Here endeth the rant. Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Super exploitation and relative monopoly
G'day Chris, You take exception to the literal definitions required to make Marx's law of value, indeed his whole critique of capitalist political economy, coherent. Whilst your instinct does you credit (I doubt anybody here doesn't share it), I think you forget that the NIC worker is suffering to the ghastly degree s/he is precisely because capitalists must/can rationally allocate their constant and variable capitals components according to variations over space. That's the economics of it. We might also suspect it's a good idea to keep a significant proportion of the first world's proletariat (and the requisite compradorial compenent in the NICs) in clover. That's the political bit. It's all one system, isn't it? The proletariat *as a whole* tends to a condition of immiseration on the Marxist view. Accumulation grows the proletariat, and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall causes immiseration in the sort of drama we saw unfold in SE Asia last year, where over 200 million innocents simply had their lives ruined. All are exploited, but to differing degrees, and all are immiserated, but to different degrees. Only at the analytical level of *class* do we see the ties that bind - not only worker to capital, but first world worker to NIC worker. On that reading, your mandarin engineer is like the business class passenger in a jetliner whilst the NIC workers are cramped into economy class. But it is profit which sits in the pilot's seat, not the capitalists (they're sipping their camparis in first class). On Marx's reading, profit can't fly planes. And the plane will crash unless profit is unseated. To do this, those in the rear of the plane had better join forces to get to the cockpit, as we have to get past first class if we're to get there. So solidarity with NIC workers ain't obviated by these definitions, but indeed recommended by them. Even if that's right (and it convinces me), I might have put that in a rather school-masterly tone. Forgive that Chris - I just rather liked it as it took shape. Cheers, Rob. -- From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: M-TH: Super exploitation and relative monopoly Date: Sun, 05 Sep 1999 09:02:46 +0100 At 22:25 02/09/99 +1000, Rob wrote: it is my understanding that it is in fact the western worker who is the more exploited. Working with state-of-the-art technology puts the western worker in the position of creating many times the value of one's wage (more surplus value is extracted per worker). Of course, many NIC [newly industrialising country] workers do work with up-to-date technolgy, but definitively most do not. Though their lives are often brutalised and impoverished by the exploitative relationship that pertains between employer and employee, it is their level of *immiseration* rather than exploitation, that is so particularly hideous. I know this argument and have always had difficulty with it. eg the small number of elite electical engineers who run the electricity grid of modern capitalist countries, and really are the aristocracy of labour in the old sense with their very high wages, are according to marxist logic said to be much more exploited than the person who cleans out the toilets in a transport cafe. I know that marxism is not "common sense" but really this is extremely counter-intuitive. Am I heretical or am I revealing my revisionist colours again? I must grasp this nettle even at the risk of exposing my true nature. I think it is wrong. I think this is a product of the simple reductionist application of Marx's abstract and dialectical analysis to a concrete situation in which mechanical marxists simply transfer costs in money terms to exchange value, and say that is marxism. Even allowing for the fact that highly skilled workers have disproportionately high wages anyway judged by the basic marxist model of the reproduction of labour power (for a variety of reasons) I think this has got to be the nonsense it appears. I think the answer must lie elsewhere in marxism. Although Marx mainly developed his abstract analysis in Capital as if he was dealing with a single capitalist economy in which geographical differences between one part of the economy and another can be set to one side in order to grasp the fundamental point, he does somewhere have a concept of "relative surplus value" arising from the "relative monopoly" that a capitalist has as a result of new technology, until it permeates to become the standard means of production for that commodity in that economy. I therefore suggest that the high profits per worker in highly capital intensive enterprises should substantially be put down to relative monopoly. The disproportionate high wages of the workers can also be put down to relative monopoly, it taking perhaps even a generation to train a new workforce more widely and in the particular technical skills required. Further I suggest that the great
M-TH: A Thaxis archive?
G'day Lew, Incidentally, Rob, I have been asked if this list has a searchable archive and, if so, how does one access it. Well, I shouldn't be surprised if Hans's server configuration has the post-move Thaxis archive in some form or another, but I don't think there is a publicly accessible archive available at the moment. Russ is mid-move himself at the moment, and it may be worth bringing the matter up with him in a few days - I dunno. Personally, I have no idea as to what's involved, but I know a volunteer on another list knocked up an archive with what seemed to be consumate ease and no great financial strain. How do Thaxists feel about immortalising their words for public perusal? I'm okay with it, myself, anyway. Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Happy Labor Day !
