[PEN-L:11108] AIDS, Inhuman Experiments, Imperialism
Jim D. wrote:
All of this might have been different if the Africans had been able to
resist imperialism or to set up strong national governments and economies
at the time of decolonization ("strong" in the sense of serving national
goals), so that public health, education, and social welfare could be
stressed. But the former colonizers and the new world colossus (the US)
always fought against this possibility, pushing for neocolonial obedience
to the "mother country" (as with France) or neoliberal "the free flow of
capital will solve our problems" governments (as with the US). What was
"good for the Africans" was at the bottom of the priority list. Thus we see
the US and other central powers supporting despicable organizations like
UNITA in Angola and RENAMO in Mozambique, which destroyed any efforts to
attain the kind of government that might successfully fight AIDS. Corrupt
tyrants like Mobutu of Zaire were tolerated because they kept the kind of
peace that the US and its colleagues wanted. The negative health effects of
a few decades of Mobutan rule were irrelevant to the powers that be.
Again, I agree. Also, we might point out that the rapid spread of AIDS
coincided with the spread of IMF imposed austerity policies, which weakened
whatever public health capacity national governments in Africa possessed.
Finally, the US has fought the ready and inexpensive availability of
anti-AIDS drugs in southern Africa.
[*] from the Enclyclopedia Brittanica's article "Tuskegee syphilis study":
American medical research project that earned notoriety for its unethical
experimentation on black patients in the rural South.
The project, which was conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS)
from 1932 to 1972, examined the natural course of untreated syphilis in
black American men. The research was intended to test whether syphilis
caused cardiovascular damage more often than neurological damage, and to
determine if the natural course of syphilis in black men was significantly
different from that in whites. In order to recruit participants for its
study, the PHS enlisted the support of the prestigious Tuskegee Institute
..., located in Macon county, Alabama. A group of 412 infected patients and
204 uninfected control patients were recruited for the program. ...
The subjects were not told that they had syphilis or that the disease
could be transmitted through sexual intercourse. Instead, they were told
that they suffered from "bad blood," a local term used to refer to a range
of ills
The Tuskegee syphilis study finally came to an end in 1972 when the
program and its unethical methods were exposed in the Washington Star. ...
Such inhuman experiments without informed consent have been conducted in
the Third World, with regard to AIDS as well.
* The New York Times
October 1, 1998, Thursday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 3; Foreign Desk
LENGTH: 2151 words
HEADLINE: Uganda AIDS Vaccine Test: Urgency Affects Ethics Rules
BYLINE: By MICHAEL SPECTER
DATELINE: KAMPALA, Uganda
...Is Informed Consent A Western Luxury?
There are no waiting rooms, but every landing on every floor overflows with
sick people. Mothers in bright cotton robes sit quietly nursing their
infants; old men wheeze in the stairwell. Hundreds of men and women sit in
eerie silence, coughing and waiting for a number to be called.
...Forty healthy volunteers will be selected. Half will receive a placebo
that would have no effect on an H.I.V. infection. The other half will
receive a vaccine into which some genes responsible for producing important
H.I.V. proteins, some building blocks of the virus, have been inserted.
Taking Other Drugs Would Ruin the Test
...Americans who are diagnosed with H.I.V. now immediately start a drug
treatment regimen aimed at cutting down the amount of the virus in their
bloodstream.
Anything less would be considered unethical. But if people in a vaccine
trial are also on these new drugs, researchers would have no way to judge
whether a vaccine was reducing the virus or whether the medicine was doing
it.
Since people in Uganda cannot hope to afford such drug treatment, which can
cost more than $15,000 a year, they are perfect subjects for such a vaccine
test.
"The question arises: are we basically exporting our risky scientific
research, from which we would benefit, to the third world?" asked Thomas M.
Murray, director of Case Western Reserve University's Center for Biomedical
Ethics, speaking at a forum on the vaccine trials this year. "This is a far
more morally complicated issue than critics of the research have ever made
it out to be."
Case Western, which for years has had a relationship with Makerere
University Medical School, is one of the sponsors of the vaccine trial.
...In the United States, for example, informed consent is required for
people who take part in drug tests. They need to know what the test will
do, what the risks are and what the rewards are.
In Africa,
[PEN-L:11111] In the Long Run.... (was Re: Why China Failed to BecomeCapitalist)
Brad De Long wrote: Imports from non-industrial-core countries equal to 3% of GDP--most of which have potential domestic substitute producers who are not *that* much more costly... Are you sure of what you just wrote? With far reaching mechanization, I suspect that we would not loose too much by producing textiles in the U.S., but what about raw materials? Think of how sensitive the economy seems to be to oil prices. There is a difference between short run and long run. Short-run a big rise in the price of oil is very disruptive. In the long run the U.S. has lots of coal, lots of shale... In the long run we'll be all dead Isn't time an important, nay, the critical factor in understanding capitalism, both at micro and macro levels? Yoshie
[PEN-L:11114] FW: Britain's ethical foreign policy
MPs turn on Byers over Jakarta aid David Hencke, Rob Evans and Simon Tisdall The Guardian, Thursday September 16, 1999 Stephen Byers was last night facing accusations of "gross hypocrisy" from MPs on all sides in the wake of Guardian disclosures yesterday that he had overruled Whitehall to give financial aid to Indonesia weeks before militiamen massacred civilians in East Timor. The row coincided with the revival of a dispute over extended credit granted a year ago to allow Indonesia to continue purchasing Hawk jets from British Aerospace. The trade secretary defended his decision to underwrite a £687,000 loan to a north-eastEngland engineering company to build transmission towers in Indonesia - saying he made no apology for instructing the chief executive of the export credit guarantee department to go ahead with the deal in July to help the poor in Central Java. In a letter to the Guardian today Mr Byers says: "To suggest that I have overruled senior civil servants is to deliberately misunderstand the export credit guarantee department's rules and ministers' responsibilities." But in documents obtained by the Guardian the trade secretary rejected arguments put forward by officials - who regarded the investment as too risky - and authorised the payment "in view of the importance we attach to our relations with Indonesia". MPs are pressing the national audit office, Parliament's financial watchdog, to investigate the loan. Menzies Campbell, Liberal Democrat foreign affairs and defence spokesman, yesterday attacked Mr Byers for going ahead with the deal against the advice of civil servants who were worried about losing taxpayers' money. He is also to question ministers about a secret Whitehall interdepartmental committee which discussed Indonesia's financial problems last November. The government refused to reveal details of decisions despite a Guardian request to release the information under John Major's "open government" code. The Tories, who had approved the original Hawk jet deals, made a strong attack on Labour. William Hague said: "We've been saying that we should suspend non-humanitarian aid to Indonesia but actually the government all the time has been extending additional credit for the purchase of arms. I don't know where their ethical foreign policy stands now. It seems to have disappeared altogether." The reaction came as the Guardian learned that Indonesia's electricity company, PLN, had been described in a United States energy information bulletin last January as facing losses of between $1-2bn following allegations of corruption. The information, which is on the internet, should have been known to civil servants and ministers. Shadow defence secretary, Iain Duncan Smith also attacked the trade secretary over his dealings with Indonesia. "This is the government which lectured the last government about the sale to Indonesia of Hawk jets. Now we have discovered they did not just continue the contract but were also subsidising them with British taxpayers' money without telling anybody."
[PEN-L:11117] Re: Re: Re: Role of the Colonial Trade
Carrol Cox wrote: Ricardo Duchesne wrote: Yet, according to O'Brien's tentative findings, England;s trade with the periphery, and the profits thereof, were still too small a percentage of its total economy to explain its expansion through the 18th century. Thus, by means of a counterfactual demonstration, he argues that, if Britain had not traded with the periphery, its gross annual investment expenditures would have decreased by no more than 7%. In constructing this counterfactual O'Brien makes the rather optimistic assumption that colonial profits were very high and that capitalists reinvested 30% of their profits. It doesn't seem to me that analysis of total profits are of much use in historical/political analysis. Those profits did not go to the "Nation" nor were they prorated among the various enterprises. They went to only a few sectors. It is the political/economic influence of those sectors that is of analytic importance. In so far as British taxpayers had to bear the expenses of empire, those expenses (in India, for example) could have been greater even than the returns and still have been of more importance politically than larger domestic profits. I don't know whether this is the case or not, but I do feel that an analysis that does not explore it or account for it should be held suspect. Carrol As far as I know, the British tax payers did not have to bear the burden of their Indian Empire. They imposed something called "Home Charges" on Indian tax payers, which was supposed to pay all the costs of British administration in India (which included the lavish life style of the British administrators and the army officers), the Indian contingent of British army, which was supposed to defend the British interest in this region, plus all the expenses of "India Office" in Britain, which gave hefty salaries to people like James Mill etc. I think Ricardo needs to take this into account, which probably is not showing in his export-import data. Moreover, he should also take into account that up till first world war, India's trade relation with Britain was triangular in nature. India had surplus of balance of trade and payments with the rest of the world, and Britain had generally a deficit of balance of trade and payments with the rest of the world. The Indian surplus was siphoned primarily in the name of "Home Charges" that played the critical role in bridging Britain's deficit with the rest of the world including the USA. Cheers, ajit sinha
[PEN-L:11118] Re: Re: Role of the Colonial Trade
Ricardo Duchesne wrote: Come on, progressive economists, Fostater pleads, how can you say that the colonial trade was not responsible for the industrialization of Europe? I would suggest, rather, that the political effect of dependency theory on the left has been divisive, setting up countries and ethnic groups against each other, foregoing universalist aspirations, which the right quite effectively took on as its own in the late 70s. But I really dont want to get into this. Here's more on O'Brien and some of his other, subsidiary, arguments, which I think might very well be enough to settle this issue here in pen-l: 1) It has not yet been shown that the rates of profits which European colonialists enjoyed in the periphery were "persistently" above the the rates "which they could have earned on feasible investments" in their home countries, or in other economies of the world. Citing studies on profits from the sugar plantations, he says that, over the long run, such earnings were *average*, fluctuating around or below 10%. Or, if I may add another figure, the percentage of slve profits in the formation of British capital was a tiny 0.11% (Anstey). Engerman, for his part, has calculated "the gross value of slve trade output" to England's national income to be 1%, to rise to 1.7% in 1770. (Of couse, if we take the triangular trade as a whole we are dealing with something more substantial, but I would agree with Rod that forward and backward linkages hold for any industry.) O'Brien also cites other studies which question the profitability of the Navigation Acts. If I may cite one source discussing a particular aspect of these Acts "...The benefit to the home country corresponding to the burden on the North American colonies was still smaller. In fact, it was itself probably a burden, not a benefit. Requiring certain colonial exports and imports to pass through Britain had the beneficial effects of reducing the prices of such goods to British consumers...The cost to British taxpayers of defending and administering the North American colonies was, by contrast, five times the maximun benefit" (Thomas and McCloskey, 1981). Likewise, even if Europeans had been forced to pay 'free market prices' for their colonial products, that would have simply worsened the terms of trade *within* this sector, which constituted a small share of total trade and an even smaller, "tiny" share of gross product. 2) What about Deane's claim that the colonial re-exports allowed Europe to acquire essential raw materials - never mind profit margins? First, O'Brien says that colonial foodstuffs contributed marginally to the supplies of calories available to Europeans. Second, that without the imported colonial produtcs, Europe would merely have experienced, *in the short run*, before substitutions were found, "a decline of not more than 3% or 4% in industrial output. __ I think the method of counterfactual is simply a poor way of doing economic history. The colonial empires were part of the rising capitalist and industrializing cores. A historian should be interested in seeing how they fitted in in the scheme of things. Colonialism was led by the mercantilist capital, and it established one form of relationship with the colonies. As the industrial capital came into ascendancy the relationship went through a change. A study of this changing relationship should through much light on the question of what that relationship meant to the rising industrial capital. When it comes to historical data, I think they are usually of rough nature and should be taken with more than a pinch of salt. And then who is to decide whether 3 to 4 percent fall in industrial output is big or small? There is no scientific way of establishing what is big or small in connection with such data, since we don't know what are the critical thresholds. My sense is that in this kind of literature any number is made to be either big or small depending upon what kind of rhetoric the numbers are inserted into. Furthermore, one should always keep in mind the terms of trade problems related to trade figures with poor countries. Let us suppose you forcibly take a lot of goods from me for free, so it will not show up in your import figures, but does that mean that I have made no contribution to your well being? Similarly, one of the objectives of colonial policies were to acquire "cheap" raw materials from the colonies, so obviously their contribution in monetary terms would appear to be small. Cheers, ajit sinha
[PEN-L:11119] UN Environmental report
