[PEN-L:2381] Fwd: Re: Re: Re: Judith Butler, etc.boundary=part0_916895464_boundary
This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --part0_916895464_boundary In a message dated 1/20/99 7:34:26 PM Pacific Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Writers don't just write to be understood; they write for the future readers who may someday understand what they were trying to say. Adorno said somewhere that the only thoughts worth thinking are those which do not fully understand themselves, i.e. do something new and unexpected, which hasn't yet fully emerged into its content, and is therefore open to history and dialectics. Let me get this. Writers do not necessarily write to be understood today thinking that they are so advanced and so brilliant that only at some amorphous time in the future, when consciousness has evolved to the level of this "obermensch" thinker, will he/she be really understood. In the meantime, just write and indulge yourself and your groupies, calling yourself "progressive" while caring nothing about whether or not the inferiors really understand you or whether or not your words make a difference in helping to effect concrete change and resistance and hoping that at least a few followers will realize how brilliant you are and keep your books around to be understood by the more highly evolved masses of the future. Sounds like megalomania, narcissism, and pretentious shit to me. But then again, I am nowhere near being "one of the ten smartest people on the planet. This Judith Butler seems to me to be a reincarnation of Ayn Rand--arrogance and pretentiousness shallow groupies and all. There was a time in Germany when some counseled Jews, Gypsies, Trade Unionists etc not to let the hate speech of the nazis get to them--not to let the "power structures" turn them into "subjects" and submissive victims of speech. They counseled to mock the hate speech of the nazis, to turn the hate speech of the nazis into a counter-force against them as in Aikido. Most of these people were far removed from the actual effects and the mounting movements of hate; they said words really don't mean that much. Most of them wound up leaving with their wealth and/or became nazis as their egos and abstractions from comfort were used and indulged while the real effects and consequences did indeed take real tolls on real people. I have lived and worked (read, write, speak) in five languages other than English so I think I have acquired some sensitivity to language in terms of shifting content, contexts of meaning, how words can be used for different purposes and can have very subtle but profound effects depending on how words and phrases are expressed, understood and acted upon. But I just don't see it. Even the passage you quoted above, you'll have to deconstruct for me (not the case with Edward Said for example) because as of yet, I just see shit and a slick hustle where people with philosophy degrees of English Lit degrees, normally unemployable, get this new gig and market niche going by putting on superficially elegant or convoluted syntax to say nothing or even worse, pretend to be actually saying something worth reading, creating a new field called "Cultural Studies" and creating a whole new movement of groupies addicted to contrived syntax and metaphysics like so many neoclassicals are addicted to convoluted math to give a phony appearance of "rigor" and "scientific method" to contrived syllogisms, empty tautologies and bourgeois apologia. Sorry that's my opinion. As for being aware of the sources of my alienation, I know of no one truly aware of all of the sources of his/her alienation. But pretentious, narcissistic semantic/mathematical masturbators and their sycophantic groupies pretending to be progressive ( on a narrow range of self- interested issues; e.g. gays who only care about gay stuff but want non gays to unite to fight against gay bashing--which I am happy to do as homophobia is indeed an ugly form of oppression--but you never see them when their anger is needed against other forms of oppression not directly tied to gay issues) is indeed one of my sources of "alienation". Sorry, just chalk it up to my stupidity and failure to see the brilliance of this Judith Butler whose brilliance awaits discovery but future and much more highly evolved species. Bullshit is bullshit no matter how elegantly dressed up in math or polysyllabic and tortured syntax. By the way, I say the same about ultra- formalistic/ritualistic/mechanistic "Marxism" and the quote mongering of some Marxists as well. Jim Craven --part0_916895464_boundary Return-Path: [EMAIL PROTECTED] by rly-zc03.mx.aol.com (8.8.8/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0) Wed, 20 Jan 1999 22:34:21 -0500 (EST) Wed, 20 Jan 1999 19:34:41 -0800 (PST) Wed, Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 19:30:30 -0800 (PST) From: Dennis R Redmond [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:2375] Re: Re: Re: Judith Butler, etc. In-reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Wed, 20
[PEN-L:2385] Re. euro-query
There is no longer a free-market exchange rate for the guilder since the guilder no longer exists as an independent currency. It is form in which the euro circulates in the Netherlands pending the introduction of euro notes and coins in 2002. The same is true for the lira in Italy. Under the stability pact, euro-zone countries are required to maintain their fiscal deficit below 3 per cent. This was originally proposed by the German CDU government, who wanted automatic fines introduced for governments that broke the rule. However the French government successfully insisted that any fines must be subject to political approval by the EU authorities. Even though the the current social-democratic governments in France, Italy and Germany are fiscally conservative, it is difficult to envisage them approving fines. Trevor Evans Paul Lincke Ufer 44 10999 Berlin Tel. fax: +49 30 612 3951 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:2387] Re: articles in RRPE
At 11:32 PM 1/20/99 -0500, you wrote: Friends, In the Fall 1998 issue of the Review of Radical Political Economics, there are articles by Max Sawicky on populism and by Louis Proyect on David Harvey and the American Indian. congratulations! Check them out. michael yates Also, check out the forthcoming spring 1999 Organization and Environment, edited by John Bellamy Foster. It has my article on "Blackfoot Civilization." I have been subscribing to OE since it came out and it is a very fine publication. Subscription information can be found at Sage Publications: www.sagepub.com Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:2388] Re: Judith Butler, etc.ON.EDU
Dennis Redmond: If Butler claimed to speak for the people on the Rez, then you could slam her for yakking away. But she's not. Dennis, but she does so implicitly. As the Lingua Franca article points out, and as Doug has stressed repeatedly, Butler is trying to define a new political approach to race and gender. She says that "race" and "sex" are social constructions. Perhaps, it might be useful to show how Marxist Barbara Epstein viewed the Butlerite challenge in this excerpt from an October 1996 Z Magazine issue: --- In my experience postmodernism in practice, as it functions in conferences, seminars, public talks, it is more ideologically driven, less restrained by standards of logic, let alone correspondence to reality, than postmodernism in print. A number of years ago I taught a seminar in which the students read chapters from Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, which argues that the concept "woman" is essentialist, and that sexual difference is socially constructed. During the discussion I argued that there are biological differences between men and women, and that while gender is constructed in a myriad of ways in different social settings, there remains a fundamental biological difference between men and women, with important social consequences. The students were shocked: they pointed out that enemies of feminism point to differences between men and women. My agreement that such differences exist seemed to place my feminism in question. One student argued that not only sexual difference but bodies are socially constructed. His stake in this view, he said, was that if he were to believe that he had a body that was given rather than constructed through discourse, that would make him a white male, and give him a set of politics that he did not want. I asked if he could not be a white male but define his own politics; my remark was ignored. A second student accused the first of speaking from a position of privilege as a white male. Other students began accusing each other of various ideological errors. I interrupted to suggest that we should all try to treat each other with respect, that everyone should be able to say what he or she thought without fear of being attacked. One student expressed general agreement with this, but said that some ideas were so hurtful that they should be ruled out of public discussion. When I asked what ideas the student had in mind, I was told: my view that there are innate biological differences between men and women. I later found out that the chair of my department received a complaint that I had expressed this apparently offensive view in class. The chair sensibly advised the complaining student to discuss the issue with me. It is of course true, as one student pointed out in the course of the discussion, that there are some people who are born with sexual characteristics that do not fit male or female categories, and some people who do not identify with the sex with which they are born. But this does not imply that the distinction between male and female is discursively constructed rather than biologically based, or that the categories are invalid, but rather that there are people who do not fit these categories or whose self-image differs from their biology. It is useful to consider how these exceptions should affect our thinking about sex. Such discussion cannot take place when ideological denunciation replaces thoughtful exchange, or when consideration of non-discursive reality is ruled out. Postmodernism asserts that there is no such thing as truth, and it does sometimes seem that participation in postmodernist discussion requires shutting down the part of one's mind that asks whether a view accords with reality, whether it makes sense or not. An acquaintance of mine, who teaches in a major East Coast university, described the doctoral defense of a candidate who had written a dissertation on the treatment of race in the law. The student criticized existing law for failing to take race (or gender, or sexual orientation) into account, for treating blacks and whites, women and men, homosexuals and heterosexuals, as equal before the law. He cited as an example the following: several black teenagers had seen a film in which a black man was beaten by a group of racist whites. They were standing on the sidewalk together discussing their anger at racism, and at whites, when one of them pointed out a white teenage boy walking down the other side of the street. Several of them ran across the street and beat the white boy, who sustained permanent brain damage. This was designated a hate crime by the court. The student objected to this designation: in treating black violence toward a white as the equivalent of white violence toward a black, he argued, it disregarded racism. The faculty at the exam, other than my acquaintance, applauded this view. My acquaintance asked the student, and the other faculty, what legal system they could imagine that would distinguish between
[PEN-L:2389] RE: Email address of Peter Arno
Does anyone have Peter Arno's e-mail address or phone number? Jeffrey L. Fellows, Ph.D. Economist Division of Violence Prevention National Center for Injury Prevention and Control U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 4770 Buford Highway NE (mailstop K60) Atlanta, GA 30341-3724 tele: (770) 488-1529 fax: (770) 488-4349 Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:2396] Re: Re: Judith Butler, etc.
Louis Proyect wrote: The main thing I got out of Epstein's remarks is that graduate students imbued with the postmodernist zeitgeist are more interested in fighting with other graduate students than with institutionalized racism and sexism. That's true of just about all academic disciplines. When I got to the University of Virginia graduate English Department in 1976, the retiring star was a fellow named Fredson Bowers, who did textual emendations of Shakespeare. Pretty different from today's "theory," but even less engaged with the world. I'll also remind you of the anti-pomo screed by Eric Alterman in The Nation last year, in which he conceded that the biggest student support for the Justice For Janitor's movement at UVa came from the theoryheads. Compared to grad students in physics or economics, they're deeply engaged in fighting institutionalized racism, sexism, and even the exploitation of janitors. When Angela from Australia asked me the other day whether I was involved with "the performativity of conflict", she was drawing from this same well. Performativity is an excellent and very useful concept, and comes out of Austin and English linguistic philosophy, which is about as un-pomo as you can get. I find it singularly depressing that smart people like Dennis Redmond and Doug Henwood can take any of this seriously. Should we take Kant or Hegel seriously? They wrote pretty funny. The Grundrisse too - Marx could write obscure prose with the best of them. I understand that Dennis has to keep up with it since he makes his living in this world. As far as Doug is concerned, I suspect that his graduate school interests in "repression"--of the sexual rather than the deathsquad variety--have never left him. I was lucky enough to be old enough to have gone to college before postmodernism was invented. I'll admit that, as Yoshie Furuhashi said once, theory is a kind of erotica for intellectuals. But another reason I read the stuff is to figure out why people put up with an oppressive, alienating, and destructive social system, and how radicals like you me can appeal to the masses. More instrumental than Adorno would approve of, I'm sure, but he was a bit of an old stick wasn't he? Doug
[PEN-L:2398] Re: Re: Judith Butler, etc.
Unfortunately, Louis, this is in no way exclusive to those "imbued with the postmodernist zeitgeist." It's pretty common among grad students, and academics generally. And not just academics, either, come to think of it. Also, it really isn't fair to assume that those who find a value in postmodernism are less genuine in their commitment to anti-racist and anti-sexist struggles. Some folks who find value in postmodernism are very committed, in practice, to these and other struggles. You're doing some pretty heavy lumping and dismissing. Mat Louis Proyect wrote: The main thing I got out of Epstein's remarks is that graduate students imbued with the postmodernist zeitgeist are more interested in fighting with other graduate students
[PEN-L:2399] Re: Re: Re. euro-query
Jim Devine wrote: so what happens if the Dutch (for example) over-spend? would it put stress on the unity of the Euro? are there any consequences? For one, the markets would demand a higher interest rate on Dutch government bonds (good thing Paul Davidson isn't here to rebuke me on this). Doug
[PEN-L:2400] Re: Judith Butler, etc.