Thanks for the Chicago Tribune interview piece, Chas. I'd never even heard of it! A good read, eh? And a Happy Labour Day to you. Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Why No Revolution?
G'day Erik, You write: If we were really going to put your statement into practice, we would have to go to the "newly industrializing nations" (I believe that is the P.C. term for Third World nowadays) and attempt to direct them towards revolutionary consciousness (since they are far more exploited than most Western workers and thus far more likely to revolt).. The thrust of this argument is certainly tenable, but it is my understanding that it is in fact the western worker who is the more exploited. Working with state-of-the-art technology puts the western worker in the position of creating many times the value of one's wage (more surplus value is extracted per worker). Of course, many NIC workers do work with up-to-date technolgy, but definitively most do not. Though their lives are often brutalised and impoverished by the exploitative relationship that pertains between employer and employee, it is their level of *immiseration* rather than exploitation, that is so particularly hideous. But, even if I'm right, that doesn't detract from your point, of course. However, you still have to deal with increasing state power and military interventionism in the First World (e.g. the U.S. or NATO acting as a "firefighter" to put out such global revolutionary hot-spots, ostensively for reasons of preserving the peace (read: preserving global capitalism)). 'Third worldist' theory always comes up against this problem. Then again, I don't think it'd be outrageous in this relatively 'globalised' time to argue that some trouble in certain NICs could in fact wreak havoc all over the world. 'Tis one of the contradictions of late capitalism (ie in the days of globalised finance, unregulated speed-of-light transfers, secret hedge-fund dispositions, doomed short-termism by which money is invested in money rather than capital due to excess capacity pressures and growing inventories etc etc), that chaos is truly free to do its thing. The wave of an Ecuadorian butterfly might yet indeed wreak a great storm in the City of London. And then, by the 'crisis sweeps away the bullshit' argument, you do indeed have a prerevolutionary episode. It still worries me that so few here think it necessary to reflect on how we might avoid dangers of bureaucratic centralism (which might initially offer a marked improvement in humanity's fortunes, but can not be entertained for long - the likes of Locke and Acton weren't without a point, y'know, absolute power is potentially corrupting whilst humans remain at all like those who roam the earth today). Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: A plea
Ah, what a thing is an Australian spring! Garish blooms, chattering parrots, chortling magpies, snogging roos, migrating turtles and a soft sun that can caress even the jaded likes of me into flights of sensuous fancy. Do a September in Ozzie before you die, comrades - the footy's still on and the nasty wrigglies are still in bed. 'k'n' perfect ... Anyway ... I think Dave is quite right. My speculative take on history is that socialist revolutionaries are loudest and most numerous when either life is unbearable (eg 1905-19 in Russia - mebbe the US in 1930-33) or when the institutional setting is such as to encourage attempts to revolutionise society from within (eg. the post-war welfare state of 1945-68). In the former, desperation alone was enough to make up for the post-bellum question-mark - in the latter, there was, I suspect, a belief that society could be held together by extant institutions while the theory/praxis dialectic produced a workable socialist society - certainly there were no serious questions being asked about the central planning of resource allocation yet (no-one was listening to the likes of Hayek and Mises yet, anyway). Both are rare moments in the great scheme of things (and just possibly parallel-computing is approaching the capacity to take care of the technical side of planning). We'd be silly to discount the possibility of life becoming very hard for the western majority (it's already very hard elsewhere) in the near future (the dangers inherent in a credit crunch in the world of today are pretty spectacular I think), but I can't see the people I talk to throwing off their yoke until they feel some of the dangers they associate with 'actually existing socialisms' have receded. We do have some bad press to undo. But still ... there have been some surprisingly big self-consciously leftish rallies about of late ... and most 3rd Way socdems do seem to have a legitimation crisis on their hands. That's gotta be two dynamics with which a clever left should be able to do something, I reckon. Slow and steady wins the race, eh? 'Nite all, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Bonapartist critique of actual socialism
