gov't & education
I'll take up Cindy's bait on government and education. When Doug Henwood suggested that the left is losing its appeal partly because its becoming more "mealy-mouthed" he joined company with me (and Mussolini). Of course, that's only part of the story. I think that what is sometimes paraded as "government ideology" that supposedly pervades the public schools is a pathetic ghost. It can in no way compete with the media. It is the product of bureaucratized ideological and curricular conflict. Historically, the function of schools has been to deprovincialize rather than provincialize, and to put people together where the parents would most likely have forbidden it. The problems I see is when this function is not performed well enough. I am for secular cosmopolitanism, and am perfectly prepared to force that on others if I think I've got enough powerful friends to help me. The religions and other forces of provincialism have enough on their side that I don't worry about anything "precious" being lost through educational "imperialism." And I really don't see any way to address the world economy in a non-cosmopolitan manner. The nationalist/ provincialist method has been tried. I don't like it. If the government doesn't "impose its ideology," who will? Michael Brun -- Michael J. Brun ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) 408 W. Elm, #3, Urbana, IL 61801, USA, (217) 344-5961
Re: speculation
Crisis may have a restorative role in the era of small enterprises that are forced to adjust to the conditions of the Depression but as the 1930's showed, another factor, in addition to intensified class struggle, which obstructs a recovery is the ability of large enterprises (IBM, GM, Ford) to lose huge amounts of money and only make minimal concessions while taking advantage of depressed wages and material costs. In effect, to "ride out" the Depression. Carl Dassbach
Population and Education
Do the studies that link the education of women with a reduction in population growth specify the type of education? One poster has suggested it may simply be a matter of teaching women reliable methods of birth control. Another mentions literacy. Is it specifically literacy that has the desired effect, or is literacy just a readily available measure of something else, perhaps some broader education or perhaps varying types of education that share this one element? Does the education necessarily come first? Maybe its easier to provide an education for your kids when you've got fewer of them, making education an outgrowth of reduced fertility rates rather than the other way around. Maybe women go to school and take up the slack when there aren't enough educated men around to meet the need. Ajit says curing poverty reduces fertility rates. Why is that? I understand that there is a real correlation here, but I don't understand what it means. With more money I might have had a second child. I've heard that in poor countries people have children to support them in their old age or to help on the farm, but the contrary also seems reasonable. For example, someone argued in an article in The Economist that agricultural people only have more children when it is possible for them to bring more land under cultivation that way and thus expand as a family. If you own a fixed plot or no land at all, where is the motivation for a large family? And do parents really have children beyond their capacity to feed them in the hopes that they'll be supported themselves later? Why do Black, unmarried, poor and poorly educated women in the American underclass have more kids? To support them in their old age? To plow new land? Doesn't ring true. Ajit, might not educating women be one way of curing poverty? Are the two approaches contradictory? And on the subject of education as an exercise in power by whoever controls education -- hot subject for me. A thread here a while back was left dangling. If anyone wants to pick it up, I'm game. I'm trying to come to a personal understanding of why schools in the US are run by the government and whether this is a good thing. There's been a LNG discussion on another list about values taught in public schools. Are they, should they be, who decides what values. A law professor has argued that first amendment rights to free speech should include belief formation and that it should therefore be unconstitutional for the government to promote values in government run schools. We've discussed the Amish being allowed by the Supreme Court to withdraw their kids from public schools, Christian fundamentalists taking over school boards, American Indians being put in boarding schools, sex education, home schooling, Herbert Gintis' voucher plan, commoditization of schooling by a free market, building community through schools, using schools to achieve racial integration and to cure poverty Any takers? Cindy Cotter [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
URPE/TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN (fwd)
Forwarded message: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 01 Sep 1994 15:30:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: URPE/TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] THANKS TO ONE AND ALL - who at the URPE summer camp/conference so kindly signed the Get Well card and sent best wishes to cheer me, which it did -- after warming my heart. Sorry that I could not be there with you. Perhaps next time. I'm fine - with not a little [25 years after Woodstock I and 25 days after Woodstock 2] but lot of help from my friends, including you. To add a "working" note, my 1993 URPE summer conference paper on "What Went Wrong in the Soviet Union...?" has since been published, with three comments - by Alec Nove [now sadly missed], Robert Denemark and Jerzny Hausner - and my answer, in REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY, Vol. I, No. 2, Summer 1994, pp 317-363. Apologies to those to whom it may not concern. Best regards Gunder Frank [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 916-898-6141 messages E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
urpe=upe?