London Times, Sept. 16 1999 Global warming will trigger series of disasters, UN warns BY NICK NUTTALL, ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT THE world is facing a string of "full-scale environmental emergencies" which threaten to cause misery for billions of people in the 21st century, the United Nations said yesterday. It is calling on the rich, industrialised nations including Britain to cut their consumption of resources such as oil by 90 per cent to avert disaster particularly in Africa, Asia and other parts of the developing world. In an unprecedented assessment, the UN says air pollution is at crisis levels in many of the world's cities. Booming populations allied to over-exploitation of resources mean that many countries and regions are set to run out of water and fertile land for growing crops. A fifth of the world's people lack access to safe drinking water and half lack access to safe sanitation and "this situation is set to worsen dramatically". The UN cites the World Meteorological Office which claims that, unless water is used more wisely, 66 per cent of the world's population will face water shortages by 2025. The report, Global Environment Outlook 2000, says that global warming related to man-made emissions is now "inevitable", leading to a disastrous rise in sea levels and in weather-related disasters including sharp increases in flooding and hurricanes such as Hurricane Floyd. It says that it is already too late for many species of plants and animals, large swaths of the world's coral reefs and the tropical rainforests. Damage to the rainforests, vital habitats and the planet's green lungs which have been cleared for timber, agriculture and new cities, is now irreversible, the study concludes. The report, introduced in London by Klaus Topfer, executive director of the UN's Environment Programme, is based on a survey of 200 scientists in 50 countries. They cite global warming as the biggest threat to the planet followed by the scarcity of fresh water, deforestation and desertification. New threats are also emerging. Nitrogen loading of the world's environment, because of its use as a fertiliser in intensive agriculture and as a result of emissions from industry, power plants and cars, is proving to be a "largely uncontrolled experiment" on a global scale, say the experts. Excessive nitrogen levels in the environment are triggering the growth of unwanted plants which are strangling estuaries and coastal areas. "A massive increase in algal blooms is leading to underwater oxygen starvation which in turn is responsible for fish kills in areas like the Black Sea, Baltic Sea and Chesapeake Bay." Nitrogen emissions account for 6 per cent of global warming from man-made emissions and this is set to escalate. The experts are also alarmed at the prospect of new wars, partly triggered by environmental factors such as competition for fresh water, which will directly damage the environment and wildlife while making millions homeless who in turn take an ecological toll. Increased globalisation and the smashing of trade barriers through organisations such as the World Trade Organisation are in many cases accelerating environmental problems, the report says. "Where environmental issues are not incorporated in economic prices and decision-making, trade can magnify unsustainable patterns of economic activity and resource exploitation," says the report. A worrying aspect of this has emerged recently as countries challenge national environmental protection measures, claiming they are barriers to trade. "Efforts to protect sea turtles, dolphins and sea birds have been struck down for exactly that reason," says the report. It looks at the threats by region. While forest cover in Western and Central Europe has grown by 10 per cent since the 1960s, nearly 60 per cent of forests are damaged by acidification, pollution, drought or fires. Nearly 70 per cent of waste in Western Europe still ends up in rubbish tips. Waste levels in countries such as Britain have climbed by 35 per cent since 1980. Pollution of land through excessive use of fertilisers and pesticides and by contaminants such as heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants and radionuclides is widespread in Europe, which produces a third of the world's greenhouse gases. The report says that there are some glimmers of hope including the agreement in Kyoto by industrial countries to cut emissions and use cleaner production processes. The Danger Signs Key points in the report include the following: There will be a billion cars by 2025, up from 40 million since the Second World war. A quarter of the world's 4,630 types of mammals and 11 per cent of the 9,675 bird species are at serious risk of extinction. More than half the world's coral is at risk from dredging, diving and global warming. 80 per cent of forests have been cleared. A billion city dwellers are exposed to health-threatening levels of air pollution. The global population will reach
[PEN-L:11125] Re: AIDS, Inhuman Experiments, Imperialism
Did anybody mention the importance of workers living away from their families in labor camps? I might have missed it if they did. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:11128] Re: Re: Why China Failed to Become Capitalist
At 06:38 PM 9/15/99 PDT, you wrote: Sure Michael, Canada defaulted on some of the railway bonds too. But that just makes my point even stronger. Countries can industrialise with the aid of foreign investment. yes, if they're settler colonies (exported from W. Europe, the imperial core of the day) that rip off resources from the indigenous population and they are not forced by "free trade" or Mercantilism to specialize in production that benefits only the imperial core. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/~JDevine
[PEN-L:11131] Baltimore headline
from Scott Shuger's SLATE column: The [Washington Post] runs a "clarification," saying that a headline on yesterday's front page--WHITE MAN GETS MAYORAL NOMINATION IN BALTIMORE--"distorted the role of race in the election and violated Washington Post policy about reporting racial identifications only in proper context." This gives rise to one very reasonable question: What, pray tell, is that WP policy? If there actually is one, why not state it? Not stating it not only makes the clarification utterly fail to clarify, but also raises the suspicion that the Post doesn't really have a well-formed idea about what "in proper context" means beyond "when the paper doesn't get a lot of complaints." Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/~JDevine
[PEN-L:11133] Re: Re: Role of the Colonial Trade
very unfair, Ricardo. have you looked at the Darity article that explicitly takes on the O'Brien stuff?? Should I type in the tables with the figures from his 1992 article?? I will do that if you request it. But don't ignore what I have put forward and dismiss it as sound and fury. Also, "factual-analytical content" can be presented with sound and fury, or are you proposing that they are mutually exclusive. -Original Message- From: Ricardo Duchesne [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, September 16, 1999 9:21 AM Subject: [PEN-L:11122] Re: Role of the Colonial Trade Barkley, The profits from the slave trade is only one aspect of a series of statistical arguments I have made showing that the colonial trade was not crucial to the industrialization of Europe, or England. I have some stuff on the cotton trade which I may post later on. But I have to say that, except for some points Ajit has made, what I have said still awaits a serious challenge here in pen-l, unless you think that arguments, full of sound and fury about the pillage of the colonies, but lacking any factual-analytical content regarding the issue at hand, should be taken seriously. Ricardo, You have focused on the profits from the slave trade, which was certainly a focus of Williams himself. But what about the argument mentioned by Brad De Long regarding lower cotton prices due to the exploitation of slave labor? Barkley Rosser Come on, progressive economists, Fostater pleads, how can you say that the colonial trade was not responsible for the industrialization of Europe? I would suggest, rather, that the political effect of dependency theory on the left has been divisive, setting up countries and ethnic groups against each other, foregoing universalist aspirations, which the right quite effectively took on as its own in the late 70s. But I really dont want to get into this. Here's more on O'Brien and some of his other, subsidiary, arguments, which I think might very well be enough to settle this issue here in pen-l: 1) It has not yet been shown that the rates of profits which European colonialists enjoyed in the periphery were "persistently" above the the rates "which they could have earned on feasible investments" in their home countries, or in other economies of the world. Citing studies on profits from the sugar plantations, he says that, over the long run, such earnings were *average*, fluctuating around or below 10%. Or, if I may add another figure, the percentage of slve profits in the formation of British capital was a tiny 0.11% (Anstey). Engerman, for his part, has calculated "the gross value of slve trade output" to England's national income to be 1%, to rise to 1.7% in 1770. (Of couse, if we take the triangular trade as a whole we are dealing with something more substantial, but I would agree with Rod that forward and backward linkages hold for any industry.) O'Brien also cites other studies which question the profitability of the Navigation Acts. If I may cite one source discussing a particular aspect of these Acts "...The benefit to the home country corresponding to the burden on the North American colonies was still smaller. In fact, it was itself probably a burden, not a benefit. Requiring certain colonial exports and imports to pass through Britain had the beneficial effects of reducing the prices of such goods to British consumers...The cost to British taxpayers of defending and administering the North American colonies was, by contrast, five times the maximun benefit" (Thomas and McCloskey, 1981). Likewise, even if Europeans had been forced to pay 'free market prices' for their colonial products, that would have simply worsened the terms of trade *within* this sector, which constituted a small share of total trade and an even smaller, "tiny" share of gross product. 2) What about Deane's claim that the colonial re-exports allowed Europe to acquire essential raw materials - never mind profit margins? First, O'Brien says that colonial foodstuffs contributed marginally to the supplies of calories available to Europeans. Second, that without the imported colonial produtcs, Europe would merely have experienced, *in the short run*, before substitutions were found, "a decline of not more than 3% or 4% in industrial output.
[PEN-L:11134] Re: Why China Failed to Become Capitalist
If , on balance, one concludes that European capitalism and industrialism have been bad for the human species, then the Chinese come up smelling like roses for not rushing into it. Given the world historic enormity of capitalism's crimes, it doesn't seem that its postive contributions make up for the losses. We might see Chinese course as a "failure to take up a failure for our species" , in other words a wise avoidance. The paradox is that in order to rid the world of this failure before it rids the world of our species, wise peoples like the Chinese have to take a bite of the poison apple. Capitalist fire must be fought and defeated with some capitalist fire. The ruthlessness in using force inherent to capitalist ideology and practice can only be defeated by a certain level of counter ruthlessness. Charles Brown "Ricardo Duchesne" [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/10/99 04:36PM Isn't it wierd that capitalism has become so elevated that any nation that doesn't become capitalist is deemed a failure? Also, why does industrialization necessitate capitalism? I'll get to Yoshie next week. We need a broader context to this idea of "failure". It is "failure" in the sense that China, after having the most advanced economy in the world prior to 1500 - some even saying that it was on the edge of the first industrial revolution as early as the period of the Sung dynasty (960-1275 AD) - did not industrialize. Moreover, even if China's growth after the Sung dynasty was not one that involved subtantial increases in per capita productivity, its economy was increasingly commercialized right through the 18th century, when England began its industrial revolution. You may still insist, why should it be a "failure" for China not to develop an industrial capitalist economy. My answer is that China's pre-industrial economy had reached a point beyond which it could not grow further within the existing technology. It was experiencing diminishing returns, and was "failing" to expand any further... leaving itself open to imperial domination by Europe. I am trying to re-think/elaborate or expand on Elvin's "high-level-equilibrium trap", in order to see if I can use it to argue that in all pre-industrial civilizations there exists an *optimun* point of extensive growth, and that 18th China had reached that point, and that Europe, too, as can be seen in France, was about to reach that point just as the Industrial revolution began. I am no lover of capitalism but am not about to embrace highly stratified agrarian societies in which the vast majority lack basic civic rights. I would rather defend hunting-gathering societies, as well as simple, stateless, agrarian societies, preferably the latter but before the chiefs came along.
[PEN-L:11135] Re: Re: Back to Smith, Bentham, Cobden Bright? (was Re: Role of theColonial Trade)
Ok. And I wasn't implying that you were suffering from the misconception. By the way, the falling rate of profit and effective demand are not substitutes, and Smith also had a falling rate of profit argument, btw. mf -Original Message- From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, September 16, 1999 10:55 AM Subject: [PEN-L:11132] Re: Back to Smith, Bentham, Cobden Bright? (was Re: Role of theColonial Trade) Mat wrote: But Smith, contrary to much popular misconception clearly stated the many advantages that came to the colonizers as well as the disadvantages to the colonized. The chapters on mercantilism, etc. are filled with this stuff, including the increase in natural resources and land, and gold and silver, the markets for exports of European manufactured goods and capital goods, and on and on. In addition, Smith's particular emphasis on the opening up of new markets for European manufactures feeds right back into the theory begun to be developed right from book 1 ch. 1-3 on the division of labor. This is what Kaldor was reviving, in combination with a dynamic extension of Keynes's principle of effective demand. Smith saw a mutually reinforcing dynamic between capital accumulation and technological advance, and key was the expansion of markets as outlets for European manufactures. Everything was there in Smith except for the principle of effective demand, you just have to piece it together, as many authors have done. I agree. I simply wrote that post to point out that leftist analyses that discount the roles of colonialism imperialism in the development of capitalism end up implying, in a manner reminiscent of neoclassical economic ideology, that there was no inherent difficulty (whether you analyze it as the problem of 'effective demand' or 'the natural tendency of profits to fall,' depending on your political persuasions) within capitalism that colonialism imperialism helped to 'solve' in some real economic sense for capitalists. (Perhaps I should have titled my post 'Back to Say's Law?') The world of counterfactuals allows such leftists to also ignore the fact that a solution to a problem has to be found 'in time,' under given social relations. Why do they insist on going back before Keynes Marx??? Yoshie
[PEN-L:11141] Re: Why China Failed to Become Capitalist
Maybe the Sorcerers Apprentice is a deep unconscious myth for this. The Sorcerer is the wise Chinese, who keep the material dangers of capitalist path bottled up after discovering it. The foolish apprentice is the Europeans, who let the species life threat of capitalism out of the bottle. CB "Charles Brown" [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/16/99 12:05PM If , on balance, one concludes that European capitalism and industrialism have been bad for the human species, then the Chinese come up smelling like roses for not rushing into it. Given the world historic enormity of capitalism's crimes, it doesn't seem that its postive contributions make up for the losses. We might see Chinese course as a "failure to take up a failure for our species" , in other words a wise avoidance. The paradox is that in order to rid the world of this failure before it rids the world of our species, wise peoples like the Chinese have to take a bite of the poison apple. Capitalist fire must be fought and defeated with some capitalist fire. The ruthlessness in using force inherent to capitalist ideology and practice can only be defeated by a certain level of counter ruthlessness. Charles Brown "Ricardo Duchesne" [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/10/99 04:36PM Isn't it wierd that capitalism has become so elevated that any nation that doesn't become capitalist is deemed a failure? Also, why does industrialization necessitate capitalism? I'll get to Yoshie next week. We need a broader context to this idea of "failure". It is "failure" in the sense that China, after having the most advanced economy in the world prior to 1500 - some even saying that it was on the edge of the first industrial revolution as early as the period of the Sung dynasty (960-1275 AD) - did not industrialize. Moreover, even if China's growth after the Sung dynasty was not one that involved subtantial increases in per capita productivity, its economy was increasingly commercialized right through the 18th century, when England began its industrial revolution. You may still insist, why should it be a "failure" for China not to develop an industrial capitalist economy. My answer is that China's pre-industrial economy had reached a point beyond which it could not grow further within the existing technology. It was experiencing diminishing returns, and was "failing" to expand any further... leaving itself open to imperial domination by Europe. I am trying to re-think/elaborate or expand on Elvin's "high-level-equilibrium trap", in order to see if I can use it to argue that in all pre-industrial civilizations there exists an *optimun* point of extensive growth, and that 18th China had reached that point, and that Europe, too, as can be seen in France, was about to reach that point just as the Industrial revolution began. I am no lover of capitalism but am not about to embrace highly stratified agrarian societies in which the vast majority lack basic civic rights. I would rather defend hunting-gathering societies, as well as simple, stateless, agrarian societies, preferably the latter but before the chiefs came along.