Actually, Chris, my home e-mail account is not very trustworthy (I'd prepared a response, but it and a heap of others just never went) _ I am not beyond quoting Marx from secondary sources, but I have read the 18th Brumaire many times - it's my very favourite of his writings (which I'm sure I've said many times), and one I find gives me a very solid grounding from which to look at all the sagas that have unfolded since (I think you and I disagree on the SU in particular and the historical constraints that pertain in given moments in general) rather than on the context of the quote I posted, btw) - including the one we're in now - but I haven't the time to go with that theme now - I absolutely must go the pub now. I'm well overdue for a little debauched excess. Avagoodweegend everyone, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: From another list:
Sigh, s'pose I have to make the required menshie noises ... Chas quotes some stalwart Bolshie mates: Noam Chomsky says: "One can debate the meaning of the term 'socialism,' but if it means anything, it means control of production by the workers themselves, not owners and managers who rule them and control all decisions, whether in capitalist enterprise or an absolutist state. * To refer to the Soviet Union as socialist is an interesting case of doctrinal double speak." Chomsky is considered an expert in the science of language - i.e., a professor of linguistics, and a partisan, linguistic theoretician. The notion of "doublespeak" is, of course, taken from George Orwell's anti-utopian science fiction, futuristic novel 1984. If there is a totalitarian or "absolutist" state-society within which operates a "Ministry of Truth," it is the United States -- with its educational institutions -- and Chomsky is its "Obrian." Bagging a fat target like the USofA is, by itself, no way to attack Chomsky, who's made the same point a thousand times - and with more respect for solid evidence than this lot. That Chomsky attacks the Soviet model, too, is quite consistent. To be sans democratic control of the means of production is to be sans a decisively socialist society, is it not. Terms, such as "socialism" and "capitalism," have meaning not only in linguistic sophistry, but also as description of economic phenomena. For Chomsky, the idea -- the concept denoted by the term -- has prior reality. Chomsky is an idealist (not a materialist like Lenin, Trotsky, and Luxemberg - all contemporaries of the Russian Revolution) and, therefore, if the material phenomenon he examines does not correspond to the concept, he dislodges the reality from the concept. For example, Chomsky's idea of socialism and the economic reality of the Soviet Union do not comport so, in order to keep his concept in tack, Chomsky dislodges the reality from the idea and refers to the Soviet Union as "socialist. . . doublespeak." To Chomsky we say that we are not dealing with an Orwellian novel, but economic reality. 'Socialism' was the Soviet version of 'freedom' in the west. Both are double-speak. Both are the names in which their definitive opposites were/are performed in practice. Economic reality in Russia in 1917 had nothing to do with Orwellian symbols and systems, and the reason why the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was not maintained in Russia cannot be explained by attributing ill will to what Chomsky considers a few power hungry "usurpers" -- viz. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin. I'm not saying there was no ill-will, mind, but what are these people really saying. That socialism in one state is not a goer, and that the productive forces (and the decisively substantial proletariat that attends a developed capitalist society) in the Russia of 1917 wasn't up to scratch yet. If that was decisively true, Chomsky is right. The SU was not socialist - because it could not be. If not decisively true, these mates of yours should tell us what was. Positioned by industrial developments in Russia in 1917, the Russian working class was able to operate as a concentrated, independent political party, a class, and it was able to challenge the bourgeois Constituent Assembly. Ah, yes. If it wasn't Bolshie, it was bourgeois. The party is the class, and everybody else is against the class. Tendentious substitutionalism on its way to the Gulag via Kronstadt ... In contradistinction to the historical precedent of the bourgeois-dominated French Revolution, the Russian proletariat was able to exploit the nascent bourgeois democracy, and form an alliance with the vast masses of a revolutionary peasantry. Here's a nice line on revolutionary peasantries and 'alliances': "They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. Their representative must at the same time appear as their master, as an authority over them, as an unlimited power that protects them against the other classes and sends them rain and sunshine from above. The political influence of the small-holding peasants, therefore, find its final expression in the executive power subordinating society to itself." Ring a bell, does it? The Russian Revolution was based on Soviet power - soviets of workers, peasants, and soldiers. "All power to the Soviets" was a good idea and even better double speak. 'The party' substituted for them, too. Socialism has nothing in common with either "capitalist enterprise or an absolutist state." Er, that's what Chomsky is saying, no? The overthrow of that state was the first phase of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in April-May 1917. Yet, there was also Soviet power along side of the bourgeois government of the Constituent Assembly. Following the example of the Paris Commune, the Bolsheviks called for "all power to the Soviets" in opposition to the power held by the National Constituent
