[PEN-L:1878] Re: Hopeful Signs of Polarization
If the outcome of this polarization in Israel is a further entrenchment of power by the extreme Right, then it is nothing to cheer about. Barkley Rosser On Wed, 23 Dec 98 17:11:36 -0500 Robert Naiman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: "On the Left" Robert Naiman Sunday Journal December 27, 1998 Hopeful Signs of Polarization Human rights activist Israel Shahak says of the political situation in Israel, "There are hopeful signs of polarization." The statement seems ridiculous. Isnt polarization always bad? Shahaks statement makes sense when you know that he opposes the policies of the Israeli government to destroy Palestinian houses and confiscate Palestinian land in the West Bank. Since these policies have historically been supported by both major Israeli political parties, the possibility that this consensus is breaking down would be a hopeful sign. Here in the U.S., commentators wring their hands over "partisanship" and "gridlock" as if everyone should be horrified if politicians dont get along, or strongly advocate opposing positions. But a moments reflection suggests that consensus is only good if the things we agree on are good. If most politicians agree on something bad, like monkeying around with our Social Security system which doesnt need fixing, then what we need is not more consensus but more disagreement. Consider some lessons from our own history. We are told that the nation was "bitterly divided" during the Vietnam War. Was that bad? Only if you think that people should support government policies like lambs, even when those policies are deeply immoral and destructive. But of course that is morally absurd. The pundits, who often slavishly support foreign military misadventures, are wrong. In this case the Bible offers a far saner approach: "Never follow a multitude to do evil." The fact that our government needlessly caused the deaths of millions of people in that war is a cause for national shame. But the fact that popular protests in the United States hastened the end of the war and saved many lives is something of which we should be proud. Or reaching further back in our history, consider the issue of slavery. In the early 1800s, there was a kind of "national consensus" -- reflected in the compromises of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution -- that slavery in the South should be tolerated in the interests of national unity. The Abolitionists set out to break that consensus. If you visit the striking museum in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, you can see the story of one such Abolitionist -- John Brown. In our history books in school, we were taught that John Brown was a lunatic. But looking at the American political landscape, John Brown saw hopeful signs of polarization, which he wished to increase. "Moderate" Abolitionists argued that the country would gradually evolve away from slavery. Brown wanted to force the liberals to take a stand for the immediate end of slavery. Moreover, he thought that black people could be the agents of their own freedom. The daring raid he and other Abolitionists -- black and white -- organized on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry was, in military terms, a total disaster. But in its political impact it was a success. The executions of Brown and his co-conspirators galvanized anti-slavery opinion. Moderates were brushed aside. Knowing this history, what are we to make of all the blather about partisanship? If different political parties dont advocate different ideas, what use are they? The father of modern punditry, Walter Lippman, may give us some insight. Lippmans idea of the ideal election was one in which two candidates advocated basically the same position. Many pundits, like Lippman, identify with big corporations and the military. Nothing annoys them more then "demagogues" like Ralph Nader who fan the flames of discontent by questioning policies like NAFTA, which are designed to benefit big business at the expense of everybody else. When it comes to war or the interests of multinational corporations, the "opinion leaders" prefer consensus. Now we do have quite a spectacle before us, with Congress impeaching the President for lying about sex. Thats silly. But there is a silver lining. The commentators howled in horror when Trent Lott and other senior Republicans denounced the bombing of Iraq, even as it was taking place. Of course the Republican criticism was tactical rather than moral -- they dont care about dead Iraqi civilians any more than the White House. But what outraged the pundits was that Lott and others "broke the rules" about criticizing a military action while it was taking place. Who made that rule? Is it better to wait until a senseless and brutal bombing campaign is over before criticizing it, when its too late to have any impact? Lotts criticism was a hopeful sign of
