SV: SV: M-TH: Impeirialism and Serbia
Bob, A long version below. Charles I would bye a lot of this as background to the intensive and growing inter-imperialist rvalry. And it ain't just oil, transit routes and IT. But markets and spheres of influence after the demise of the world after Malta. This also plays into what Rob is saying on China. And don't forget Japan the industrial powerhouse in that part of the world. Warm regards Bob --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: SV: SV: M-TH: Impeirialism and Serbia
Yea, fundamentally it is about controlling labor power all around there, as labor is the source of all exchange value. "Market" is a euphemism for exploiting laborers. CB "Bob Malecki" [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/14/99 02:33PM Bob, A long version below. Charles I would bye a lot of this as background to the intensive and growing inter-imperialist rvalry. And it ain't just oil, transit routes and IT. But markets and spheres of influence after the demise of the world after Malta. This also plays into what Rob is saying on China. And don't forget Japan the industrial powerhouse in that part of the world. Warm regards Bob --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Guardian attack on LM
I cross swords cordially and robustly with James Heartfield from time to time. This often malicious article (below), just published in the Guardian, clearly contests with LM its entry into the public space of civil society. As a member of Democratic Left I too believe very much that any marxism that is living has to locate itself in civil society, and generally I prefer a Gramscian view of this. I agree with some LM contributors that analysis of the quality of late capitalist society is part of that struggle. I do not object to James or Mick Hume getting articles in the Times and similar organs so long as the compromises, and compromises are absolutely necessary, are not ones of principle. I am not purist about this, but like others I mistrust the warmth of the reception that LM writers have achieved even though in a coded way it is a signal of an awareness that marxist questions have to be taken up. I was offended in the past by the RCP's opposition to sanctions against apartheid South Africa, and as is well known I object to what I see as LM's cover for what are in effect Serbian apartheid policies. Overall it seems to me ideologically that LM has adopted nothing more than a radical version of bourgeois democratic rights and by promoting this has found a niche within capitalist society that does not fundamentally shift the power relations in favour of the working people. That is why it has become part of the acceptable search for alternative interesting experiences, and a commodity in itself, (whatever may be said about past sectarian methods of organisation of some of its members which is not so relevant to its current appeal). In copying this to the list I do not expect James Heartfield to feel under pressure to refute what LM supporters may see as the many misreprestations or perhaps downright falsehoods, but with the Guardian this morning it is now part of wider British civil society, and I would be interested in his response to what are the main *serious* political and ideological questions. Chris Burford London Licence to rile Until 1996, Living Marxism was the organ of the Revolutionary Communist Party, splinter group of a splinter group. Now, the magazine has renounced the old party and re-emerged as LM, glossy opinion-former and sponsor of high-brow celebrity seminars. But is the aim still the same - finely calculated outrage? By Andy Beckett. Saturday May 15, 1999 The Guardian It was the water jug that did it. There it was, in the middle of the panellists' table, at the very first session of the conference organised by Living Marxism. The jug was large and thick-sided and stylish, not the glassware you might expect at such a marginal-sounding gathering. The stage lights made it sparkle; a Habitat window-dresser would have been proud. What was most noticeable, though, was the large, blocky logo printed down the side. Today's revolutionary vanguard recommend Absolut Vodka. And Perrier, too, to judge by the panellists' tumblers. And Waterstone's, which had a stand in the hall outside. And the Royal Shakespeare Company, which was sponsoring a seminar. And the Times Literary Supplement, which was giving away free copies. And a right-wing think tank called the Education Training Unit, which was sponsoring another seminar, to "explore the part which markets can play in meeting educational needs". Being a modern Marxist, it seemed, was a surprising business. The magazine's conference was not about late capitalism or the Irish Question. It was not held in some draughty meeting hall or tobacco-stained L-shape above a pub. It was about "standards in the arts, education and the media", and took place at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, on an expensive stretch of the Thames, with Jeeps and the odd Mercedes parked nearby. On the first day, a Friday, proceedings had to wait for Chris Evans to finish filming his weekly TV programme. Outside in the street, there were no sellers of political newspapers or rival radical factions or collectors of petitions for the usual causes. Inside, nobody heckled. Nobody said the word "struggle" or "poverty" or "injustice". Instead, one