Matt wrote: Unfortunately, Louis, this is in no way exclusive to those "imbued with the postmodernist zeitgeist." It's pretty common among grad students, and academics generally. And not just academics, either, come to think of it. Also, it really isn't fair to assume that those who find a value in postmodernism are less genuine in their commitment to anti-racist and anti-sexist struggles. Some folks who find value in postmodernism are very committed, in practice, to these and other struggles. You're doing some pretty heavy lumping and dismissing. Mat Look, Matt. I was involved with the Central American solidarity movement for most of the 1980s. I never ran into a "postmodernist" graduate student. Not a single one. Furthermore, I didn't even have a clue what it was about, except that it had something to do with Phillip Johnson's ATT building or the novels of people like William Gass. I had no idea that there was some kind of assault being mounted on Marxism. And you have to understand that I was not the average solidarity activist. I had a masters degree in philosophy and read the New York Review of Books. Furthermore, my idea of what tenured professors should be doing is related more to the activity of Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, Jim Craven and Manning Marable. The postmodernist milieu, based on what I've seen on the Internet and in person, seems more committed to verbal radicalism than anything else. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:2403] Re: 1998 Bad Writing Contest winners
Butler: The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power. Henwood: "An older view, associated with structuralism, which held that capital shaped social life in a unitary and timeless way, has given way to a new view of power, as something dispersed, changeable, and requiring constant reinforcement and reassertion." Or something like that. Which leads us to performativity and citationality, and the lbo-talk Butler seminar, which needs a little dose of editorial discipline, something I'll attend to imminently. Doug A reasonable try, but what did you do with the words and phrases: "convergence" "takes structural totalities as theoretical objects" "contingent possibility of structure" ? And then there are the deeper problems with the paragraph: power that is dispersed and contingent ain't hegemony, and so forth... Brad DeLong
[PEN-L:2407] Re: Re: Re: 1998 Bad Writing Contest winners
At 01:19 PM 1/21/99 -0500, you wrote: Brad De Long wrote: And then there are the deeper problems with the paragraph: power that is dispersed and contingent ain't hegemony, and so forth... Doug responds: Well that's the point here, it can be: if power is in our heads, if power forms our subjectivities, then it is dispersed in billions of us, in trillions of daily contacts. This obviously comes out of Foucault, who can be criticized for his excessively atomized view of power, but it's a useful contrast to all those classically Marxian views of power, which find the entire capitalist structure in every grain of sand. ... why this either/or? that is why is it _either_ Butler, Foucault, and PoMo in general _or_ "classical Marxism"? Why do we dwell on the "useful contrast" rather than trying to build a critical synthesis? What about, for example, Mike Lebowitz's view in his BEYOND CAPITAL, which (in crude terms) sees actually-existing capitalism as being a combination of capital struggling to conquer every grain of sand and people resisting that takeover? In this view, again crudely, the power of capital is to some extent "in our heads" (an atomized kind of power) but it's more importantly in institutions, specifically in the centralized control of money and control over productive and military resources and in the collective organizational weakness of the working class and other dominated groups. The interesting thing is that Mike's book is pretty explicity opposed to both PoMo and "classical Marxism" but has generally been ignored. More importantly, as he points out, a lot of the theoretical position he lays out has been part of the broad culture of the Left even when it has not been part of the official line. And it can even be found in offical Marxism now and then. Why is this broad culture being ignored? Or put another way, why choose between PoMo and stereotyped "classical Marxism" when one could choose, say, Mike Albert, or for that matter, Louis Proyect or Doug Henwood? a dismal scientist, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
[PEN-L:2409] Re: THE CRISIS IN BRITISH INDUSTRY IV
On "The Crisis in British Industry" The Times replies to a letter from Sidney and Beatrice Webb, London Times, December 6, 1901, page 9. In a letter which we publish to-day MR. and MRS. SIDNEY WEBB undertake the defence of trade unionism "as an institution." That is a little off the point. We have explicitly stated, in an article they have evidently read, that it is not trade unionism that is being attacked, but the policy followed by trade unions. The distinction is important, because in our view it was open to trade unions to follow another and a wiser policy, whereby their own objects would have been more powerfully furthered without any injury to the general interests. MR. and MRS. WEBB summarize fairly enough the charges of our Correspondent, who is dealing so exhaustively with the crisis in British industry, though they omit to notice that he credits large numbers of English working men with a desire to do better than they are allowed to do by the opinion, often very forcibly expressed, of their fellows who support trade-union policy. Then they go on to say -- "so far as they relate to the instinctive sentiment of a manual working class, employed at time wages, we believe that your Correspondent's charges contain much truth." They even add reasons why it must be so, as long as some men pay and others receive wages. Considering how far we are from the Utopia of Collectivism, we are glad to be able to regard this view as unduly pessimistic; but in the meantime we need only note that our Correspondent's views are admitted to be fairly sound as regards by far the larger portion of the labouring classes. His error seems to consist in holding that the evil is greater than in former times, and that its increase is due to the policy and teaching of the trade unions. It is to be observed in passing that, if the evil is not greater than it has always been, the favourite argument of MR. and MRS. WEBB, that the "cash nexus" and the wages system are producing ever-increasing ills which only an industrial revolution can cure, loses much of its force. That complaints can be quoted from other periods of our history does not prove anything concerning the relative magnitude of the evil of shirking or skulking at different dates. It only proves, what nobody doubts, that there always were persons who thought themselves entitled to complain of the service they received. But the point which MR. and MRS. WEBB ignore is that we have to-day a phenomenon to which they do not produce a parallel from earlier times, which is that we have shirking and skulking preached as an economic gospel by organized bodies holding positions of such power that they can and do enforce its acceptance upon men who would rather work honestly and energetically. If they seriously think that the natural failings of human nature are not developed by a system which first weakens the incentives to well-doing, and then enforces ill-doing by class opinion and by downright coercion, we can only say, in their own words, that their opinion is evidence of their psychological condition, but proves no objective fact. The same remark applies to the statement that they entirely disbelieve in the existence of any unwritten limit of 400 or any other number of bricks per day. We have abundance of evidence that the rules exist, that they vary in different places, and that, as a matter of experience on the part of living men, the limits have been lowered within recent times. If MR. and MRS. WEBB have failed to find such evidence, they must have overlooked some very accessible sources of the information. Indeed, they must have omitted to consult a certain book on "Industrial Democracy," which contains many interesting facts and some acute observations, though it is not exactly the final word upon industrial or economic questions. In that book are quoted regulations by bricklayers' and stonemasons' unions distinctly inculcating the duty of going easy, and announcing penalties for doing more than the average. They do not state what is the average or permitted number of bricks, but they clearly imply an unwritten understanding upon that essential point. MR. and MRS. WEBB maintain that, so far as the disposition to limit exertion exists, it is incorrect to ascribe it to trade union action, because only five per cent. of the population are trade unionists. We hardly see what this odd way of stating the numbers can add to the lucidity of the argument. Trade unionists are a large percentage of the body of manual labourers; they are an organized body; they dominate their own section; and they set the example and give the tone to non-unionists. Everything we know of their teaching goes to show that they unceasingly advocate limitation of output, and by many ingenious methods enforce it. Against all that we have to set the refusal of MR. and MRS. WEBB to believe, or at least to admit, that their teaching and practice do in fact produce the effects obviously aimed at and
[PEN-L:2410] Re: Re: Re. euro-query
Doug, Only if you believe in "backward-unraveling" theories. But the evidence is that a lot of economic decisions are made on short-run factors. Your argument becomes more valid as we get into 2001 and approach the time of the ending of the national pieces of paper. But for now? Such black markets are perfectly possible, although I am not forecasting them as most of the governments involved are being pretty "well behaved." Barkley Rosser On Thu, 21 Jan 1999 13:29:49 -0500 Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Rosser Jr, John Barkley wrote: Now, although most eurofinanciers poo-poo the possibility, it is not out of the question that black markets in actual currencies could develop in the next three years, that somebody might be trading guilders for marks on the streets of Amsterdam, or wherever, for something other than the rate implied by their fixed ratios with the euro. As long as these distinct "national forms of the euro" exist, such an outcome is possible. But the guilder will cease to exist in 2002, at which time it must be exchanged for euros at the fixed and "irrevocable" rate established the other week, or it will become a cute but useless piece of colored paper. No doubt Scholes and his pals at LTCM could put a value on such an instrument, but wouldn't that execution date undermine any street value of the guilder? Doug -- Rosser Jr, John Barkley [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:2411] BLS Daily Report
This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand this format, some or all of this message may not be legible. --_=_NextPart_000_01BE4570.35B7E480 BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 1999 RELEASED TODAY: Median weekly earnings of the nation's 96.2 million full-time wage and salary workers were $541 in the fourth quarter of 1998. This was 5.9 percent higher than a year earlier, compared with a gain of 1.5 percent in the CPI-U over the same period. ... BLS has completed the first two of four pilot projects in Jacksonville, Fla., and Tucson, Ariz., using alternative methods of gathering wage and benefit data for determining locally prevailing wages under the Davis-Bacon Act. The pilot projects are the result of an agreement between the Labor Department's Employment Standards Administration and BLS to test the feasibility of using BLS to collect and publish Davis-Bacon wage data. ... Robert Van Giezen, a BLS economist working on the project, says it is too early to comment on the effectiveness of the alternative approach to gathering data for Davis-Bacon prevailing wage surveys. He adds that BLS was pleased with a relatively high survey response rate. Methodology used in the pilot surveys mimicked the approach BLS used in its National Compensation Surveys, Van Giezen said. This meant that its adaptation to Davis-Bacon data gathering was relatively easy for BLS staff, and "fit well with our ongoing programs." He said the agency's regional offices have reported considerable interest in the survey results. Agency staff will evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the pilot studies procedures once all the studies are completed, Van Giezen said, probably by the end of this year. The Davis-Bacon Act requires the payment of locally prevailing wages and benefits on federal construction projects valued at more than $2,000. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A-4). A final rule implementing a host of changes in Labor Department requirements for recording workplace injuries and illnesses is now targeted for publication in June, Department officials said yesterday. ... Perhaps the most significant issue being debated is how employers are to determine whether an employee injury should be recorded. Some have said an injury should be recorded if it is more than 50 percent work related. Others believe they should be recorded if work contributed in any way to the injury. ... Another important issue is who will be covered by the new requirements, with possible exemptions for industries that for two decades have had to comply with the existing requirements. But the proposal also would cover some industries that for years have been exempt from the requirements. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A-7)_An industry task force is proposing that employers be only required to record those cases that are "clearly linked to the workplace," seeking a narrow approach to the definition of work-related injuries under OSHA's planned record keeping regulation. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A-8). --_=_NextPart_000_01BE4570.35B7E480 b3NvZnQgTWFpbC5Ob3RlADEIAQWAAwAOzwcBABUADQA7ADsABABzAQEggAMADgAAAM8HAQAV AA0AOwAtAAQAZQEBCYABACEyQjZDNkY5QTI3QjFEMjExODg4RTAwQzA0RjhDNzgzMQAfBwEE gAEAEQAAAEJMUyBEYWlseSBSZXBvcnQAkAUBDYAEAAICAAIAAQOQBgAsCgAAHEAAOQAg oiU+cEW+AR4AcAABEQAAAEJMUyBEYWlseSBSZXBvcnQAAgFxAAEWAb5FcD34 mm9sLLEnEdKIjgDAT4x4MQAAHgAxQAENUklDSEFSRFNPTl9EAAMAGkAAHgAw QAENUklDSEFSRFNPTl9EAAMAGUAAAgEJEAEAAABsBwAAaAcAAHAMAABMWkZ1 eAAlHP8ACgEPAhUCpAPkBesCgwBQEwNUAgBjaArAc2V0bjIGAAbDAoMyA8UCAHDccnESIAcTAoB9 CoAIzx8J2QKACoENsQtgbmcxODAzMwr7EvIB0CBCgkwF8ERBSUxZB/AARVBPUlQsIFegRURORVMY wFkZgMBKQU5VQVIZAAHQeRmAMTkbIAqFCoUZIEyIRUFTGbAgVE8aAbw6IAXQCYAHMAOgdwng4Gts eSBlCsADABbgAQQgb2YgdGhlIFBuYXRpAiAnBCA5VDYuEiBtAxBsH1EgdGZ1ICAtH0AHgB2gYcZn HwAAcGQgcwdACsD1HgB3BbBrBJAEIB2wFTDAICQ1NDEgC4Ae00cCEAhwHuAgcXUKwHQnBJAeohsR OC4dIFRoBwQAIREEIDUuOSBw3QSQYwnwBUAlUGce8AXA4x7gA5FhIHkeIR4SIDB3BJAZgAWgbQqx CYAdoGmbI/EnUGcLcSSTLjUmB0EjRUNQSS1VHqB2vybTHwAhsCDxJhEfUGQlEP4uLMAdIB0gG1wX nAogGHLvF50mgCWhKFJsEgAosSNz9mkR4AVAdCIgHqIjsiYATQMQbwVAE5BvagWQdEsEICNBSgDQ a3MCIHbVIBFlGYBGC2AuGYAhcrhUdWMz8RmABxF6NMHudQCQFuAhYGwkYR8iK3D7H/ASAGgEcB6T KVAe4QUQOzZRISdiCfANwCjwIGT/HzAnUAIQBcANsCRhIAAeUjogFMBjB0Ad8ROQZXZvC3AgMDhl BCB1IYArhURiYTQgcy1CANAgUUF/M0AlEywhMqwokR7TFTBz/yCQBUAesSciCcIHgCZhOSA3MdAJ 4R7TTAGgBbFEZa0KsXRBEh+BRTCxbwbAPSZSUwGQIYALEQQgQWS7OoIxoHIfMyFjGIJ0MfBfJGAx oiOCHiAAkGI7wXT/HgAesTYkRdUUoTDQM0AhY/xwdQJgBAAkAD0qISM5ok8spQgAOSAAICBWA5FH vQiQegnwNNEYcwWRbgNw/0TxIhM2QiBRHuIy9RmAIbD+eTNhKnEEIEYQMfAnwh4A/UhjbUETTkUN wTMxNwE5QOcEER61NophcDLxANAkAP9GETf4Oac9Kjt9IaAIcCtw609gJRFIIVFkN5EnAQVA/xiC JZIwwSWgKLgVMAtgNvLvHfEmkldlP+JwAiAR8D/gvR8wZSURHUA3YhSxZx4A/zYgKLEjRTKUV3Uf 8SAAM9D/MQVTxxiCXYYo8AehHzMHQN8q8ChhCfAhsEVDU1eEGYD7TAghoWkskSU0B4AAcEZy/1ix YUJYQFPAAZBFQ0YRPSr/OaM3+gQgWllG4R4AOfIYgu0xoGEN0DTUIjliHbAgIOco1DJSAiBnbzZC
[PEN-L:2414] Re: Re: Re: Re: 1998 Bad Writing Contest winners
Jim Devine wrote: why this either/or? that is why is it _either_ Butler, Foucault, and PoMo in general _or_ "classical Marxism"? Why do we dwell on the "useful contrast" rather than trying to build a critical synthesis? It's not either/or in my book. I'm trying to think through a critical synthesis. Unfortunately, there are all too many folks on both sides of the virgule who'd rather snipe than talk. Doug
[PEN-L:2418] Re: 1998 Bad Writing Contest winners