[PEN-L:11144] Re: finanz kapital
There's been concentration, but it's hard to argue that the economic scene isn't more competitive now than it was 20 years ago, before the deregulation and privatization of everything. Lenin Hilferding were talking about state-sponsored cartels eliminating competition; now we have states around the world fostering competition. Doug I agree that we're not talking about the same conditions that Lenin or Hilferding analyzed. But fostering deregulation, privatization, 'competition' dialectically have led to and continue to lead to further concentration of capital, right? I've been thinking that the current imperial noises about East Timor 'humanitarian interventions' are a cunning of economic reason acting in a political manner, arising from a discontent that not enough state-sponsored conglomerates in Asia have been broken up and picked up by their rightful owners. Yoshie
[PEN-L:11147] AIDS, social inequality and world-systems theory
[From chapter one of Dr. Paul Farmer's new book, "Infections and Inequalities: the Modern Plagues". Farmer is one of the great thinkers and humanitarians of our age.] One learns, I would hope, to discover what is right, what needs to be rightedthrough work, through action. --DANIEL BERRIGAN. 1972 As I prepared this book, an anonymous reviewer of an early draft suggested that, since the book reflects a personal journey, it should make explicit the itinerary taken. The idea of a confessional cast to a book about the plagues of the poor made me shudder, at least initially. But it is nonetheless true that my experiences in Peru and, especially, in Haiti have shaped my interpretations every bit as much as has training in anthropology and medicine. Curiously, perhaps, I knew earlyat twenty years of age, before I went to Haitithat I wanted to be a physician-anthropologist. But my experience in central Haiti helped me decide what kind of medicine to practice. In my first year there, I witnessed preventable deaths from malaria, tuberculosis, and postpartum infections. That was enough to make me decide to specialize in infectious disease. Haiti also strengthened my interest in social theory, particularly in the relationship between structural constraints and personal agency. How do life conditions restrict any individuals capacity to make choices? The constraint part of the formula was critical, for poverty was the central fact of life for the Haitians with whom I lived and worked. It seemed at times as if their every move was trammeled by the hard surfaces of economic want. "Life for the Haitian peasant of today," observed anthropologist Jean Weise over twenty-five years ago, "is abject misery and a rank familiarity with death." Accordingly, lack of access to effective biomedical services was the most salient feature of the Haitian health system. The country had only one medical school, and its graduates usually sought to remain in Port-au-Prince after graduationor, better yet, to leave Haiti altogether. In the decade following the ascent of Dr. François Duvalier to power, for example, 264 physicians graduated from the state medical school, and all but 3 left the country. In the eighties, Haitis nationwide physician-to-population ratio was 18 physicians per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 250 physicians per 100,000 in the United Statesand 364 per 100,000 in neighboring Cuba. This figure varied substantially between the countrys four administrative districts. The Haitians whose stories are presented in this book live in the Region Transversale, which is by far the most underserved region, with about 5 physicians per 100,000 inhabitants. That made me, from the time I was a medical student, something of a novelty in rural Haiti. By the spring of 1984, a year after my arrival, Id cast my lot with a group of landless peasants who were working with a dynamic Haitian priest. He knew nothing about health care, he told me. Since I was going to be a doctorhe never evinced much interest in my anthropology studiesit would be my job to oversee health-related projects. So get cracking, he said; find the necessary resources. Wouldnt it be better, I objected, to conduct a preliminary "needs assessment" of the region, one that would ask those living in the communities to be served what theyd like to see come from our efforts? "Fine," replied the priest. "Do as you wish. But theyre just going to tell you they want a hospital." He was right. Although they also mentioned schools and water and land, most people surveyed said that a hospital was what the region needed. (Notably, we never heard requests for research.) Although we knew better than to wait to hear demands for, say, vaccinations against tetanus and measles, we decided to act as if we meant it when we insisted that their opinions mattered to us. At the same time that we sought to establish preventive services, we built a clinic. Founded in 1985, the Clinique Bon Sauveur has since served the rural poor of Haitis Central Plateau. My experiences there further shaped medical interests. Within a year of opening the clinic, we saw our first case of AIDS, in a young man who presented with disseminated tuberculosis. His drama became mine too, since no one knew, really, what going on, and I, a physician-in-training, was often the most "medical" person around. Manno became a central figure in my dissertation and the book it engenderedand forced me to come to terms with the nature of my own involvement in the lives of my "informants." My priority, I knew, was not analytic; it was pragmatic. From the early eighties, I commuted between Haiti, with its dearth of medical services, and Harvard, where there were innumerable doctors and veritable thickets of hospitals. The experience has been jarring, certainly, but also illuminating. Haiti became a sort of interpretive grid what I was hearing in medical school. First, I paid special attention to formation that
[PEN-L:11149] Re: finanz kapital
Doug Henwood wrote:
There's been concentration, but it's hard to argue that the economic
scene isn't more competitive now than it was 20 years ago, before the
deregulation and privatization of everything. Lenin Hilferding were
talking about state-sponsored cartels eliminating competition; now we
have states around the world fostering competition.
Obviously I am going to have to reread some material I studied closely
20 years ago, including Lenin on imperialism -- I remember the conclusions
I drew from Lenin better than I remember the parts of his argument that
I based those conclusions on.
My memory though is that one of the key elements in Lenin's argument was
that *capitalism remained capitalism* -- i.e., in essential ways competitive
-- *even if* cartels seemed to eliminate competition. Lenin's opponents
were those who claimed that somehow monopoly capitalism was an
essentially different social system and that therefore Marx's analysis
of it no longer held. The current argument that "globalization" represents
a fundamental change in capitalism is in many ways a modernization
("postmodernization"?) of the position of (e.g.) Kautsky 100 years
ago.
Carrol
[PEN-L:11150] Re: Re: Re: Why China Failed to Become Capitalist
Actually at the IEA meetings Joseph Stiglitz gave the final plenary address where he continued in his role as global gadfly while still following standard neoclassical economic theory. He presented some evidence that a) there is no relation between flexibility of prices/wages and macro stability and b) that fiscal policy in poorer countries has been pro-cyclical, that is destabilizing, in contrast to that in richer countries. The last point is the one I want to kvetch on more here. It is clear that the reason that has been happening is that poorer countries must borrow from abroad in order to run budget deficits, which is what a stabilizing fiscal policy should consist of when a country is in a recession as any good Keynesian knows. But they are not allowed to, as we have seen recently in Asia and are now seeing in South America, including Argentina, currently in recession and host of that conference. Stiglitz wisecracked that the old joke about banks holds for countries: They'll lend you money when you have it and don't need it, but won't when you don't have any and need it. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wednesday, September 15, 1999 9:47 PM Subject: [PEN-L:11103] Re: Re: Why China Failed to Become Capitalist Rod, countries no longer have that option. Rod wrote, Sure Michael, Canada defaulted on some of the railway bonds too. But that just makes my point even stronger. Countries can industrialise with the aid -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:11151] Re: Re: Re: Role of the Colonial Trade
(FROM DARITY, 1992, "BRITISH INDUSTRY AND WEST INDIES PLANTATIONS" IN _THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE_, INIKORI AND ENGERMAN (EDS.) ) Small Ratios? The most prevalent justification for the foregoing attitude consistently appears to be Stanley Engerman's (1972) well-known "small ratios" argument. Engerman constructed what he viewed as overstated estimates of the profits earned from the slave trade by British capitalists. He then sought to demonstrate that slave trade profits, as a percentage of national income, investment, and commercial and industrial investment for Britain in several years during the eighteenth century, were too small to matter in an explanation of British industrialization. Note, first, that Engerman's intentionally overstated estimates are limited to profits from the British slave trade alone; they do not encompass the entire returns from the trade as well as the colonial plantation system in the British West Indies (see Darity, 1982; Solow, 1985).3 Second, in light of the more recent range of estimates of the profits from the slave trade, it is not clear that Engerman's estimates constitute a gross overstatement (see, e.g., Darity's [1985] profit estimates, which use Inikori's [1976] importation estimates).4 Third, it is not apparent that Engerman's precentages actually are small in a histroical or relative sense, despite their apparent absolute smallness. In a critique of Engerman's argument, Barbara Solow (1985: 105-06) makes exactly such a point: Focusing on 1770...we find that [Engerman's] overstated slave trade profits form one half of 1 percent of national income, nearly 8 percent of total investment, and 39 percent of commercial and industrial investment. These ratios are not small; they are enormous. The ratio of TOTAL corporate profits of domestic industries to GNP in the United States today (1980) amounts to 6 percent. The ratio of total corporate domestic profits to gross private domestic investment for that year amounts to over 40 percent. And the ratio of total corporate domestic profits to 1980 investment in domestic plant and eqiuipment (non-residential fixed investment) runs at more than 55 percent... How can we be sure the ratio of slave trade profits to national income in 1770 is "small" at half a percent, when the ratio of total corporate profits to GNP today is only 6 percent? If slave trade profits were 8 percent of investment in Britain in 1770, is that "small" when today total corporate profits amount to 40 percent? No industry manages as much as 8 percent. Is the potential contribution of an industry whose profits can "only" amount to 39 percent of commercial and industrial investment to be ruled out because it is "small"? Naturally it is not my intention to make a serious comparison between 1770 and 1980, nor to claim that these figures make a case for Williams. Engerman never claims that they measure anything but an upper limit on what the slave trade could have contributed to British growth. On the evidence of his figures, the contribution COULD HAVE BEEN enormous. The best-developed application of Engerman's small ratios argument to the period of the industrial revolution is Patrick O'Brien's (1982) attempt to dismiss the importance of trade with the entire periphery (Asia, Africa, and the Americas ) for European economic development. O'Brien marshalls estimates of the shares of foreign trade in overall economic activity for all of the eighteenth-century Europe to show that the numbers are too small to give credence to the importance of trade of any sort as a critical engine of economic expansion. Presumably, European economic development was predominantly an internal affair that would have proceeded if the rest of the world had not existed from the eighteenth century onward. O'Brien (ibid.: 4) points out that by the 1790s "the flows of commodities transhipped between Western Europe and regions at the periphery of the 'modern world system' might amount to 20 per cent of exports and 25 per cent of imports." The bulk of trade by European states was between themselves. He goes on to observe that the volume of all exports of European nations during the period 1780-90 amounted to about 4% of Europe's GNP, with "perhaps less than 1 per cent...sold to Africa, Asia, Latin america, the Caribbean, and the southern plantations of the young United States" (ibid.: 14). The proportionate volume of imports was a bit larger but still small, according to O'Brien. Again, the smallness in an absolute sense tells us nothing about the contextual or causal significance of Europe's trade with the periphery. In 1837, the German nationalist Friedrich List (1983: 174-75) expressed concern about the misleading impression Huskisson, the British ambassador to the United States, had given while using a similar small ratios argument in the early nineteenth century: Huskisson declared that the exports of the United States to
[PEN-L:11157] Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Why China Failed to Become Capitalist