session was titled, "What's wrong with cultural elitism?" Another was, "Is classical music dead?" The invited speakers included Kate Adie and John Simpson from the BBC, and Melvyn Bragg and David Starkey, and Janet Daley of the Daily Telegraph. The first discussion panel alone contained Nicholas Kenyon, the director of the Proms, John Tusa, the head of the Barbican Centre, and Sir John Mortimer. John Humphrys of Radio 4's Today programme was chair. For his introductory remarks, Humphrys leaned forward in his seat and made a little joke. Someone had written an article, he said, accusing the conference of being "sinister". He read out a bit, mocking each word with his taunting, tough-interviewer's vowels. Then, for his punchline, he looked up at the audience, which rose in orderly ranks before him, every seat
M-TH: anti-Lenininist Leninist list
(I meant to send the following to thaxis ...) Strictly for comedy read the following. Someone ought to tell Steven Speilberg that there is a "Jurasic Park" on the Internet where Stalinist dinosaurs still roam. Jerry -- Forwarded message -- Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 10:28:39 +0200 From: Sven Buttler [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: (MARXJOUR): The Marxist-Leninist List Introduction This list has been created to provide a forum for serious debate between revolutionaries from different parts of the world, and for the exchange of information about the struggles for national liberation and for socialism. It's standpoint is that of Marxism-Leninism, that is to say scientific socialism. We emphasise Leninism because we recognise this as the only valid interpretation of Marxism in the imperialist epoch. This list stands in the proud tradition of the Third International and the struggle against modern revisionism. Ideologically, it is fundamentally opposed to social democracy, including Trotskyism, which was correctly characterised by the ECCI in 1926 as a social democratic deviation. This list is an attempt to use the powerful medium of the Internet to further the struggle of the working class and its allies. The Marxist-Leninist list is a forum for the development and propagation of revolutionary theory. It is not a forum which will tolerate lies and slanders against great proletarian leaders. We stand in the tradition of Marx, Lenin and Stalin, and we are proud of this. To subscribe to the Marxist-Leninist List send a blank message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Moderators Panel. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Imperialism and Serbia
G'day Chas, You write: "Doesn't American imperialism and all imperialism need the INSTITUTION of war ? Some war , somewhere, regularly ? Otherwise, how could it avoid disarmament ? And wouldn't disarmament spell the end of capitalism ? World peace would take away capitalism's ultimate form of creative destruction, its method of restoring the rate of profit." Well, war is definitely the ultimate way to resolve excess capacity problems, but you'd need a big war in the right place to do the job to any significant degree. War and rumours of war also cost capital a lot. And then there's the confusing little matter of distinguishing between the interests of capital in general and capitalists in particular - at any particular moment, I think you'd have to deploy an institutional analysis to discern whether you're watching crisis control by or on behalf of capital in general, or whether you're watching a currently powerful capitalist or sector get its way. And maybe we should distinguish also between wars that are authored by capital consciously (I think Vietnam was one), and wars that emanate from capital relations (more along the quasi-structuralist lines of Lenin's imperialism thesis - I think both World Wars may have been such events). You also write: "There would be no way to impose the will of the IMF and the big banks and financial institutions, no way to collect the debts which are the basis of neo-imperialist control of the neo-colonies. Brazil and Mexico could just default and what would Wall Street do ?" Again, war is sufficient for this, but not generally necessary. I think it's part of the story in the Yugoslav instance, but most of the world was brought to heel by transnational finance without much war. A bit of debt manipulation, perhaps. Targetting research and development at getting around public utilities (eg the way satellites were built to offer end-to-end autonomy from public telcos, or deploying market power to make new technologies expensive for governments - as in the health sector), dressing up the insurance sector as the health sector (to undermine public health structures), pushing the debt buttons (by way of currency manipulation and ratings agencies) to encourage governments to pull money out of their public sectors (eg undermining public schooling), and so on. I suspect this a bigger story than war when it comes to the explaining the development of the finance sector's hegemony. Doug has an interesting bit in *Wall St* about how New York's political autonomy was destroyed by a few bankers. I guess I'm banging on thus because both world wars ended up presenting capitalism with enormous threats to its hegemony. We wouldn't have got the Soviet Union without WW1, and widespread national independence agitations (many inspired by socialists - eg. the PKK in Indonesia, Ho's mob in Indochina, and Mao's mob in China), a suddenly enormously powerful SU, and fleetingly resolute social democrat parties throughout the west all issued from WW2. If a war gets big enough to destroy, say, 20% of world capital, it might also be big enough to destroy capitalism in particular and humanity in general. You'd have to be awfully desperate to muck around with stakes like that. Of course, plain stupidity always has a role ... Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Fw: UNITE! Info #98en: A US writer on bomb economics