As I look around URPE the fear is that the average age is advancing about a year per year. Even as a reformer or worse I can realize that we need to do something to make the group seem more with-it. I suggest that we change the name to the Union of Totally Rad Political Economy. Joe Persky P.S. Yes, when doing work in a more mainstream context the content definitely shifts toward more orthodox. I can't imagine anyone denying this. Clearly, however, some of us shift more than others.
Re: Re[4]: Population
The Population discussion continues... The point I was trying to make is simple and quite oldfashioned. As Peter Robertson comes half way to accept that "there is clearly a simultaneity here which is hard to intangle". It is unfortunate that Peter deleted my final sentence, "Thus, population is not the problem-- poverty is." This is an argument about what do we put on the agenda. The politics of thirld world population problem is quite similar to the politics of crime in the USA or many other first world countries. Crime is a problem, we cannot deny. But should we have a "crime bill" or a "development of inner-city bill" is a political question we all (including Jesse Jackson) understand. I do think that if the govt. puts mote cops on the street and builds more prison, it would reduce crime to some extent. If they put the whole under-class in concentration camps, they would reduce crime even more. But does that solve the problem? Not really! Because wrong problem is posed as the problem. This does not mean that solving the poverty/unemployment problem in the inner-city will eliminate crime altogether. But an odinary justice and education system should be able to take care of it. A parallel case can be made for the so-called 'population problem' of the third world. The whole policy of "population control" has CONTROL at the root of it. No matter what you do, it will be repressive. As you probably know, Indera Gandhi's (Sanjay Gandhi's) population control policy was extremely repressive (pursued during the period of naked dictatorship), and it was one of the major reasons she lost a landslide general election (including her own seat in the parliament) in 1976. Moreover, if I remember correctly, it was a general knowledge that Sanjay Gandhi's five point program had full backing of the World Bank. I think the reason we revert back to the crime & population "problem" is that removal of poverty sounds too lofty and almost an impossible a task. So what do we do? Lets CONTROL crime and population so that they do not GET OUT OF HAND. I do think that the world must begin to think about drastically changing the way we produce and consume at a global level. Population or environment are not national problems. We need left-wing global consciousness and not nationalist consciousness to begin to understand the nature of the problem. I think Doug Henwood is making a similar sort of argument. Way to go Kerala!Cheers, Ajit Sinha
Re: speculation
Rakesh (a.k.a. "donna jones") quotes Mattick: >"***Unless ways and means are found to increase the surplus value***, a >prolonged depression sets in. But the the law of value, which explains the >descent from prosperity to depression, also explains the ascent from >depression to prosperity--as involving a change in value relations favorable >to a further expansion of capital." (p.80, my emphasis) > This captures the restorative role of crises, but is not the whole picture. It is true that rising or high unemployment, along with the scrapping of much old capital (or its sale below historical price) and waves of bankruptcy do clean out the cobwebs and help create the conditions allowing recovery. But efforts to cut wages, speed-up production, and the like can depress consumer demand. With accumulation already depressed (and no war or similar event to push government to intervene), this can make the recession worse. Also, these efforts might cause a rise in opposition to the system which could discourage accumulation. Thus, recovery is not automatic. in radical solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ., Los Angeles, CA 90045-2699 USA 310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950
