[PEN-L:10325] Re: RE: Ideology/consciousness and material/social
Rod Hay wrote: Relations between what? If individuals are the results of relations, what is relating? A mere form without content? "Full of sound and fury signifying nothing" There are no "individuals" Rod, only subjects. Think about your own 'individuality'. Who are you? Your own ego is associated with your name, which was given to you by others, and you learnt what it means only in the relations with those others. Your nationality, your gender, your race, your ethnicity, you being a son, a father, a brother, a husband, etc. etc. are all nothing but various relationships that define your so-called individuality to yourself. If you think that there is somewhere a pure you, independent of all these relations, then try finding that pure self and let us know who it is and how is it significant to anybody else. First of all, I would suggest, try to see if your pure self is a 'Man' or a 'Woman'? Rod: It is hard to argue against a philosophy that no one believes in enough to act upon it. Everyone believes in the theory of the human will. The burden of proof is on those who would deny it. Explain consciousness as the result of relations, or as the result of material processes. No one else has done it. __ This is nothing but an example of bad rhetoric. How come I'm not a part of your "everybody"? Most of the scientists don't believe in "a theory of human will", as far as i know. And what is it by the way? The burden of proof must be on those who claim that something exists. If I claim that ghosts don't exist, then the other party has the burden to come up with some evidence to show that they do exist. You are the other party in this game, Rod. Cheers, ajit sinha Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archives http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://members.tripod.com/rodhay/batochebooks.html http://www.abebooks.com/home/BATOCHEBOOKS/ __ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
[PEN-L:10335] RE: Analysis of next neo-liberal moves by Kim Scipes
The (PPI) analysis is B.S., the weights in the index are arbitrary, hence the index is b.s., but the elements of the index are not inherently biased towards factors that negatively affect workers. There's an office worker factor, but there are also manufacturing factors. It's not clear the office worker correlates with lower than average wages. If it was a service worker factor that would be different. The only part that hints at worker problems is one variable pertaining to business failure/start-ups. But this is only a single element in the index. In short, I don't see any neo-liberal biases in the index itself, though the underlying story is another matter. For those in search of an overtly progressive index, one is constructed by the Corporation for Enterprise Development. This is used by unions to rebut a business-oriented index calculated by Grant Thornton, a consulting outfit. All these indices are worthless, except in propaganda wars, IMO. The best available indicator of the economic well-being of a state would be based on its Gross State Product, relative to assorted demographic factors, though this fails to grapple with the green accounting and similar issues. mbs -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Charles Brown Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 1999 11:52 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:10333] Analysis of next neo-liberal moves by Kim Scipes Dear Folks-- I haven't written recently on the US economy, but have something to say, so thought I'd send a general message out. (1) I stumbled across a project of the Democratic Leadership Conference, which is the center-right coalition within the Democratic Party here in the US that was so instrumental in getting Bill Clinton nominated by the Dems in 1992, and then later elected as President. This project is called "The New Economy Index" and is located at www.neweconomyindex.org/index.html. . . .
[PEN-L:10337] The Amazon Journal of Roger Casement
Announcing the publication of: 'The Amazon Journal of Roger Casement' edited by Angus Mitchell 84 St Pauls Crescent, London NW1 9XZ, +44 (0) 171 482 4676 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.win-uk.net/~anaconda/ "He could tell you things! Things I've tried to forget; things I never did know." --Joseph Conrad "... his was a heroic nature. I should like to write upon him subtly, so that his enemies would think I was with them till they finished my book and rose from reading it to call him a hero. He has the appeal of a broken archangel." --T.E. Lawrence "This is a book of the very greatest interest, which urgently deserves publication." --Richard Bourne, Survival International In the first decade of the twentieth century, British Consul Roger Casement carried out two investigations into atrocities in the Congo Free State and Amazon rainforest. His official reports exposed widespread genocide against tribal people enslaved to collect rubber. In 1911 Casement was knighted for the courage and cogency of his investigations. Five years later, in the apocalyptic August of 1916, he was tried and hanged for high treason for his role in Ireland's Easter Rising. Ever since, his place as the outstanding humanitarian of his age has been overshadowed by the controversy surrounding explicit sex diaries that he is alleged to have scribbled whilst carrying out these investigations, extracts from which were shown to influential figures at the time in a successful attempt to undermine any campaign to have his sentence commuted The introduction to this first edition of The Amazon Journal of Roger Casement explores the background to the issue of those "Black Diaries" and the manner in which the controversy surrounding them has clouded subsequent understanding both of Casement the man and of his life's work. In the process, it makes a formidable case for the argument that the "Black Diaries" were forged. Subsequently, the book consists of the complete text, annotated by the editor, of the compelling journal kept by Casement during his Amazon investigation, along with further Casement writings in the course of his journey into the jungle and back. The editor has previously lived in and written about Spain. Nowadays, when not working in archives in South America and Europe, Angus Mitchell tends a farmstead in the Brazilian highlands, surrounded by an increasingly numerous and exotic menagerie. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:10339] Re: The Amazon Journal of Roger Casement
Louis, I recall that Adam Hochschild discussed the importance of Casement in interviews I heard about his King Leopold's Ghost. Louis Proyect wrote: Announcing the publication of: 'The Amazon Journal of Roger Casement' edited by Angus Mitchell 84 St Pauls Crescent, London NW1 9XZ, +44 (0) 171 482 4676 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.win-uk.net/~anaconda/ "He could tell you things! Things I've tried to forget; things I never did know." --Joseph Conrad "... his was a heroic nature. I should like to write upon him subtly, so that his enemies would think I was with them till they finished my book and rose from reading it to call him a hero. He has the appeal of a broken archangel." --T.E. Lawrence "This is a book of the very greatest interest, which urgently deserves publication." --Richard Bourne, Survival International In the first decade of the twentieth century, British Consul Roger Casement carried out two investigations into atrocities in the Congo Free State and Amazon rainforest. His official reports exposed widespread genocide against tribal people enslaved to collect rubber. In 1911 Casement was knighted for the courage and cogency of his investigations. Five years later, in the apocalyptic August of 1916, he was tried and hanged for high treason for his role in Ireland's Easter Rising. Ever since, his place as the outstanding humanitarian of his age has been overshadowed by the controversy surrounding explicit sex diaries that he is alleged to have scribbled whilst carrying out these investigations, extracts from which were shown to influential figures at the time in a successful attempt to undermine any campaign to have his sentence commuted The introduction to this first edition of The Amazon Journal of Roger Casement explores the background to the issue of those "Black Diaries" and the manner in which the controversy surrounding them has clouded subsequent understanding both of Casement the man and of his life's work. In the process, it makes a formidable case for the argument that the "Black Diaries" were forged. Subsequently, the book consists of the complete text, annotated by the editor, of the compelling journal kept by Casement during his Amazon investigation, along with further Casement writings in the course of his journey into the jungle and back. The editor has previously lived in and written about Spain. Nowadays, when not working in archives in South America and Europe, Angus Mitchell tends a farmstead in the Brazilian highlands, surrounded by an increasingly numerous and exotic menagerie. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html) -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
[PEN-L:10341] Re: Analysis of next neo-liberal moves by KimScipes
More on the New Economy. A forward. CB In connection to Kim Scipes comments about the DLC's 'New Economy' initiative, I thought I would mention three recent publications from Working Partnerships, an AFL-CIO-linked research institute in Silicon Valley. Both publications try to critique the 'New Economy' approach, recognizing there are dramatic new developments in the U.S. economy, but highlighting the downsides for workers in the heart of Silicon Valley. Hopefully they can provide some useful material in the broader project of developing more progressive alternatives to the center-right New Economy paradigm. Described briefly below, the reports are available online at http://www.atwork.org/wp/pub.html: Walking the Lifelong Tightrope: Negotiating Work in the New Economy (May 1999) examines the striking changes in California's economy over the past decade and the implications of this transformation for the state's working families. The report details how workers at all income levels are increasingly vulnerable to rapid changes in our volatile, information-based economy and how inequality has become more and more entrenched in California's economic structure. To decrease economic insecurity and volatility, Walking the Lifelong Tightrope proposes news ways for government, business and labor to develop new institutions and policies that protect working families, provide effective bridges from low-paid to high-paid occupations and industries, and provide life-long learning opportunities. Growing Together or Drifting Apart? Working Families and Business in the New Economy (January 1998) --A status report on social and economic well-being in Silicon Valley which documented a range of social and economic indicators relevant to working families in Silicon Valley. Shock Absorbers in the Flexible Economy (1996) --A research study documenting the rise of contingent employment in Silicon Valley. The report also explores a wide-range of possible solutions to problems of contingent employment, including public policy recommendations and suggestions for new forms of worker organizing. * Chris Benner (510) 643-7078 Department of City and Regional Planningfax: 642-1641 University of California[EMAIL PROTECTED] Berkeley, CA 94720 http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~cbenner **
[PEN-L:10350] Re: Asian recovery...