It's not either/or in my book. I'm trying to think through a critical synthesis. Unfortunately, there are all too many folks on both sides of the virgule who'd rather snipe than talk. Doug Why would you even try to involve somebody who has never had sex in these discussions? From all the references to penises and vaginas, I would assume that you'd require somebody who has popped their cherry already. On a more practical note, I'd suggest for the 117th time that you sit down and talk to Randy Martin, who has been on the bleeding edge of these questions. Not only does he write the sort of hyperconvoluted prose you seem infatuated with these days, he is a serious Marxist thinker. Even though he was the one who apparently got fooled by Alan's article, he is still the sharpest mind in academia on these questions. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:2420] 1998 Bad Writing Contest winners
Might not a critical synthesis be had in part from a critical struggle between the different schools of thought and parties of action ? Charles Brown Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] 01/21 2:19 PM Jim Devine wrote: why this either/or? that is why is it _either_ Butler, Foucault, and PoMo in general _or_ "classical Marxism"? Why do we dwell on the "useful contrast" rather than trying to build a critical synthesis? It's not either/or in my book. I'm trying to think through a critical synthesis. Unfortunately, there are all too many folks on both sides of the virgule who'd rather snipe than talk. Doug
[PEN-L:2421] Re: 1998 Bad Writing Contest winners
At 02:01 PM 1/21/99 -0500, Charles wrote: Didn't classical Marxism demonstrate some validity to its theory of subjectivity and power, micro and macro, by the success of the 1917 Russian Revolution, Chinese Revolution, Cuban Revolution, Viet Namese Revolution, etc. ? Didn't they the hegemony problem some ? sure, but I bet you know about the criticisms that Marxists have had of those revolutions and how all but the Cuban one has fallen. BTW, those Marxist critiques predated PoMo by several decades (such as the Frankfurt school and even earlier, folks like Trotsky). If you define "classical Marxism" as Marx Engels' ideas, you have to address the facts that all of these revolutions were in places where Karlos and Fred weren't expecting revolutions and that none of them were pure anti-capitalist revolutions of the sort they favored. Where are comparable postmodern successes in practice even in liberation struggles other than workers' emancipation struggles ? How, where and when have the postmods' interpretation or understanding of the meaning of the world changed the world ? Has _anyone_ been successful in recent years? The big successes in the US since WW II I can point to are only two: (1) the civil rights movement and (2) the anti-war movement's forcing of the US away from a strategy of using ground troops against Vietnam to one of strategic bombing and more importantly, the general shaking up of US society that the movement produced. Neither of these are recent. Maybe I'm overly pessimistic... But the apparent failure of the US left in recent decades should encourage us to avoid pride (what the Jesuits here call the sin of pride), so we don't crow about our successes compared to the PoMo failure or the "classical Marxist" failure, etc. How, when and where has the _Beyond Capital_ theory changed the world ? It hasn't changed the world at all. Not a smidgen! However, that doesn't say that "rethinking Marxism" isn't something that we shouldn't be doing. Given the general failure of what used to be called "the Movement" in the last couple of decades, isn't it useful to think about theoretical basics? Isn't it sometimes useful to think? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
[PEN-L:2422] RE: Julius Clinton
Anyone trying to distill truth from the interestingly inappropriate? In the Starr Report an unknown functionary named Evelyn Lieberman banished the emperor's latest fellatio interest from the palace, and he could do nothing about it. What unwritten law assured that this nugget fell beneath the threshold of public notice? valis Old news in beltway-land, V. It was in the paper here. mbs
[PEN-L:2424] Re: Re: 1998 Bad Writing Contest winners
I once asked a sociologist friend who had long experience as an editor of a sociological journal whether, in his experience, it was necessary to use jargon and impenetrable prose. He told me that when he started editing he had thought this might be the case -- that certain thoughts required specialised language; however, with time and experience, he came to the conclusion that the prose hid the fact that nothing was being said in most cases. When he asked writers to explain what they were saying in clear English they were unable to say anything. This experience suggests that if these important ideas cannot be expressed in another way they just aren't that important. I write articles about law. If anyone can sling the lingo, it's certainly lawyers. I have, however, made it a point to write in a style which is accessible to people likely to care about the issues I address -- workers, collective bargaining, and power. Prose that cannot be understood unless one has been in graduate school and/or has read all the prior writers referenced is of no use to those who most need to read about these ideas. Real workers may not have the time to do the background reading, but they certainly want and need to know about these issues. It is not wishful thinking on my part, but I get contacts regularly from workers thanking me for having written clearly on a particular issue. In my opinion, anyone who writes this sort of prose cannot call themselves revolutionaries, and I have real trouble with their calling themselves Marxists. They write not for workers but for other privileged academics, and they don't have the courage to refuse to go along with the power elite in their disciplines and write things that matter. Now, it may be that once in awhile someone just has to do turgidwrite, but if they have anything worth saying they owe it to society to make amends by also writing it in plain English and putting it in places that will make a difference. Regards, Ellen Ellen J. Dannin Professor of Law California Western School of Law 225 Cedar Street San Diego, CA 92101 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (619) 525-1449 fax: (619) 696-
[PEN-L:2429] Re: 1998 Bad Writing Contest winners
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 01/21 3:11 PM At 02:01 PM 1/21/99 -0500, Charles wrote: Didn't classical Marxism demonstrate some validity to its theory of subjectivity and power, micro and macro, by the success of the 1917 Russian Revolution, Chinese Revolution, Cuban Revolution, Viet Namese Revolution, etc. ? Didn't they the hegemony problem some ? sure, but I bet you know about the criticisms that Marxists have had of those revolutions Charles: Marxists practice criticism/self- criticism, so of course, Marxists would have criticisms, but such criticisms would not have to amount to a conclusion that these revolutions are failures in the overall epochal picture of the transition to socialis ;nor that the current revolutionary downturn is permanent; nor that future revolutions will not draw upon the material and theoretical successes of those listed above. Error is inherent to Marxist analysis as trial and error is inherent to scientific investigation. This derives from an epistemology which is that practice is the ultimate test of theory, the theory of knowledge expressed by Marx in the second thesis on Feuerbach. Much of the impact of these revolutions is still in effect, especially the end of paleo- colonialism. I s ___ Jim: and how all but the Cuban one has fallen. BTW, those Marxist critiques predated PoMo by several decades (such as the Frankfurt school and even earlier, folks like Trotsky). Charles: I'd say there is a lack of sense of historical proportion to conclude that these revolutions have been utterly and absolutely wiped from the history or that they do not continue to effect history today; or to predict that they will not have more impact in the future. For example, Napoleon's reign was a counter-revolution to the French Rev. , but in the long run, the French Rev. is a big change in France and the world. Or the English Roundheads were overthrown,but their rev. changed English history, ushered in capitalism. Or the Civil War overthrew slavery, but Jim Crow was a setback. But in the longrun, the U.S. Civil War has lasting effects. Dialectics teaches that processes are ebbs and flows, zigs and zags, two steps forward, one step backward. Neo-liberal, global triumphalism is premature in a larger historical picture. The Frankfurt school , etc. critiques are scholastic. They do not pass Marx's test of practice. This doesn't mean they are proven wrong, just that they have not proven themselves correct until that make a revolution, like the postmodernist critiques. ___ Jim: If you define "classical Marxism" as Marx Engels' ideas, you have to address the facts that all of these revolutions were in places where Karlos and Fred weren't expecting revolutions and that none of them were pure anti-capitalist revolutions of the sort they favored. _ Charles: There are some late writings by Marx indicating he saw Russia as a possible. However, the specificity of country is not a main Marxist prediction. Interestingly, in the long run, Marx and Engels are proven correct (by the very current setbacks in "socialism in backward countries ") that there must be a rev. in one or some of the "advanced" cap. countries to sustain the rev. But that there has been a socialist rev. at all is a better fulfillment of the predictions of Engels and Marx than all the other social scientists in history. Another classical Marxist predicted that the socialist rev. in Asia would be bigger than in Russia. That insight looks good right now. Trotsky seems more a classical Marxist than the postmods or Frankfurters. The predictive value of classical Marxism, though predictions on the specifics you mention are not a claim of classical Marxism. look better than those of the postmods and Frankfurters. Charles: Where are comparable postmodern successes in practice even in liberation struggles other than workers' emancipation struggles ? How, where and when have the postmods' interpretation or understanding of the meaning of the world changed the world ? Has _anyone_ been successful in recent years? The big successes in the US since WW II I can point to are only two: (1) the civil rights movement and (2) the anti-war movement's forcing of the US away from a strategy of using ground troops against Vietnam to one of strategic bombing and more importantly, the general shaking up of US society that the movement produced. Neither of these are recent. Maybe I'm overly pessimistic... But the apparent failure of the US left in recent decades should encourage us to avoid pride (what the Jesuits here call the sin of pride), so we don't crow about our successes compared to the PoMo failure or the "classical Marxist" failure, etc. ___ Charles: Again, your use of "recent" does not have a good sense of historical proportion. The transition we are talking about is over multiple generations. Just in 1979 the Sandinistas, Afghanis, Ethiopians and Angolans, had just added to the
[PEN-L:2430] Re: Julius Clinton III
Old news in beltway-land, V. It was in the paper here. And it was interpreted how, by whom? She was made out to be a lone bureaucratic hero in the presidential satyricon. mbs Uh-huh. Any hands, class? valis
[PEN-L:2432] Re: Re: Capital going out of print
The bookstore says that that is Amazon's practice. Michael Perelman wrote: Earlier I wrote that Capital, at least the last 2 volumes of the Vintage edition, are going out of print. Presumably, Penguin also. Doug Henwood, clever denizen of the net that he is, went to Amazon, which reported that it is indeed available. Our bookstore checked with Amazon. They have one copy and will find used copies if you want more. Any responses? I don't get this - Amazon reports they ship copies in 2-3 days, which doesn't sound like a book almost out of print. I greedily ordered all three, just in case it's true; my old ones are mighty tattered. Doug -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:2434] Re: Re: Re: 1998 Bad Writing Contest winners
At 12:33 PM 1/21/99 -0800, Ellen Dannin wrote: In my opinion, anyone who writes this sort of prose cannot call themselves revolutionaries, and I have real trouble with their calling themselves Marxists. They write not for workers but for other privileged academics, and they don't have the courage to refuse to go along with the power elite in their disciplines and write things that matter. Now, it may be that once in awhile someone just has to do turgidwrite, but if they have anything worth saying they owe it to society to make amends by also writing it in plain English and putting it in places that will make a difference. Orwell's "Politics of the English Language" is good here (though the title may be inexact). He may have finked to Big Brother in his last days before dying, but he had a lot of good things to say before that. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
[PEN-L:2436] Re: SWM May Have Lied III
I'm sure you went to school when the BS quotient rarely ran higher than 10%, Barkley. This is a shamefully trashed generation for whom the like of The Onion plays quite a different role. I've already heard more than I can take. Which halcyon days would those have been? Joseph Noonan I assume Barkley is of '60s vintage, like most of us. Pomo rococo did not yet exist, the system's lies were fairly opaque, and there was (Remember?) a movement. valis
[PEN-L:2440] Am I right?
Judith Butler is the Martha Stewart of critical cultural studies. Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:2442] Am I right? II
I wrote (innocently enough), Judith Butler is the Martha Stewart of critical cultural studies. THEN I searched Alta Vista for +"Judith Butler" +"Martha Stewart" and got ONE hit: Date: 29 Jun 1998 19:02:09 -0400 From: Graphic Design discussion Subject: And now for something completely different From a call for papers issued by Zoe Newman and Kyla Wazana for a proposed special session at the 1998 Modern Language Association conference in San Francisco in December. Newman is a graduate student at the University of Toronto; Wazana is a graduate student at Stanford University. - Martha Stewart is one of North America's preeminent arbiters of middle-class style and taste. In her multiple and synthesized roles as author and trademark, financial icon and cultural magnate, uber-Wasp and Chief Executive Housewife, archetype of white femininity and immigrant dream, Stewart's influence extends across visual and print media and has spawned numerous parodies. It is clear that there are contradictions here that bear investigation. Our panel seeks to consider the following questions: How does Stewart's work serve to construct notions of whiteness and middle-class heterosexual identity? How is Stewart produced by the culture of late capitalism? What would [feminine theorist] Judith Butler make of Stewart's aggressively heterosexual performance? Do camp parodies of Stewart represent queer subversions of dominant discourses? What is the function of nostalgia in Martha Stewart? Is it an "imperialist nostalgia"? What is the significance of Stewart's aesthetic of cleanliness and perfection? Bearing in mind Anne McClintock's work in _Imperial Leather_, what is the connection between nineteenth-century discourses of dirt and purity and Stewart's postmodern urban aesthetic? What can we make of the connection between Stewart's actual life and the virtual life that is apparently the subject of _Martha Stewart Living_? (from the May '98 issue of Harper's) Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
[PEN-L:2443] Re: Ben Shahn links (addendum)
I would note that socialist realism did not begin with the Stalinist period in the USSR. It has a long and conscious history in the nineteenth century with such French painters as Gustave Courbet prominently associated with it. This tradition in turn draws on much older but less consciously political traditions of painting common people in everyday scenes by such French painters as Chardin and many of the Dutch and Flemish painters. BTW, many of the recent reviews of the Ben Shahn show have been very negative, characterizing him as out-of-date and political naive. H. Says more about the critics than him, I think, although some of the critics who come from leftist Jewish backgrounds fondly reminisce about their youths in houses where Ben Shahn pictures hung while people listened to Pete Seeger and the Weavers and indulged in other icons of fashionable 1950s leftism. Barkley Rosser On Thu, 21 Jan 1999 16:55:54 -0500 Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Cyberexhibits of Shahn's work can be linked to from: http://www.auburn.edu/~folkegw/univ/arboadva.htm Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html) -- Rosser Jr, John Barkley [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:2444] Re: Re: Judith Butler, etc.