Re: AFDC and business interests
My sense is that the Southern opposition was tied up intricately with subordination of the black labor pool in the South -- not surprisingly, you need to look at race and gender along with class to understand Southern opposition to a federal AFDC benefit. The first one has a terrific anecdote (I think) about some bubba congressman wondering who was going to iron his shirts if there was a federal minimum benefit. Treacy: In the 1950's there was great opposition by liberals to run away industry moving South. In fact Federal Minimum wage laws were viewed by some as attempts by Unions to restrict competition from low wage Southern areas. Fed. laws restricting tobacco land to allotments kept a large number of black males employed because tobacco was still cultivated by mules that could work much narrower rows than tractors in the Pee Dee Section of South Carolina. When a shirt sewing factory was set up in Florance, S. C. in 1956, there was great wailing and gnashing of teeth by White Matrons who lost their $10-12 a week(six days) maids and cooks to forty dollar a five day week job in the shirt factory. While these wages were low relative to those in Northern unionized towns, they looked like heaven to the black women of Florence. Maid and cook wages jumped to $18 a week within three months. [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Teresa Amott Dept. of Economics Bucknell University Lewisburg, PA 17837 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 717/524-1652 (w) 717/524-3760 (fax)
AFDC and business interests
If people want to pursue the history of business opposition to AFDC, one place to start is Winifred Bell's classic book on AFDC (entitled _Aid to Dependent Children_). A superb essay on SSI and the Southern states that makes similar points is Jill Quadagno in Weir, Orloff and Skocpol, _The Politics of Social Policy in the United States_ (very good book). See also the other essays in that book. My sense is that the Southern opposition was tied up intricately with subordination of the black labor pool in the South -- not surprisingly, you need to look at race and gender along with class to understand Southern opposition to a federal AFDC benefit. There are several essays in _Women, the State and Welfare_, edited by Linda Gordon, that might be useful. I have one essay in there entitled "Black Women and AFDC: Making Entitlement Out of Necessity" that reviews some of that history. Finally, see any of James Patterson's books (_America's Struggle against Poverty, 1900-1985_; _Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal_; _The New Deal and the States: Federalism in Transition_). The first one has a terrific anecdote (I think) about some bubba congressman wondering who was going to iron his shirts if there was a federal minimum benefit. *** Teresa Amott Dept. of Economics Bucknell University Lewisburg, PA 17837 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 717/524-1652 (w) 717/524-3760 (fax)
Re: Re[4]: Population
On Wed, 31 Aug 1994 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > One of the sources on Kerala, above, > is by K.A. Zachariah, "The determinents of fertility decline in Kerala", who > is Indian and works for the World Bank. I believe that the WB employs many > "dark skinned" people and many of them are woman. Yes we can be cautious in > endorsing their policies, but on this particular issue, I think they are > doing a good job. > Two points. One, the World Bank is still dominated by the white First World, its mulitcultural staff aside. And two, maybe class is more important than race here - they're afraid of being overrun by poor people, who might cause trouble. I think poverty causes population growth rather than the other way around. And if we're worried about the environment, it's the slow-growing countries of the north that do most of the damage, not the overpopulated countries of the south. I also wish folks would tend more towards viewing human beings as a resource rather than a threat. Doug Doug Henwood [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Left Business Observer 212-874-4020 (voice) 212-874-3137 (fax)
Re: URPE = UPE?