Sam Pawlett [EMAIL PROTECTED] 08/23/99 02:23PM Maybe, though at his point clearly the government/capitalists/criminals are pretty much one and the same. In Russia, there seems to be a ruling class split between domestic, nationalist gangsters and more imperialist, internationally oriented gangsters. Charles: State-monopoly gangsterism is pretty prevalent in the history of capitalism. That's how all of capitalism got started with the cutthroats on boats who were grabbing slaves and carving out colonies, backed up by the HMS gunboats. Or cowboys ripping off Indians to tame the West for business. The movie _The Godfather_ actually portrays a typical capitalist gestation process, from gangsters to legitimate. Primitive Russian capitalism today is well within the capitalist tradition, not an anomoly. Charles Brown
[PEN-L:10352] RE: Re: Narrow economism
James Craven Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. 98663 (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5/craven2.htm *My Employer Has No Association With My Private/Protected Opinion* -Original Message- From: Wojtek Sokolowski [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 1999 8:25 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:10332] Re: Narrow economism At 09:57 AM 8/23/99 -0700, Michael Perelman wrote: I want pen-l to be relevant to what goes on in the economy. The banter and exchanges about cultural and political matters are useful. They round out the list and make it more entertaining. On the other hand, I would like to see us create a body of knowledge that can be useful to activists and workers for social change. For that reason, I welcomed the recent exchanges about the Asian crisis. It seems to me that there is a "third way" between the Scylla of culturalism and the harybdis of macro-economism: institutional analysis that combines both cutural and economic aspects of collective behavior. IMHO, however, pen-l does not seem to be flooded with institutional analyses. wojtek Wojtek, I do an exercise in my classes related to institutions and institutional thinking/approaches that you might find interesting. I start with Dave Colander's definition of "institutions" in his Economics 3rd Edition (on which I was a final reviewer/editor for technical content and pedagogy): "An economic institution is a physical or mental structure that significantly influences economic decisions." (p. 8) I then ask, from that definition ALONE, can anyone give me examples of "institutions". Usually no or little response. I then ask the class to give me examples of institutions from common speech or common reference to institutions. I usually get: institution of the family, institution of marriage, institution of private property, someone has been "institutionalized" (mental ward or prison), the College as an institution etc. So we take three examples from common speech of supposed "institutions"--e.g. marriage, family and private property and proceed to dissect them and ask what do they have in common in terms of fundamental properties and in terms of fundamental functions. We arrange three lists: Properties Functions Why/Reasons We note that in all three cases there are definite, commonly understood, yet also dynamic, rules, laws (don't go to family reunions looking for a mate, don't slip your grandmother the tongue when she gives you a gentle kiss, don't locate your private-property-protected porn theater next to the old grade school etc), constraints, privileges, rights, responsibilities, power structures, rewards, symbols, traditions, myths, taboos, rituals etc etc. Then we talk about what these three commonly-termed institutions have in common in terms of what they do: socialize, regiment, constrain, teach, reinforce, legitimate, de-legitimate, marginalize, demonize, define, reward, punish, program, co-opt, condition, etc. Then we talk about why: teach/reinforce dominant paradigms and ideas while marginalizing/demonizing unpopular or "dangerous" paradigms and issues; condition and make organized,predictable and controllable certain human behaviors and interactions; proscribe/prescribe or limit "permissible" or "acceptable" ideas, paradigms, issues and approaches; legitimate/reinforce/consolidate/reproduce dominant power structures, ideas and Weltanschauungs; enhance predictability and controllability of human behaviors and intereactions so as to reduce risk, uncertainty and associated information/transactions costs; enhance "social capital" and social cohesion from the perspective of dominant groups; balance ultra-individualist impulses and behaviors necessary for capitalism with imperatives for social cohesion and prevention of ultra-individualism going to system-compromising extremes; expanded reproduction of human, physical and social capital forms and relations and capitalism as a whole; social systems engineering and legitimation along with de-legitimation and marginalization/demonization of systems deemed to be fundamentally antagonistic to capitalism; etc etc. The students come up with these features, functions and reasons for them via "Socratic" probing. Then then combined them to form a genralized definition of institutions: dynamic complexes of interrelated values, laws, rights, responsibilities, constraints, power relations/structures, myths, traditions, taboos, symbols etc that serve to structure human behaviors/interactions, legitimate/de-legitimate, marginalize, demonize, teach, condition, brainwash etc in order to reproduce the system and its fundamental features on an expanded scale, marginalize/demonize designated enemies, reinforce/legitimate dominant and "permissible" paradigms/issues etc, reduce risk, uncertainty and associated costs, reproduce power structures/relations on an expanded
[PEN-L:10354] The Putumayo Report
(From Michael Taussig's "Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man) It is at this point instructive to work through Casements Putumayo reports submitted to Sir Edward Grey, head of the British Foreign Service, and published together with letters and memoranda as a "blue book" by the British House of Commons on 13 July, 1913 when Casement was forty-nine years old. It should be noted at the outset that Casements attachment to the cause of Irish home rule and his anger at British imperialism not only made his almost lifelong work as a British consul fraught with concealed conflict (as with his homosexuality), but that he felt that his experiences in Africa and South America influenced his understanding of colonialism in Ireland, which in turn stimulated his ethnographic and political sensibility south of theequator. He claimed it was his knowledge of Irish history which allowed him to understand the Congo atrocities, for example, when the Foreign Office would not because the evidence made no sense to them. Making sense here meant a willingness and a developed instinctive capacity to identify not simply with a nation or with a people, but with the hunted and the marginal whose way of life and appreciation of life could not be understood through the soulless philosophy of commodities. In a letter to his close friend Alice Green he recalled: "I knew the Foreign Office would not understand the thing, for I realized that I was looking at this tragedy with the eyes of another race of people once hunted themselves, whose hearts were based on affection as the root principle of contact with their fellow men, and whose estimate of life was not something to be appraised at its market price." In the article he wrote for the respected Contemporary Review in 1912, he argued that the Putumayo Indians were more highly developed, morally speaking, than their white oppressors. Not only did the Indian lack a competitive streak but he was, in Casements assessment, "a socialist by temperament, habit, and possibly, age-long memory of Inca and pre-Inca precept." In conclusion, Casement asked, "Is it too late to hope that by means of the same humane and brotherly agency, something of the goodwill and kindness of Christian life may be imparted to the remote, friendless, and lost children of the forest?" Later he would refer to the peasants of Conemara in Ireland as "white Indians." In good part Casements dilemma was not so much that of wooing himself from his Unionist and Protestant birthright under the Crown, or from what he increasingly came to see as hypocritical British culture "professing," as he wrote, "Christianity yet believing only in Mammon." His more acute dilemma lay in the way this very same hypocrisy insinuated itself into his life pattern of self-discovery through opposition in which nationalism and anticolonialism but not the covert life of the homosexual could be made manifest and be dignifying: "In these lonely Congo forests where I found Leopold [king of the Belgians, and owner of the Congo Free State, I found also myself, an incorrigible Irishman." In his diary covering his Putumayo journey, some ten years after portraying himself as an "incorrigible Irishman," Casement penned to himself a fragment that displayed the way his thought could work images of femaleness and maleness to represent the culture of imperialism. On the launch Liberal steaming up the Putumayo. on 17 September, 1910, he wrote: "The man who gives up his family, his nation, his language, is worse than the woman who abandons her virtue. What chastity is to her, the essentials of self-respect and self-knowledge are to his manhood. "The young Quichua pilot on "Liberal" is named Simon Pisangoa pure pure Indian namebut calls himself Simon Pizarro [to whom Conrad likened Casement in his letter to Cunninghame Graham]because he wants to be civilized. Just like the Irish Os and [undecipherable] dropping first their names or prefixes to shew their respectability and then their ancient tongue itself to be completely Anglicized. Simon Pisango still talks Quichua, but another [undecipherable] of Pizarros will speak only Spanish! Men are conquered not by invasion but by themselves and their own turpitude." Men are conquered not by invasion but by themselves. It is a strange sentiment, is it not, when faced with so much brutal evidence of invasion as one enters the rubber belt? As he wrote to Sir Edward Grey in 1912: "The number of Indians killed either by starvationoften purposely brought about by the destruction of crops over whole districts or inflicted as a form of death penalty on individuals who failed to bring in their quota of rubberor by deliberate murder by bullet, fire, beheading, or flogging to death, and accompanied by a variety of atrocious tortures, during the course of these 12 years, in order to extort these 4.000 tons of rubber, cannot have been less than 30,000, and possibly came to many more." Louis Proyect
[PEN-L:10356] Re: Re: Re: Re: Ideology/consciousness and material/social
I have called no one a liar, nor denied anyone membership in the human species. I say everyone believes in the human will because everyone acts as if they do. Does Ajit really believes that he is totally determined by his social relations? Does he really believe that there is no causation? (i.e., that he cannot intend a consequence of his actions?) Does he never attempts to control his environment? Or perhaps there is no Ajit just a conjunction of a series of mysterious social forces, overdeterminating themselves into a temporary material form. And no one has answered my question. How is it possible to have relations when there is nothing to relate? Original Message Follows From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] P .S. Agit has already responded quite correctly to Rod's strange assertion that "Everyone believes in the theory of the human will," but perhaps a couple points. Rod is either calling Agit and me liars or denying that we are part of the human species: both of us claim not to believe in any such oddity as "the human will." I would add that I am even incapable of imagining what such a thing would be if it existed. The widespread belief (or at least assertion of belief) in immortality suggests that many people think they can imagine what a "will" or a "mind" or a "soul" would be, but I certainly cannot. "Theory of the human will," in addition is a strange expression. What Rod means is the *fact* of the human will. A theory of the human will would be an *explanation* of that fact. But there can be no theory of the non-existent. That is, mostly, what ideology is. "Racism" is an ideologoical explanation of another non-fact in which "everyone" believes: the biological or cultural existence of "races." Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archives http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://members.tripod.com/rodhay/batochebooks.html http://www.abebooks.com/home/BATOCHEBOOKS/ __ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