M-TH: A therapeutic (?) whinge
G'day Thaxists, Melancholia Alert! A few typical stories that would be carried by a half-decent news bulletin on this particular but ordinary day: Thousands of Irish Republicans sit in the road to demonstrate, and they're clubbed to a bloody pulp as they sit there ... 100 000 Melbournians rally in the city centre against neo-liberalism and its peeling back of basic democracy and is all but ignored by the media ... 20 000 Australian miners go on a one day strike to protest the government's failure either to enforce a deadbeat boss to come up with the $6.5 million dollars he stole from his erstwhile workers, and their union finds the price of solidarity may be bankruptcy as the courts tell 'em 'be a union, and we break you' ... MOST Australian Aboriginal males can not now expect to see fifty ... A new Israeli PM promises peace, and promptly razes a Palestinian village near Jerusalem to the ground ... The UN sits back as Kosovo's Serbs emulate their Krajinan compatriates and retreat to god-knows-where in terror before a western authored purge ... 'Civil' Wars in Liberia, Angola, Democratic Congo, Eretria/Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Burundi ... Erstwhile Reagan henchman Oliver North DARES criticise Warren Beatty's presidential aspirations on the grounds that he's just a Hollywood actor ... As I said, an ordinary day. But then, to realise that, you'd need a clue about what other days are like. Some history is invented, sure, but a lot more of it is conveniently forgotten - or just plain ignored, I reckon. I've stopped appealing to history to make my points when I teach - none of the bright-as-a-button, full-of-potential youngsters in a packed Australian lecture theatre would know what on earth I'm on about! Humanities Departments are cutting their history departments, high schools don't seem to teach it any more, and the news tells us nothing about how any of the particular episodes of carnage or ineqity in which it wallows came to pass. History starts anew each day, and dies as aching head hits pillow. No sense of direction, none of erstwhile victories, none of more recent losses, none of danger, and none of hope. Oh, and the aggregate countering weight of good news stories on this particular day? Viewers of pay TV will soon be able to choose the angles for their replays of footbal matches! Well, ya can't make omelettes like that without breaking a few hundred million eggs, eh? Sigh. Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re: dialectical materialism/activist materialism
G'day Chas, I reckon you sound like a good historical materialist in this post - especially here: "Marx says that the chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism, Feuerbach included, is that it is contemplative and not active. " here: "History is made by active classes" here: "Feuerbachian and the other materialisms are errors of mechanical or vulgar materialism, treating history like a giant clock that mechanically unwinds without human agency." and here: "Engels says exactly that knowing something in nature is to change it from a thing-in-itself to a thing-for-us. This is the Marxist ( and Hegelian) solution to the Kantian problem of the unknowable thing-in-itself. Engels says we know something when we can make it." Welcome aboard! You also write: "Also, in the Preface to the First German edition he says that he treats economics like natural history." I'll take a tentative (somewhat vague) stab at this ... 'Economics' here is that of capitalism - a dynamic mode of production which he reckons hides its driving force behind our backs (the exchange relation). In that which human consciousness does not enter (ie that which we do not perceive as we live our lives), a natural science approach is tenable. His method is revolutionary because it unmasks the hidden and thus makes us conscious of it. Consciousness constitutes a systemic disruption to the giant clock. Natural science gives you the OCC, the corresponding TRPTF, and the tendency to periodic crises. Consciousness (arising where the once conducive social relations suddenly fall out of kilter with whatever developments the definitive drive for accumulation forces upon the mode) manifests in stuff like superstructural ameliorations of the base (such as the welfare state arising out of one such crisis), societal quakes (such as your beloved Bolshies arising out of another), and the spectre of democratic socialist transformation (well, we'll see). It's when (inevitably present) social relations are factored into the clockwork of (inevitably impossible) pristine capitalist economics that we arrive at the 'materialist conception of history'. History needs human society. Capitalism in its abstracted self (and it is capitalism that is the subject in *Das Kapital*), is a finite dynamic - its historical context and the concomitant question of what might succeed it - are matters outside that neat natural scientific box. History is social, and it is this dimension that reduces the apparently natural and everlasting to an episode of becoming and begoing (well, it *should* be a word!). "Also, the last time we discussed this, Chris Burford found many examples of Marx using natural science dialectics as heuristics in Capital to explain human historical dialectics." I've been using Gould's 'punctuated equilibrium' notion as a heuristic, too. And the processes of the San Andreas fault. And the dynamics of an arm wrestle. In none of these cases do I feel the need to demand identity with my object (social history), 'coz that's not what 'heuristic' means. That lot may not all make sense - and I wouldn't blame you if it didn't. But a bloke can but have a go. Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: M-TH Republican Movement GFA