At 09:19 AM 1/21/99 -0500, Louis Proyect wrote: Dennis Redmond: If Butler claimed to speak for the people on the Rez, then you could slam her for yakking away. But she's not. Dennis, but she does so implicitly. As the Lingua Franca article points out, and as Doug has stressed repeatedly, Butler is trying to define a new political approach to race and gender. She says that "race" and "sex" are social constructions. Perhaps, it might be useful to show how Marxist Barbara Epstein viewed the Butlerite challenge Barbara eschews the label Marxist, but she'll do until one comes along. Ethan Young
[PEN-L:2447] PEN-L: jan99 : Cicero Clinton etc.boundary=------------12762C26F1B3035E8DE8271B
This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --12762C26F1B3035E8DE8271B boundary="EC1A758ACE2AAB34481EB64E" --EC1A758ACE2AAB34481EB64E Dear Mike, My hunch is that President Clinton's Social Security privatization plan is the same kind of deal as NAFTA. Clinton will "assure" us that his Social Security privatization plan has all of the necessary safeguards and protections we need, but, after he and the Republocrats get done it will have none. Same deal as NAFTA. Your email pal, Tom L. http://csf.colorado.edu/hypermail/pen-l/jan99/0424.html --EC1A758ACE2AAB34481EB64E !doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en" html Dear Mike, pMy hunch is that President Clinton's Social Security privatization plan is the same kind of deal as NAFTA.nbsp; Clinton will "assure" us that his Social Security privatization plan has all of the necessary safeguards and protections we need, but, after he and the Republocrats get done it will have none.b Same deal as NAFTA./b pYour email pal, pTom L. brA HREF="http://csf.colorado.edu/hypermail/pen-l/jan99/0424.html"http://csf.colorado.edu/hypermail/pen-l/jan99/0424.html/A/html --EC1A758ACE2AAB34481EB64E-- --12762C26F1B3035E8DE8271B name="0424.html" filename="0424.html" l/jan99/0424.html" l/jan99/0424.html" !-- received="Wed Jan 20 03:53:35 1999 MST" -- !-- sent="Tue, 19 Jan 1999 20:25:21 -0800" -- !-- name="Perelman, Michael" -- !-- email="[EMAIL PROTECTED]" -- !-- subject="[PEN-L:2335] Cicero Clinton" -- !-- id="[EMAIL PROTECTED]" -- !-- inreplyto="" -- titlePEN-L: jan99 : [PEN-L:2335] Cicero Clinton/title h1[PEN-L:2335] Cicero Clinton/h1 ul li bMessages sorted by:/b a href="date.html#424"[ date ]/aa href="index.html#424"[ thread ]/aa href="subject.html#424"[ subject ]/aa href="author.html#424"[ author ]/a !-- next="start" -- li bNext message:/b a href="0425.html"Brad De Long: "[PEN-L:2336] Re: 1998 Bad Writing Contest winners"/a li bPrevious message:/b a href="0423.html"[EMAIL PROTECTED]: "[PEN-L:2334] The State of the Union"/a !-- nextthread="start" -- /ul iTue, 19 Jan 1999 20:25:21 -0800/i br bPerelman, Michael/b (a href="mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]"i[EMAIL PROTECTED]/i/a)br p !-- body="start" -- Clinton's strong point is that he is a far better actor than Reagan. He'sbr probably smart and certainly self desctructive.br p As for the politics, he just has to balance what his daily polls tell himbr with the demands of big contributors.br p Gore is not as good an actor and is less effective as a glad hander. He isbr also more conservative than Clinton -- Makes you sort of long for Richardbr Nixon, doesn't it.br p For those of you outside of N. America, Clinton's policy is calledbr triangulation. Look at the Democratic congress as the left wing (Yeh, Ibr know ...) and the Repugs as the right. Split the difference and callbr yourself a statesman.br p So long as the stock market goes up and unemployment is not too bad, itbr works.br p Let us hope that the circus in Washington brings politics to a standstillbr before Clinton dismantles the little that is left of the safety net.br p I think it will be more fun following Maggie and looking for howlers in thebr back issue of the American Economic Review - and don't forget the Journal ofbr Political Economy.br p p.s. Milton Friedman writes well. I suspect that we will find that thebr liberals will lose when it comes to clarity.br p Michael Perelmanbr !-- body="end" -- p ul !-- next="start" -- li bNext message:/b a href="0425.html"Brad De Long: "[PEN-L:2336] Re: 1998 Bad Writing Contest winners"/a li bPrevious message:/b a href="0423.html"[EMAIL PROTECTED]: "[PEN-L:2334] The State of the Union"/a !-- nextthread="start" -- /ul --12762C26F1B3035E8DE8271B--
[PEN-L:2451] quote from Monthly Review article
Friends, In the Jan. issue of MR, Bryan Palmer, in an article about Harry Braverman's political development, quotes from "Labor and Monopoly Capital" as follows: "The apparent acclimitization of the worker to the new modes of production grows out of the destruction of all other ways of living, the striking of wage bargains that permit a certain enlargement of the customary bounds of subsistence for the working class, the weaving of the net of modern capitalist life that finally makes all other modes of living impossible. But beneath this apparent habituation, the hostility of workers to the degenerated forms of work which are forced upon them continues as a subterranean stream that makes its way to the surface when employment conditions permit, or when the capitalist drive for a greater intensity of labor oversteps the bounds of physical and mental capacity. It renews itself in new generations, expresses itself in the unbounded cynicism and revulsion which large numbers of workers feel about their work, and comes to the fore repeatedly as a social issue demanding attention." Palmer then says, "This is, to be sure, an old set of ideas, a constellation of Marxist thought that some have, in the unparalleled confluence of arrogance and complacency that often masquerades as 'critical theory' in the late 20th century years postdating Braverman's text, constructed as an antiquarian attachment, risible in its sympathies and sensitivity. Scholastic hyperbole notwithstanding, such apparently laughable thought is the premise of a politics of social transformation, and however many new positions we may be justifiably exhorted to embrace, none are achievable if the old positions of the young Harry Frankel (Braverman' party/SWP name) are not defended and deepened." It seems to me that one way to judge a scholarly work, whether it be Judith Butler's or anyone else's, is to ask, to what extent does it help the hostility workers feel toward their work "rise to the surface," to what extent does it aid a "politics of social transformation." For example, workers are exploited everwhere there is capitalism. Therefore, ths struggles of workers (and indigenous people I might add. If Indians struggle to regain control of land they once inhabited, we must support them. If once they gain control, a minority of them capitalistically exploit the rest, we must support the exploited majority. And if workers are trying to form unions here, we must not say, well unions are by definition reactionary, we must support the workers' efforts and at the same time try to broaden and deepen their political perspectives.) everywhere are legitimate and it is the duty of radicals to support them and push them forward. The sad thing is not so much that workers in poor countries are more heavily exploited but that the US labor movement actively supported this exploitation. We must try, to whatever extent we can, to both end the exploitation of workers in poor countries and to confront the reactionary policies of the AFL-CIO. Having said this, I know that I am not a saint; I have not done all I could on many occasions, both in my writing and in my actions, and I have looked to my own comfort many times. Understanding this, I try to take people and writings as I find them, allying with the people when I can to push forward the struggle and taking from the writings what is useful in doing so. And, finally, trying to laugh and have fun whenever possible! Michael Yates
[PEN-L:2453] Re: Re: Re: RE: Cicero Clinton
At 09:53 PM 1/20/99 EST, Maggie wrote: ... What is also most interesting is Alan Greenspan has now opposed the investment of social sec. in the stock market. ... Then Jim Define says: I wonder who appointed Greenspan to criticize economic policy _in general_. I thought he was only in charge of monetary policy. Call me naive... good point, I hadn't thought of that, he is supposed to be in charge of monetary policy. I read the Times article about Greenspan today, and it seems he doesn't really oppose investing social security money in the market, he opposes the Government investing the money. I wonder if he favors people keeping their social security payments and investing them on their own. Anyone know?
[PEN-L:2454] RE: Re: Re: Re: RE: Cicero Clinton
good point, I hadn't thought of that, he is supposed to be in charge of monetary policy. I read the Times article about Greenspan today, and it seems he doesn't really oppose investing social security money in the market, he opposes the Government investing the money. I wonder if he favors people keeping their social security payments and investing them on their own. Anyone know? I'd be amazed if he opposed diversion of payroll taxes into individual accounts under the control of the contributors. He would be concerned that any scheme not contribute to any diminution of the overall budget surpluses. mbs
[PEN-L:2455] Fwd: quote from Monthly Review articleboundary=part0_916980578_boundary
This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --part0_916980578_boundary So true, so elegantly put, so human. Dead On. Jim In a message dated 1/21/99 6:37:22 PM Pacific Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Subj: [PEN-L:2451] quote from Monthly Review article Date: 1/21/99 6:37:22 PM Pacific Standard Time From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Michael Yates) Sender:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), [EMAIL PROTECTED] ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), [EMAIL PROTECTED] ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Friends, In the Jan. issue of MR, Bryan Palmer, in an article about Harry Braverman's political development, quotes from "Labor and Monopoly Capital" as follows: "The apparent acclimitization of the worker to the new modes of production grows out of the destruction of all other ways of living, the striking of wage bargains that permit a certain enlargement of the customary bounds of subsistence for the working class, the weaving of the net of modern capitalist life that finally makes all other modes of living impossible. But beneath this apparent habituation, the hostility of workers to the degenerated forms of work which are forced upon them continues as a subterranean stream that makes its way to the surface when employment conditions permit, or when the capitalist drive for a greater intensity of labor oversteps the bounds of physical and mental capacity. It renews itself in new generations, expresses itself in the unbounded cynicism and revulsion which large numbers of workers feel about their work, and comes to the fore repeatedly as a social issue demanding attention." Palmer then says, "This is, to be sure, an old set of ideas, a constellation of Marxist thought that some have, in the unparalleled confluence of arrogance and complacency that often masquerades as 'critical theory' in the late 20th century years postdating Braverman's text, constructed as an antiquarian attachment, risible in its sympathies and sensitivity. Scholastic hyperbole notwithstanding, such apparently laughable thought is the premise of a politics of social transformation, and however many new positions we may be justifiably exhorted to embrace, none are achievable if the old positions of the young Harry Frankel (Braverman' party/SWP name) are not defended and deepened." It seems to me that one way to judge a scholarly work, whether it be Judith Butler's or anyone else's, is to ask, to what extent does it help the hostility workers feel toward their work "rise to the surface," to what extent does it aid a "politics of social transformation." For example, workers are exploited everwhere there is capitalism. Therefore, ths struggles of workers (and indigenous people I might add. If Indians struggle to regain control of land they once inhabited, we must support them. If once they gain control, a minority of them capitalistically exploit the rest, we must support the exploited majority. And if workers are trying to form unions here, we must not say, well unions are by definition reactionary, we must support the workers' efforts and at the same time try to broaden and deepen their political perspectives.) everywhere are legitimate and it is the duty of radicals to support them and push them forward. The sad thing is not so much that workers in poor countries are more heavily exploited but that the US labor movement actively supported this exploitation. We must try, to whatever extent we can, to both end the exploitation of workers in poor countries and to confront the reactionary policies of the AFL-CIO. Having said this, I know that I am not a saint; I have not done all I could on many occasions, both in my writing and in my actions, and I have looked to my own comfort many times. Understanding this, I try to take people and writings as I find them, allying with the people when I can to push forward the struggle and taking from the writings what is useful in doing so. And, finally, trying to laugh and have fun whenever possible! Michael Yates --part0_916980578_boundary Return-Path: [EMAIL PROTECTED] by rly-zd03.mx.aol.com (8.8.8/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0) Thu, 21 Jan 1999 21:37:19 -0500 (EST) Thu, 21 Jan 1999 18:37:20 -0800 (PST) [136.142.185.11]) (8.8.8/8.8.8/cispo-7.2.2.2) Thu, 21 Jan 1999 21:32:55 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1999 21:35:38 -0500 From: Michael Yates [EMAIL PROTECTED] Organization: Pitt-Johnstown To: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" [EMAIL PROTECTED], "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" [EMAIL PROTECTED], "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:2451] quote from Monthly Review article Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Friends, In the Jan. issue of MR, Bryan Palmer, in an article about Harry Braverman's political development, quotes from "Labor and Monopoly Capital" as follows: "The apparent acclimitization of
[PEN-L:2457] Re: quote from Monthly Review article
I suspect that I am making a mistake stepping into this minefield late at night, but Mike's thread connects nicely with with recent flame war about who is most exploited. With respect to Mike's assertion, probably all of us participate in bad stuff. I take my $ from the state as a tenured prof. We contribute to the profits of the bastards when we buy stuff In spite of all of our imperfections, Mike is absolutely correct to say that the question is how we are able to contribute to social betterment. This idea brings me to the question of exploitation. Reading Marx formally, the amount of surplus value taken from a worker in an industrialized economy excedes that of what is taken from the Indonesian or Nigerian worker. On the other hand, Marx was clear that the central industry of England relied on the labor of slaves and the Irish. So both sides of the debate can find support in Marx. Now back to Mike. Marx was working for social betterment. He understood that the artificial separation of British and Irish workers was self destructive. The working class was international. If we debate whether the Nigerian, the Indonesian, or the citizen of the U.S. is more exploited, we dissipate our energies. I enjoy spirited debates as much as the next person, but I am watching this one spin out of control. The key should be to locate the weak parts of capital, to know how to fight the good fight. As I read him, Marx did. We should do the same. Marx saw capital as social capital. Without the Nigerian oil (metaphorically speaking) to create the electricity, the exquisite computers at Microsoft would grind to a halt. Marx understood this about the cotton industry, at least after the Cotton Crisis during the U.S. Civil War. I suspect that I should go back to reread this to make sure that I have thought this out well enough, but I am tired and need to get up early. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:2456] Re: CAPITAL out of print