The idea of repressing the R in URPE reminds me of Cardenas' electoral strategy in Mexico. In the interest of winning friends on Wall Street and the Mexican upper middle class, Cardenas and his party softened their message, and became the friends of free trade and marketization. So they gave their potential supporters nothing to get enthusiastic about, while failing to win friends in high places. The right made enormous progress over the last 15-20 years by appropriating leftish language about revolution, radicalism, and justice. At the same time, the left gets more mealy-mouthed by the day. Of course our message and our program need rethinking and retuning, but dilution gets you nowhere. Doug Doug Henwood [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Left Business Observer 212-874-4020 (voice) 212-874-3137 (fax)
speculation
I posted the following to the marxism list. I repost it here. It raises questions about speculative capital, national differences in financial markets, real investment, and the content of progressive politics. My questions came out of an exchange between Doug Henwood and Wes Cecil on the volatility of the stock market. By the way, it's quite possible to finish this post after the question following the Kurtzman quote. The post goes on for some time after that question! >In his last post, Doug Henwood, re-emphasized that persistent failure to >carry out real investment poses real long-term danger. Doug also pointed out >that financial chicanery is more tolerated in the US and UK than >elsewhere--Japan and Germany, I suppose. And this raises the question--if this >is true--why is it so? > >), I was wondering if anyone wanted to discuss some of the dangers and >prospects in the different policies advocated to increase real >investment--required as Doug has noted by capitalism on its own terms. > >Should "we, Americans" learn from Japan and Germany? What are we to learn? Is >it possible to import regulations here and graft them onto to American >capitalism given its objective structure? >Joel Kurtzman's Death of Money calls for a govt-backed policy to increase real >investment. He concludes > >"Why should America tolerate what happened in the steel industry when United >States steel (now USX) bought Marathon Oil, with profits that came from >operating in a protected market with factories United States Steel refused to >upgrade?The global market must be returned to its original role of >delivering capital to businesses that need it to grow. The financial economy >must no longer dominate the real economy. We need policy-makers who >understand that, for more than a decade, America has languished and its >industrial base has withered away as an out-of-control financial economy >swallowed resources and shifted the focus to ever shorter gains...It is time >for our policymakers to temper their faith in the market with an assessment of >what we have received in return in the world's fastest growing and most >successful countries, the invisible hand of the market has always had a >measure of help form the very visible hands of government. We Americans >deserve no less." > >Earlier I indicated potential problems with the conceptualization of crisis as >one of speculative or idle capital. What conditions must be created in a >capitalist economy for idle/speculative capital to take on again real >investments? (this seems to be a burning question for the theorists of new >social structures of accumulation). > > In Marxism: The Last Refuge of the Bourgeoisie, Mattick provides a >framework for an answer to that question: > > "A capitalist crisis and the ensuing depression signify the arrest, or the >decline, of capital accumulation, which disrupts the circulation process and >thus shows itself as an overproduction of commodities. Already produced >surplus value, earmarked for the expansion of capital, remains in its money >form and thus fails to function as capital. [this is our idle or speculative >capital]. A falling or low rate of profit indicates that new investments would >not yield the customary rate of profit and thus would reduce the already low >rate of profit even more. For this reason no new investments are made. The >curtailment of investment appears as an overproduction of means of production, >as well as an overproduction of consumption goods, for workers who would have >been employed in the case of an enlargened reproduction of capital are now >also idle. The shortage of surplus value, coming to light in an actual fall >of the rate of profit, thus appears on the market as a reduction of the >effective demand for all sorts of commodities. > >"***Unless ways and means are found to increase the surplus value***, a >prolonged depression sets in. But the the law of value, which explains the >descent from prosperity to depression, also explains the ascent from >depression to prosperity--as involving a change in value relations favorable >to a further expansion of capital." (p.80, my emphasis) > >In other words, if capitalism is governed by the law of value,"the real way >out of depression and economic crisis is an abrupt grinding of the economy to >a halt,the destruction of large quantities of constant capital and the brute >reduction of real wages and salaries. This spurs large new investments >(production of value) when real wages are low and thus the rate of surplus >value is high. These new investments (contrary to "labor-saving" investments) >generate *high levels of employment* both of means of production and of labour >power, so that the conditions are created not only for a higher level of >output but also for the demand and purchasing power for that output, and *high >levels of profitability*" (Carchedi, 1991, 175) > >However, there is at least one more way to increa