G'day Bob, You write: Well, who would not oppose and end to the killing! But to compare this to that this leadership is dedicated to a genuine struggle towards socialism is fairly mind boggling. And in fact in regards to the killing only has for a short time perhaps reduced it. And even if successful with this operation which I doubt they only manage to point the guns in another direction in the future instead of at the ruling class! [I'm not claiming that the current leadership is particularly socialist at all, Bob. Can't think when it really was, actually.] Well what is going on in Ireland has more to do with its entry into the common market which for Ireland was in fact a positive thing in raising the welfare of the entire nation over the short term --but hardly the long term. But this hardly makes the turn of the leadership any better. They just want to become joint partners in the operation. but in the final analysis there ain't no room for Ireland to prosper under peaceful bourgeois democratic forms. In fact not for England, Germany, Japan or anywhere else. [Well, I'm not sure Europe doesn't have the potential to do quite well (as an 'economy') over the next decade or two. But the media are already quite aware that there are danger signs in the world economy (US consumption is based on the quicksand of debt; information stocks, indeed even some Dow stocks may soon prove to be capable of mammoth falls; China is beginning to creak; both SE Asia and Latin America could go straight back in the toilet at any minute, depending on these developments at every point; and Europe's new elite is being very reluctant about rejuvenating demand to get some growth happening). Europe's potential might be nipped in the bud very dramatically over the next year or two. Either way, Irish workers are paying the price of labour market deregulation and lower public revenues in the context of very fragile growth.] Because if we are there then we have reached what kautsky called super imperialism and then well all of us have been wrong. [I actually agree with you here - a suspicious, indignant and belligerent international political culture has been born in the globalising traumas of the last two years, and the comfy reign of super imperialism looks less realistic today than it did only two years ago.] so the debate about Ireland must be seen in the big picture and not a maneuvering place for leftists who feel comfortable in HOPING this will be the way things go so that we don't have to get out on the barricade. [There's a barricade to be on alright. But you have to make sure your fighting the battle of the day, I reckon.] This must be taken in the context of what is really going on. To say that the last ten years of capitalist counter revolution is leading towards a globalization at super imperialist pipedream I believe quite wrong. in fact bourgeois democracy can not solve the present crisis and we are heading towards WW3 which will certainly create its own mass movement potential. The point is where this movement will be lead too. Will we see a reprisal of the betrayals of the second International. The ex far left now trying to jump into the shoes of traditional Social democracy or will we see the development of new Zimmerwalds? Seems like genuine socialist struggle is pretty far fetched even under your criteria fir these countries these days. [Demanding minimum wages, public infrastructure, corporate taxes, minimum conditions - these are all currently important sites of struggle - socialist struggle. It's somewhere to flex collective muscle, gain confidence, and learn to look further afield, too. And it's urgent. That's all I was trying to say, Bob.] Ow! Does my bite hurt? [You've taken bigger chunks out of me than this, Bob! You're out of practice, mate - this is but a nip!] Think if we had the republicans in Ireland leading the struggle of the Australian wharfies. But that is impossible because the peace deal is connected to a growth in the Irish economy connected to its entry into the common market. But this is only short term. The future I doubt is not so bright and this includes the "peace" aspirations that came to the surface in connection to this. [You won't find an argument here.] Trying to find something good in the pathetic turn of the Irish leadership which was already bad before their historical turn to make the deal and trying to find some light in all of this certainly must be at best incredibly naive coming from leftists who are as well read as this crew. [I think Jim is right on this. It's actually been over for a while - and some of us have got used to the idea. MacGuinness and Adams haven't held any picture cards for years.] But please give us some proof! What exactly is going on in Ireland or anywhere else that one can possibly claim anything bright about. All this talk about the aspirations" of people wanting "peace" ain't enough just after we saw the latest
M-TH: Re: Luxemburg v Lenin?