Yes, I was concerned about the availability of paperbacks, to make Marx more accessible. ECUSERS wrote: The three volumes of CAPITAL also seem to be available in English as individual volumes of the Marx/Engels COLLECTED WORKS series (volumes 35 through 37, I think it is), at 25 bucks a pop. The series is sold by both Pathfinder Press and International Publishers, last I looked. Someone correct me if this information is outdated. Cheers, Paul Burkett -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:2452] Re: Re: Re: Re: 1998 Bad Writing Contest winners
In a message dated 99-01-21 10:06:43 EST, you write: P.S.: Anyone care to try to translate Butler's award-winning paragraph into reasonably idiomatic English? Ah, Brad, the question is, Is it worth translating into "reasonably idiomatic English?" maggie coleman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:2449] Fwd: Re: Re: 1998 Bad Writing Contest winnersboundary=part0_916967727_boundary
This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --part0_916967727_boundary Comment: This is absolutely right on in my opinion and so elegantly and humanly expressed. There is another epistemological question. To do concrete struggle, where does the requisite knowledge come from and how is it tested? Many of the most important insights and sources of knowledge come from those "masses" who are often the objects/subjects of esoteric prose and jargon but would could/would never read or understand what is being asserted about them and their conditions in the convoluted prose etc. Yet when the deconstructionists are deconstructed, it becomes clear that underneath the veneer of superficially complex prose and equations in the case of us dismal scientists, often it is the commonplace, pure metaphysics or commonplace stereotypes and myths being asserted--forcefully. The famous quote from Marx from his letter to Arnold Ruge ( "If the construction of the future and its completion for all time is not our task, all the more certain is what we must accomplish in the present. I mean, the ruthless criticism of everything that exists; the criticism being ruthless in the sense that it fears neither its own results nor conflicts with the powers that be" ) demands a continual "rethinking of Marxism"--and everything else. But there is no making change or even obtaining critical information about that which must be changed without "getting the hands dirty." That means being close to that which is being studied and written about. That means that those who are being "studied" and written about, or those whose struggles are being aided in concrete ways, must have access to and be able to understand and correct or add to, what is being studied and written. Jim Craven In a message dated 1/21/99 12:35:18 PM Pacific Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Subj: [PEN-L:2424] Re: Re: 1998 Bad Writing Contest winners Date: 1/21/99 12:35:18 PM Pacific Standard Time From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Ellen Dannin) Sender:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To:[EMAIL PROTECTED] I once asked a sociologist friend who had long experience as an editor of a sociological journal whether, in his experience, it was necessary to use jargon and impenetrable prose. He told me that when he started editing he had thought this might be the case -- that certain thoughts required specialised language; however, with time and experience, he came to the conclusion that the prose hid the fact that nothing was being said in most cases. When he asked writers to explain what they were saying in clear English they were unable to say anything. This experience suggests that if these important ideas cannot be expressed in another way they just aren't that important. I write articles about law. If anyone can sling the lingo, it's certainly lawyers. I have, however, made it a point to write in a style which is accessible to people likely to care about the issues I address -- workers, collective bargaining, and power. Prose that cannot be understood unless one has been in graduate school and/or has read all the prior writers referenced is of no use to those who most need to read about these ideas. Real workers may not have the time to do the background reading, but they certainly want and need to know about these issues. It is not wishful thinking on my part, but I get contacts regularly from workers thanking me for having written clearly on a particular issue. In my opinion, anyone who writes this sort of prose cannot call themselves revolutionaries, and I have real trouble with their calling themselves Marxists. They write not for workers but for other privileged academics, and they don't have the courage to refuse to go along with the power elite in their disciplines and write things that matter. Now, it may be that once in awhile someone just has to do turgidwrite, but if they have anything worth saying they owe it to society to make amends by also writing it in plain English and putting it in places that will make a difference. Regards, Ellen Ellen J. Dannin Professor of Law California Western School of Law 225 Cedar Street San Diego, CA 92101 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (619) 525-1449 fax: (619) 696- --part0_916967727_boundary Return-Path: [EMAIL PROTECTED] by relay31.mx.aol.com (8.8.8/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0) Thu, 21 Jan 1999 15:35:16 -0500 (EST) Thu, 21 Jan 1999 12:37:54 -0800 (PST) From: "Ellen Dannin" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:2424] Re: Re: 1998 Bad Writing Contest winners Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1999 12:33:24 -0800 Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] I once asked a sociologist friend who had long experience as an editor of = a sociological journal whether, in his experience, it was necessary to use jargon and impenetrable prose. He told me that when he started editing he had thought this might be the
[PEN-L:2450] Re: Re: 1998 Bad Writing Contest winners
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 01/21 7:16 PM I had written: sure, but I bet you know about the criticisms that Marxists have had of those revolutions Charles answers: Marxists practice criticism/self-criticism, so of course, Marxists would have criticisms, but such criticisms would not have to amount to a conclusion that these revolutions are failures in the overall epochal picture of the transition to socialis ;nor that the current revolutionary downturn is permanent; nor that future revolutions will not draw upon the material and theoretical successes of those listed above. I never said that the current downturn is permanent. Nor do I think so. In that light, I can skip over replying to a lot of Charles' other contributions. Charles: Does this mean we just skipped over a lot of stuff we agree on ? Oh well, I guess contradiction drives the thought. Can we draw on those revs I listed ? Charles: The Frankfurt school , etc. critiques are scholastic. They do not pass Marx's test of practice. This doesn't mean they are proven wrong, just that they have not proven themselves correct until that make a revolution, like the postmodernist critiques. James: I see nothing wrong with scholasticism per se. But if we can't use the scholastics' work at all, if it's written like the stuff I've seen by Judith Butler or deals with totally irrelevant subjects, I can't say I'm especially interested. I would point to the work of Baran Sweezy, and that of Braverman, which were in the broad Frankfurt-school tradition but were quite useful to leftist activists for a long time (even if their conceptions seem a bit naive in retrospect). I hope you don't see the creation of a revolution as the only criterion of success, since revolutions are few in number. As Charles noted, their success in the 20th century has been almost entirely against paleocolonialism, not against capitalism. And the contributions of the Russian revolution are pretty nil looking at Russia in 1999. Charles: I agree that revolution is a very stringent test, but I can't see how we can accept a lower standard ? Scholastics per se, which means "in-itself. Scholastics that are not in unity with practice is a problem. This is a strict standard too. I am sorry. I didn't make the standard. But the rules of any science are pretty strict at some level. Engels and the others' scholastic standards are high too. We know Marx lived at the British Museum. So, it is not no scholastics but practice must be on an equal level with theory. So, when Marx says in the 2nd thesis on Feuerbach "The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. In practice man (sic) must prove the truth, i.e. the reality and power, the "this sidedness" of his thinking. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question," he speaks as a true scholar to other scholars. He knows scholars tend not to practice enough. He is being self-critical. Similarly, philosophers have interpreted the world, the thing is to change it. To practice is to change the world. I very much disagree that the contributions of the Russ. Rev are nil,even with the state of Russia in 1999. The world could be under the Nazis for one thing, if it had not been for the Russian Rev. It is very difficult to know what the Russian Rev. determined in history. But even Russia today has an education level and other things that it probably wouldn't have and which prevents the crisis from being worse. (well that was longwinded by me-CB) James: I think that most workers would be happy with some reforms. If we can figure out how to win those while setting the stage for more fundamental change, that would be a major victory in this generally dismal period. Charles: Agree. When I say revolution, the struggle reforms is part of revolutionary struggle, otherwise would be ultra-leftism. For reforms, how about shorter work week with no cut in pay and a constitutional right to a decent job ? _... Charles had written: Where are comparable postmodern successes in practice even in liberation struggles other than workers' emancipation struggles ? How, where and when have the postmods' interpretation or understanding of the meaning of the world changed the world ? I answered: Has _anyone_ been successful in recent years? The big successes in the US since WW II I can point to are only two: (1) the civil rights movement and (2) the anti-war movement's forcing of the US away from a strategy of using ground troops against Vietnam to one of strategic bombing and more importantly, the general shaking up of US society that the movement produced. Neither of these are recent. Maybe I'm overly pessimistic... But the apparent failure of the US left in recent decades should encourage us to avoid pride ..., so we don't crow about our
[PEN-L:2448] Re: Re: 1998 Bad Writing Contest winners
I had written: sure, but I bet you know about the criticisms that Marxists have had of those revolutions Charles answers: Marxists practice criticism/self-criticism, so of course, Marxists would have criticisms, but such criticisms would not have to amount to a conclusion that these revolutions are failures in the overall epochal picture of the transition to socialis ;nor that the current revolutionary downturn is permanent; nor that future revolutions will not draw upon the material and theoretical successes of those listed above. I never said that the current downturn is permanent. Nor do I think so. In that light, I can skip over replying to a lot of Charles' other contributions. The Frankfurt school , etc. critiques are scholastic. They do not pass Marx's test of practice. This doesn't mean they are proven wrong, just that they have not proven themselves correct until that make a revolution, like the postmodernist critiques. I see nothing wrong with scholasticism per se. But if we can't use the scholastics' work at all, if it's written like the stuff I've seen by Judith Butler or deals with totally irrelevant subjects, I can't say I'm especially interested. I would point to the work of Baran Sweezy, and that of Braverman, which were in the broad Frankfurt-school tradition but were quite useful to leftist activists for a long time (even if their conceptions seem a bit naive in retrospect). I hope you don't see the creation of a revolution as the only criterion of success, since revolutions are few in number. As Charles noted, their success in the 20th century has been almost entirely against paleocolonialism, not against capitalism. And the contributions of the Russian revolution are pretty nil looking at Russia in 1999. I think that most workers would be happy with some reforms. If we can figure out how to win those while setting the stage for more fundamental change, that would be a major victory in this generally dismal period. Charles had written: Where are comparable postmodern successes in practice even in liberation struggles other than workers' emancipation struggles ? How, where and when have the postmods' interpretation or understanding of the meaning of the world changed the world ? I answered: Has _anyone_ been successful in recent years? The big successes in the US since WW II I can point to are only two: (1) the civil rights movement and (2) the anti-war movement's forcing of the US away from a strategy of using ground troops against Vietnam to one of strategic bombing and more importantly, the general shaking up of US society that the movement produced. Neither of these are recent. Maybe I'm overly pessimistic... But the apparent failure of the US left in recent decades should encourage us to avoid pride ..., so we don't crow about our successes compared to the PoMo failure or the "classical Marxist" failure, etc. Again, your use of "recent" does not have a good sense of historical proportion. The transition we are talking about is over multiple generations. Just in 1979 the Sandinistas, Afghanis, Ethiopians and Angolans, had just added to the success of Viet Nam of '75 and Cuba of '59. All of Africa came out of paleocolonialism after 1957 (Ghana). This is very recent in historical terms. Who would have thought Apartheid would fall so soon ? I was talking about the US only. Pride ? Confidence , patience and defense of victories from shortsighted pessimissm are critical for revolutionaries in this epochal struggle. Otherwise the bourgeoisie will steal our wins by mental tricks. The struggle continues victory is certain. I was arguing against dogmatism and sectarianism. However, I like to avoid using the same words and phrases over and over again. How, when and where has the _Beyond Capital_ theory changed the world ? It hasn't changed the world at all. Not a smidgen! However, that doesn't say that "rethinking Marxism" isn't something that we shouldn't be doing. Given the general failure of what used to be called "the Movement" in the last couple of decades, isn't it useful to think about theoretical basics? Isn't it sometimes useful to think? Yes, rethink we should, but continue to think many of the basic principles too, because they have not been proven failures by "recent" zags, which zags we expect. In 1908 in Russia , a period of reaction, there was less evidence of the success of Marxist classical ideas than today. Lucky thing Lenin and the Bolshies didn't throw out the baby with the rethinking bathwater. _Imperialism_ was a rethinking, but a sublation, not obliteration of the classics. Lenin also wrote on Empirico-Criticism and his notebooks on Hegel. Even though these books were sorta obscure and actually contradicted each other in important ways (I am told), they were the type of scholasticism that Lenin thought was necessary to deal with the big issues of his time. If I remember correctly, the notebooks on Hegel are partly a response to the
[PEN-L:2446] Re: Re: Fwd: Re: Re: Re: Judith Butler, etc.