[PEN-L:10365] Re: Ideology/consciousness and material/social
Carrol you have not read Ajit's posts. He explicitly denied causation. The rest of the post has more to do with your imagination that what I said. There was nothing about ghosts, either internal or external. I am simply making the claim that intentional activity implies a belief in causation. And that the existence of purposeful activity implies a will. If you do not act intentionally, then perhaps you have no will. But I content that you are writing the messages that you send. They are not being written by the sum of your social relations past and present, which is what Ajit said a person was. Do you not undertake activities expecting a certain result? Do you not at times resist certain compulsions because you want to avoid a forseeable result? That is what a will is. I feel no obligation to defend anything that Jonathan Edwards wrote or did. And I know what an emergent property is. On this I am agnostic. No one can explain consciousness, or the human will. Ajit may think that it is the result of social relations but he can not demonstrate it. Some one may belief that it emerges from the material substance and organization of the brain but it has not been explained. Original Message Follows From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] Rod Hay wrote: I have called no one a liar, nor denied anyone membership in the human species. I say everyone believes in the human will because everyone acts as if they do. Does Ajit really believes that he is totally determined by his social relations? Rod, you are not trying to understand. Neither Ajit nor I has said anything, one way or another, about determinism. I did say, explicitly, that the debate over the freedom or determination of "the will" was nonsense because there was no will to be free OR determined. The questions are quite separate. (As a matter of historical fact, the tendency among those who believe in the existence of "The Will" is to deny its freedom. For one thing, if the will is free than one's identity does not determine one's actions and therefore one is not responsible for one's actions: see Jonathan Edwards on this.) So, I simply can't understand what you mean when you say I have "A Will" or act as though I did. So either you have to admit that some people don't experience themselves as having a will (free or determined) *or* you have to call be a liar or deranged or something of the sort. I myself don't believe anyone really thinks they have a will -- they are just deluded by pop psychology and the individuating force of the market to think they think they have a will. Where is your will located? What are the elements the relations of which constitute it if it is an emergent property of the system. (Explanation of an emergent property. Suppose you have 50 generators running 50 clocks. The generators will be uneven in their power output and some of the clocks will run faster, some slower. Now suppose you attach all 50 generators together and run the clocks off their combined output. I forget the exact technicalities, but the system will act as though there were a "governor" inhabiting it. (Just as you seem to believe you have some ghostly "will" sitting up there at the control panel of your brain.) If one generator speeds up, the others will slow down, exert a drag on it, and it will speed up. That governor does not exist, even though all the generators operated *as though* there were a physical governor controlling them. One way to explain such ghillies and ghosties and things that go boomp in the night as "wills," "personalities," "minds," "souls," "character," etc. etc. etc is as emergent properties of the system (the history which "is" a person). (Humans can entertain themselves in odd moments over the next few thousand years sorting out that complex system of neuronal circuits and social relations which we refer to as Rod or Carrol or Ajit. Fortunately for the purposes of the working class movement we need only understand the movements of groups, not of "individuals" or "subjects" whose responses and behaviors depend on too nearly infinite a set of contingencies to be the subject of any systematic understanding. Incidentally, Angela does not in principle, I suspect, accept the existence of either the "individual" or the "will," but her mystical criteria for planning reveal the cloven hoof of the committed metaphysical individualist. Carrol Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archives http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://members.tripod.com/rodhay/batochebooks.html http://www.abebooks.com/home/BATOCHEBOOKS/ __ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
[PEN-L:10396] Re: Re: Re: Re: Ideology/consciousness andmaterial/social
it is a bit difficult to imagine a chimpanzee as an individual, and a human individual is unimaginable. Try the mind experiment of stripping away every social relation you have ever had. What would be left? what would happen if you were to strip away all of human biology? what would be left? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/JDevine.html
[PEN-L:10364] Re: Re: Re: Re: German bank merger
When the Canadian banks wanted to merge they claimed that large size would allow them to compete in the bidding for large international projects. That joint financing partners would be more willing to deal with a bank with a large capital base to draw from. Original Message Follows From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] Michael Perelman wrote: What kind of power does a bank merger provide? How much of the advantage comes from shedding labor costs or branches? How much from just having power to get political advangtages? Doug writes: See http://www.frbsf.org/econrsrch/wklyltr/wklyltr99/el99-25.html for one view - that there are modest cost savings if you adjust for accounting oddities. Most other researchers have found little cost savings. I think they're just after a bigger mass of profits - that and a lust for world domination. Methinks the major benefits of bank merger come from the fact that the end of the ban on interstate banking (and similar deregulation) made some banks vulnerable, so that the less-vulnerable banks could benefit by taking them over. As someone who just visited Arizona, I encountered some benefits of the Bank of America's recent merger with another bank (NationsBank?) It meant that I didn't have to pay non-B of A automatic teller machine fees when I used the new B of A machines, which in turn gave B of A an advantage over other banks in Arizona. Finally, the bigger the bank, the more the bank regulators will decide it's "too big to fail" and thus bail it out when times get rough. This of course also means that the bank has more political pull. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/JDevine.html Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archives http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://members.tripod.com/rodhay/batochebooks.html http://www.abebooks.com/home/BATOCHEBOOKS/ __ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
[PEN-L:10363] Re: Riga Axioms Research Query
Craven, Jim wrote: Has anyone on the list done any work related to the so-called Riga Axioms or the Riga Group of the 1920s (Dulles brothers, Paul Nitze, William Bullitt, James Forrestal, Charles E Wilson, Phillip Reed of GE, George Kennan, Robert Murphy, Loy Henderson, Joseph Grew, Hugh Gibson, James Clement Dunn, Elbridge Dubrow, Ray Atherton, Arthur Bliss Lane etc) who advanced the notion of creation of a "cordon sanitaire" and social systems engineering "axioms"/tactics against the USSR and Bolshevism in general? I have read Daniel Yergin's "Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State" and Martin Weil's "A Pretty Good Club: The Founding Fathers of the U.S. Foreign Service" but would appreciate any other references. Burton Hersch "The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Founding of the CIA" is flawed but good. Bruce Cumings in his massive "The Origins of the Korean War" has a good analysis of the Nitze written NSC 68 (one of the most important documents of the cold war) and the associated "rollback" mileau in US government/elite circles. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:10362] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Ideology/consciousness andmaterial/social
Rod Hay wrote: I have called no one a liar, nor denied anyone membership in the human species. I say everyone believes in the human will because everyone acts as if they do. Does Ajit really believes that he is totally determined by his social relations? Rod, you are not trying to understand. Neither Ajit nor I has said anything, one way or another, about determinism. I did say, explicitly, that the debate over the freedom or determination of "the will" was nonsense because there was no will to be free OR determined. The questions are quite separate. (As a matter of historical fact, the tendency among those who believe in the existence of "The Will" is to deny its freedom. For one thing, if the will is free than one's identity does not determine one's actions and therefore one is not responsible for one's actions: see Jonathan Edwards on this.) So, I simply can't understand what you mean when you say I have "A Will" or act as though I did. So either you have to admit that some people don't experience themselves as having a will (free or determined) *or* you have to call be a liar or deranged or something of the sort. I myself don't believe anyone really thinks they have a will -- they are just deluded by pop psychology and the individuating force of the market to think they think they have a will. Where is your will located? What are the elements the relations of which constitute it if it is an emergent property of the system. (Explanation of an emergent property. Suppose you have 50 generators running 50 clocks. The generators will be uneven in their power output and some of the clocks will run faster, some slower. Now suppose you attach all 50 generators together and run the clocks off their combined output. I forget the exact technicalities, but the system will act as though there were a "governor" inhabiting it. (Just as you seem to believe you have some ghostly "will" sitting up there at the control panel of your brain.) If one generator speeds up, the others will slow down, exert a drag on it, and it will speed up. That governor does not exist, even though all the generators operated *as though* there were a physical governor controlling them. One way to explain such ghillies and ghosties and things that go boomp in the night as "wills," "personalities," "minds," "souls," "character," etc. etc. etc is as emergent properties of the system (the history which "is" a person). (Humans can entertain themselves in odd moments over the next few thousand years sorting out that complex system of neuronal circuits and social relations which we refer to as Rod or Carrol or Ajit. Fortunately for the purposes of the working class movement we need only understand the movements of groups, not of "individuals" or "subjects" whose responses and behaviors depend on too nearly infinite a set of contingencies to be the subject of any systematic understanding. Incidentally, Angela does not in principle, I suspect, accept the existence of either the "individual" or the "will," but her mystical criteria for planning reveal the cloven hoof of the committed metaphysical individualist. Carrol
[PEN-L:10361] Re: Re: Re: German bank merger
Michael Perelman wrote: What kind of power does a bank merger provide? How much of the advantage comes from shedding labor costs or branches? How much from just having power to get political advangtages? Doug writes: See http://www.frbsf.org/econrsrch/wklyltr/wklyltr99/el99-25.html for one view - that there are modest cost savings if you adjust for accounting oddities. Most other researchers have found little cost savings. I think they're just after a bigger mass of profits - that and a lust for world domination. Methinks the major benefits of bank merger come from the fact that the end of the ban on interstate banking (and similar deregulation) made some banks vulnerable, so that the less-vulnerable banks could benefit by taking them over. As someone who just visited Arizona, I encountered some benefits of the Bank of America's recent merger with another bank (NationsBank?) It meant that I didn't have to pay non-B of A automatic teller machine fees when I used the new B of A machines, which in turn gave B of A an advantage over other banks in Arizona. Finally, the bigger the bank, the more the bank regulators will decide it's "too big to fail" and thus bail it out when times get rough. This of course also means that the bank has more political pull. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/JDevine.html