- Original Message - From: Rolf Martens Newsgroups: alt.politics.radical-left,alt.activism,soc.culture.yugoslavia,soc.culture.slovenia Sent: Thursday, May 13, 1999 8:10 PM Subject: UNITE! Info #98en: A US writer on bomb "economics" UNITE! Info #98en: A US writer on bomb "economics"[Posted: 13.05.99]Note / Anmerkung / Note / Nota / Anmärkning: On the UNITE! / VEREINIGT EUCH! / UNISSEZ-VOUS! / ¡UNIOS! / FÖRENA ER! Info en/de/fr/es/se series: See information on the last page / Siehe Information auf der letzten Seite / Verrez information à la dernière page / Ver información en la última página / Se information på sista sidan.INTRO NOTE:Below is reproduced an article by James K. Galbraith on the "efficiency", as seen from the standpoint of the US establish-ment, of bombing campaigns such as the present, criminal, one directed against Yugoslavia. Needless to say, the political views stated do not coincide with mine, and for the correct-ness of various detail assessments made I cannot vouch, but the article in my opinion contributes towards showing the des-peration and the utterly reactionary character of those go-vernments, not only the US one, which continue to perpetrate this crime. The article was posted on 10.05 to the Activist Mailing List (at http://get.to/activist - to subscribe, writeto [EMAIL PROTECTED]).Date: 10 May 1999 13:21:08 -From: Activist Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: The Dis-Economics of BombingThe Dis-Economics of Bombinghttp://epn.org/galb/jg990427.htmlCopyright © 1999 by James K. Galbraith. The Dis-Economics of BombingJames K. GalbraithAfter one month, the bombs over Serbia have not won the war. But before we decide that the remedy is another month, and then another, let's ask: can bombing work at all? And let's not ask the generals, for a change. Some simple concepts from economics,and some deep lessons from history, can help us answer this question for ourselves.Let's go back to World War Two. In October, 1945, the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, which my father [the well-known economist J. Kenneth Galbraith, I presume - RM] directed, filed its report. The Survey found that our huge air assault on Germa-ny had not worked well. Nazi aircraft and munitions production rose prodigiously in 1943 and 1944, under the bombs. They fell only as Germany collapsed, in the final months of the war.'Substitution' is what defeated our Flying Fortresses and Libe-rators. We hit the railroad marshalling yards, but the military trains only needed a little bit of the capacity that was there; they switched to undamaged track and got through. We hit ball-bearing factories, but the Germans used stockpiles and rede-signed their engines. We hit the nitrate factories, and they switched from fertilizers to explosives. German farm output might have fallen, the Survey found, if the war had continued into 1946.Years earlier, German bombing had also failed. The Blitz famous-ly strengthened British morale. And while the V-bombs rained on London late in the war, Churchill announced, or so I once read in Thomas Pynchon's novel "V", that it would take until 1960 forthe city to be half destroyed. After that, more than half the rockets would hit rubble, and the pace of destruction would slow. "Diminishing returns."In Vietnam, years later, diminishing returns undermined our air war. Pre-industrial North Vietnam just didn't have enough tar-gets; after a while, the B-52s could only make their own cratersbounce. And the Ho Chi Minh trail pitted a $4,000 truck, easily replaced, against an F-4 Phantom costing 1,000 times as much.In the Persian Gulf, we exaggerated the effects of bombing, as later studies showed. At the time, bombs were said to have kil-led 100,000 Iraqi troops in Kuwait alone. But in fact the wholeIraqi garrison was smaller than that; most of the soldiers we admitted killing never existed at all. In Bosnia, also, NATO's bombing of the Pale Serbs was mainly for show. What decided thatwar was the Bosnian-Croat force that retook Hercegovina on the ground.And so today over Serbia, hard lessons need relearning. U.S. Ge-neral Wesley Clark announced that in less than a month Nato cutYugoslav oil stocks in half. And how much gas does the Serb mi-litary now have? As much as it needs - at civilian expense. Meanwhile the other half of the oil will be harder to find. Theother real targets are also elusive. After a month, the New YorkTimes reported that we had destroyed just 16 of 80 Yugoslav air-craft, just 30 per cent of their older SAM missiles, and just 15 per cent of the newer ones. Today's B-52 is the B-2 bomber -- with its payload of 8 F-15s at only 40 times the cost.Then there are increasing costs of a grimmer kind. So long as wetargeted air defenses and fuel depots, civilian casualties werefew. But as we moved to rail bridges and trucks, they mounted.