Awright, Chris. You have a bite. You write: She sounds like a symbol of subjective revolutionary passion, like Che Guevara. Leaving poor Che out of it for a minute - where do you get that 'subjective revolutionary passion' bit from? Don't you like that quip of hers about 'the false steps which a real revolutionary labour movement makes are historically immeasurably more fruitful and valuable than the infallibility of the best central committee'? I do. Luxemburg was opposed to the distribution of land to the peasants and to the right of nations to self-determination. Luxemburg opposed this only in the short term - thinking that efficiencies would be given up if the large estates were to be broken up at a time when things were a tad fragile food-wise. Er, she had a point, didn't she? She considered this latter to be unrealisable in a capitalist world. That wasn't her argument. She thought the nationalist component of the Polish working class were too ready to compromise with their nationalist allies in the petit bourgeoisie and borgeoisie. This at a time when she considered it essential that nothing confuse or qualify the potential tide of proletarian revolutionary sentiment coming from the east. She was a great one for applying class analyses at the moment, and revising these as moments changed. Tolerably Marxist position, really. She was very much influenced by Leo Jogiches, an older comrade with whom she worked in the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland. Who was himself hunted down and killed straight after Rosa and Karl died. In 1904 she argued about Lenin on party building, writing On the Organisational Questions of Social Democracy. However it was alleged in the discussion she could be as centralist as she accused Lenin of being: she had authoritarian control over the SDKP even at one time considering beating a group of political enemies by putting it about that they were police agents. I hadn't heard this last. In fact I thought the reason she did not split from the rightist socdem warmongers immediately in 1914 was that she did not feel she should try to impose from above what was not yet sufficiently widely and deeply inculcated within the rank and file. Her commitment to democratic processes was such that she was prepared to join her comrades in a 'false step'. Mebbe an early split might have been a good idea - but then we'll never know. She was in favour of a broad party and criticised the existence of a large number of factions in exile. You'd be okay with that, wouldn't you. She over-emphasised the possibilities of appealing directly to the masses. She had a nascently revolutionary moment on her hands, and at such times masses are are very different things than we are in other times. 'Revolution from below' has to mean something, doesn't it? After the war German Social Democracy was influenced by the Bremen Left Radicals who were indluenced by Pannekoek and Gorter. Paul Levy was in due course expelled as a rightist. Pannekoek rewards another read, too. Failed revolutions are better than none at all, but *only* if people learn from what went wrong. Pannekoek has some compelling things to say on this. No one knew of anything she had written on philosophical questions, including dialectics. I still think her approach to the masses a more two-sided one than the one so arrogantly advanced by Radek and some of the more centralist bolshies of the time. Her philosophy was in her practice, and her practice caused her to change her theory (she was a great one for speaking up when she felt a change of mind was suggested by events). In the discussion some argued that the differences between her and Lenin were overstated. Lelio Basso's *Rosa Luxemburg: A reappraisal* takes this line. I don't know enough to take a firm position, but my inclination is to disagree. I reckon there were fundamental differences. It's in Lenin's tone when he takes Luxemburg to task on stuff like the national question. But Rosa did grow much more understanding over time - as Lenin's invidious plight started becoming apparent in 1918. In 1925 at the 5th Congress of the Communist International it was stated that it "real Bolshevisation" of the International was not possible without overcoming "Luxemburgism". The slogan Either Socialism or Barbarism does seem to me to exclude intermediate positions of struggle for democratic rights. You're stretching a bit here. But if I were to go along, I'd argue that we should bear in mind the cleavage in the left in her time and place. Rosa saw one side of that left as a potential emasculator of the left as a whole within a miltarist and dangerous milieu. That, she thought, could lead to barbarism. It did. This would be consistent with her opposition to the right of nations to self=determination and the distribution of land to the peasants. She did NOT oppose self-determination as a matter of course (she affirmed the big fella's
M-TH: Re: Does the labor theory of value hold?