[PEN-L:10360] Part II message to employer
Tips for getting hired as a supervisor from the Clark Model: 21) Assume the posture and temperament of someone who could sit on a lump of coal and turn it into a diamond; 22) gather and be prepared to drop quotes from Machiavelli, Mein Kampf, Henry Ford, Frederick Taylor etc during the interview; 23) Dress for SUCKcess; 24) Indicate belief in architecture, management, physical capital--certainly not workers--as the essential factors in the overall production function; 25) If a "minority", attempt to "pass" and if unable to "pass", actively disparage affirmative action and fellow "minorities"; 26) Focus on maximizing revenues, minimizing costs and maximizing profits and the favor of higher-ups and the key and sole criteria of "performance"; 27) Find out local watering hole of management and go there for extra networking/fawning efforts; 28) Attempt to incur disparaging comments against you from those about whom management makes their own disparaging comments ( a negative recommendation or "I am the enemy of your enemy").; 29) Give examples from previous supervisory experience of willingness and ability to deny basic civil rights to employees and get away with it; 30) Indicate heavy financial and family responsibilities such that you could never afford to lose your job and would do anything to keep it; Jim C ;-) James Craven Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. 98663 (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5/craven2.htm *My Employer Has No Association With My Private/Protected Opinion*
[PEN-L:10359] Message to my employers: opportunity at SEH America
My response to the original message at the bottom. -Original Message- From: Craven, Jim Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 1999 4:19 PM To: Craven, Jim Subject: RE: opportunity at SEH America I am all for helping needy students find employment in general, but is this not an example of use of campus email for the benefit of a particular corporate and private entity? This institution--an Agency of the Government of the State of Washington--is already privatized enough. Double standards on email use--as usual--anyone? For those taking up this offer, perhaps some tips from the Clark Model for hiring supervisors would be in order: 1) indicate you are a real "team player" and indicate you will never threaten anyone higher-up with excellence or competence; 2) gather and drop as many buzz words as possible from relevant professional journal sources; 3) Do not demonstrate any real or potentially threatening experience or competence in the areas for which you are being hired and/or in the areas of the supervisors doing the hiring; 4) Wear Rotary, Kiwanis or other networking organization pins prominently displayed; 5) Learn names of favored insiders of the institution and drop them during the interview; 6) Fawn over and flatter those doing the hiring and/or their higher-ups; 7) Indicate willingness to follow all orders to the letter including willingness to participate in anything--legal or illegal--as directed; 8) Indicate a fetish for wearing suits and desire to hang-out only with the suits; 9) Indicate total lack of any values or desires other than desire to get ahead and please the higher-ups; 10) Indicate willingess never to threaten or up-stage higher-ups and belief in the omnipotence and omniscience of those higher-ups; 11) indicate total contempt for the basic civil rights, expertise and contributions of subordinates; 12) indicate belief in one special set of performance and accountability standards for supervisors and their cronies and another set for everyone else; 13) indicate special desire for the job such that doing anything to invoke the wrath or displeasure of the higher-ups would be unthinkable; 14) demonstrate flexibility and situational ethics or even no ethics; 15) find-out names of those who have been marginalized/demonized by the higher-ups, never drop those names, and even join-in in the marginalization/demonization of those targeted for such by the higher-ups; 16) use as references, only those who can attest that you possess--and themselves possess--the above-mentioned and below-mentioned procliviities; 17) Find out which political party or organization appointed their networkers and fund-raisers as Board members, join and support that party or organization, seek continual access to network with the real higher-ups; 18) investigate any allegations against the higher-ups and/or alleged deficiencies of the organization and never refer to them and/or dismiss them as the rantings of some paranoid out to get the higher-ups; 19) practice ability to chit-chat about nothing while appearing to be concerned with matters of substance; 20) practice style over substance but never refer to any possible gap between style and substance; More to follow. Jim Craven James Craven Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. 98663 (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5/craven2.htm *My Employer Has No Association With My Private/Protected Opinion* -Original Message- From: Reese, George Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 1999 2:32 PM To: Campus Master List Subject: FW: opportunity at SEH America To all Clark students, faculty and staff: Here's an opportunity to gain some insight into the hiring process of a local employer while earning a little money on the side. SEH America is looking for students, faculty or staff to participate in role playing sessions that are part of their hiring process for supervisors. SEH will train you for this experience. Once trained, you will be invited to participate in role playing sessions scheduled throughout the year as needed by SEH. SEH will pay $10 per hour for the both the training and the role playing sessions. The training and the first role-playing session are scheduled for this Thursday and Friday, August 26th and 27th. Both will be all day commitments. To find out more, please call Karen Harmon, SEH America Recruiting Coordinator at 883-7595.
[PEN-L:10358] The Internet Anti-Fascist: Tuesday, 24 Aug 1999 -- 3:68 (#321)
__ The Internet Anti-Fascist: Tuesday, 24 August 1999 Vol. 3, Numbers 68 (#321) __ L.A. SHOOTER IS A NAZI, NOT JUST A SICKO Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women 14 Aug 99 When the news hit the air waves that a gunman had attacked children and staff at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills, the Freedom Socialist Party and many others leaped to an outraged and correct conclusion -- another Nazi thug has acted out his hatred on those he considers "inferior" to Anglo-Saxon whites. It took less than a day to confirm that the shooter, Buford Furrow is not just an anti-social sicko. He is an American Nazi with a political movement behind him. He is well- schooled in the fascist doctrines of the Christian Identity movement and well connected to far right terrorist groups such as Aryan Nations. Such fascists always surface when the economy is unstable, because the system needs ready-made scapegoats to blame for its failure to provide good jobs, peace, and education for the majority of us. These neo- Nazis agitate among disaffected white men and point the finger at Jews, unions, Blacks, Latinos, Asians and other people of color, "uppity" women, lesbians and gays, immigrants and socialists for the faults of the system itself. Furrow's attack on Jewish pre-schoolers and his murder of Filipino postal worker Joseph Ileto are not isolated instances of fascist violence in this country. They are chilling reminders of a murderous year of Nazi crimes - from the dragging death of James Byrd, the bludgeoning deaths of several gay men, torched Jewish synagogues, and an abortion doctor's murder, to the high school massacre in Littleton, Colorado. Missing from the hand wringing and psychobabble about all these "hate crimes" are the words that politically define them: fascist, anti-Semitic, Nazi, racist, homophobic, misogynist, rightwing terrorist, white supremacist. Furrow's targets on Tuesday morning were Jewish and Asian. But as a spokesman for the Asian Pacific American Legal Center warned, "If people think it is just happening to Jewish Americans or Asian Americans, that's really an incomplete response." HOW TO PREVENT FUTURE FASCIST ATROCITIES To stop future Buford Furrows, appalled and angry Americans must face the fact that there is a growing fascist movement in the U.S. It will not be stopped by denial or more gun control. And it will not be stopped by depending solely on law enforcement agencies, some of whose members themselves belong to ultraright groups. Whatever the personal or psychiatric histories of the so-called "loners" who carry out these acts, they are guided on their destructive paths by a well-funded international fascist movement that can only be stopped by massive, anti-Nazi organizing. This is why the Freedom Socialist Party and its sister organization, Radical Women, have led the fight against one of the international breeding grounds of fascism in the Pacific Northwest, and why we have participated in numerous anti-Nazi protests from Napa Valley and Simi Valley, California to Las Vegas, Nevada. In Coeur d'Alene, Idaho over last July 4th weekend, 20 white supremacist marchers were confronted by thousands of local residents who defied their town leaders' pleas to "just ignore the Nazis." The protesters were organized by the national Anti-Racist Action group (ARA) and by United Front Against Fascism (UFAF), a Seattle-based coalition of unionists, feminists, people of color, Jews, gays and leftists. UFAF, founded by the Freedom Socialist Party, has picketed numerous white supremacist events over the last ten years and forced white supremacists, through public exposure and protests, to cancel Pacific Northwest and European appearances. With UFAF and ARA as models, anti-fascists everywhere can do the same thing by committing themselves to educate about and out-organize any Nazi band that shows its ugly face. The only way to halt a movement based on racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, anti-communism and ultra-nationalism is to build a movement that mobilizes against all forms of Hitlerlites and boldly defends all of us targeted by rightwing bigots. United we stand. Divided we fall. --- ARYAN LEADER SAYS L.A. SHOOTINGS PART OF RACE WAR Martin Wolk (Associated Press) 21 Aug 99 SEATTLE -- The leader of the Aryan Nations said Friday he believed last week's shootings at a Los Angeles Jewish community center, allegedly by a member of his neo-Nazi group, were understandable in the context of what he called a "war against the white race." Richard Butler, in a telephone interview with Reuters,
[PEN-L:10357] re: Single-Payer National Health Insurance