One case in Africa that sticks out as peculiarly tragic is that of Botswana. It has been one of the few "success stories" in sub-Saharan Africa in recent decades, with one of the highest rates of GDP growth in the world of any country during the 1980s (fourth behind China, S. Korea, and Bhutan). It has been relatively free of tribal conflict and has a reasonably democratic and non- corrupt government. It has had a lot of government intervention in the economy, btw, but done in a fairly effective manner. However, it is now one of the countries most hard hit by AIDS, with one of the highest rates of infection in the world. This has really sideswiped the country and its achievements. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Mathew Forstater [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, September 16, 1999 11:24 AM Subject: [PEN-L:11127] Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Why China Failed to Become Capitalist one of my colleagues has pointed out that much of what is blamed on "AIDS" are other diseases ultimately rooted in poverty, malnutriotion, poor health care, rough lives. For some, these other diseases are diagnosed as these diseases, while for others they are called HIV or AIDS. I can't explain it very well, obviously, but I hope I'm getting my point across. -Original Message- From: Craven, Jim [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' [EMAIL PROTECTED]; '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wednesday, September 15, 1999 5:34 PM Subject: [PEN-L:11084] RE: Re: RE: Re: Why China Failed to Become Capitalist Jim, Most of your points in this message are well taken. But I am a bit perplexed regarding the question of HIV. Quite aside from whether the rate of infection is as high as you say, although it may be that high in a few countries, I fail to see what that has to do with imperialism. Last I checked most people think that HIV was initially contracted by humans in Africa probably from chimpanzees, probably while killing them to eat. You're not going to give us some theory that HIV is a Jewish doctors' plot to wipe out people of color are you? I hope not. I would grant that poverty and related weak immune systems make people more susceptible to dying from HIV, although it is unclear that it makes them more susceptible to contracting HIV in the first place, although maybe it does. If there is a link with imperialism, that would be it. Is imperialism responsible for the failures of some of these countries to implement strong condom and safe sex programs? Barkley Rosser Hi Barkley, Uh no I'm not going to give you the "Jewish Doctors" plot as I have neither anti-Semitism nor such garbage concepts in me. I will however give you the imperial "plot" to divert critical resources to compliant elites rather than to desperately-needed programs in epidemiology, prevention, sanitation etc; I will give you the imperial "plot" to vacuum out and transfer to the metropoles the best minds and other critical resources necessary in the fight against AIDS and such diseases; I will give you the imperial "plot" to engineeer unconscionable terms of aid/trade/loans that result in net outflows of critical financial resources that could be employed in a variety of ways in the war against AIDS; I will give you the imperial "plot" to engineer "Third World" educational systems that serve to create and train compliant clones/sycophants of US imperial ideology rather than self-reliant scientists capable to launching local-conditions-sensitive campaigns against AIDS; I will give you the imperial "plot" to reinforce systems and images that keep women and children down, servile, dependent, vulnerable and exploited and vulnerable to conditions and vicissitudes that create and exacerbate all sorts of horrors including AIDS; I will give you the imperial plot to export to the "Third World" all sorts of inferior and dangerous drugs not allowed for sale in the imperial metropoles while denying and making prohibitive in cost the most effective drugs and treatment regimes; I will give you the imperial plot to use UN and other international agencies charged with dealing with global epidemics for other more narrow and more mercenary and more pro-imperialist purposes; I will give you the imperial "plot" to arm and train death squads that keep in power kleptocracies and brutal regimes that insulate the privileged while hoping for--and abetting--AIDS killing off the poor and oppressed; etc etc. Jim C BTW these long lines and panicking consumers rushing to get batteries, canned foods etc and these long lines of traffic leaving Florida and South Carolina look like images from the "old" USSR. Must be that capitalism and markets have failed in Florida and south Carolina eh? What's this stuff about "context" and history anyway? ;-)
[PEN-L:11159] Re: finanz kapital
It is wellknown that Lenin's analysis of monopoly, an extension of Marx's fundamentals
on how concentration leads to monopoly ( _Capital _ I) ,demonstrated the dialectical
contradiction of both more competition and more monopoly with the advent of
imperialism. As Nkitin argues in _The Findamentals of Political Economy_"Though
monopoly grows out of free competition, it does not eliminate competition, but exists
along side of it. Under the predominance of monopolies, the competitive struggle
becomes especially fiercce and predatory. In order to get rid of a competitor, a
monopoly makes use of financial machinations, bribery, , blackmail and actual
violence." Nitikin lists five ways in which there is compeitition within monopoly
capitalism.
Lenin discussed the contradiction this way. "in fact, it is this combination of
antagonistic principles, viz,, competition and monopoly , that is the essence of
imperilaism..." ("Comments on the Remarks Made by the Committee of the April
All-Russia Conference " Collected Works Vol. 24).
Thus, Lenin's theory of imperialism would predict that increased concentration over
the last twenty years would lead to more competition, but unfair competiton, not more
equal competition among smaller enterprises as in the 1800's.
Today's privatization is an aggravation of the Leninist principle of state-monopoly (
See my paper "Privatization" An Erosion of Demcracy"). Deregulation is an advantage to
monopoly. It is an increase in "state-monopoly", which is the state becoming more of a
direct economic servant of monopoly than it was in the 1800's.
The forms of monopoly and state-monopoly are not identical to those at the beginning
of the 1900's but they are what Lenin's basic theories would project for today with
state-monopoly capitalism lasting as long as it has. Lenin's basic concepts make sense
out of most of the main developments of global capitalism, even though, of course,
they are state-monopoly capitalism on an augmented and even qualitiatively aggravated
level.
And more specifically, today's states are not fostering EQUAL competition, but doing
everything to favor even greater concentration of wealth among the biggest TNC's,
trusts and concerns. The U.S. and other states are removing barriers for the TNC
monopolies to exploit more and more markets in "competitions" with smaller concerns or
former government enterprises that were protected from them before by the states. This
is "competition" stacked in favor of the monopolies such that they will inevitably win
and become even bigger monopolies. The labels of today such as "open markets" ,
"free trade" are ,misleading, if what is meant is tending to return to the greater
"free competition" days of the 1800's.
Disgarding Lenin's analysis of imperialism based on the minor changes from 1900 to
today doesn't make sense, because the main concepts of that analysis fit very well the
most important new factual developments in global capitalism. Some of the analysis is
truer today than in the early 1900's, such as concentration of wealth and
monopolization being greater today than then.
Charles Brown
Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/16/99 01:28PM
There's been concentration, but it's hard to argue that the economic
scene isn't more competitive now than it was 20 years ago, before the
deregulation and privatization of everything. Lenin Hilferding were
talking about state-sponsored cartels eliminating competition; now we
have states around the world fostering competition.
Doug
I agree that we're not talking about the same conditions that Lenin or
Hilferding analyzed. But fostering deregulation, privatization,
'competition' dialectically have led to and continue to lead to further
concentration of capital, right?
I've been thinking that the current imperial noises about East Timor
'humanitarian interventions' are a cunning of economic reason acting in a
political manner, arising from a discontent that not enough state-sponsored
conglomerates in Asia have been broken up and picked up by their rightful
owners.
Yoshie
[PEN-L:11163] Re: finanz kapital
Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/16/99 01:11PM Charles Brown wrote (quoting Lenin): Finance capital is capital controlled by banks and employed by industrialists It's not that simple these days. (( Charles: Today that basic idea holds with extrapolations of it based on its own logic. ((( Doug: If they were one (and Hilferding uses the image of the holy trinity to express their oneness) then there wouldn't have been all the battles between takeover artists and the Business Roundtable in the 1980s. ((( Charles: I have to say that you don't seem to know what Lenin said about these things. I think the oversimplification here is your portrayal of what Lenin' theory of imperialism is. The financial capitalist institutions and industrial institutions are more united than they were in the 1800's. They are not less united today than they were in 1900. The history of capitalism since Lenin analyzed it has not seen the fianancial institutions and the industrial institutions move to be more separate as they were in the 1800's. The merger of financial and industrial institutions that Lenin described was and is not the harmonious oneness you describe. Lenin argues that competition increases with monopolization, of which this merger aspect is a dimension. Lenin's theory would predict battles of the type you describe above; and , as happened, at the end of the day, there is greater concentration and monopolization (( Michael Jensen would have had nothing to write about from 1976 onwards. Large corporations would not be largely self-financing. Charles: It is exactly through Wallstreet as a generic fiancial capital process (not a plain old bank) that we see much of the merger of finance and industrial functions. Again, you don't seem to get the more general dimension of Lenin's analysis. Perhaps it should be termed "Creditor capital". (( Hilferding and Lenin were extrapolating from the structure of Germany in the early 20th century. Charles: No. Lenin was generalizing based on England, France, the U.S. and Germany. Lenin's financial oligarchy is both German bankers and Anglo-American stock marketers. There is no sensible inference from Lenin and all Leninist economists statements that he thought stock markets were going away or everything was tending toward a German model. ( Hilferding said that the Anglo-American system - of stock markets and dispersed ownership - was fading and the German way was the way of the future. (( Charles: But Lenin did not. This is not part of the Leninist theory of imperialism. ((( The early USSR took a cue from German industrial structure, thinking it was the future of capitalism, and created giant enterprises. But now it looks like the German system is fading and the Anglo-American one is spreading around the world. Maybe 10 years from now that will look quaint, I don't know. But Hildferding and Lenin aren't very enlightening about capitalism in 1999. (( Charles: You are conflating Hilferding and Lenin. Lenin's theory is general enough to analyze stock exchanges as part of finance capital. A booming Wallstreet is enormous confirmation of the validity of Lenins' theory in 1999. .There was more free competition in the 1800's. With the 1900's there is an enormous concentration of wealth relative to then. There's been concentration, but it's hard to argue that the economic scene isn't more competitive now than it was 20 years ago, before the deregulation and privatization of everything. Lenin Hilferding were talking about state-sponsored cartels eliminating competition; now we have states around the world fostering competition. (( Charles: This is answered in another post. You do not represent Lenin's theory accurately. He says specifically that imperialism is in essence the unity of the opposites competition and monopoly. Thus, more competition than 20 years ago is a confirmation of the freshness of Lenin's theory in 1999 still. What the states around the world are fostering is monopoly competition, i.e. monopolies competing with small fish and winning , of course. This state help for monopolies is exactly Lenin's state-monopoly in 1999. Finance capital as Hilferding defines it is the locus of the monopolies, giant companies of banks and industrial enterprises with interlocking directorates, and more closely coordinated activities with the purpose of making M' for the owners of the banks/financial institutions and the industrial corps. Doug: And how relevant is that to 1999? ( Charles: So, relevant it isn't funny. Interlocking directorates are more, not less than in 1900. The coordination and process of making M' for the owners of banks/financial institutions ( like hedge funds) and industrial corps. is greater today than in Lenin's day, not less. I
[PEN-L:11165] Re: Capitalist development