-- From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] G'day Doug, You write: In other words, these are glamorous issues, but not really all that representative or as profound as the huffing-and-puffing makes them out to be. All useful info, Doug, but it's precisely the stuff that is actually bought and paid for that I'm talking about. That and its projected significance in future national accounts all 'round. Those numbers are a LOT bigger, no? After all, IP treaties, trade agreements and all manner of germaine international dealings are significant to the degree that they work, not to the degree that they don't. Am I not right in saying more than half of US exports may usefully and accurately be characterised as 'information'? I'm just about out of huff and puff on this, but it'd be good to know for sure whether I'm wasting my time sweating on this stuff. Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Marx on Timon of Athens
G'day Chris, In *C1* Marx refers to Timon's speech, in which money is described as the 'common whore of mankind': "Just as every qualitative difference between commodities is extinguished in money, so money, on its side, like the radical leveller that it is, does away with all distinctions." He then goes on to quote, of all characters, Creon (Sophocles's Antigone) on the evil of filthy lucre - and then gives us a bit of Athenaeus on greed. All to show that we have, under capitalism, lost the common-sense insights of yore. Marx would never have posited a "normal" attitude to money. What is (importantly) meant then is: *normal for western precapitalist societies* - from 460BC to 1601AD, anyway. Take a peek at S.S. Prawer's *Karl Marx World Literature* - as Timon doesn't directly rate a mention in the index, try pp329-331 of the 1976 edition (perhaps, alas, the only edition of a terrific book). Marx also muses about Timon in the Paris Manuscripts somewhere. Cheers, Rob. I was surprised, looking through a second hand copy of "Some Versions of Pastoral" by William Empson (1935), to see the first chapter entitled "Proletarian Literature". This seems to flirt archly with marxist ideas. He *claims* the book examines "a form for reflecting a social background without obvious reference to it". There is only one reference to Marx. In the chapter on Gay's "Beggar's Opera" (inspiration for Brecht's "Threepenny Opera"), he writes: "Every reference to money in the Opera carries a satire on the normal attitude to it no less complete than those of Timon of Athens which Marx analysed with so much pleasure." Marx would never have posited a "normal" attitude to money. But the purpose of my post is to ask: does anyone have a reference to (date, not just volume) or better an extract from, Marx on Timon of Athens? Chris Burford London --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Does the labor theory of value hold?
G'day Doug, You write: "Information" itself is an empty concept. Information about what? Capital flows are a kind of information. So are chip designs and patented engineered molecules. So is Ally McBeal. So what exactly are we talking about here? Well, I guess I'm talking about all of 'em. The concept isn't empty, is it? I said some things about the relationship between production (as a commodity) and actualisation that I think hold for all commercially sold financial data, designs, rights, and TV shows. Even Ally McBeal makes its money in the US market - after that it costs nothing to beam it to Oz (which they do quickly, as Oz pays more per capita for US programming than any other national market - there's a power relation incarnate). Am I missing something? Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Grumbleguts
G'day Bob, 'We' is the ironic reference Robert Fiske makes to the west, Bob - it's from a rhetorical tradition which often makes its points by simulating the viewpoint of the target so as to ridicule 'em - Yanks have no such tradition, so you can't be blamed for missing the core of the article absolutely, I suppose. Why not tell us exactly *why* the article is 'garbage'! And why snap at a fellow Thaxist for using the reply mode to get a pretty useful article to the list? You never struck me as a stickler for nettiquette ... And thanks for the article, Clinton! Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Marx on GOLD
G'day John, Haven't got my *C* with me ... My understanding of the way things are today is that banks create over 90% of the money in circulation through the provision of credit. It exists only as digits, and represents a faith in the near-to-mid term old crisis theorists like me don't think is justified. In other words, the huge majority of monies represents value not yet extracted, and not particularly likely to be within the period it'll be needed to square the accounts. In that event, we either reallocate social wealth to bail out the banks or generate new loan contracts to keep the finance system afloat (we've done that before, but it obviously ain't a structural fix as much as a short-term 'socialism-for-the-rich' band-aid that effectively exacerbates the credit-dependence of the system), or we let the financiers hit the wall and find ourselves with a depression of (by my simple arithmetic) absolutely unprecedented intensity. We depend upon our yoke most profoundly ... Anyway, no relationship