At 04:31 PM 8/25/99 -0500, Steve Perry wrote: Out here in Minnesota--whose gift to the world was the HMO system-- there have been quite a few interesting folks involved with the single- payer question. Early in his first term, Paul Wellstone was seriously interested in pushing single-payer initiatives--not that he thought it was practical to attempt it nationally at that point; his notion was to pursue measures that would make it easier for states to do single-payer experiments and thus try for a groundswell that way. But he was seduced by Hillary Clinton during her '93 March to the Sea, and he's never made a noise about it since, to my knowledge. (By the way-- why does everyone persist in claiming that the Clinton plan failed, just because it wasn't passed into law? It's quite obvious that the administration's move in the direction of HMOs touched off a merger mania that made her plan--minus some of its rube goldberg convolutions--into reality.) -- snip Two points. First, Christopeher Hitchens argues that Hillary's "reform" was, in fact, a move designed by big insurance firms and received a relatively mild oppsotion from smaller guys in the insurance biz. So it was hardly a propaganda blitz that "killed" that initiative. Au contraire, the whole "initiative" was a scham never intented to be implemented as advertised. Second, health reform involves two conceptually different issues - the cost-effectiveness and the universal coverage. "Single payer" or more generally - public insurance schemes are designes primarily to address the cost-effectiveness issue by reducing transaction costs that are significant in this business. It does not automatically lead to universal coverage - in fact the acclaimed public health care systems under state socialism were NOT truly universal - for example, self-employed were not covered. Moreover, not every procedure was covered - only those available in public health care facilities. Universal coverage does not require a single payer solution - it is possible to attain by means-tested public subsidies of insurance premiums. That is, you buy your insurance from a market vendor, and if you cannot afford one - government subsidies will make up the difference between what it costs and what you can afford. So it makes a lot of sense, from the Left's point of view, to make that conceptual distinction clear. As katha p. others pointed out, changing the status in the insurance biz will be extremely difficult politically, and the left should focus their energies on issues that really matter to its constituents, i.e. working class. I do not think that cost-efficiency should be of primary concern to the Left for a number of good reasons, chief among them being that insurance companies can take of that. Moreover, "government health care" has become one of the buzz-words that provoke a knee jerk reaction on the right - so fighting for a single payer system is not the best strategy for the left, except perhaps for scoring symbolic points in a kulturkampf. A much better strategy is to focus on universal coverage - which as I have argued - can be achieved by institutional arrangements that are not limited to a single payer public insurance scheme. wojtek
[PEN-L:10355] Globalization Reporting Review 8/23/99 by Dean Baker
Globalization Reporting Review August 24, 1999 This analysis of reporting on global economic issues is excerpted from the "Economic Reporting Review" by Dean Baker. You can sign up to receive ERR via email every week at www.preamble.org/columns/subbaker.htm. ERR is archived at www.fair.org/err/. RUSSIA "Russia, One Year After the Fall" Daniel Hoffman Washington Post, August 17, 1999, page A1 This article examines the state of the Russian economy one year after the collapse of the ruble. At one point the article comments: "Looking back, some economists say that Russia could not have sustained the stronger ruble." It then quotes a Russian banker saying that "the crash in the ruble was the best thing that ever happened to this country." It is worth noting that many economists argued exactly this position prior to the collapse of the ruble, most notably Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs. A lower valued ruble makes Russian goods more competitive both domestically and internationally. The I.M.F. and the "reformers" in the Russian government, backed the Clinton Administration, insisted on maintaining the value of the ruble. Although there were differing views among economists at the time, virtually all of the news reporting on Russia's financial crisis last summer predicted that the devaluation of the ruble would be disastrous for the Russia economy. (See, e.g., " U.S. Expects Yeltsin Will Survive Economic Woes," by Thomas W. Lippman, Washington Post, 8/15/98, page A12; "Yeltsin and Crew Are Sinking Like the Ruble," by Michael Wines, New York Times, 8/22/98, page A1; and "Yeltsin Must Resort to Reform by Decree," by Sharon LaFraniere, Washington Post, 7/18/98, page A14.) See also "Outstanding Stories of the Week." ASIA "Asia's New Ascent" Sandra Sugawara Washington Post, August 18, 1999, page E1 This article describes a generally upbeat picture for East Asian economies based on the fact that they are moving towards U.S.-style capitalism. While there is evidence that East Asian economies are recovering, it is questionable whether adopting U.S.-style capitalism would really prove to be beneficial. According to data from the United Nations, in the period from 1960 to 1994, per capita GDP grew at a 4.9 percent annual rate in Japan, a 5.2 percent rate in Thailand, and a 7.0 percent rate in South Korea. There are few cases where economies that follow the U.S. model have been able to sustain even half this rate of growth. "Fearing Deflation, China Orders a Ban on New Factories" Seth Faison New York Times, August 19, 1999, This article reports on the Chinese government's efforts to cope with a problem of over-production and falling prices. The general view of economists interviewed in the story appeared to be that China is suffering from a chronic problem of inadequate demand. Such a shortfall can best be solved by higher wages, increased government spending or printing money, which would help to create inflation. Until very recently, few mainstream economists viewed inadequate demand as a real economic problem. AGRICULTURE "Farmers Begin to Think Globally in Price Crisis" William Claiborne Washington Post, August 15, 1999, page A3 This article analyzes the problems facing the nation's farmers as the prices of major crops, such as wheat and corn, have fallen well below the cost of production for most farmers. At several points, the article discusses the hope of farmers that the government will develop new export markets for them. It is virtually impossible for the sort of market openings (e.g., ending the embargo against Cuba) discussed in the article to have any measurable impact on the plight of farmers. Commodities have a world market price that will be minimally affected by these moves. Farmers can sell already sell as much grain as they choose to at world market prices; the problem for them is that the price is too low. GERMANY "Ex-World Capital Has Its Eye on a Virtual Future" Roger Cohen New York Times, August 20, 1999 This article discusses the economic prospects for Bonn as it adjusts to the move of Germany's capital to Berlin. The article asserts that Germany is trying to "make a painful shift from a highly regulated society where the state accounts for close to 50 percent of economic activity to a nimbler, more entrepreneurial system better able to create jobs." Actually, Germany has consistently outpaced the United States in productivity growth over the last two decades. Because efficiency in Germany is growing at a more rapid pace than in the United States, there is less demand for labor, and therefore fewer new jobs created. The article would be more accurate if it said that the intent of Germany's government was to create a "less nimble" system, which by being less efficient, would have more demand for labor, and therefore create more jobs. The article also quotes an executive at a software company
[PEN-L:10353] Riga Axioms Research Query
Has anyone on the list done any work related to the so-called Riga Axioms or the Riga Group of the 1920s (Dulles brothers, Paul Nitze, William Bullitt, James Forrestal, Charles E Wilson, Phillip Reed of GE, George Kennan, Robert Murphy, Loy Henderson, Joseph Grew, Hugh Gibson, James Clement Dunn, Elbridge Dubrow, Ray Atherton, Arthur Bliss Lane etc) who advanced the notion of creation of a "cordon sanitaire" and social systems engineering "axioms"/tactics against the USSR and Bolshevism in general? I have read Daniel Yergin's "Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State" and Martin Weil's "A Pretty Good Club: The Founding Fathers of the U.S. Foreign Service" but would appreciate any other references. James Craven Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. 98663 (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5/craven2.htm *My Employer Has No Association With My Private/Protected Opinion*
[PEN-L:10351] Re: Re: German bank merger
Michael Perelman wrote: What kind of power does a bank merger provide? How much of the advantage comes from shedding labor costs or branches? How much from just having power to get political advangtages? See http://www.frbsf.org/econrsrch/wklyltr/wklyltr99/el99-25.html for one view - that there are modest cost savings if you adjust for accounting oddities. Most other researchers have found little cost savings. I think they're just after a bigger mass of profits - that and a lust for world domination. Doug
[PEN-L:10349] Re: socialized medicine (was: no brainer: abortion is killing. sowhat?)
Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: The most politically important (at least for the left) aspect of socialized medicine is universal coverage and that does not require a revolution. In fact, such coverage does not even require a marxist ideology to justify it Wojtek, the justification of socialized medicine is (as the earlier subject line put it) a no-brainer, but that was not my point. My point was the difficulty of marshalling the political forces necessary to bring it about -- and that has little if anything to do with the reasons that justify it. Congress is not the editorial board of a learned journal in the physical sciences. I suggested only half facetiously that it would be as easy to wage a revolution as to get socialized medicine through Congress. And as I said in the original post, I hope I'm wrong. Argument over the merits and demerits of socialized medicine can't confirm or refute my post. Carrol
[PEN-L:10347] Re: Re: Ideology/consciousness and material/social
On Tuesday, August 24, 1999 at 14:20:52 (-0500) Carrol Cox writes: "William S. Lear" wrote: On Tuesday, August 24, 1999 at 13:29:42 (-0700) Ajit Sinha writes: ... There are no "individuals" Rod, only subjects. ... Ajit, you are usually a bit more careful than this. Who gave us language? Who gave us the capacity for thought? If you have indeed answered "Descartes' Question", we'd love to hear about it, but I don't think your approach will quite do... I'm not sure what Descartes has to do with it. ... He posed the question of how humans use language creatively, something not explained by experience or any sort of "subjectivity". Therefore, to say we are "only subjects" is just plain wrong (as is saying the opposite). Try the mind experiment of stripping away every social relation you have ever had. What would be left? You seem to assume that the answer is "nothing", which again is quite wrong. Try stripping away our innate capacities. You'd be left with a random wadd of protoplasm. Bill
[PEN-L:10345] Re: Re: Re: Ideology/consciousness and material/social
"William S. Lear" wrote: On Tuesday, August 24, 1999 at 13:29:42 (-0700) Ajit Sinha writes: ... There are no "individuals" Rod, only subjects. ... Ajit, you are usually a bit more careful than this. Who gave us language? Who gave us the capacity for thought? If you have indeed answered "Descartes' Question", we'd love to hear about it, but I don't think your approach will quite do... I'm not sure what Descartes has to do with it. Try it this way. A stone can be an individual. A microbe can be an individual. A grasshopper can. Even when we come to such a mammal as (say) the deer it might be possible to think of each deer as an individual (they can be moved abruptly from one context to another without much if any loss). But it is a bit difficult to imagine a chimpanzee as an individual, and a human individual is unimaginable. Try the mind experiment of stripping away every social relation you have ever had. What would be left? As a "mere" body (definable by 3 spatial and one temporal coordinate) a person can be, is, "an individual." But so defined that person is hardly a human being. The ancient greeks seem even to have recognized this in their language. An *idiotes* sp? was a private person as opposed to one who participated in public life: that is, a private person, an individual, was "not all there," not really human. Carrol P .S. Agit has already responded quite correctly to Rod's strange assertion that "Everyone believes in the theory of the human will," but perhaps a couple points. Rod is either calling Agit and me liars or denying that we are part of the human species: both of us claim not to believe in any such oddity as "the human will." I would add that I am even incapable of imagining what such a thing would be if it existed. The widespread belief (or at least assertion of belief) in immortality suggests that many people think they can imagine what a "will" or a "mind" or a "soul" would be, but I certainly cannot. "Theory of the human will," in addition is a strange expression. What Rod means is the *fact* of the human will. A theory of the human will would be an *explanation* of that fact. But there can be no theory of the non-existent. That is, mostly, what ideology is. "Racism" is an ideologoical explanation of another non-fact in which "everyone" believes: the biological or cultural existence of "races."