[PEN-L:1877] Re: Worker managed firms and n-c theory (RE: Soc.dem and Utopia)
Anders, As the person who more or less brought this subject up, with some response from Brad De Long, let me note that I did not assume the neoclassical position at all. My discussion has been entirely empirical, that is, what has actually happened in Yugoslavia and why with also some references to worker-owned cooperatives in the US, e.g. the much-studies plywood coops of the US northwest. It is from these that the conclusion that there are fewer layoffs comes. It is a neoclassical theoretical paper from 1958 that by Benjamin Ward that suggests less hiring. Brad also claims that Laura Tyson supports such views. A long time ago she wrote a book (at least one) about the Yugoslav economy, although she has gotten distracted with other stuff in more recent decades... Again, the evidence from Yugoslavia is a mixed bag. Based on unemployment rates, Slovenia did very well, with some of the lowest unemployment rates around. But other parts of the country, most extremely pathetic Kosovo, did rather poorly. I claimed not to have the answers regarding this disparity of regional performances in the former Yugoslavia. Barkley Rosser On Thu, 24 Dec 1998 10:16:16 +0100 Anders Ekeland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am always a bit surprised that progressive economist are so willing to discuss the Yougoslav experience and worker managed firms in general on the basis of on the traditional neo-classical assumptions about the firm. Drawing conclusions that they would employ less labour, lay-off less labour etc. etc. But the n-c "theory of the firm" is utterly divorced from reality. In reality there are not smooth production functions, there are Knightian uncertainties, there are shareholders, CEOs, managers, technicians, workers - all with their specific knowledgebases and interests. For most firms it is survival/expansion and not marginal adjustment of employment that is the interesting question. Concerning employment: judging from my anecdotal experience, very many worker owned/managed would not exist at all if they were not - worker managed. The alternative (unique stable equilibrium??) is no employment. No production at all of that specific product. The n-c framework is IMHO not suited to say anything interesting about worker managed firms. The real interesting problems with worker managed firms has very little to do with their employment effect. Much more interesting is the internal division of labour/power among the workers, their innovation strategies/processes etc. For the Yugoslav experience, Cahterine Samarys book "Le marche contre l'autogestion" is an example of a discussion of real problems. (La Breche and PUBLISUD, 1988) Since n-c is a pure deductive theory, they are not interested in empirical facts, ignoring the evidence contrary to their theory. They always reason as if we were in equilibrium and not developing a backward country, not trying to modify regional differences etc. etc. We are always out of the totally imaginary n-c equilibrium so none of their conclusions actually apply even on their own terms! Why should we accept them? The n-c theory of the firm is a theory that cannot function as an guide for real policy recomendations. Let me take an example from a field I know better, research policy. The traditional n-c model talks about additionality, marked failure, social and privat returns etc. ad nauseam. But the fact is that very many firms do not do any such calculations, have no concrete idea of an (risc adjusted) expected rate of return on research projects (BTW: even fewer calculate the rates of return post fact - as everybody who have tried know: it is very, very difficult!). So how are public research councils to pick those projects that the private firms do not find profitable enough, but wich have great social returns when the firms themselves do not calculate or know? And those firms that do calculate rates of return are often wildly optimistic, often badly mistaken on wich projects are the real winners (Microsoft Net vs. Internett). How do such facts fit into a n-c modell? How do you handle them if you are into the business of distributing research funds and not in the easy biznizz of writing articles full of tautological n-c deductions? If one wants to know how real firms operate, read Dilbert, the first chapters of NelsonWinter, Penrose, use your own experience, read the bizniz press. Of course we - the progressive economists need to come forward with a detailed, empirically substantiated critique of the hegemonic n-c model. We need to develop alternative theories, but an important firste step is to not accept it as the natural starting point for discussions about workermanaged firms, public research policy etc. etc. Let the n-c people prove the empirical fundament of their elegant theory! Merry Christmas Anders Ekeland -- Rosser Jr, John Barkley [EMAIL
[PEN-L:1876] Re: reply to Tom Walker