pertains in 1999 between minted money and the amount in circulation (capitalism survives each day on an ever deeper-mined future - the only bolt-hole it has), and none with gold - which enjoys only a discursive status - as Australia's and Britain's decisions to sell while the going's good suggests. Controlling credit is not only a self-professed socialist's aim, it really should be any capitalist's aim, too. Everyone's so urgently talking up productivity projections not so much because of the improved living standards they should promise, but because it's desperately needed to square today's accounts. It might be said that the tendency of the rate of profit to fall encourages ameliorating bites into the future, which ultimately promises only systemic fragility, as the pressure to service that debt is increased by more of said tendency. The 'information economy' seemed to offer those who don't believe in systemic crisis a way out (an index to this optimism is to be seen in stock values among info-monopolists). But those numbers are already softening, it seems. After that, only massive capital destruction is left as a way back to profitability - and that would have the effects we've been watching in SE Asia. Regional devastation and the laying waste of 200 million lives in sudden intense depressions that go all but ignored in the core economies. Too much of that, and you've solved an excess capacity problem only to introduce an underconsumption crisis. Then the depression nails us ... If that's hilariously untenable, Doug'll be quick enough to chime in. Won't you, Doug? Cheers, Rob. To readers of Das Kapital, Here is a theoretical question on Marx's most important work which I hope someone can help me with. There is a group of us here in Manchester slowly going through Das Kapital and although we can get to grips with most of the first few chapters, one problenm we cannot resolve is the relationship between the amount of gold and the amount of paper money, coins, credit, etc. Is the value of the coin money equal the amount of gold, is it proportional or is there any direct relation? o they just have to have some Gold? In the exchange C-M-C does M = the amount of concretised labour in an amount of gold equal to that required to make C ? This question is rather confused, but if anyone has any idea what it is I am still struggling to understand could youn please help. Many thanks, John Walker Manchester, UK. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Marx on GOLD
Just got home - John's question about gold and credit still nags at me, so I've whipped Doug's book off the shelf (a hard-back less than twenty years old ain't hard to find there) and dug out a few germaine morsels. Doug follows Marx's *Grundrisse* "Pure paper and bank money did perish in 19th century crises, so for Marx the most imperishable form of money was gold. In a normal modern crisis, the flight to money is usually to Treasury bills; but even in modern crises, gold, ridiculed by Keynes as a 'barbarous relic', usually regains its charms." p232 Well, I reckon that was historically true when *Wall St* was written, but it's a lot less so now. Gold is losing its lustre, and governments are flogging it while a few bob can be had for it. Doug quotes this salutary warning to our times a few pages earlier (225): "The credit system is no more emancipated from the monetary system as its basis than Protestantism is from the foundations of Catholicism". Explains Doug (following Marx every inch of the way, Bob), credit to producers funds greater capacity beyond consumption, while credit to consumers stretches consumption. Result: Ponzi units. A disruption comes along (eg a bit of retrenchment, an interest rate hike etc), debts become unserviceable, the finance sector takes a hit, panic ensues, and we get milked to bail out the financiers. In economies where this ain't possible, an old-fashioned depression is simply had. In the end, says Doug, 'money of the mind' collides with matter. When Doug digs into *Capital 3*, he comes up with this apposite Karlism: 'in old and rich countries, the amount of national capital belonging to those who are unwilling to take the trouble of employing it themselves, bears a larger proportion to the whole productive stock of society'. All cost and no benefit - except to the new fat technocrat that takes the place of the owner-manager. But the rentiers are not irrelevant - they're still able to regulate the new managers, and 'the needs of money seem increasingly to take precedence over those of production', and we have effectively made of credit 'the principle lever of overproduction and excessive speculation', already ripe with structural distortion and volatile contradiction. An awful lot of Marx for a petit bourgeouis Keynesian tract, eh? Anyway, credit ain't tied to anything because capital can't afford it to be. Capitalism's problem is that it consequently relies wholly on confidence in the future. Public Relations is sophisticated these days (well, they've got some of us going along with the killing of Serbian babies and make-up artists), but it can't handle every chaotic twist and turn - and the Ponzis are already out there. Just like flexibly integrated and forward-looking socialist institutions aren't. Pity, that. Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