[PEN-L:10346] WTO
In an age in which our leaders call for transparency, how can the World Trade Organization remain so opaque? If it does not have more power than the Federal Reserve today, I suspect that it will in the near future. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
[PEN-L:10344] China and other WTO Expansion
Sunday, August 22 Sunday Journal, suburban DC Robert Naiman, Preamble Center "On the Left" China and other WTO Expansion In November, trade ministers from many nations will converge on Seattle for meetings of the World Trade Organization [WTO]. Trade unionists, environmentalists, human rights and fair trade activists from around the world will be there too, to register their opposition to the WTO agenda of writing global trade rules for the benefit of multinational corporations. The Clinton Administration has an ambitious agenda for the WTO meetings in Seattle. It wants an agreement to deregulate trade in forest products -- what environmentalists call the "Global Free Logging Agreement." It may support an investment agreement, including elements of the "Multilateral Agreement on Investment" that collapsed last year due to grassroots opposition. It may try to expand "Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights,"[TRIPS], which are used to force other countries to give the same huge public subsidies to corporations that these companies receive from US patent laws. But fair trade activists in Seattle will have a very different agenda: curbing the WTO's power. They charge that the WTO has made the world safe for corporate profits while making it less safe for workers, the environment and human rights. They've seen US environmental laws designed to protect dolphins and sea turtles challenged by WTO decisions and EPA regulations on gasoline weakened. They've seen the US, because of WTO rules, refuse to respond to the flood of steel imports caused by the IMF-imposed economic crisis in Asia, Russia and Brazil. And when state governments in the U.S. have passed laws to penalize corporations that do business with the military dictatorship in Burma and Swiss banks that profiteered from the Holocaust, these have also been threatened with WTO challenges. The Clinton Administration pays lip service to concerns about threats to democracy and human welfare from the WTO, but while citizens' groups have called for the WTO to be fixed or scrapped rather than expanded, the Administration plows forward with plans for a "new round" of negotiations in Seattle. The Administration plans to expand the WTO in another way, by including China. This makes it clear that Clinton's speeches about the need to reform the WTO are mere empty rhetoric, designed to fool folks who don't follow these issues very closely. Not everything China's government does is wrong. It mostly escaped the Asian financial crisis, largely because it does not have a convertible currency, does not allow enterprises to borrow freely in foreign currency, and generally ignores the rotten economic advice which comes from the International Monetary Fund and the Clinton Administration. But few would dare to claim that Chinese workers are free to organize into unions of their own choosing, or to press for better wages or working conditions. Few would dare to claim that the Chinese government allows concerns about the environment or human rights to be freely expressed. It doesn't even allow free investigation of concerns about World Bank projects in China. If China is allowed into the WTO now, the rhetoric of the Administration about reforming the WTO to take labor rights, environment and other concerns into account will turn into a bad joke. We can forget about reform of the WTO on the question of labor rights for a long time, because China won't agree, and the precedent will have been set that in practice there are no real standards when it comes to human rights. Proponents of "free trade" claim that discussions of labor and the environment don't belong at the WTO. Yet the WTO is already challenging laws designed to protect workers and the environment. If they don't want to hear about workers and the environment, let them get rid of WTO policies that threaten regulations to protect workers and the environment. Moreover, the claim that the WTO simply reflects free trade principles ignores that the WTO imposes US patent and copyright laws on poor countries that can ill afford them, like countries which need affordable drugs to combat AIDS. This is a blatant violation of free trade economic principles, in addition to being grossly unjust. And of course the arena where we're "supposed" to discuss these issues is always something toothless like the International Labor Organization [ILO]. Pigs will fly before you hear about an anti-worker US labor law being threatened by the ILO. "Free trade" has nothing to do with it. The question is who makes the rules and in whose interest. So far a small international corporate elite has written the rules at everyone else's expense. But the corporate coalition may get an unpleasant wake-up call in Seattle. --- Robert Naiman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Preamble Center 1737 21st NW Washington, DC 20009 phone: 202-265-3263 fax: 202-265-3647 http://www.preamble.org/ ---
[PEN-L:10343] Re: Re: RE: Abortion stops Crime- from the horse'smouth
Carrol:
I can't disagree with the critics of this study, and also suspect that
it
will be used more to support arguments for population control than
in support of women's rights. But the attacks ought to recognize on
element in the study which is more positive, the author's statement
of their assumptions:
unwanted babies are more
likely to suffer abuse and neglect and are
therefore at an
increased risk for criminal involvement later in
life. The first
assumption, that abortion reduces the number of
unwanted
children, is true virtually by definition.
This emphasis on "unwanted" might well apply to so-called "middle
class women" as well as the impoverished. We do know that it is
not only impoverished women who abuse their children. Besides,
"middle class" as used on these lists covers mostly actual working
class people (and not even only the more affluent). I have seen
sections of the population with incomes under $40,000 classified
as "upper middle class."
One may make an argument that an anti-abortion politics is in effect
anti-children, but I think that the same point can be made without positing
a causal link among unwanted children, child abuse, and crime. One may
argue that anti-abortionists are using unwanted pregnancy as an instrument
of punishment of women ("you must pay by pregnancy and childbirth for your
sin of sexuality"), thus reducing the resulting children to the status of
an instrument for moralist politics. I think that this is a better
political rhetoric for the following reasons:
Emphasizing subsidiary reasons (as to what good for society women's right
access to abortion may achieve) too much tends to _obscure_ the central
point of feminist reproductive politics: women's own desire for our own
emancipation. The right and access to abortion would be necessary,
desirable, and in the rational individual collective interests of women
_even if_ their effects upon society were neutral (e.g. no quantifiable
decrease in child abuse). Abortion is a necessary good for women, for
without it biology becomes our destiny. We ought to encourage people to
think that women's emancipation is good in itself, not just because it
additionally has good effects on the entire working class, society, etc.
And last but not the least, for leftists to combine a reproductive rights
argument with population control discourse is injurious and alienating to
poor women, esp. poor women of color. (Remember Sanger?) Leftists must
consult the lead taken by feminist black women other feminist women of
color who first pointed out the necessity of opposing *both population
control and the denial of reproductive rights (including abortion)*.
Yoshie
[PEN-L:10338] More on Roger Casement
The New York Times, February 8, 1998, Sunday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section 7; Page 31; Column 1; Book Review Desk Martyr for Many Causes By Lucy McDiarmid; Lucy McDiarmid is president of the American Conference for Irish Studies. She is completing a book on Irish controversies. Bernard shaw wrote a speech for him. Conan Doyle wrote a novel based on his adventures; W. B. Yeats and Richard Murphy wrote poems about him. He gave Conrad the idea for "Heart of Darkness," and he makes cameo appearances in Joyce, Stevie Smith, Louis MacNeice and Paul Muldoon. Alfred Noyes, the author of "The Highwayman," devoted an entire book to him. A minor muse for many modern writers, Roger Casement (1864-1916) was the most sentimental of Irish rebels and the most idealistic of humanitarians. Although someone has put a curse on the many screenplays about him, which never seem to make it to the screen, another one is always being written. In the 81 years since his execution in London for committing high treason during World War I, Casement has rarely been absent from the news in Ireland. Sooner or later his thin, bearded face and intense, deep-set eyes will be as familiar in American popular culture as Oscar Wilde's puffy cheeks. Like Wilde, Casement belongs to a small but increasingly visible group, Irish homosexuals. To state that as a simple fact is to ask for trouble, because Casement's sexuality, like everything else in his life, has proved a source of controversy. He was a Protestant with a secret Roman Catholic baptism in childhood, and an anti-imperialist British diplomat who had the harp of Ireland engraved on his consular stationery. In 1911 he was knighted for his humanitarian work on behalf of Africans and South Americans enslaved to gather rubber for European companies, but was degraded from knighthood after he received the death sentence. Hanged and buried on the grounds of Pentonville prison in London and reburied in Ireland in 1965 in a magnificent state funeral, Casement has led a busy posthumous life. It remains exceptionally busy because his notorious "Black Diaries" may not be his. The five diaries, whosever they are, contain coded and not-so-coded descriptions of homosexual encounters in Ireland, England and South America. Depending on which line of thought you follow, they're either the ingenious contrivances of a British forger or Casement's private records, stolen by Scotland Yard. In June 1916, Casement was on trial for attempting to recruit Irish prisoners of war in Germany to fight in the Easter Rising. During the summer, the diaries were circulated sub rosa to discourage Casement's supporters from appealing his treason conviction and to ruin him for martyrdom. Sir Ernley Blackwell, legal adviser to the Foreign Office, wrote in his report, "I see not the slightest objection to hanging Casement and afterwards giving as much publicity to the contents of his diary as decency permits, so that at any rate the public in America and elsewhere may know what sort of man they are inclined to make a martyr of." When the American Ambassador told Prime Minister Herbert Asquith he had seen a copy of the diaries, Asquith remarked, "Excellent; and you need not be particular about keeping it to yourself." As international smut, as forgeries, as the records of a closeted gay life, the diaries continue to provoke discussion, though no longer sub rosa. Their authenticity has been definitively confirmed and stubbornly questioned in a dozen biographies, in W. J. Maloney's "Forged Casement Diaries" (1936) and in the 1959 Peter Singleton-Gates book, "The Black Diaries." Linking an Irish patriot with sexuality -- even, as in Parnell's case, with heterosexuality -- has always caused commotion, but the possibility of a gay martyr challenged fundamental notions of Irish identity. Each new biography, whatever its theory of Casement, inspired prolonged debate about national heroes, or sex, or both. Casement's unsettled posthumous history meant that the mere mention of his name evoked the thought of homosexuality even when the word wasn't mentioned. "The fascination of the voluminous correspondence on the moral character of Casement is only exceeded by its futility," a letter in The Irish Times declared in 1956. Meanwhile, privately (very privately), Casement's friends accepted the diaries' authenticity. Eamon De Valera, the Irish President, who spoke movingly at the reinterment in Dublin, did not want the diaries along with the bones, and they remain in the Public Record Office in London. The newest diary controversy, the subject of a colloquium to be held at Goldsmiths College, University of London, later this month, comes at a time when argument about Casement seemed finally to have ceased. In the wake of Ireland's decriminalization of homosexual acts in 1993, the BBC devoted a program to the diaries, and a handwriting expert declared them genuine. Two Englishmen, Angus Mitchell, a travel writer who
[PEN-L:10336] BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, AUGUST 23, 1999 Regional and state unemployment rates were stable and low throughout much of the United States in July, the BLS reports. The Midwest continued to post the lowest unemployment rate of any region in the country, at 3.6 percent, while the West had the highest rate at 4.9 percent. ... (Daily Labor Report, page D-1). The tight job market promotes higher pay. ... Many Americans -- 36 percent -- say they're getting bigger raises this year than last, according to a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll. Nearly a third expect their next raise to be bigger still, based on a nationwide telephone poll of 1,028 adults conducted Aug. 16-18. In fact, the percentage who believe their income will go up more than prices will in the next year is the highest since Gallup began asking the question in May 1980. The results are in sharp contrast to widespread complaints workers have voiced in recent years about puny raises. ... (USA Today, page 1B). Despite a decade of economic reforms, unemployment and poor working conditions continue to escalate in Latin American countries, according to a report by the International Labor Organization. ... (Daily Labor Report, page D-1). The poorest families are losing ground, and female-headed households' gains erode as welfare reform starts, a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research and policy institute, indicates. ... The study found that the average earnings and overall income of low-income families with children headed by females rose substantially between 1993 and 1995, as the economy expanded. But from 1995 to 1997, despite continued economic growth, the average incomes of the poorest 20 percent of female-headed families fell. This occurred as welfare system changes took effect on a large scale because of changes in state rules and enactment of the 1996 federal welfare reform law. The center based its analysis on census and caseload data. ... One of the main problems, many analysts have said, is that some families eligible for food stamps are not getting them after they leave the welfare rolls, although it is not clear why. ... (Washington Post, Aug. 22, page A7)_Changes made 3 years ago have succeeded in cutting the welfare rolls but have driven the poorest families deeper into poverty, while slightly raising the incomes of those who are somewhat better off, said a study released by an organization that opposed the law. ... Others argue that most families are better off over all. The biggest problem, opposing camps agree, is that many families who leave welfare are not getting food stamps even though they remain eligible for the benefit. ... (New York Times, page A12). application/ms-tnef