Depression, Haiti,US
I have just joined this line. My name is rakesh bhandari. I shall have to post under my roommate's name (all posts are automatically signed djones), as having not paid my dues, I can't my own line. A graudate student in the ph.d group in ethnic studies at ucbekeley, I am not a trained economist (i did enjoy marc linder's anti-samuelson, though); my theoretical interest is in the work of Henryk Grossmann and the people he has influenced (sometimes indirectly): William J Blake, TA Jackson, Sydney Coontz, Bernice Shoul, John Eaton, Roman Rosdolsky,David Yaffe, G Marramao, Rick Kuhn,Kevin Brien Tilla Siegel, Fred Moseley, Mario Cogoy, Geoffrey Pilling, Geoffrey Kay, Guglielmo Carchedi and of course Paul Mattick. (I guess this is sometimes called the falling rate of profit school, and I have studied various critiques of this school; oh, yes, let me make clear that none of my self-appointed teachers know me or have trained me, so my interpretations may be very far off.) I am also very interested in Schumpeter, including the work published in RRPE by Bellofiore. I am working on the relationship between fascist politics and Schumpeter's sociological theory of capitalist decline. Promise: I had been working on this for years before Catephores' recent piece in NLR on Schumpeter as the bourgeois marxist. I must apologize in advance for the primitiveness of my posts, but please excuse me as Marx's Capital has not been taught at berkeley in years. Also I am not a mathematical whiz, but I am refreshing myself. Of course I wouldn't mind if rrpe became a review of the marxian critique of political economy. Orthodoxy doesn't come from dogmatism, only from an understanding of the reactionary directions that radical or populists challenges to capitalism take (and have taken) when not grounded in marxist theory. Of course the same is said about politics grounded in marxism, but the best critiques of such practice comes in my opinion from within *and* against marxism--see for example Paul Mattick, Anti-Boslhevik communism. I posted some stuff to a marxism line, which didn't receive much comment and which I repost below. After some long quotes, I end with a question relevant to the discussion on population--about the Malthusianism specific to a late capitalism. The passages are about the Great Depression. >I reproduce two lengthy quotations below on the Great Depression. From North >America to Haiti, we may find that capitalism is still capitalism is still >barbarism. >>From William J Blake, June 4, 1940 in a New Masses review "The Fat Years >and the Lean": > >"Immigration nearly ceased. The natural increase of the population >diminished. The bounding growth of America was no more. There was a >stupendous transfer of labor from mechanical employments to those of >distribution. There was for the first time in history, not mass >unemployment, but chronic mass unemployment, most of it refractory to >cyclical changes in business. The recovery from crises, hitherto always >effected by immense investments in fixed plants, was now counter-availed >of by light, inexpensive, laborsaving machine tools. Two attempts were made >to cure credit collapse by deflation. The 1921 surgery succeeded, the 1929 >failed. The American dollar, holy of holies, the only sacred thing on >earth to millions, shed divinity. The government became the source of >credit, the sustainer of "values," the lavish almoner of the rich and the >pitable patron of some of the poor. The middle classes, arid and poor, >became impotent as a source of stock exchange speculation. Security >offerings were rarely public. The insurance industry rose to unwonted >importance of the secret source of industry's new capital funds. The >errors of bank management were immortalized by a federal guarantee of >deposits. The banks were no longer the financiers of business but janitors >of the national debt. Armaments, from being a mere decoration of industrial >society, promised to become its mainstay. State capitalism replaced once >and for all the assumptions of laissez-faire. The cadre of fascism was >completed under liberal pretexts. The more generous sources of the people >were tapped by the New Deal. The instruments that tapped these sources >were perverted to baser uses. The United States lost that brusque >confidence of ascendant capitalism. A permanent neurosis, everlasting >grousing, became the psychic feature of its frightened plutocrats. Labor, >after wide fluctuations, developed a great and fruitful militancy. And >yet, despite labor's great scope, dreaded by the large capitalists, the >international involvement of that class gave them the possibility of >annulling most of these gains." >Meanwhile, in Living Marxism May/1938, Paul Mattick, Sr. wrote an article >"The Dominican Republic Solves Its Unemployment Problem": >"On the Island of Hispaniola, in October, 1937, 12,000 defenceless people >were suddenly slaughtered in a butchery