Louis This is all irrelevant. I have read Needham (not all, but several volumes). I am saying that the combination gave the European an advantage in encounters. They had the technology and they had the incentive. No one else had that combination. Any one who knows anything about history knows that the Chinese were ahead technologically until the 16th century, that the Arabs were ahead in mathematics and philosophy, and probably in agricultural technique. The question is why did the Europeans burst out of their continent from the 15th century on, and why were they able to conquer everyone in their path. Aside on naval technology. The Chinese ships had fixed sails which made it impossible to tack against the wind. Original Message Follows From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] Rod Hay wrote: Europe did have the "advantages" of superior sailing technology, superior arms, an experienced military and a social system which encouraged private accumulation. Janet Abu-Lughod, "Before European Hegemony": The Chinese evidently stumbled upon the explosive character of gunpowder around 650 A.D., although the first reference to it does not appear before a mid-ninth century science text. By the early tenth century gunpowder is mentioned as the ignition for a flame-throwing weapon, and by about 1000 A.D. "the practice of using gunpowder in simple bombs and grenades was coming into use" (Needham, "The Epic of Gunpowder and Firearms). The illustrations in Needham leave little doubt that the Chinese used gunpowder for more than fireworks displays. Chinese artisans working under the Chin transformed the relatively mild gunpowder known to the Sung into a true explosive first employed in 1221; a further innovation in 12721273 combined the standard Muslim mechanical stone thrower with an explosive projectile (Elvin, 1973: 88). By the early fourteenth century, if before, a device that is unmistakably a cannon for lobbing bombs was in use (see the illustration of it in Needham, reprinted 1981), and Lo (1955) tells us that ships of the Yuan navy were regularly equipped with this device. The "gun" proper also appeared about this time. It was a logical extension of the Chins earlier "fire spurting lances," which shot gunpowder out of rolled paper, and the improved version that Southern Sung had used in 1259 to defend themselves from Mongols, which shot pellets from a bamboo barrel. By the fourteenth century, the Mongols were equipped with a true metal-barreled gun capable of shooting explosive pellets (Elvin, 197 89). When the Ming eventually inherited the disintegrating empire in the latter part of the fourteenth century, the use of firearms in warfare was fully characteristic (Elvin, 1973: 92). It is therefore difficult to countenance a view of Chinese technology as either stagnant or devoted to frivolous ends; it was "dead" serious. Had it not been dismantled, the Chinese would have proved a formidable enemy capable of rendering Portuguese ships and guns powerless. Nor were Chinese ships and navigational techniques in any inferior to those of the Europeans. As noted in Chapter 4, compass originated in China and then diffused to the Arabs Italians. The first clear reference to the use of the magnetic needle in Chinese navigation appears in a sea manual written around 900 AD., and, by the eleventh and twelfth centuries, floating compasses were in common use on Chinese ships (Needham lecture on "The Chinese Contribution to the Development of Mariners Compass.") as the wind-rose (Teixeira da Mota, 1964: 60). And throughout Sung and Yuan times. Chinese ships were larger and more seaworthy than those of any other nation. They were certainly the match of Europe, as the work of Lo demonstrates. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html) __ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
[PEN-L:11166] Re: finanz kapital
Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/16/99 01:11PM Hilferding and Lenin were extrapolating from the structure of Germany in the early 20th century. Hilferding said that the Anglo-American system - of stock markets and dispersed ownership - was fading and the German way was the way of the future. The early USSR took a cue from German industrial structure, thinking it was the future of capitalism, and created giant enterprises. But now it looks like the German system is fading and the Anglo-American one is spreading around the world. Maybe 10 years from now that will look quaint, I don't know. But Hildferding and Lenin aren't very enlightening about capitalism in 1999. ((( Charles: I suggest Chapter 9, "Financial Rulers of America" in _Superprofits and Crises_ by Victor Perlo, to dispel this notion that Lenin thought banks and not stock markets were the financial capitalist institutions. Perlo says "Ownership and control of stocks is part of the investment and trust functions of the banks. Investment Banking: Investment banking is the mobilization of capital for the formation , expansion and merger of corporations. This includes the accumulation of the vast sums needed by corporate giants; it involves handling investments of wealthy clients and as been broadened to take on pension funds, university funds and other funds that represent the collective holdings of groups of capitalists, and, in some cases, their workers through unions. These sources make up the trust funds, running into hundreds of billions of dollars, handled b the major banks and some other fianancial institutions. These funds are then used for investment nd provide part of the funding needed for new issues of bonds and stocks. The investment banking function also involves selling to broad circles the bond and stock issues of corporations and debt issue of governments." etc.. etc. in the same vein on Wallstreet and stock and bond market functions as part of finance capital functions. Every single Wallstreet type of institution is discussed in this chapter as important parts of the Leninist definition of finance capital and the financial oligarchy. It is completely inaccurate to say that the Leninist concept of finance capital does not include Wallstreet stock and bond market activities and functions. Charles Brown
[PEN-L:11167] Re: [Capitalist development
Mat However, you compare the numbers, whose ever number you use. They pale in significance beside the volume of capital accumulation within Europe. Twenty or fifty thousand pounds a week is peanuts compared to the volumes that were being accumulated. Yes the raw materials were important, the repatriated profits, the increase in liquidity, but the vast majority of the capital accumulated was accumulated from the surplus labour of Europeans. (and as Brad points out the labour of American cotton slaves). Many of our ancestors left Europe because the rate of exploitation was lower in the colonies. The legacy of Europeans in the periphery was for the most part not accumulation but destruction. 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:11173] Re: finanz kapital
(What is the largest "privately-held" corporation?) Cargill. Pretty close behind is UPS, but they are going to go partially public (1%) by the end of the year. ian
[PEN-L:11176] RE: Re: Re: finanz kapital
Speaking of Hilferding, anyone know if Finanz Kapital has even been translated to English, and if so, how to get it (the book, not the finanz kapital)? max
[PEN-L:11180] Re: Capitalist development
On Thu, 16 Sep 1999, Louis Proyect wrote: Jim Blaut, "Colonizer's Model of the World": It is now known beyond doubt that Chinese technology was on a par with that of the western part of the Old World, in some ways superior and in other ways inferior, during and before the Middle Ages. This new knowledge is devastating to many of the European miracle theories, those that claim that ancient and medieval European progress in technology was a crucial cause of the "miracle." If the Chinese were doing the same thing at the same times, the argument about Europes uniqueness just crumbles. The result has been a general modification of many of the miracle theories to take these newly known facts into account. Typically, the formula runs as follows: 2. "Whatever technological advances took place in medieval China, the important point is that they stopped." In the formula, this argument express in different ways for different spheres of technology, but the central argument is fairly standard: something characteristic of Chinese medieval culture forced it to cease developing and so to stagnate. In other words, what is plugged in here is the old doctrine of Oriental stagnation: Most typically, Weber is used to make this point: just about all of Weberian claims about the reasons for Chinese lack of progress are regularly paraded at this point. Some historians balk at using Webers thin argument about the stultifying effect of Confucianism. Others prefer to notice Webers ethnocentrism when he describes Chinese personality traits. But Webers arguments about the city, landowning, bureaucracy and empire are still quite regularly employed. The Chinese city was never "free" and did not have a real bourgeoisie. Chinese landowning was not close to private property. The Chinese bureaucracy and the Chinese imperial state were not "rational" and so held back the society fromm progress. It has always struck me that the key difference between Weberian and Marxist approaches to why England developed first was that something occurred in the relations of production in England that did not take place in China, which thereby made possible advances in English economic and technological development which did not take place in the rest of the world, even France at the same time. Thus, Jim Blaut's polemic against Weberians, is not one I would have a problem with (indeed, Lou, it is not unironic that Weberians are trying to teach you a thing or two about imperialism given Weber's own politics at key moments of the imperialist epoch), but his problem with Brenner has always been lost on me because he makes no clear distinction between Brenner and Weber's arguments about the origin of capitalist development. At least as far as I can tell. I would use Brenner's arguments against a Ricardo before Blaut, I think they are much more useful when dealing with the Weberian understanding of the origin of development Steve
[PEN-L:11181] Re: Social structue and hierarchy ofcapital:superprofiteers at thetop
Charles Brown wrote: I'm not sure, Roger. Does the below help ? Interesting that they discontinued reporting gross product of foreign affiliates of U.S. nonfinancial corps. Probably because it helps to show exactly what is being discussed right here. Half-data is a demogogic method. Right, Charles. Once they took over the fed govt in '81, the Reagan crowd set about killing sources of information, where they could, that helped people to more clearly see what is happening. Foreign affiliate gross product was one example, the urban family budget index, which measured budget needs similar to the marxian concept of social subsistence was another, as I have mentioned before. Let me correct something from my previous message. Because, as I said, there is no reliable data on net fixed investment by foreign affiliates that is comparable to domestic data (adjusting reported depreciation to reflect the replacement value and economic life of the asset), there can be no capital consumption adjustment to reported profits, as is done in the domestic data. Not only that, but (1) there is no inventory valuation adjustment made to profits in the foreign affiliate data, and (2) no accounting for interest paid by nonfinancial corps. That's three ways the profits shown in the foreign affiliate data, even when they were published, are not comparable to domestic data. Foreign affiliate data were published only three times as far as I know (they were constructed from a detailed survey of foreign production, done only periodically, which is the excuse the Reaganites used to kill them--too expensive), 1966, 70, 77. So adjustments and extrapolations must be done to even use them. I suspect that many who are throwing these data around are sloughing off these problems. On page 357 of _Superprofits and Crises_ is a Table (14-1) "Income from Foreign Investments and Total Property Income, U.S Selected Years, 1929 -1984 Income from Foreign Investments goes from 1.15 billion in 1929 to 105.15 billion in 1986. This income from For. Investments goes from 3.2 % of Total Property Income in 1929 to 11.8 % in 1986. Could be OK. I once compared profit shares for foreign and domestic production of US based corps for 1966-77, the years covered by the foreign affiliate data (lacking net fixed capital data for foreign affiliates, only profit shares can be compared, not profits rates---first warning sign: Look with a jaundiced eye upon anyone who claims he is comparing foreign and domestic profit rates. Even if fixed capital data were available for foreign production it would be original cost numbers that are not comparable to BEA numbers) Two thing were clearly happening then, and I would be surprised if either had changed very much: (1) the profit share (profits as a % of gross product) from foreign production exceeded that from domestic sources every year, and (2) foreign profits were probably a generally growing share of total profits for the period. In 1966, adding in the foreign profits raised the domestic share from 13.95% to 14.32%, when figured on a worldwide basis, an increase of .32 of a percentage point. By 1977, adding in foreign profits raised shares from 10.67% domestically, to 11.32 % on a worldwide basis, an increase of .65 percentage point. The profit numbers I used were after tax capital income (I think taxes must be eliminated in a study like this on profitability to properly see trends), which is profits plus interest payments, of nonfinancial corps. To compare them directly to Perlo, though, you need data on proportions, which I don't have at hand. Also, 1966 was a peak year for post WWII domestic profitability, while 1977 was much less, representing only partial recovery from the low point years of 1974-5, (there is a bigger disparity in profit rates, as opposed to shares during this time) so there are cyclical factors at work here to be disentangled. The Sources: (1) SCB, 3/87, T. 1-2, p.44; ERP 1987, B-99, p. 358; Hist. Stat, Vol.II, U5-U7, p.864. Includes fees and royalties from abroad, which are estimated for 1929 -1959. For 1986 only, includes an estimated $5 billion income on U.S. investments in Puerto Rico. (2) EROP, 1987, B-23, pp.270-71; Property income on a before-tax basis. On page 360 of _Superprofits and Crises_, Perlo has a Table (14-2) "Direct Foreign Investments, Leading Capitalist Countres Selected Years, 1950 -1982 (billions of dollars)" The U.S. goes from 12 billion in 1950 to 221 billion in 1982. UK gos from 8 to 77. etc. The Sources are "U.S - Hist. Stat; SCB", et al. One thing to distinguish: Data on profits returned to the US from total profits earned on foreign production. I'll have to check into these sources when I get a chance, and also see what Perlo is doing here. Roger
[PEN-L:11182] a pkt seminar with Michael Perelman
Pen-lers: This is to announce that Michael Perelman will be leading a pkt-seminar starting on October 7th. His seminar will focus on his book: The Natural Instability of Markets : Expectations, Increasing Returns, and the Collapse of Capitalism by Michael Perelman Hardcover - 188 pages 1 Ed edition (June 1999) St Martins Pr (Short); ISBN: 0312221215 ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.87 x 8.55 x 5.74 The seminar will be on the pkt-seminars list. If you are a subscriber to the pkt-seminars list already there is nothing you have to do. If you would like to subscribe to the pkt-seminars list, please send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the body of the message type: subscribe pkt-seminars your name. You will not receive any messages until the seminar begins. So, please take the time to read the book and participate. Thanks, -Ric Holt editor of pkt