[PEN-L:10334] Re: Re: Ideology/consciousness and material/social
On Tuesday, August 24, 1999 at 13:29:42 (-0700) Ajit Sinha writes: ... There are no "individuals" Rod, only subjects. ... Ajit, you are usually a bit more careful than this. Who gave us language? Who gave us the capacity for thought? If you have indeed answered "Descartes' Question", we'd love to hear about it, but I don't think your approach will quite do... Bill
[PEN-L:10332] Re: Narrow economism
At 09:57 AM 8/23/99 -0700, Michael Perelman wrote: I want pen-l to be relevant to what goes on in the economy. The banter and exchanges about cultural and political matters are useful. They round out the list and make it more entertaining. On the other hand, I would like to see us create a body of knowledge that can be useful to activists and workers for social change. For that reason, I welcomed the recent exchanges about the Asian crisis. It seems to me that there is a "third way" between the Scylla of culturalism and the harybdis of macro-economism: institutional analysis that combines both cutural and economic aspects of collective behavior. IMHO, however, pen-l does not seem to be flooded with institutional analyses. wojtek
[PEN-L:10333] Analysis of next neo-liberal moves by Kim Scipes
Dear Folks-- I haven't written recently on the US economy, but have something to say, so thought I'd send a general message out. (1) I stumbled across a project of the Democratic Leadership Conference, which is the center-right coalition within the Democratic Party here in the US that was so instrumental in getting Bill Clinton nominated by the Dems in 1992, and then later elected as President. This project is called "The New Economy Index" and is located at www.neweconomyindex.org/index.html. This project is what the DLC sees as the way forward for the US economy. I think it is an extremely sophisticated program that we who tend to challenge mainstream efforts must look at and critique, and ultimately must counterpose with our own project. This is the continuing neo-liberal effort to get rid of/destroy any regulations that hinder the movement of capital and political power of the US state, and to continue restructuring the US economy to be able to maintain US dominance over the rest of the world's political economy. The accompanying part of the project is called "The State New Economy Index" and is at www.neweconomyindex.org/states/introduction.html. This part of the project examines the situation in each terrotorial state (e.g., New York, California, etc.), and basically tells policy makers what they have to do to get their state up to the standards necessary to compete in the hyper-competitive neo-liberal model. I suggest that folks need to look at these items. And this is important for those of you who live outside the US as well, because if the US implements all of these things, your country/economy/etc., will have to deal with them. (2) From Fortune magazine of September 6, 1999: 121-134: "Internet Defense Strategy: Cannibalize Yourself" by Jerry Useem. I think this fits with the above--what is happening is that established firms are being overrun by new companies organized around the Internet--the old ones are not near as nimble in responding to change, etc. The author says that old companies are starting new Internet companies to compete with the (i.e.,THEIR) old companies, and the new ones are tearing up the old ones. In other words, if the original company wants to survive in these days of hyper-capitalism, firms must "cannibalize" themselves to insiders or risk having this done to them by outsiders, and going out of business. Since the DLC's "New Economy" Project already points out that 1/3 of all jobs in the US are currently "in flux"--i.e., either the company is growing rapidly or is going out of business--this looks even nastier. (3) From Crain's Chicago Business, the local weekly business paper here in Chicago: "City awash in newly minted millionaires" by Julie Johnsson, August 23, 1999: 3, 38. In this article, Ms. Johnsson points out that "Between 1994 and 1998, the number of millionaire households--those with at least $1 million in investible assets [i.e., does not include house or car--KS]--in Illinois swelled 43% to 73,588, outpacing the growth in affluent households nationwide" Then she points out, "What's more, the ranks of millionaire households are projected to swell 47% to 108,288 by 2003. -- Hopefully, the point has gotten through: as our political "leaders" here in the US are destroying any limits on capital, a few are getting fabuously wealthy. I won't try to put this in a larger sociological context tonight, but I think it bodes ill for most of the people here and around the world. In solidarity-- Kim Scipes
Re: political practice [was ebonics; was anecdotage]
At 05:35 AM 8/24/99 -0400, Yoshie wrote: ahh hell, i'll just call it a tie and leave it at that. kelley Kelley also wrote to Carrol: Wojtek ought to stop worrying about campus politics, which are of far less political impace (even during the '60s) than he seems to think. geewillickers, and here i thought that this was woj's point. I sure hope that's the case (with regard to both of the above). You've already spent another 12 k on yakking about 'academia,' 'identity politics,' and whatnot. Wojtek's professed idea, as you noted on lbo yourself, is 'campus politics' hardly matters. The correct response to what doesn't matter much, however, is to leave it alone so as not to waste one's breath. The problem is he doesn't practice what he preaches. Two quick points. First, while campus politics hardly matters outside the campus, it seems to define the Left, because there is hardly any left left outside the campus. Thus, my argument was that the Left should focus on the "out-of-campus" issues to gain out-of-campus relevence. Second, you seem to assume that getting involved in a certain political practice is a matter of individual choice - hence your comment on practicing what once preaches. That seems to me as the cornerstone of the mainstream ideology of choice - since individuals "choose" to be rich or to be poor, among many other things, there is hardly any need to discuss the "system." In the same vein, since individuals "choose" to engage in campus id politics or out-of-campus organizing, there is hardly any need to discuss the nature of academic labor and the institutional ramifications of knowledge production. Since there is hardly any need to argue on this list about the substantial systemic influences on what appears to be "individual choices" - - the falsehood of your position seems quite apparent. That brings to focus a remark kelley made elsewhere about the importance of "middle level analyzis" of the organizational constraints knowledge workers face in the process of knowledge production. To bring those two points together: self-reflective and critical analysis of the process and constraints of knowledge production (i.e. something that listservs like this one has been set up for) seems to be the most promissing, if not the only, _collective_ (as opposed to illusory 'individual choice') way of overcoming the trap of out-of-campus irrelevance the Left got itself into. wojtek
[PEN-L:10331] Re: Re: Re: RE: Ideology/consciousness andmaterial/social
There are no "individuals" Rod, only subjects. what's the difference between an "individual" and a "subject"? It seems to be merely a matter of semantics. "Individuals" need not be atomistic or isolated in nature. If I understand Marx correctly, individuals/subjects reflect the ensemble of social relations -- but the existing ensemble of social relations are created by individuals/subjects (though not exactly as they please), as part of a dialectical and historical process. Marx's point wasn't that "individuals" don't exist as much as that any given individual is _powerless_ (if acting in isolation) to affect the historical process, so that the character of the individual is more of a "dependent variable" than an independent one. (He didn't address the genetic component of the determination of the individual's character, to my knowledge, though there must be some sort of genetic basis for "species being" and for the differences between people and beasts.) We can't undermine capitalistm, for instance, by simply meditating, changing our minds, wishing for a better world, writing letters to the editor, standing as individuals on street corners shouting at passersby, or voting. To change the historical process, masses of individuals/subjects need to be organized in collective practice, as with the English Chartists or the mass Social Democratic Party of Germany of Marx's time. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/JDevine.html
[PEN-L:10330] Attack on Edward Said
Friends rally to repulse attack on Edward Said Julian Borger in Washington The Guardian, Monday August 23, 1999 The credibility of one of the best known torch-bearers for the Palestinian cause, Professor Edward Said, came under fierce assault over the weekend after he was accused by an American Jewish magazine of falsifying his account of his early years to portray himself as a refugee. An article in a small right-wing periodical, Commentary, said Prof Said grew up in a wealthy household in Cairo, and challenged the US-based writer's claims that his family was driven out of Jerusalem by Jewish forces in 1947. The article has stirred fierce emotions, because Prof Said is a well-respected and widely quoted Palestinian voice in the US media, which Arabs contend is dominated by the powerful pro-Israeli lobby. Much of his writing dwells on the experience of exile, both his own and his fellow Palestinians. Prof Said is a central figure in the continuing struggle over western opinion between Arabs and Jews. The articulate Palestinian scholar is one of the few Palestinian voices to carry weight in US intellectual and media circles. Much of the moral power of his arguments, spelt out in a series of books and countless articles on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, rests on the depiction of Palestinians as neglected refugees from their homeland. His evocation of his own experience of exile has led many of his readers in the west to see him as the embodiment of the Palestinian tragedy. The author of the Commentary article, Justus Reid Weiner, a scholar in residence at the Jerusalem centre for public affairs, alleged that Prof Said "has served up - and consciously encouraged others to serve up - a wildly distorted version of the truth, made up in equal parts of outright deception and of artful obfuscations". Prof Said, who teaches literature at Columbia university in New York, was reported to be travelling in Europe yesterday, but his friends denounced the attack as baseless and politically motivated. They insisted that the Said family, including the 12-year-old Edward, left Jerusalem in 1947 when it became too dangerous to remain in the crossfire between Arabs and Jews over the city's future. Christopher Hitchens, a US-based British journalist and a Said family friend, said: "There's no question. The Saids decided to go because life was made hard for them. It became difficult and dangerous for him to go to school." Prof Said has never denied having spent some of his childhood in Egypt, and that his father was a well-to-do Palestinian who carried a US passport. In his 1994 book, the Politics of Dispossession, he wrote: "I was born in Jerusalem in late 1935, and I grew up there and in Egypt and Lebanon; most of my family - dispossessed and displaced from Palestine in 1947 and 1948 - had ended up mostly in Jordan and Lebanon." Another friend, Israel Shahak - who is a Holocaust survivor and an Israeli human rights activist - said: "Commentary is a monthly of the most rightwing Jewish views, and the most conservative views in America, so I am not surprised by this attack." Mr Shahak said that the argument over how the Said family left did not affect Prof Said's status as a refugee. "This is like saying the Jews who escaped from Germany before the war were not kicked out," Mr Shahak argued. "The main argument is that they were prevented from returning to their land. This is what it is about." Mr Weiner said in his article that there was no evidence to support Prof Said's recollection of attending St George's school in Jerusalem. But Mr Hitchens said that he had discussed his friend's schooldays with teachers and Anglican clerics from the school, who remembered the young Edward Said well. "I know he was there," Mr Hitchens said. "The Anglican community spoke of Edward as a valuable member." A powerful voice for his people Edward W Said has written a series of books arguing for the rights of Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories. These include The Question of Palestine (1979) and The Politics of Dispossession (1994). He is known as a stern critic of the Oslo peace process begun in 1993, arguing that it sold short the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. He also opposes the Oslo formula of carving a Palestinian entity out of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, arguing instead for the creation of one state, in which Arabs and Jews would have equal rights. He is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia university in New York. He has also taught at Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Yale universities in the United States. Although he is severely ill with a form of leukaemia, he continues to travel and lecture in the Middle East and Europe.