While I agree with much Jim says, Doug is certainly right that there is little resemblance -except perhaps that both have groupies- between Rand and Butler. Ayn Rand writes with vigor and a clarity that makes it easy to critique. She is very much an essentialist and admirer of Aristotle but adopts a forthright ethical egoist position i.e. you ought to look out for number one (THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS). She supports free-market capitalism and indulges in tirades against socialism and altruism. She doesn't seem to be concerned about gender issues as far as I can recall. I doubt that Butler is capable of writing a popular novel such as Atlas Shrugged. It is ironic that BUtler should adopt themes from J. L. AUstin. Austin was famous for his scathing critiques of contemporary philosophers' inability to look carefully at the way that the English language works but instead went off inventing unclear new terms, generalising, and indulging in abstraction without looking at the facts both about language and the world. His critiques were directed at some of the clearest philosophical writers who ever lived: A.J. Ayer, G.E. Moore, and HH Price. I doubt that he would be bothered to say anything of writing so tortured and filled with pomposity as Butler or Althusser. He seems to have totally ignored the Continental speculative tradition. Austin had a dry caustic humour that he used to deflate hifalutin philosophical enquiry. THe supposed problem of free-will he writes about in an article called " 'Ifs' and 'can' " He doesn't ask if we have free will because he doesn't understand what that means. He asks whether 'cans' are constitutionally 'iffy'. This is directed against soft determinists who claim that when you say you can do something you always mean if such and such then I can. So if you say I can sink that putt even though it turns out you don't, you mean that if such and such I will. Freedom on this account is not in conflict with determinism. Until near the end of his life, Austin was wholly opposed to much generalisation in philosophy. He remarks that if philosophers studied butterflies they would distinguish only one species or maybe a couple or so. In his last work HOW TO DO THINGS WITH WORDS he introduces the concepts that Butler uses and they certainly involve broad generalisations. Ones that he didn't work out in much detail. That work was never completed but reconstructed from lecture notes by G. Warnock. I am sure that he would be turning over in his grave if he knew the use to which those ideas were being put by Butler. You would think that Butler would use more recent authors who developed Austin's ideas: John Searle's SPEECH ACTS is probably closest to carrying on in the Austinian tradition. One of Austin's main works has a title that is a play on the words of the famous novel SENSE AND SENSIBILITY by Jane Austen. His book was SENSE AND SENSIBILIA. When I used Austin I had to send SENSE AND SENSIBILITY back, not once, but twice ! Cheers, Ken Hanly Doug Henwood wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This Judith Butler seems to me to be a reincarnation of Ayn Rand--arrogance and pretentiousness shallow groupies and all. No, not in the least. Doug
[PEN-L:2445] Re: Re: Ben Shahn links (addendum)
On Thu, 21 Jan 1999 17:28:17 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time) Rosser Jr, John Barkley said: BTW, many of the recent reviews of the Ben Shahn show have been very negative, characterizing him as out-of-date and political naive. H. Says more about the critics than him, I think, although some of the critics who come from leftist Jewish backgrounds fondly reminisce about their youths in houses where Ben Shahn pictures hung while people listened to Pete Seeger and the Weavers and indulged in other icons of fashionable 1950s leftism. Talking about such icons, I have a copy of a rabid right book about "The Marxist Minstrels" that refers in passing to the Brooklyn Dodgers as "the baseball arm of the CPUSA." Walter Daum
[PEN-L:2441] CAPITAL out of print
The three volumes of CAPITAL also seem to be available in English as individual volumes of the Marx/Engels COLLECTED WORKS series (volumes 35 through 37, I think it is), at 25 bucks a pop. The series is sold by both Pathfinder Press and International Publishers, last I looked. Someone correct me if this information is outdated. Cheers, Paul Burkett
[PEN-L:2438] Ben Shahn
(Third in a series on art and revolution) Ben Shahn was one of the foremost Social Realist artists of the 1930s. At the outset we have to recognize that this movement arose in response to the political/esthetic directives of Stalin's government. The original Constructivist style that emerged with the victory of the Bolsheviks was basically outlawed and Soviet artists either adapted to the new agenda or left the country. Ironically, while the style became identified with the cultural and political retreat of the Soviet Thermidor, in the west--particularly the United States--it reflected an upturn in the revolutionary movement. Nobody needed to dictate to artists that they should serve the revolutionary movement. The objective forces of history were sufficient to do that. In David Shapiro's introduction to his "Social Realism: Art as a Weapon," a collection of articles by artists and critics both for and against the movement in the 1930s, there's a useful summary of Social Realism: "Social Realism is not an art of the studio--rarely does one see a painting of the model, costumed or nude, and even less frequently is a still life encountered. Social Realism's only landscapes are at least partly cityscapes--a decaying mining village, or shacks along the railroad tracks. A variety of genre painting, Social Realism takes as its main subject certain significant or dramatic moments in the lives of ordinary poor people. The moments in their lives selected (and it is always a moment in someone's life--it is hard to think of Social Realist painting that does not include a human being) are almost always those that in some way focus on the indignity or pathos of their situation--the hard work they perform. the inadequate rewards they receive for it, or the miserable conditions they work under. There is almost always, implied or explicit, a criticism made of the capitalist system. With this as their subject matter, Social Realists perforce showed those aspects of American life that were the least 'pretty.' Not for them to glory in the soaring mountains, or, for that matter, in the soaring skyscrapers. Instead, they painted the people in the slums, the industrial suburbs, the factory towns, and sometimes on the farm. When rich people appear, they are the objects of satirical derision: art patrons unable to understand the pictures they look at, dowagers attending opera for snob reasons only, millionaires dining in splendor half the world goes hungry." This is the esthetic world that Ben Shahn emerges from. Along with other notables such as Philip Evergood and William Gropper, Shahn was part of the CP-dominated cultural front that the Trotskyist intellectuals derided. This was not art, but propaganda, according to the precepts of Meyer Shapiro and Clement Greenberg. Such easy dismissal must be critically re-evaluated, as Alan Wald, a post-Trotskyist literary critic, has attempted to do in the literary field, with particular emphasis on the "proletarian novel". We have to consider the possibility that, for all its flaws, Social Realist art has much more to say to us today as people who are striving to transform the world. Rather than being some kind of one-dimensional cartoon, the work of Ben Shahn has the sort of humanitarianism that is the inner essence of all attempts to transform the world. Shahn was born in 1898 in Kovno, Lithuania, the first of five children of a traditional Orthodox Jewish family. His father was a woodcarver and cabinetmaker. Sometimes we can lose sight of how oppressed Eastern European Jews were in this period. They faced discrimination and violence everywhere they turned. When the Russian Revolution of 1917 declared war on all forms of anti-Semitism, Jews instinctively turned toward the new government. In a fascinating oral history collection titled "Followers of the Trail: Jewish working-class radicals in America," author David Leviatin presents the testimony of Harry M.: "At that time there was truly no antisemitism. It was forgotten. We were proud, we were equal citizens, we could travel anywhere we wanted, we could get any job we wanted, we were free to live wherever we wanted. No discrimination. The Jews were very happy. Antisemitism didn't show except in reactionary circles. Those that were in the counterrevolutionary movement, they blamed everything on the Jews. It's not a question of a Russian being a Communist. Jew and Communist was synonymous, and that was their propaganda. "But Jews had their full rights, like everybody else. They were the leaders, they were the members of the soviets, they were the members of the government. The Gentiles that were with the Red Army had no opposition to it. I think there was even a law then that if you abused a Jew or used the words 'dirty Jew' you were getting six months in jail." The subjects of Leviatin's book are literally the social base of Ben Shahn's artwork. They were working-class New York Jews of the Communist Party, now in their 80s
[PEN-L:2439] Ben Shahn links (addendum)
Cyberexhibits of Shahn's work can be linked to from: http://www.auburn.edu/~folkegw/univ/arboadva.htm Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:2437] Phillipine Revolutionaries beat Amazon
Capital is available online - also for the scholarly community - at the MEIA - unfortunately vol. 2+3 only as fragments. Capital vol. 1 is available at: http://www.marx.org/Archive/1867-C1/ Capital vol. 2 (chapters 1-19 out of 21): http://www.marx.org/Archive/1885-C2/ transcribed by Phillipine Revolutionaries and Doug Hockin. Capital vol. 3 - only part I (chapters 1-7) and chapters 36-39: http://www.marx.org/Archive/1894-C3/ I've also heard about a CD-ROM, but I couldn't retrieve it yet. It is really a sad thing to learn that the complete English print edtion is no longer avalaible. Hinrich Kuhls At 12:38 21.01.99 -0800, Michael Perelman wrote: Earlier I wrote that Capital, at least the last 2 volumes of the Vintage edition, are going out of print. Presumably, Penguin also. Doug Henwood, clever denizen of the net that he is, went to Amazon, which reported that it is indeed available. Our bookstore checked with Amazon. They have one copy and will find used copies if you want more. Any responses?
[PEN-L:2435] Re: Re: SWM May Have Lied II
On Thu, 21 Jan 1999, valis wrote: Quoth Barkley Rosser: Hey! As someone who spends parts of his summers in Mad City, Wisconsin where the venerable (or should that be "venereal") _Onion_ is published, and has been reading since well before its recent internet fame, I gotta say that it is great. Don't knock it; laugh with it. I'm sure you went to school when the BS quotient rarely ran higher than 10%, Barkley. This is a shamefully trashed generation for whom the like of The Onion plays quite a different role. I've already heard more than I can take. Which halcyon days would those of been? valis -- Joseph Noonan [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:2431] Re: Capital going out of print
Michael Perelman wrote: Earlier I wrote that Capital, at least the last 2 volumes of the Vintage edition, are going out of print. Presumably, Penguin also. Doug Henwood, clever denizen of the net that he is, went to Amazon, which reported that it is indeed available. Our bookstore checked with Amazon. They have one copy and will find used copies if you want more. Any responses? I don't get this - Amazon reports they ship copies in 2-3 days, which doesn't sound like a book almost out of print. I greedily ordered all three, just in case it's true; my old ones are mighty tattered. Doug
[PEN-L:2428] Re: Re: 1998 Bad Writing Co
Amen to Ellen's belief about the unvarnished benefits of clear writing, and I add only that good writing on social and political theory, even political economy, does not have to go into the thickets of jargon to be innovative and meaningful. My one major tip: active verbs, and avoid the passive voice!
[PEN-L:2427] RE: Re: Julius Clinton II
Old news in beltway-land, V. It was in the paper here. And it was interpreted how, by whom? valis She was made out to be a lone bureaucratic hero in the presidential satyricon. mbs
[PEN-L:2426] Capital going out of print
Earlier I wrote that Capital, at least the last 2 volumes of the Vintage edition, are going out of print. Presumably, Penguin also. Doug Henwood, clever denizen of the net that he is, went to Amazon, which reported that it is indeed available. Our bookstore checked with Amazon. They have one copy and will find used copies if you want more. Any responses? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
[PEN-L:2425] Re: Julius Clinton II
Spin-Dr Sawicky hears tell: Anyone trying to distill truth from the interestingly inappropriate? In the Starr Report an unknown functionary named Evelyn Lieberman banished the emperor's latest fellatio interest from the palace, and he could do nothing about it. What unwritten law assured that this nugget fell beneath the threshold of public notice? Old news in beltway-land, V. It was in the paper here. And it was interpreted how, by whom? valis
[PEN-L:2423] Re: SWM May Have Lied About Liking Sunsets, Long Walks
Hey! As someone who spends parts of his summers in
Mad City, Wisconsin where the venerable (or should that be
"venereal") _Onion_ is published, and has been reading
since well before its recent internet fame, I gotta say
that it is great. Don't knock it; laugh with it.
Barkley Rosser
On Thu, 21 Jan 1999 13:31:47 -0600 (CST) valis
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
{sigh} OK, it's official: American academia is choking in
hyperprolix pomposities which not only the average person
but even the average intellectual and average Marxist find
utterly devoid of substantive content!
Hardly a mystery, then, that The Onion (www.theonion.com),
an inane rag calling itself "America's Finest News Source,"
is indeed the most popular publication among the country's
20-somethings the past few years, with titles like the one
gracing the current subject line introducing "news reports"
of grotesquely extended irony: parodies of actual issues and
social tendencies. I wonder who's compensating for what,
encountered where?! Next case!
valis
--
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:2419] Julius Clinton
Muses first Maggie, then Jim D: ... What is also most interesting is Alan Greenspan has now opposed the investment of social sec. in the stock market. ... I wonder who appointed Greenspan to criticize economic policy _in general_. I thought he was only in charge of monetary policy. Call me naive... Anyone trying to distill truth from the interestingly inappropriate? In the Starr Report an unknown functionary named Evelyn Lieberman banished the emperor's latest fellatio interest from the palace, and he could do nothing about it. What unwritten law assured that this nugget fell beneath the threshold of public notice? valis
[PEN-L:2417] RE: Re: Re: 1998 Bad Writing Contest winners
Well that's the point here, it can be: if power is in our heads, if power forms our subjectivities, then it is dispersed in billions of us, in trillions of daily contacts. This obviously comes out of Foucault, who can be criticized for his excessively atomized view of power, but it's a useful contrast to all those classically Marxian views of power, which find the entire capitalist structure in every grain of sand. But we're probably boring all the dismal scientists with this kind of talk. no dude, it's far out . . . rilly . . .
[PEN-L:2416] Re: Re: BLS Daily Report
Tom Walker wrote: RELEASED TODAY: Median weekly earnings of the nation's 96.2 million full-time wage and salary workers were $541 in the fourth quarter of 1998. This was 5.9 percent higher than a year earlier, compared with a gain of 1.5 percent in the CPI-U over the same period. ... Four and a half percent is quite an astonishing increase in real median weekly earnings. The three-year increase in real weekly earnings for all of 1998 - 7.0% - is the highest since the BLS started the all private workers series in 1964, eclipsing 1973's previous record of 6.2%. For manufacturing workers, the 1995-1998 figure was 6.1%, which is lower than the golden age numbers, but still the highest since the early 1970s. Longer hours contributed a lot to recent performance, though; real hourly earnings for all private sector workers were up just 1.9% from 1995 to 1998; in the late 60s/early 70s, the figures were in the 4-7% range. Doug
[PEN-L:2415] SWM May Have Lied About Liking Sunsets, Long Walks
{sigh} OK, it's official: American academia is choking in
hyperprolix pomposities which not only the average person
but even the average intellectual and average Marxist find
utterly devoid of substantive content!