[PEN-L:11183] Capitalist development
Steve: teach you a thing or two about imperialism given Weber's own politics at key moments of the imperialist epoch), but his problem with Brenner has always been lost on me because he makes no clear distinction between Brenner and Weber's arguments about the origin of capitalist development. Blaut has a new book coming out consisting of replies to six "Eurocentric" historians, including Brenner. I'll post info on it as soon I have details. PS, in the latest MR there's an interesting article (how could it be otherwise) by Ellen Meiksins Wood answering Brenner in the context of a discussion of the possibility of revolutionary politics. It was originally a talk given in South Africa at a joint conference of the ANC, SACP and COSATU. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:11186] Re: finanz kapital
Yes it has been translated. By Morris Watnick and Sam Gordon, edited by Tom Bottomore and published by Routledge in 1981. ---Original Message Follows From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Max Sawicky) Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:11176] RE: Re: Re: finanz kapital Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 19:56:57 -0400 Speaking of Hilferding, anyone know if Finanz Kapital has even been translated to English, and if so, how to get it (the book, not the finanz kapital)? max 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:11185] Re: Re: Capitalist development
On Thursday, September 16, 1999 at 13:21:18 (PDT) Rod Hay writes: The question is why did the Europeans burst out of their continent from the 15th century on, and why were they able to conquer everyone in their path. In a nutshell, if I remember Blaut correctly, they luckily stumbled upon America where they plundered with the aid of genocidal policies and germ warfare (against which the Native Americans had no defense), enriching themselves and laying the groundwork for a colossal Western Imperium. Bill
[PEN-L:11184] Re: Re: Re: Re: Social structue and hierarchy of capital:superprofiteers at the top
Max B. Sawicky wrote: How useful are these numbers would these numbers be, in light of the extent of multinational output wherein reported profits in countries are heavily influenced by tax avoidance considerations? I'm not sure I understand your question. A fundamental problem I am raising is that because foreign gross product type data isn't caclulated, foreign profit numbers are as reported by corps only, without the adjustments the BEA does to have the numbers better refelect economic reality. One element of the problem with reported profits is kind of tax effects you mention. Often foreign affiliates do have ways to avoid having revenue show up taxable profits, beyond the usual methods used at home. In taxing multi-state corps, state governments don't even try to estimate profits by state; they use simple formulas to apportion them for tax purposes. You mean for a state income tax?. As I'm sure you know, corporate headquarters are often in a different state (e.g., Delaware) than are their production and sales. On what basis is the taxable revenue apportioned, if you know? Roger
[PEN-L:11179] The Internet Anti-Fascist: Tuesday, 14 Sep 1999 -- 3:74 (#332)
__ The Internet Anti-Fascist: Tuesday, 14 September 1999 Vol. 3, Numbers 74 (#332) __ ANTI-FASCIST WEB UPDATED http://www.anti-fascism.org The web site for anti-fascism.org is updated. In particular, you may want to check out the "Latest Readings" where you can get the Antifa Info-Bulletin, the Holocaust Newsletter, and other works of interest. Remember that we also have a nice collection of archived documents there analyzing fascism as well as how to fight it. We also have some documents from the fascists themselves outlining their plans and tactics. -- MUMIA'S LIFE STILL HANGS IN THE BALANCE JOIN UNION WEEK OF ACTION AWARENESS WEEK: 19 - 25 September Chris Kinder (Labor Action Committee) 10 Sep 99 UPDATE: The threat of death still hanging over political prisoner Mumia Abu- Jamal is a gauntlet thrown down to the organized labor movement. Will we let this innocent brother die at the hands of a corrupt, racist and anti-labor state? Thousands of West Coast longshore workers said "no" in a loud voice on April 24th, when they shut down all West Coast ports to free Mumia, and led a march of 20,000 in San Francisco. Teachers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil also stopped work to free Mumia, on April 23rd. Oakland teachers held a teach-in on Mumia and the death penalty. Writing to longshore workers following the April 24th Coast shut-down, Mumia said, "I am quite thrilled to hear of your unionÕs powerful demonstration of solidarity! And I am honored as well. You are proving that the power of labor makes everythingÑeven positive change, and justice!" Meanwhile, Mumia has sacrificed his own interests to support labor, as when he refused to be interviewed by a scab ABC-TV crew during the NABET/CWA lockout in 1998. Now it is our turn to rise to the defense of this eloquent opponent of police brutality and racism. Time is running out. The following new statement was issued by Mumia on the 6th of September 1999: A SALUTE TO LABOR'S STRENGTH, by Mumia Abu-Jamal: "When one considers the recent actions of labor in support of this fight for justice and freedom, one can only be deeply and profoundly impressed. The Teach-Ins, the Brazilian Teachers' 2-hour work stoppage, the unprecedented Coast-wide ILWU shutdown of the ports on 24th April last, the international workersÕ actions in support of the Neptune Jade defendants in relation to dockers in Liverpool; we are witnessing something remarkable; the internationalization of support and struggle for fellow workers. I thank and applaud the Labor Action Committee for your principled support! I see this battle as only growing in strength, as it broadens and deepens its reach; and as it challenges capitalÕs lust for death; and as it supports the cause of life, of freedom, and of justice. I salute you! As a recent member of the National Writers Union (affiliated with the UAW, and through them, the AFL-CIO) I join you as we broaden this fight, as we labor on behalf of a better world, and a better life! For workers solidarity, Ona Move! LLJA!" -- Mumia Abu-Jamal" September 19 through the 25th has been set aside for nationwide protests to increase public awareness of JamalÕs case. Millions have heard a bogus new "confession" story from Vanity Fair magazine and ABCÕs 20/20, which claims that Jamal allegedly admitted to Philip Bloch in 1992 that he killed Officer Faulkner. Few have heard the replyÑthat this story is a lie, just like the earlier "confession" tale, which the police failed to "remember" until weeks after the fact. It is proven so by a letter Bloch himself sent to Jamal in 1993, stating he was confident that Jamal would receive a new trial where his innocence would be proven! Evidence also shows that Bloch could not have visited Jamal at the time of this so-called confession, since contrary to his claims, he had been fired by the Prison Society for which he worked when the interview with Mumia supposedly took place! The Vanity Fair and ABC stories trotted out the numerous lies, distortions and half-truths that have long been refuted by either the trial transcripts or the new evidence found in the case. The sensational new "confession" story was the only "new evidence" they chose to emphasize in their execution campaign. In fact, Mumia's trial was a mockery of justice from beginning to end: * Evidence that would have exonerated him was suppressed. Several witnesses, all of whom saw another man run from the scene, were not called. Ballistics "evidence" was concocted. * The key prosecution witnesses were given special treatment in exchange for false testimony; one of them, Veronica Jones, now admits she lied
[PEN-L:11178] Re: RE: Re: Re: finanz kapital
Max Sawicky wrote: Speaking of Hilferding, anyone know if Finanz Kapital has even been translated to English, and if so, how to get it (the book, not the finanz kapital)? It was. I've got an edition published in the early 1980s by Routledge Kegan Paul, but Amazon says it's out of print. Doug
[PEN-L:11177] Re: RE: Re: Re: finanz kapital
R. Hilferding, 1981, _Finance Capital_, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul At 07:56 PM 16/09/99 -0400, you wrote: Speaking of Hilferding, anyone know if Finanz Kapital has even been translated to English, and if so, how to get it (the book, not the finanz kapital)? max
[PEN-L:11175] RE: Re: Re: finanz kapital
$50billion or so in sales http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5202/carinc.html ian -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Jim Devine Sent: Thursday, September 16, 1999 3:56 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:11174] Re: Re: finanz kapital how big is Cargill compared to other corporations? At 03:44 PM 9/16/99 -0700, you wrote: (What is the largest "privately-held" corporation?) Cargill. Pretty close behind is UPS, but they are going to go partially public (1%) by the end of the year. ian Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/~JDevine
[PEN-L:11174] Re: Re: finanz kapital
how big is Cargill compared to other corporations? At 03:44 PM 9/16/99 -0700, you wrote: (What is the largest "privately-held" corporation?) Cargill. Pretty close behind is UPS, but they are going to go partially public (1%) by the end of the year. ian Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/~JDevine
[PEN-L:11172] Re: Re: Re: finanz kapital
Doug, isn't the auto industry also less concentrated? In the 50's the big 3 had the US tied up. Now, competition is international. Doug Henwood wrote: Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: But fostering deregulation, privatization, 'competition' dialectically have led to and continue to lead to further concentration of capital, right? I don't think concentration is incompatible with competition. The auto industry is a lot more competitive now than it was 30 years ago. The computer industry is intensely competitive. I'm not up on my theory of oligpolistic competition though. Doug -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
[PEN-L:11170] Capitalist development
Rod Hay: The question is why did the Europeans burst out of their continent from the 15th century on, and why were they able to conquer everyone in their path. Why? Because of their plunder of the Americas obviously. All the silver and gold ripped from Mexico, Brazil, Peru and Bolivia went into the coffers of Western European nations and gave them an edge in mercantile shipping and trade. If Latin America had nothing but quartz and sandstone, history would have had an entirely different outcome. It was the misfortune of the American Indian to be in possession of precious metals, who the genocidal Columbus announced he was there to seize in the name of the Crown and Jesus Christ. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:11169] Table 2 - better version (hopefully)
Table 2 Profit Ratios in the British slave trade and American automobile industry- Great Britain (pounds million)Gross Investment expenditures at home and abroad by British Investors 10.30 (a) Total flows of profits to British capitalists engaged in trade with the periphery 5.66 (b) Profits from commodities made or grown for export to the periphery 1.20 (c)profits from the slave trade .318 (d) - United States ($ billion) Gross private domestic investment 671.0 (e) corporate profits 284.4 (f) manufacturing profits 69.4 (g) profits of motor vehicles sector 5.9 (h) -- ratio of (b) over (a) .55ratio of (f) over (e) .42ratio of (c) over (a) .12ratio of (g) over (e) .10ratio of (d) over (a) .03ratio of (h) over (e) .009
[PEN-L:11168] Monthly review artices
Ellen Wood has a very insightful article in the Sept. 1999 "Monthly Review" titled "The Politics of Capitalism." Also John Bellamy Foster has written a moving tribute to Paul Sweezy, written on the occassion of Sweezy's receipt of the Veblen-Commons Award last January. michael yates
[PEN-L:11164] Role of the Colonial Trade
Mat asked me to post more readable versions of the tables. I hope the following is readable (and if not, I hope the attached file is readable). I couldn't do anything with table 2. Table 1 Export and Import Shares, 1986 GDP(a)Exports(a)Imports(a) Exports/GDP Imports/GDP US4,185.5217.31387.08.052 .092 UK 468.29 106.93126.33.228 .270 Brazil 206.7 23.4 15.56 .113 .075 Hong Kong32.2535.44 35.37 1.10 1.10 S. Korea 98.1534.72 31.58.35.32 Singapore17.3522.50 25.51 1.29 1.47 Philippines 30.54 4.7 5.4.15 .18 Argentina69.82 6.85 4.72 .098 .068 Venezuela49.9810.03 9.57.20 .19 Mexico 127.1416.24 11.99.13.09 Thailand 41.78 8.79 9.18 .21 .22 Peru 25.37 2.51 2.83 .10 .11 (a)in billions of dollars source: World Bank 1988 Table 1 Export and Import Shares, 1986 GDP(a)Exports(a)Imports(a) Exports/GDP Imports/GDP US4,185.5217.31387.08.052 .092 UK 468.29 106.93126.33.228 .270 Brazil 206.7 23.4 15.56 .113 .075 Hong Kong32.2535.44 35.37 1.10 1.10 S. Korea 98.1534.72 31.58.35.32 Singapore17.3522.50 25.51 1.29 1.47 Philippines 30.54 4.7 5.4.15 .18 Argentina69.82 6.85 4.72 .098 .068 Venezuela49.9810.03 9.57.20 .19 Mexico 127.1416.24 11.99.13.09 Thailand 41.78 8.79 9.18 .21 .22 Peru 25.37 2.51 2.83 .10 .11 (a)in billions of dollars source: World Bank 1988 Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/~JDevine
[PEN-L:11162] precious metals
Darity: O'Brien (1982: 12-16) also seeks to downgrade the importance to European development of precious metals obtained from the Americas and Africa. His discussion, oddly enough, does not consider the specie inflow as an addition to the monetary bases of the colonial powers and hence, through the credit-bank multiplier, fundamental to the expansion of finance. O'Brien (ibid.: 14) also indicates that there was a net drain of bullion from Europe to settle trade deficits with the Far East and Baltic states. However, one would be hard-pressed to establish that there was a net drain over time for Britain given the Anglo-Portuguese trade. Early in the eighteenth century, the Portunguese trade alone brought an estimated 50,000 pounds worth of bullion from Brazil's mines into London each week (Birnie 1935: 175, 180). Birnie, A. (1935) _An Economic History of the British Isles_, London: Methuen.