Michael's answer pretty well captures what I thought when I first read through the paragraph. By the way, it's from Alfred Marshall's _Principles_. Subsequently, though, I was looking at some material on the wages-fund doctrine -- including Marshall's remarks and Francis A. Walker's 1876 critique of the doctrine (in _The Wages Question_) -- and at some contemporary (1890s) material on the agitation for the eight hours day, most notably Sidney Webb and Harold Cox's _The Eight Hours Day_, John Rae's _Eight Hours for Work_ and an 1895 article by Charles Beardsley, "The Effect of an Eight Hours' Day on Wages and the Unemployed." (Quarterly Journal of Economics, IX, p 450-9) The more I find out about the context of Marshall's paragraph, the more peculiar it looks. After reading Walker's critique of the wages-fund doctrine, I started to suspect that Marshall's "work-fund" was a rather odd inversion and recuperation of the (by the 1890s) discredited doctrine. Then I read Beardsley's response to John Rae's argument (which is similar to Marshall's). Beardsley stated flat out that John Rae's position was a "new form of the old doctrine of the wages-fund." In fact, Beardsley used an analysis of marginal utility to refute Rae's argument. Beardsley almost seems to have been taking direct aim at the Marshall paragraph I cited, beginning a very intriguing paragraph (top of page 453) with the stipulation, "If Professor Alfred Marshall is right in regarding both distribution and exchange as governed by the same law of value, these proportions vary with the ratios at which labor, business ability, and the uses of land and capital exchange. Wages, interest, rent, and profits are the prices of the factors of production. They are determined, as the prices of all commodities are determined, by marginal utility. . ." This most interesting paragraph concludes with the observation. "It is true, as Mr. Rae and others have pointed out, that the demand for work comes largely from the product of work, and that to reduce the product would be to reduce the demand. But the price of labor does not depend on the demand for labor, but on the demand considered with reference to the supply. The extent of the rise in price, due to restriction of supply, would depend on the character of the demand curve for labor." Beardsley's "and others" is tantalizing, given his reference to Marshall and the passage I cited from Marshall on stinting labour. One might say that in the crucial case of the price of labour, Marshall fled the margin and reverted to a (pre-Marx) version of the labour theory of value. Now, all this might look like so much antiquarian hair splitting unless one realizes that the time when these scribblings were jotted down was one of tremendous upsurge of the labour movement precisely around the issue of the shortening of the hours of work. Michael Perelman wrote: Tom Walker wrote: Perhaps someone could explain to me what the following passage means from the perspective of marginal utility: "In short the argument that wages can be raised permanently by stinting labour rest on the assumption that there is a permanent fixed work-fund, i.e. a certain amount of work which has to be done, whatever the price of labour. ME: Withholding of labor will not raise wages. THE PARAGRAPH CONTINUES And for this assumption there is no foundation. On the contrary, the demand for work comes from the national dividend; that is, it comes from work. The less work there is of one kind, the less demand there is for work of other kinds; and if labour were scarce, fewer enterprises would be undertaken." ME AGAIN: This is merely a Keynesian multiplier like argument, that jobs create the demand for more labor. TOM ASKS; What is the relationship between "labour" and "work" in the above paragraph? Does the term "work" have a consistent referent throughout the paragraph? ME AGAIN: The paragraph seems to use work to mean the demand for jobs and labor to means the sale of "labor power," although the usage is not entirely consistent. Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:1872] Re: Greenfield on Asia
Thanks to Louis for posting the two interesting articles by Gerard Greenfield. One question: what is the IUF-A/P Greenfield works for? Bill Rosenberg
[PEN-L:1869] Re: marginalism uber alles
G'day Penners, Why is no-one talking about Brazil? Cardoso has put a gun against his cabinet's head on the understanding they do the IMF's bidding and chop $23.5 billion off the budget. This for an $18 billion stop-gap from an IMF that still sounds to me like the one that put the cleaners through Thailand et al. No sooner do the IMF hand over the first five billion, but half of that pours back out of the country in a firtnight. Or doesn't this matter? And is Tom in a position to tell us how the streets are taking this news down there? Have a festive blast, everybody! And have as happy a new year as is reasonable to expect - well, perhaps a slightly happier one ... Rob.