[PEN-L:10329] RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Abortion stops Crime- from thehorse's mouth
I think you completely missed my point. -Original Message- From: Nathan Newman [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, August 23, 1999 6:09 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:10322] RE: RE: RE: RE: Abortion stops Crime- from the horse's mouth -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [] Child abuse is related to low socio-economic status. The point that I made was not that this wasn't the case, but that the elevated risks are not up to the task in terms of explaining a sizable portion of the criminal statistics. Other confounders, like alcohol, weapon availability, current (not past) socioeconomic status indicators such as income, occupation, and education, and a variety of situational variables that involve the victim, dilute the potential effect of unwantedness. Well, that is your empirical claim. What this study seems to claim is that your empirical claim is wrong, and that unwantedness and associated abuse - rather than economic status or other variables - is far more important to creating criminal acts later in life. What I find interesting is that in the more limited claims of the authors, this study is much more interesting as support for the arguments of those activists who highlight the dangers of child abuse. Rather than being a study supporting eugenics - since race and economic status are seemingly small factors in crime statistic variation - it is a study supporting some of the more (for-lack-of-a-better-word) New Age feminist arguments stressing love for the child as of key importance over the more materialist causes stressed by the traditional workerist Left. Since I place myself generally in the later category, I do find the results of the study provocative. All the doubts on statistics collection and regression still hold of course, but that is no different from every economic and social study published - whether we like them or not. --Nathan Newman
[PEN-L:10328] Charles Leadbeater
Greetings Given the recent mention of Financial Times journos past and present, the item below might be of interest. Trust me, I am right Workplace democracy is being ignored in the rush to celebrate the entrepreneurial spirit Angela McRobbie The Guardian, Monday August 23, 1999 It was probably just a matter of time before the new right inside New Labour cottoned on to the possibility of the "by stealth" strategy. So far this has been something practised by the re-distributionist left. But now, Charles Leadbeater the author of Living In Thin Air: The New Economy, provides the know-how (one of his key phrases) for the new right to succeed inside New Labour. His recipe (another favoured word) is not to follow the moral high road beloved of the Daily Mail, but rather to encourage government to embrace the new enterprise culture warmly by making it seem inevitable. For portraying the future in such glowing terms and imagining a new set of institutions to replace those which global communications is making redundant, Leadbeater has already been proclaimed as Tony Blair's new guru. The theory is that everything we do in the workplace and all the skills we amass on a daily basis ought now to be sellable assets. In the new era of the microchip and the database, what is stored in our own heads is worth its weight in gold. We can get money from know-how and value from ideas. School dropouts can make a million by inventing computer games and untrained youths can become fashion designers. As on Mrs Thatcher's favoured pathway, professionals' know-how is more or less discounted in favour of knowledge entrepreneurs. This preference means overlooking existing and highly efficient pathways. Take the fashion designer Alexander McQueen. While it is true he did not have a first degree, he was accepted through a special entry route into the MA course in fashion at Central St Martins. It was not just luck or talent which got him to Paris, but the contacts he made at college, the quality of teaching he received and the experience in public relations which he also learnt on the course. If Leadbeater had spent an afternoon in Central St Martins, London, he would have seen how a hard pressed and dedicated staff - against all the odds and with very little in the way of online facilities - produce the world's leading designers. The same is true for the university sector. Academics are struggling to find ways of packing in more students without much in the way of extra resources. The problem is that some public sector institutions, including the universities, have great brand names but suffer from an innovation deficit. The scale of Leadbeater's neo-liberalism on education issues stretches right down through the school system, where he disputes the value of the national curriculum and argues that there is too much rigidity and standardisation in schools stifling individuals and limiting the freedom to learn in different ways in different places. And as a provocation, no doubt, to old Labour, he credits Mrs Thatcher with expanding the university sector and thus widening access, as though nobody on the left had ever argued against the elitism of the old system. In the new world of work, where more and more people will be self-employed, the role of both networks and trust will grow. But how does a network develop and how does it function, other than as a vaguely collaborative system? The same question applies with trust. Blair's "trust me" plea to wavering voters, including the business community, is taken as a kind of pledge of decency, an honest man making a commitment to stick to his word. But how far can trust be extended as a code for good working practice? Is there no place for old fashioned notions like workplace democracy or even the dreaded bureaucracy? Echoing the recent words of the PM and the earlier speeches by Peter Mandelson during his time at the DTI, Leadbeater accuses the public sector of being slow to innovate. His praise instead is directed towards the new entrepreneurs like those working in Silicon Valley who fail, but get back up on their feet and are knocking on the doors of the venture capitalists the next day. This is fine for the 25-year-olds who crowd into California, but it is a heartless model of work for young couples who, in their late 20s, want to have children. Who is going to pay the rent, never mind the childcare during these periods of failure? Unlike most professionals, academics included, Leadbeater can actually envisage new ways of working which appear to correspond with the needs of the new weightless economy. He has got vision. But this vision is based on a population of self-employed, self-reliant individuals, buying into a range of welfare packages according to their needs and paying taxes which are also devolved into different types for different circumstances - there is no reason why somebody should not opt into the German tax
[PEN-L:10326] Re: Re: RE: Ideology/consciousness andmaterial/social
G'day Ajit, You write: There are no "individuals" Rod, only subjects. Think about your own 'individuality'. Who are you? Your own ego is associated with your name, which was given to you by others, and you learnt what it means only in the relations with those others. Your nationality, your gender, your race, your ethnicity, you being a son, a father, a brother, a husband, etc. etc. are all nothing but various relationships that define your so-called individuality to yourself. If you think that there is somewhere a pure you, independent of all these relations, then try finding that pure self and let us know who it is and how is it significant to anybody else. First of all, I would suggest, try to see if your pure self is a 'Man' or a 'Woman'? What would be wrong with the observation that we are, each and everyone of us, exclusively the product of relations (I'll leave physiological variability out of it for the purposes of the argument - I am surely who I am partly because I've a dick, testosterone, a typically male brain, and a big body that's good at lifting and shoving) and we are also individuals? None of you is the product of the particular relations that produced me, surely? Doesn't that make me an individual right now? I 'will' things, and I will different things in different ways than you do. And I experience my peculiar will and my ways of willing as 'that who I am'. A very fundamental part of human being indeed, I'd've thought. One to bear in mind in one's politics, no? Or do I miss the point? Cheers, Rob. Rod: It is hard to argue against a philosophy that no one believes in enough to act upon it. Everyone believes in the theory of the human will. The burden of proof is on those who would deny it. Explain consciousness as the result of relations, or as the result of material processes. No one else has done it. __ This is nothing but an example of bad rhetoric. How come I'm not a part of your "everybody"? Most of the scientists don't believe in "a theory of human will", as far as i know. And what is it by the way? The burden of proof must be on those who claim that something exists. If I claim that ghosts don't exist, then the other party has the burden to come up with some evidence to show that they do exist. You are the other party in this game, Rod. Cheers, ajit sinha Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archives http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://members.tripod.com/rodhay/batochebooks.html http://www.abebooks.com/home/BATOCHEBOOKS/ __ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
[PEN-L:10324] Imperlialism 101
Anybody catch the PBS documentary "The Crucible of Empire" on the Spanish-American war? I thought it was pretty good, for television anyway. No visible marxist historians, but a good multicultural line-up of experts. The stuff on the anti-imperialist league was pretty neat (major stalwarts, the Womens Christian Temperance Union!). The economic motive was laid out pretty clearly, but a variety of other factors were persuasively advanced too. You could take this as good or bad. The most severe criticism from a hard left view would be that the entire enterprise -- American imperialism -- is presented as a something of a momentous accident, not something that was likely in the cards. Overall I would say it has a constructive message. The abject U.S. betrayal of the Cuban and Phillipine revolutions could not have been made more clear, I think. (In that sense it was more a matter of liberal sympathy towards nationalism.) In the same vein, the profoundly weasel-like nature of U.S. pro-imperialist political and military leaders is pretty vivid. A friend of mine from w-a-a-y back was a principal in the production, so if there are any comments I could relay them to him, and he might be sufficiently provoked to react. PBS is selling the thing for $20. If I was teaching I would use it. I don't know if my friend has a piece of that action. I'm sure they will be running it again. mbs