[PEN-L:11161] Re: finanz kapital
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/16/99 01:29PM Beyond that I agree that books by Hilferding on finance capital and Lenin on imperialism are not good guides for understanding 1999. Charles: Maybe going over the main elements of the theory of imperialism one by one will help here. Is the process of concentration and monopolization further along and continuning today ? How can anyone say that monopolization is less today than in 1900 ? This central concept of Lenin on imperialism is an extremely good guide for understanding 1999. In fact if you don't have it, you can't understand what is going on. Lenin's analysis of this is mainly an extension of Marx's analysis of the process in _Capital_. Another concept is "state-monopoly". The state apparatus serving more and more closely the growing monopolies. Privatization, deregulation, Keynesianism, The U.S. Treasury, The Fed. All of this is greater state-monopoly than in Lenin's day. 1999 has more state-monopoly than in 1900. Again, Lenin's analysis is an indispensable guide to understanding 1999 capitalism. Finance capital has been addressed. Lenin's argument is a good guide. Export of capital comes to predominate over export of goods. The imperialist metropole nations are exporting capital to colonies and other imperialist countries as a predominance over exporting goods. The formation of international monopoly capitalist associations which share the world among themselves. Fits 1999 to a tie. More than it fits 1900. The IMF, World Bank , NAFTA, new GATT are this process on a higher scale than in 1900. The one that has been reversed is territorial division and redivision of the world and heavy interimperialist rivalry. This is reversed largely because of their unit against the Soviet Union and socialist world system, which unity now continues after the fall of the SU. If one asks, "what in the world is going on ?", _Imperialism_ is still as good a guide as _The Communist Manifesto_ CB At 01:11 PM 9/16/99 -0400, you wrote: Charles Brown wrote (quoting Lenin): Finance capital is capital controlled by banks and employed by industrialists It's not that simple these days. If they were one (and Hilferding uses the image of the holy trinity to express their oneness) then there wouldn't have been all the battles between takeover artists and the Business Roundtable in the 1980s. Michael Jensen would have had nothing to write about from 1976 onwards. Large corporations would not be largely self-financing. Hilferding and Lenin were extrapolating from the structure of Germany in the early 20th century. Hilferding said that the Anglo-American system - of stock markets and dispersed ownership - was fading and the German way was the way of the future. The early USSR took a cue from German industrial structure, thinking it was the future of capitalism, and created giant enterprises. But now it looks like the German system is fading and the Anglo-American one is spreading around the world. Maybe 10 years from now that will look quaint, I don't know. But Hildferding and Lenin aren't very enlightening about capitalism in 1999. etc. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/~JDevine
[PEN-L:11160] Capitalist development
Ricardo: None of what is said below challenges the relative decline of China after 1500. Jim Blaut, "Colonizer's Model of the World": It is now known beyond doubt that Chinese technology was on a par with that of the western part of the Old World, in some ways superior and in other ways inferior, during and before the Middle Ages. This new knowledge is devastating to many of the European miracle theories, those that claim that ancient and medieval European progress in technology was a crucial cause of the "miracle." If the Chinese were doing the same thing at the same times, the argument about Europes uniqueness just crumbles. The result has been a general modification of many of the miracle theories to take these newly known facts into account. Typically, the formula runs as follows: 1. "If indeed the development of technology in medieval China forces us to ask why China did not, then, have its own miracle, we can least assert that China was the only civilization outside of Europe about which such questions arise." In other words, European superiority to everybody else is not put into doubt. This is convenient for those, instance, who want to show that India, Africa, the Middle East, and so on, had no potential for development. 2. "Whatever technological advances took place in medieval China, the important point is that they stopped." In the formula, this argument express in different ways for different spheres of technology, but the central argument is fairly standard: something characteristic of Chinese medieval culture forced it to cease developing and so to stagnate. In other words, what is plugged in here is the old doctrine of Oriental stagnation: Most typically, Weber is used to make this point: just about all of Weberian claims about the reasons for Chinese lack of progress are regularly paraded at this point. Some historians balk at using Webers thin argument about the stultifying effect of Confucianism. Others prefer to notice Webers ethnocentrism when he describes Chinese personality traits. But Webers arguments about the city, landowning, bureaucracy and empire are still quite regularly employed. The Chinese city was never "free" and did not have a real bourgeoisie. Chinese landowning was not close to private property. The Chinese bureaucracy and the Chinese imperial state were not "rational" and so held back the society fromm progress. One can respond to this argument in two steps. First, as Purcell pointed out, the important question really is how and why these Chinese advances happened, not how and why they stopped happening (if indeeed they did stop). In other words, historians must explain how China came be such a technologically innovative society that it outstripped other civilizations in many spheres of technology for many centuries. doesnt help in this process one bit. The whole Weberian scheme is an explanation for stagnation, and what we are talking about is impressive progress, not stagnation. The second step in the argument requires a focus on the precise period when, according to European miracle historians, the Chinese advance is supposed to have stopped. According to Elvin, broad-spectrum technical advances in China ended after the early fourteenth century. China at this time had perhaps the most advanced and most highly commercialized agriculture in the world. Chinese industrial technology was unexcelled in such fields as textile manufacture. Mechanical clocks were well known. Chinese merchant ships were plying throughout Southeast Asia and into the Indian ocean. Chinese guns were unexcelled. Canal technology was impressive. And so on. Broadly, the changes associated with the rise and travails of the Ming dynasty are associated with the slowing of technical advance, although advances continued to take place in some spheres of technology (shipbuilding, cannons, printing with movable metal type invented circa 1400, probably in Koreaand much more). But Europe at this time was not experiencing a major technical advance either. After 1350 Europe stagnated both economically and technically. There is little evidence that European technology was advancing prior to 1492. The Renaissance was not a technological revolution, as historians have long realized. After 1492 important European advances began again in some technical spheres (notably shipbuilding). Whether truly revolutionary technological change really began before the eighteenth century is a matter of contention among European historians. What does this say comparatively about China? It suggests that there is no problem of "stagnation." There was, instead, a slowing of progress during two centuries, in a scenario well known in all human cultures, because uneven progress is the norm. It suggests, rather, a problem that Third World historians focus some attention on but European historians tend to ignore. As a result of the European commercial expansion in the sixteenth centurywe argue in this book that the year
[PEN-L:11158] Re: Re: dynamic feedbacks
note 6 O'Brien (1982: 10) also acknowledges that "some 'dynamic' benefits certainly emanated from exports to the periphery." He lists the following potential gains: "From the beginning Europeans exchanged manufactured goods for primary produce and precious metals. The governments regulated trade to promote this tendency by restricting manufacturing in their imperial possessions. Europeans also specialized in the sale of shipping, banking, and insurance services to other continents (partly because they pioneered technical breakthroughs in these spheres of business) but basically to obtain means (other than gold and silver) to pay for the persitently adverse balance of commodity trade with India and China. The efficiency of Chinese and Indian industry pushed the maritime nations toward s specialization in commercial services. European ships captured an increasing share of the waterborne trade on the Indian Ocean and the china seas from the fleets of the Orient, and by the seventeenth century a sizable share of transport and mercantile services. Such patterns of specialization stimulated shipbuilding. And the development of banks, insurance, and shipping companies to service oceanic trade are all part of the commercial and institutional development which promoted industry and urban development. The direction of such effects is not in doubt" (ibid.: 10-11). But after introducing this array of "dynamic benefits," which seem to undermine his case for the insignificance of the periphery for Europe's economic development, O'Brien (ibid.: 11) immediately downplays their importance by invoking his small ratios argument: "Nevertheless, the feedbacks to industry and shipbuilding as well as the obvious spinoffs to commercial development are not understated by the small ratios of exports sold to and imports purchased from other continents."
[PEN-L:11156] Re: SUPERNORMAL PROFITS?
Supernormal Profits? The small ratios argument is the crux of the empirical basis for dismissing the proposition that the slave trade and the colonial plantation system were instrumental in British economic development. It is a weak basis. Another a priori argument that emerges with less frequency (see Anderson and Richardson 1983; O'Brien 1982 8-9) is that the slave trade was a highly competitive industry where only "normal" profits could be earned. The inference then drawn is that in the absence of supernormal profits, the slave trade could not have played a role in Britain's accumulation of wealth prior to or during the industrial revolution. But this is an insubstantial argument. As I have pointed out elsewhere (Darity 1985: 694; 1989). conclusions drawn about the degree of competition in the slave trade indsutry provide no information about the volume of slave trade profits, slave trade profitability, or the specific channels into which slave trade profits subsequently flowed. Ironically, O'Brien (1982: 9) suggests that in the early stages of the slave trade, what he terms "superexploitative" profits were earned until additional entrants drove the profit rate in the slave trade into line with other sectors. This suggests that the slave trade, at least for a while, offered an investment outlet that propped up the general rate of profit. In fact, depending upon one's theory of the determination of the general rate of profit, it is possible to argue that the slave trade led to a higher rate of profit than otherwise would have prevailed, thereby contributing a powerful stimulus to British industry. The important issue is the determination of the general rate of profit and the mechanisms that led to equalization of profit rates across all activities. The monopoly versus nonmonopoly nature of slave trade profits is a false issue. 2 B CONTINUED
[PEN-L:11155] Future Postings of Progressive Response
Dear members of pen-l discussion list, We at Foreign Policy in Focus have enjoyed the engaging discussions on this list, however due to the high volume of email we receive at this account we will be signing off of the list. This of course means we will not be posting materials from the project. We hope you found the Progressive Repsonse and Foreign Policy in Focus briefing papers worthwhile. If you want to receive the weekly Progressive Response directly please visit our website and enter your email address or follow format below. best regards, Tim McGivern Foreign Policy in Focus [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org To subscribe to The Progressive Response, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the words join newusfp in the body of the message.
[PEN-L:11154] Re: Capitalist development
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 14:04:33 -0400 To:[EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:11148] Capitalist development Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] None of what is said below challenges the relative decline of China after 1500. If time allows I might deal with this. Important to understand as well that the issue is not only the rise of capitalism, defined as an economic system, but of modernity which includes the ideal of the self-determination of the individual. Janet Abu-Lughod, "Before European Hegemony": The Chinese evidently stumbled upon the explosive character of gunpowder around 650 A.D., although the first reference to it does not appear before a mid-ninth century science text. By the early tenth century gunpowder is mentioned as the ignition for a flame-throwing weapon, and by about 1000 A.D. "the practice of using gunpowder in simple bombs and grenades was coming into use" (Needham, "The Epic of Gunpowder and Firearms). The illustrations in Needham leave little doubt that the Chinese used gunpowder for more than fireworks displays. Chinese artisans working under the Chin transformed the relatively mild gunpowder known to the Sung into a true explosive first employed in 1221; a further innovation in 1272_1273 combined the standard Muslim mechanical stone thrower with an explosive projectile (Elvin, 1973: 88). By the early fourteenth century, if before, a device that is unmistakably a cannon for lobbing bombs was in use (see the illustration of it in Needham, reprinted 1981), and Lo (1955) tells us that ships of the Yuan navy were regularly equipped with this device. The "gun" proper also appeared about this time. It was a logical extension of the Chin's earlier "fire spurting lances," which shot gunpowder out of rolled paper, and the improved version that Southern Sung had used in 1259 to defend themselves from Mongols, which shot pellets from a bamboo barrel. By the fourteenth century, the Mongols were equipped with a true metal-barreled gun capable of shooting explosive pellets (Elvin, 197 89). When the Ming eventually inherited the disintegrating empire in the latter part of the fourteenth century, the use of firearms in warfare was fully characteristic (Elvin, 1973: 92). It is therefore difficult to countenance a view of Chinese technology as either stagnant or devoted to frivolous ends; it was "dead" serious. Had it not been dismantled, the Chinese would have proved a formidable enemy capable of rendering Portuguese ships and guns powerless. Nor were Chinese ships and navigational techniques in any inferior to those of the Europeans. As noted in Chapter 4, compass originated in China and then diffused to the Arabs Italians. The first clear reference to the use of the magnetic needle in Chinese navigation appears in a sea manual written around 900 AD., and, by the eleventh and twelfth centuries, floating compasses were in common use on Chinese ships (Needham lecture on "The Chinese Contribution to the Development of Mariner's Compass.") as the wind-rose (Teixeira da Mota, 1964: 60). And throughout Sung and Yuan times. Chinese ships were larger and more seaworthy than those of any other nation. They were certainly the match of Europe, as the work of Lo demonstrates. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:11153] Re: Re: finanz kapital
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: But fostering deregulation, privatization, 'competition' dialectically have led to and continue to lead to further concentration of capital, right? I don't think concentration is incompatible with competition. The auto industry is a lot more competitive now than it was 30 years ago. The computer industry is intensely competitive. I'm not up on my theory of oligpolistic competition though. Doug
[PEN-L:11152] Re: Re: Role of the Colonial Trade
Perhaps you should, since so far you have merely said that someone said that O'Brien was wrong without saying why. I do thank you for those sources as I was unware of Darity. I just dont have the time to check them, not that I will find them anyways in my small library. very unfair, Ricardo. have you looked at the Darity article that explicitly takes on the O'Brien stuff?? Should I type in the tables with the figures from his 1992 article?? I will do that if you request it. But don't ignore what I have put forward and dismiss it as sound and fury. Also, "factual-analytical content" can be presented with sound and fury, or are you proposing that they are mutually exclusive. -Original Message- From: Ricardo Duchesne [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, September 16, 1999 9:21 AM Subject: [PEN-L:11122] Re: Role of the Colonial Trade Barkley, The profits from the slave trade is only one aspect of a series of statistical arguments I have made showing that the colonial trade was not crucial to the industrialization of Europe, or England. I have some stuff on the cotton trade which I may post later on. But I have to say that, except for some points Ajit has made, what I have said still awaits a serious challenge here in pen-l, unless you think that arguments, full of sound and fury about the pillage of the colonies, but lacking any factual-analytical content regarding the issue at hand, should be taken seriously. Ricardo, You have focused on the profits from the slave trade, which was certainly a focus of Williams himself. But what about the argument mentioned by Brad De Long regarding lower cotton prices due to the exploitation of slave labor? Barkley Rosser Come on, progressive economists, Fostater pleads, how can you say that the colonial trade was not responsible for the industrialization of Europe? I would suggest, rather, that the political effect of dependency theory on the left has been divisive, setting up countries and ethnic groups against each other, foregoing universalist aspirations, which the right quite effectively took on as its own in the late 70s. But I really dont want to get into this. Here's more on O'Brien and some of his other, subsidiary, arguments, which I think might very well be enough to settle this issue here in pen-l: 1) It has not yet been shown that the rates of profits which European colonialists enjoyed in the periphery were "persistently" above the the rates "which they could have earned on feasible investments" in their home countries, or in other economies of the world. Citing studies on profits from the sugar plantations, he says that, over the long run, such earnings were *average*, fluctuating around or below 10%. Or, if I may add another figure, the percentage of slve profits in the formation of British capital was a tiny 0.11% (Anstey). Engerman, for his part, has calculated "the gross value of slve trade output" to England's national income to be 1%, to rise to 1.7% in 1770. (Of couse, if we take the triangular trade as a whole we are dealing with something more substantial, but I would agree with Rod that forward and backward linkages hold for any industry.) O'Brien also cites other studies which question the profitability of the Navigation Acts. If I may cite one source discussing a particular aspect of these Acts "...The benefit to the home country corresponding to the burden on the North American colonies was still smaller. In fact, it was itself probably a burden, not a benefit. Requiring certain colonial exports and imports to pass through Britain had the beneficial effects of reducing the prices of such goods to British consumers...The cost to British taxpayers of defending and administering the North American colonies was, by contrast, five times the maximun benefit" (Thomas and McCloskey, 1981). Likewise, even if Europeans had been forced to pay 'free market prices' for their colonial products, that would have simply worsened the terms of trade *within* this sector, which constituted a small share of total trade and an even smaller, "tiny" share of gross product. 2) What about Deane's claim that the colonial re-exports allowed Europe to acquire essential raw materials - never mind profit margins? First, O'Brien says that colonial foodstuffs contributed marginally to the supplies of calories available to Europeans. Second, that without the imported colonial produtcs, Europe would merely have experienced, *in the short run*, before substitutions were found, "a decline of not more than 3% or 4% in industrial output.