Hardly a mystery, then, that The Onion (www.theonion.com),
an inane rag calling itself "America's Finest News Source,"
is indeed the most popular publication among the country's
20-somethings the past few years, with titles like the one
gracing the current subject line introducing "news reports"
of grotesquely extended irony: parodies of actual issues and
social tendencies. I wonder who's compensating for what,
encountered where?! Next case!
valis
[PEN-L:2412] 1998 Bad Writing Contest winners
Didn't classical Marxism demonstrate some validity to its theory of subjectivity and power, micro and macro, by the success of the 1917 Russian Revolution, Chinese Revolution, Cuban Revolution, Viet Namese Revolution, etc. ? Didn't they the hegemony problem some ? Where are comparable postmodern successes in practice even in liberation struggles other than workers' emancipation struggles ? How, where and when have the postmods' interpretation or understanding of the meaning of the world changed the world ? How, when and where has the _Beyond Capital_ theory changed the world ? Charles Brown Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 01/21 1:40 PM At 01:19 PM 1/21/99 -0500, you wrote: Brad De Long wrote: And then there are the deeper problems with the paragraph: power that is dispersed and contingent ain't hegemony, and so forth... Doug responds: Well that's the point here, it can be: if power is in our heads, if power forms our subjectivities, then it is dispersed in billions of us, in trillions of daily contacts. This obviously comes out of Foucault, who can be criticized for his excessively atomized view of power, but it's a useful contrast to all those classically Marxian views of power, which find the entire capitalist structure in every grain of sand. ... why this either/or? that is why is it _either_ Butler, Foucault, and PoMo in general _or_ "classical Marxism"? Why do we dwell on the "useful contrast" rather than trying to build a critical synthesis? What about, for example, Mike Lebowitz's view in his BEYOND CAPITAL, which (in crude terms) sees actually-existing capitalism as being a combination of capital struggling to conquer every grain of sand and people resisting that takeover? In this view, again crudely, the power of capital is to some extent "in our heads" (an atomized kind of power) but it's more importantly in institutions, specifically in the centralized control of money and control over productive and military resources and in the collective organizational weakness of the working class and other dominated groups. The interesting thing is that Mike's book is pretty explicity opposed to both PoMo and "classical Marxism" but has generally been ignored. More importantly, as he points out, a lot of the theoretical position he lays out has been part of the broad culture of the Left even when it has not been part of the official line. And it can even be found in offical Marxism now and then. Why is this broad culture being ignored? Or put another way, why choose between PoMo and stereotyped "classical Marxism" when one could choose, say, Mike Albert, or for that matter, Louis Proyect or Doug Henwood? a dismal scientist, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
[PEN-L:2408] Re: THE CRISIS IN BRITISH INDUSTRY III
Letter from Sidney and Beatrice Webb, The Times, December 6, 1901, page 12. THE CRISIS IN BRITISH INDUSTRY. TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES. Sir, In the articles which you have lately published attacking trade unionism you expressly challenge reply, and you even infer that the absence of contradiction in your columns proves, not only the correctness of the allegations themselves, but also the validity of the deductions made from them. We venture therefore, to say that six years' detailed investigation into the actual working of trade unionism all over Great Britain convinced us that, as an institution, it has a good and (to those who will take the trouble to study the facts) a conclusive answer to your charges. But working men do not read The Times, any more than your Correspondent reads our Industrial Democracy, in which he would have found all his charges against trade unionism examined in full and minute detail, and, we hope, with candour, four years ago. This elaborate work has not been refuted or replied to. The absence from your columns of any answer to your Correspondent's allegations is therefore no proof of their truth. What your Correspondent alleges comes, in brief, to this -- that English workmen do not put their full strength into their work; that they give when they can a "light stroke," or skulk; that they are not eager for the greatest possible productivity, and even resent it, as tending to diminish employment; that they resist labour-saving contrivances; and that they are in a constant conspiracy to keep down the speed and energy of their labour. Now, so far as they relate to the instinctive sentiment of a manual working class, employed at time wages, we believe that your Correspondent's charges contain much truth. It is a special evil of the separation of industrial classes, the reduction of all relations between employer and employed to the "cash nexus," and the growing intensity of competition, that masters and men are always tempted to try to take advantage of one another. The employers seek to get more work for the same wages, or otherwise to alter the proportion of remuneration to effort, and the workmen seek to effect a similar alteration in the other direction -- namely, by getting more wages for the same work, or expending less energy for the same remuneration. The result in either case is bad for the community, and it is to be unreservedly deplored that conditions so vital to national well-being as the citizen's standard of life and industrial productivity should be left to this anarchic duel between individuals. But your Correspondent also alleges that the evil (he characteristically thinks only of the workman's malpractices) is worse than formerly, and that it is increasing; and he identifies it with trade unionism, which he accuses of being the cause of what he dislikes. We believe, after considerable investigation, that these statements are quite incorrect and the reverse of the truth. The complaints as to diminished quantity or energy of work, and of the tacit conspiracy to discourage individual exertion, occur with curiously exact iteration in every decade of the last 100 years at least. Even in the 16th century there were found those who, in the words of Orlando in *As You Like It*, sighed for -- "The constant service of the antique world, When service sweat for duty, not for meed." [note: meed is an archaic word for compensation] But such complaints are evidence only of the psychological condition of their utterers -- they prove no objective fact. To give one instance only, we have found exactly the same accusation of the bricklayers' limiting the number of bricks, and precisely the same belief that they were only doing "half as much" as they did 20 years before, in the great strikes of 1833, in those of 1853, again in 1859-60, and again in 1871. We believe them all -- that is to say, we take them as some evidence that the employers felt the workmen's constant attempt in all ages to alter the bargain to their own presumed advantage. But we have found absolutely nothing that can be called evidence that the actual *quantum* of work done per hour, quality and conditions being taken into account, is less today than it was a hundred years ago. (It must be remembered that brickwork differs enormously, and that some that passed muster in old days would not now be allowed by the architect or district surveyor.) We must add that we entirely disbelieve in the existence of any unwritten limit of 400, or any other number, of bricks per day as a consciously agreed-upon limit. This is another old story, for which, after much investigation, we have never been able to find any evidence. Passing from the bricklayers to the whole range of English labour, we can only record as the result of our own studies that, so far from the aggregate product being less per head, and decreasing, we are convinced, on the evidence of employers themselves, that greater sobriety, greater
[PEN-L:2406] Re: Re: Re. euro-query
Rosser Jr, John Barkley wrote: Now, although most eurofinanciers poo-poo the possibility, it is not out of the question that black markets in actual currencies could develop in the next three years, that somebody might be trading guilders for marks on the streets of Amsterdam, or wherever, for something other than the rate implied by their fixed ratios with the euro. As long as these distinct "national forms of the euro" exist, such an outcome is possible. But the guilder will cease to exist in 2002, at which time it must be exchanged for euros at the fixed and "irrevocable" rate established the other week, or it will become a cute but useless piece of colored paper. No doubt Scholes and his pals at LTCM could put a value on such an instrument, but wouldn't that execution date undermine any street value of the guilder? Doug
[PEN-L:2405] Re: Re: 1998 Bad Writing Contest winners
Brad De Long wrote: And then there are the deeper problems with the paragraph: power that is dispersed and contingent ain't hegemony, and so forth... Well that's the point here, it can be: if power is in our heads, if power forms our subjectivities, then it is dispersed in billions of us, in trillions of daily contacts. This obviously comes out of Foucault, who can be criticized for his excessively atomized view of power, but it's a useful contrast to all those classically Marxian views of power, which find the entire capitalist structure in every grain of sand. But we're probably boring all the dismal scientists with this kind of talk. Doug
[PEN-L:2404] Re: Re. euro-query
Doug H. is right in how this will show up. The analogy is to state governments in the US. Some have to pay higher interest on their bonds because of their "unsound" finances. We are, however, in a weird and essentially unprecedented zone in financial and monetary history as near as I can tell. One can say that that the individual remnant national monies are merely "forms of the euro." That is true from the standpoint of demand deposits or any form of bank money. The Dutch cannot "expand their money supply" through any of the usual textbook methods. The only way they can do so is the old fashioned one, print or mint more M0 actual physical guilders. Now, although most eurofinanciers poo-poo the possibility, it is not out of the question that black markets in actual currencies could develop in the next three years, that somebody might be trading guilders for marks on the streets of Amsterdam, or wherever, for something other than the rate implied by their fixed ratios with the euro. As long as these distinct "national forms of the euro" exist, such an outcome is possible. That it would or could force a change in those fixed ratios is highly unlikely. However, it is not totally impossible despite the assurances of the eurofinanciers. To avoid it will involve offsetting behavior by the new European Central Bank which will probably be forthcoming, not to mention pressure on any country whose behavior is leading to such black markets. Barkley Rosser On Thu, 21 Jan 1999 08:20:47 -0800 Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 03:31 AM 1/21/99 -0500, you wrote: There is no longer a free-market exchange rate for the guilder since the guilder no longer exists as an independent currency. It is form in which the euro circulates in the Netherlands pending the introduction of euro notes and coins in 2002. The same is true for the lira in Italy. Under the stability pact, euro-zone countries are required to maintain their fiscal deficit below 3 per cent. This was originally proposed by the German CDU government, who wanted automatic fines introduced for governments that broke the rule. However the French government successfully insisted that any fines must be subject to political approval by the EU authorities. Even though the the current social-democratic governments in France, Italy and Germany are fiscally conservative, it is difficult to envisage them approving fines. so what happens if the Dutch (for example) over-spend? would it put stress on the unity of the Euro? are there any consequences? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html -- Rosser Jr, John Barkley [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:2401] Judith Butler's Cabaret,boundary=part0_916939879_boundary
This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --part0_916939879_boundary From what I have been able to see so far, and I for one cannot deconstruct Butler's award-winning feast of tortured syntax, I think Cabaret might be an accurate metaphor for some of this pomo stuff (and for the stuff that routinely goes on in grad schools). These three people, carrying a lot of emotional baggage, create, and insulate themselves within, a surreal subterranean world of depravity, pretentiousness, narcissism and practical indifference while around them the signs of mounting social decay, total systemic failure and nazis are mounting. They run across an occasional incident of "Jew- bashing" by the nazis, even for a moment are touched a bit, but show no real concern even when the presence of the nazis reaches into the Cabaret. They create for themselves an inner sanctum in which they experiment to develop all sorts of new combinations and permutations of depravity, focus on their own special pain and and angst ignoring pleas of others to see their pain and join in the fight. They even tell each other and the targeted victims (lkike the young man who was Jewish passing as a Christian who wanted to marry the young rich Jewish woman) that they will only be victims if they allow meaningless words and cagtegories to take on and have the intended effects of the victimizers; they even note that words and categories have no intrinsic meaning, properties or intended effects beyond what the victim allows them to take on. The visual images, the pretentious narcissism, savoring their own rhetoric and sense of self-importance (like William Buckley who narcissistically flashes his eyes and eyebrows at key points he wants emphasized as if his threatrics and pompous posturing somehow make the point more worth of consideration and more "proved"), the players and surreal scene and self-indulgent apathy of the Cabaret remind me of some of the pomo stuff I have seen so far. And Oh yes I do indeed say the same thing about a lot of the "mathurbation" (as Heilbroner put it "adding "rigor" and alas also "mortis" to economics) and tortured affected syntax of much of "mainstream" economics (as if superficially "complex" language indicates having grasped and analyzed the complexities of the phenomena being discusseed) as creaating cloistered elites speaking in code not for elucidation or promoting change but rather to keep the circle of elites narrow and in command of their respective market niches. I am also reminded of a book called "Profscam" which had some useful examples of how we academics, or some in academia, are aiding some of the backlashes against academia and acadmics with the overblown/pretentious/useless rhetoric, with esoteric classes geared more toward our own needs than the real needs of students as expressed by the students, with the scholar despotism often evident in grading and discipline, with endless hours spent on CV-building and endless spin-offs of spin-offs in meaningless journals and conferences with little if any spent on improving pedagogy in technique and scope or in valuing teaching; etc. Many of the shots are cheap shots but no doubt some academics have given the administrators (often even more cloistered, elitist, pampered and irrelevant) some aid and comfort. In many ways "Cabaret" is a metaphor and even extended allegory for much of academia as well. Perhaps the pomos are offensive to some because they perhaps represent a very open and clear example of reductio ad absurdum/nauseum--how to say nothing with a lot of big words, quote ongering/appeal to authority, contrived and caricatured authorities and convoluted syntax. Hey, if you hate math and science, if you have a degree in philosophy or English Lit that allows you to talk and write any shit without any objective basis for being refuted and that makes you potentially unemployable or a candidate for Assistant Manager at Wendy's, you can always attack the notion of "science" and "scientific method" or even play scientist with vocabulary, syntax and sources of theory that make metaphysical assertions appear to be established principles, axioms and even "Laws". The grants will flow, the publications will flow, the trips as guest speaker to other cloistered elites and groupies will flow, specialized journals will be created and hey, "Life is a Cabaret". Jim Craven Just some thoughts. In a message dated 1/21/99 8:29:15 AM Pacific Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Subj: [PEN-L:2398] Re: Re: Judith Butler, etc. Date: 1/21/99 8:29:15 AM Pacific Standard Time From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mathew Forstater) Sender:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unfortunately, Louis, this is in no way exclusive to those "imbued with the postmodernist zeitgeist." It's pretty common among grad students, and academics generally. And not just academics, either, come to think of it. Also, it
[PEN-L:2397] Re: Re. euro-query
At 03:31 AM 1/21/99 -0500, you wrote: There is no longer a free-market exchange rate for the guilder since the guilder no longer exists as an independent currency. It is form in which the euro circulates in the Netherlands pending the introduction of euro notes and coins in 2002. The same is true for the lira in Italy. Under the stability pact, euro-zone countries are required to maintain their fiscal deficit below 3 per cent. This was originally proposed by the German CDU government, who wanted automatic fines introduced for governments that broke the rule. However the French government successfully insisted that any fines must be subject to political approval by the EU authorities. Even though the the current social-democratic governments in France, Italy and Germany are fiscally conservative, it is difficult to envisage them approving fines. so what happens if the Dutch (for example) over-spend? would it put stress on the unity of the Euro? are there any consequences? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
[PEN-L:2395] Re: Re: RE: Cicero Clinton
At 09:53 PM 1/20/99 EST, Maggie wrote: ... What is also most interesting is Alan Greenspan has now opposed the investment of social sec. in the stock market. ... I wonder who appointed Greenspan to criticize economic policy _in general_. I thought he was only in charge of monetary policy. Call me naive... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
[PEN-L:2394] Re: Judith Butler, etc.
Matt wrote: I don't see what the problem is. Biological characteristics that have no inherent social meaning have been assigned social significance that has come to be perceived as somehow natural, and is the basis for social inequality. The main thing I got out of Epstein's remarks is that graduate students imbued with the postmodernist zeitgeist are more interested in fighting with other graduate students than with institutionalized racism and sexism. I got a good whiff of this, oddly enough, from "Marxist-Leninist" arch-foes of Judith Butler grouped around some professors on the SUNY campuses upstate. Their most well-known spokesperson is Teresa Ebert, who mounts ferocious attacks on her postmodernist foes in academia, using identical language and the same philosophical presuppositions--namely, that "contestations" over language and theory have some sort of political significance. When Angela from Australia asked me the other day whether I was involved with "the performativity of conflict", she was drawing from this same well. It is a hermetically sealed universe that is bounded by ivy and totally irrelevant to the lives of everyday working class struggles. The postmodernists and the academic Marxists like Teresa Ebert feed off each other. If there was no university system, this crap would disappear in a day or two. We are dealing with what Russell Jacoby described as the decline of public intellectuals. Butler, Ebert, and company live for the next academic conference where they can lay waste to their ideological enemies. I find it singularly depressing that smart people like Dennis Redmond and Doug Henwood can take any of this seriously. I understand that Dennis has to keep up with it since he makes his living in this world. As far as Doug is concerned, I suspect that his graduate school interests in "repression"--of the sexual rather than the deathsquad variety--have never left him. I was lucky enough to be old enough to have gone to college before postmodernism was invented. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:2393] Re: Re: Re: Re: 1998 Bad Writing Contest winners
Brad De Long wrote: Yep. Ain't it awful?... So why did you write all those bad things, Brad? From your postings it's obvious you can write clearly well. Constraints of the genre? Positioning yourself in the field? Habit? P.S.: Anyone care to try to translate Butler's award-winning paragraph into reasonably idiomatic English? Butler: The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power. Henwood: "An older view, associated with structuralism, which held that capital shaped social life in a unitary and timeless way, has given way to a new view of power, as something dispersed, changeable, and requiring constant reinforcement and reassertion." Or something like that. Which leads us to performativity and citationality, and the lbo-talk Butler seminar, which needs a little dose of editorial discipline, something I'll attend to imminently. Doug
[PEN-L:2391] Keynes and Hayek
Keynes at Cambridge University, who advocated government intervention to protect the economy from the effects of the business cycle, and Hayek at the London School of Economics, who adovated the merits of free markets, had been theoretical opponents in economic theory since the 1930s. Events in the 1930s had showed the socio-economic damage caused by free markets. Subsequently, the macroeconomics of Keynes's 1936 General Theory dominated acdemic circles as well as government policy establishments. By the time Keynes died in 1945, Hayek and the classical, trade cycle theory had very few serious followers. Economic policy at that time emphasized demand management in which the business cycle was beleived to be an undesirable defect to be managed with fiscal policies of deficit financing. Discouraged, Hayek left economic theory work, eventually chaired the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago in 1950, and later at the University of Freiberg (1962-68) and Salzburg (1968-77). He worked on psychology (The Sensory Order, 1952), political theory (The Constitution of Liberty, 1960), and legal studies (Law, Legislation Liberty, Volumes l-lll, 1973-79) along generally conservative lines. The so-called Socialist Calculation Controversy was prompted by the Austrian School's critique of central planning. From the 1920s until the 1940s, Hayek and his fellow Austrian and teacher, Ludwig von Mises, argued that socialism was bound to fail naturally as an economic system, although they seemed to allow for socialism's political imperative, albeit only as a fallacy. Hayek maintains that only free markets, with individuals making disaggregatd decisions in their narrow self-interest, can generate the information necessary to intelligently coordinate social behavior. Freedom of individual choice without "distortive" regard for social impacts is considered as necessary input for an efficient economy that would lead to prosperity. Hayek argues that free market prices are the true expression of a rational economy. For three decades after WWII, reality ran counter to Hayeks' theories. Even conceptually, macro-economists began to suggest that with the aid of computerized macro input/output models, central planning can accomodate the very information problem that Hayek had raised. Afterall, if the boundless comlexities of fluid mechanics in producing a silent-runing submarine propeller can be simulated by mathematical models, why not the dynamics of a planned economy. Mathematics was challenging ideology in the evaluation of theories in economics. Paradoxically, Hayek, who implies scientific determinism in his ideological argument for free market, is unsympathetic to the efficacy of applying the sophisticated tools of the physical sciences to the social sciences. The shift from the "gun or butter" trade-off of the pre-war era to the "gun and butter" fantasy of 1960s and '70s pushed post-war prosperity into spiraling inflationary bubbles in countries that had benefitted from Keynesianism, led by the United States and the U.K. As more and more surplus value was siphoned off to non-productive military expenses, wages could only rise by permitting inflation to stay ahead of them. Employment thus became hostage to the militarization of peace. Even then, full employment could not be maintained by Keynesian measures in peace time because surplus value, havng been stored in military inventory, was not being recirculated in the economy through higher wages to sustained needed demand. The traditional counter-cyclical therapy, such as stimulating consumption and postponing savings through government deficit spending, strained the elasticity of wage/price convergence, pushing the economy into stagflation. The macro models, imperfect as they were, showed that the principle of "guns or butter" was immune to macro-economic management. Too many guns would produce inflation that wages simply could not catch up. Under Cold War mentality, cutting butter became the only option. Capital understood that managed inflation is pro-labor and anti-capital. Keynesian economics was essentially pro-labor in its macro approach by treating unemployment as a social virus that healthy doses of managed inflation should be tolerated as its cure. Government fiscal policy was deemed the natural venue to administer the medicine. Capital, to combat this serious threat to its very existence, adopted a strategy with three legs. The first leg required that guns remained an untouchable piority. The rationale was that guns were needed geopolitically in a world that had become fatally dangerous to capitalism. The second leg required that government be blamed for high inflation and unemployment. Voters had to be convinced that inflation was bad for them and that the pain workers with low wages were suffering was caused by big government and inefficient central planning that distorted the natural self-adjustments of a free market.
[PEN-L:2386] (Fwd) Conference
Dear Pen-l, Below is a call for papers for a conference I am helping to organize. Proposals more than welcome. Best, Terry McDonough THE THIRD GALWAY CONFERENCE ON COLONIALISM DEFINING COLONIES 17-20 JUNE 1999 CALL FOR PAPERS The aim of this multidisciplinary conference is to explore the meanings of the contemporary and historical entities which are categorised under the rubric of colony. Historically, colonies were defined in a wide variety of ways, with varying relationships to the imperial centre, and with a number of widely differing forms of colonial or imperial government. In like manner, there have been different kinds of colonizing and decolonizing processes. The modern discourse of colonialism is not equivalent to the earlier discourse of colonization and terms such as empire, charter colonies, crown colonies, dependencies, provinces, dominions, and commonwealths need careful discrimination. Papers would address the question of how colonies have been defined, politically, economically, socially, and culturally. Are there any sure signs of coloniality, postcoloniality? What are the roles of ethnicity, race, gender, and social class in different colonial dispensations? Papers might consider the ever-present danger of generating colonial theory from the specific experience of certain kinds of colonies and then conferring on it the dignity of universality. A central strand of the conference will address the question, Was Ireland a Colony? After the Act of Union in 1800, Ireland was constitutionally an imperial power, but in many other respects was a colony in all but name. Many nationalists refused to see Ireland as a colony and remained enthusiastic imperialists. Ireland was widely seen as anomalous, resisting definition as either colony or empire. The wider theme of this conference should illuminate this discussion, while the specificity of Irelands experience might test the validity of colonial theories generated from different colonial situations. Papers should be no longer than 20 minutes. If you wish to contribute to the conference, please send an abstract of not more than 300 words, preferably by email, to the Conference Organisers, Department of English, NUI, Galway, Ireland, before 15 February 1999. There is a special conference email address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Details of the conference, which will be updated regularly, are available on the World Wide Web at: http://www.ucg.ie/enl/colony/conference.htm Conference Organisers Fiona Bateman, Tadhg Foley, Lionel Pilkington, Seán Ryder, and Elizabeth Tilley, Department of English, and Terry McDonough, Department of Economics, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland Tel: 353 [0]91 524411 Fax: 353 [0]91 524102 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PLEASE DISPLAY --
[PEN-L:2384] Re: Jubilee 2000 enquiry (fwd)
And another site with lots of topical material: Alternative Information and Development Centre (Cape Town): http:\\aidc.org.za *** Patrick Bond 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 Johannesburg, South Africa phone: (2711) 614-8088 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] office: University of the Witwatersrand Graduate School of Public and Development Management PO Box 601, Wits 2050 phone (o): (2711)488-5917; fax: (2711) 484-2729 email (o): [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:2383] Fwd: Re: Fwd: Re: Re: Re: Judith Butler, etc.boundary=part0_916897859_boundary
This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --part0_916897859_boundary In a message dated 1/20/99 9:19:04 PM Pacific Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Subj: [PEN-L:2382] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: Re: Judith Butler, etc. Date: 1/20/99 9:19:04 PM Pacific Standard Time From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Doug Henwood) Sender:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To:[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This Judith Butler seems to me to be a reincarnation of Ayn Rand--arrogance and pretentiousness shallow groupies and all. No, not in the least. Doug Doug, Out of respect for you and all that you have done and are doing at great sacrifice to advance progressive causes, please show me that as in so many times before, I am wrong and precipitous again. Please bring out some of her best stuff (I will be reading all of her published work) and let aa hundred Derrida's deconstruct and contend. By the way, as a parenthetical note to my last comments, I deal every day with some Indians who think that only Indian issues and Indians matter, that say it is "us" against the White Man, and I ask the same question: Without the support of non-Indian progressives, what needs to be smashed and changed will not be; why should non-Indian progressives care about Indians and their issues if progressive Indians care nothing about the pain and suffering of so many non-Indians who are not the enemy and are suffering horribly? So please bring on some of the most penetrating, billiant, advanced and innovative prose for our edification and in order to learn and correct any precipitous and unfair judgments. I can only reiterate that my "impressions" (they are very important in concrete political work and activism) and perceptions are limited, based not on any comprehensive or even substantive reading of her work, open to counter-evidence, counter-reasoning and change, with the further notes that I have been wrong many times before and will be wrong many times again. Jim --part0_916897859_boundary Return-Path: [EMAIL PROTECTED] by rly-zb02.mx.aol.com (8.8.8/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0) Thu, 21 Jan 1999 00:19:02 -0500 (EST) Wed, 20 Jan 1999 21:19:32 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1999 00:15:52 -0500 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:2382] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: Re: Judith Butler, etc. Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This Judith Butler seems to me to be a reincarnation of Ayn Rand--arrogance and pretentiousness shallow groupies and all. No, not in the least. Doug --part0_916897859_boundary--
[PEN-L:2382] Re: Fwd: Re: Re: Re: Judith Butler, etc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This Judith Butler seems to me to be a reincarnation of Ayn Rand--arrogance and pretentiousness shallow groupies and all. No, not in the least. Doug
[PEN-L:2368] Re: euro-query
Jim Devine wrote: BTW, is the Italian Lire really high in its parity with the Euro? There sure seemed to be a lot of Italian tourists when I visited New York in early January. (Or was it the airline I flew, Delta, that somehow focused on the Italian market? It is often ignored that Italy - according to outpout and bip per head - is no. 3 in Europe. For a good political background article on Italy by Rossana Rossanda see the current issue of Le Monde diplomatique (The article is very informative, indeed; as I am not subscribed to the English edition: anybody else who could provide it in English?) HK http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/en/1999/01/index.html HOW LEFT IS EUROPE? Italy proves the exception by Rossana Rossanda Italy is in an anomalous situation compared with Europe's other leftist governments in France, in Great Britain and now in Germany. This administration seems to go against the tendency of all the other social democrats to try out remedies (prudent ones) now that neo-liberalism has met with reverses and economic growth is stagnant. It's as though Italy - once the most advanced post-war social and political laboratory - is still stunned by the extensive and bewildering changes in ownership patterns and labour relations.