[PEN-L:11148] Capitalist development
Rod Hay wrote: Europe did have the "advantages" of superior sailing technology, superior arms, an experienced military and a social system which encouraged private accumulation. Janet Abu-Lughod, "Before European Hegemony": The Chinese evidently stumbled upon the explosive character of gunpowder around 650 A.D., although the first reference to it does not appear before a mid-ninth century science text. By the early tenth century gunpowder is mentioned as the ignition for a flame-throwing weapon, and by about 1000 A.D. "the practice of using gunpowder in simple bombs and grenades was coming into use" (Needham, "The Epic of Gunpowder and Firearms). The illustrations in Needham leave little doubt that the Chinese used gunpowder for more than fireworks displays. Chinese artisans working under the Chin transformed the relatively mild gunpowder known to the Sung into a true explosive first employed in 1221; a further innovation in 12721273 combined the standard Muslim mechanical stone thrower with an explosive projectile (Elvin, 1973: 88). By the early fourteenth century, if before, a device that is unmistakably a cannon for lobbing bombs was in use (see the illustration of it in Needham, reprinted 1981), and Lo (1955) tells us that ships of the Yuan navy were regularly equipped with this device. The "gun" proper also appeared about this time. It was a logical extension of the Chins earlier "fire spurting lances," which shot gunpowder out of rolled paper, and the improved version that Southern Sung had used in 1259 to defend themselves from Mongols, which shot pellets from a bamboo barrel. By the fourteenth century, the Mongols were equipped with a true metal-barreled gun capable of shooting explosive pellets (Elvin, 197 89). When the Ming eventually inherited the disintegrating empire in the latter part of the fourteenth century, the use of firearms in warfare was fully characteristic (Elvin, 1973: 92). It is therefore difficult to countenance a view of Chinese technology as either stagnant or devoted to frivolous ends; it was "dead" serious. Had it not been dismantled, the Chinese would have proved a formidable enemy capable of rendering Portuguese ships and guns powerless. Nor were Chinese ships and navigational techniques in any inferior to those of the Europeans. As noted in Chapter 4, compass originated in China and then diffused to the Arabs Italians. The first clear reference to the use of the magnetic needle in Chinese navigation appears in a sea manual written around 900 AD., and, by the eleventh and twelfth centuries, floating compasses were in common use on Chinese ships (Needham lecture on "The Chinese Contribution to the Development of Mariners Compass.") as the wind-rose (Teixeira da Mota, 1964: 60). And throughout Sung and Yuan times. Chinese ships were larger and more seaworthy than those of any other nation. They were certainly the match of Europe, as the work of Lo demonstrates. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:11146] Re: finanz kapital
I think the relationship between finance and industry is more complex than Doug Henwood, who wrote the original post suggests, as the author of Wall Street surely knows. Just as prosperity in Japan led the major corporations to dabble in zaitech, so too corporations in the United States playing with derivatives and other risky operations. I would very much like to know much financial fragility this creates. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
[PEN-L:11145] Re: finanz kapital
There's one valid point to the Hilferding emphasis on the merger of finance and industry (that Lenin took up). Even before the current era when the captains of industry are in harmony with financiers because they try to get as much as possible from their stock options, the modern industrial corporation was also a financial corporation. This does not simply refer to the fact that General Motors includes GMAC which lends money to car-buyers. It also refers to the corporate form itself, which uses financial organization to combine the scattered capitals of many capitalists (along with the big ones of the Dupont family or whoever has replaced them). Without the essentially financial form of the limited liability joint-stock company, large businesses like GM would be rare. (What is the largest "privately-held" corporation?) Beyond that I agree that books by Hilferding on finance capital and Lenin on imperialism are not good guides for understanding 1999. At 01:11 PM 9/16/99 -0400, you wrote: Charles Brown wrote (quoting Lenin): Finance capital is capital controlled by banks and employed by industrialists It's not that simple these days. If they were one (and Hilferding uses the image of the holy trinity to express their oneness) then there wouldn't have been all the battles between takeover artists and the Business Roundtable in the 1980s. Michael Jensen would have had nothing to write about from 1976 onwards. Large corporations would not be largely self-financing. Hilferding and Lenin were extrapolating from the structure of Germany in the early 20th century. Hilferding said that the Anglo-American system - of stock markets and dispersed ownership - was fading and the German way was the way of the future. The early USSR took a cue from German industrial structure, thinking it was the future of capitalism, and created giant enterprises. But now it looks like the German system is fading and the Anglo-American one is spreading around the world. Maybe 10 years from now that will look quaint, I don't know. But Hildferding and Lenin aren't very enlightening about capitalism in 1999. etc. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/~JDevine
[PEN-L:11143] finanz kapital
Charles Brown wrote (quoting Lenin): Finance capital is capital controlled by banks and employed by industrialists It's not that simple these days. If they were one (and Hilferding uses the image of the holy trinity to express their oneness) then there wouldn't have been all the battles between takeover artists and the Business Roundtable in the 1980s. Michael Jensen would have had nothing to write about from 1976 onwards. Large corporations would not be largely self-financing. Hilferding and Lenin were extrapolating from the structure of Germany in the early 20th century. Hilferding said that the Anglo-American system - of stock markets and dispersed ownership - was fading and the German way was the way of the future. The early USSR took a cue from German industrial structure, thinking it was the future of capitalism, and created giant enterprises. But now it looks like the German system is fading and the Anglo-American one is spreading around the world. Maybe 10 years from now that will look quaint, I don't know. But Hildferding and Lenin aren't very enlightening about capitalism in 1999. .There was more free competition in the 1800's. With the 1900's there is an enormous concentration of wealth relative to then. There's been concentration, but it's hard to argue that the economic scene isn't more competitive now than it was 20 years ago, before the deregulation and privatization of everything. Lenin Hilferding were talking about state-sponsored cartels eliminating competition; now we have states around the world fostering competition. Finance capital as Hilferding defines it is the locus of the monopolies, giant companies of banks and industrial enterprises with interlocking directorates, and more closely coordinated activities with the purpose of making M' for the owners of the banks/financial institutions and the industrial corps. And how relevant is that to 1999? Doug
[PEN-L:11142] Re: Capitalist development
Europe did have the "advantages" of superior sailing technology, superior arms, an experienced military and a social system which encouraged private accumulation. Original Message Follows From: "Mathew Forstater" [EMAIL PROTECTED] yes, at the time of initial contact Europe was far from "ahead" of Africa, Asia, etc., in these areas, or others. Quite the contrary. The white ages in Europe (so called "dark ages") were times of flourishing civilizations for example Ghana, Mali, Songhai, etc. with universities, long distance trade made possible by agricultural and craft production, and so on, truths not simply romanticizations--though there has been romanticizing, of course, but not all of this is romanticizing--with lots of evidence to support it. mf -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wednesday, September 15, 1999 7:47 PM Subject: [PEN-L:11099] Capitalist development Wojtek: Charles, the ethical aspects of colonialism aside - if the wealth of European capitalism originated in the third world, why did not that wealth produce economic development on a par with capitalism outside Europe prior to the plunder? I'm not Charles, but I'd like to take a crack at that. In reality, Europe was relatively underdeveloped in AD 1250-1350. Here's Janet Abu-Lughod's take on medieval China in "Before European Hegemony": In the past, before western scholars had sufficient information about Chinas achievements in science and technology, it was commonly argued that Europes eventual triumph in the world was the result of her unique scientific and technological inventiveness, and, conversely, that Orientals, although perhaps "clever" had never been able to sustain a scientific revolution. The voluminous investigations of Needham (inter alia, 195485, 1970, have more than corrected this error. We now have much documentation on Chinese contributions to medicine and physiology, physics and mathematics, as well as their more practical applications in technology. According to Sivin (1982: 105106), Needham did not go far enough; he stopped short of admitting that, by Sung times, China had had a true scientific "revolution," a position strongly argued by Chinese scholars (e.g., Li et al., 1982; although Chang, 1957, dissents). Whether or not the term "scientific revolution" is justified, there can be no doubt that in late medieval times the level of Chinese technical competence far exceeded the Middle East, which, in turn, had outstripped Europe for many centuries. Space permits only a few examples here: paper and printing, iron and steel, weaponry (including guns, cannons, and bombs), shipbuilding and navigational techniques, as well as two primary manufactured exports, silk and porcelain. According to Tsien (in Li et al., 1982: 459): "paper was invented in China before the Christian era, adopted for wnting at the beginning of the 1st century A.D., and manufactured with new and fresh fibres from the early 2nd century... . Woodblock printing was first employed.., around 700 A.D. and moveable type in the middle of the 11th century." Some time in the ninth century, the Arabs learned the process of paper making from the Chinese and later transmitted that precious knowledge to "westerners." Braudel (1973: 295) suggests that the first European paper mills appeared in twelfth-century Spain but that the Italians did not begin to produce paper until the fourteenth Century; Cipolla (1976: 206), basing his remarks on a 1953 article by Irigoin, however, claims that by the second half of the thirteenth Century the court in Byzantium no longer bought its paper from the Arabs but from Italy. (For more details, see T. F. Carter, 1925, revised 1955.) But in any case, Chinas edge was significant. Even more impressive than paper manufacture were Chinese advances in siderurgy, which were several hundred years in advance of Europes. From at least the eighth century onward, coal was being mined in northern China and used in furnaces that produced high-quality iron and even steel "either by means of the Co of pig iron and wrought iron, or by direct decarbonization in a cold oxidizing blast" (Elvin, 1973: 86; see also Needham and Steel Production in Ancient and Medieval China," 19 reproduced in Needham, 1970: 107112, and the works of Hartwell, 1962, 1966, 1967). Hartwells (1967) estimates of the scale of iron production are truly staggering. By his calculations, the tonnage of coal annually in the eleventh century for iron production alone in northren China was "roughly equivalent to 70 percent of the amount of coal annually used by all metal workers in Great Britain at the beginning of the eighteenth century" (Hartwell, 1967: 122) By the end of the eleventh century the Sung were minting coins and making many metal products as well. According to Hartwell (1967: 122123): "7,000 workers were engaged in actually mining the ore and fuel operating
[PEN-L:11140] Re: Capitalist development
On Wojtek's question, the wealth of the nations in which the capitalist mode of production prevails originates in labor. That is labor is the source of all new exchange-value (not use-value; nature is also a source of use-value) So, the wealth gotten by early imperialist European capitalism from colonies and slavery was from the labor of colonial laborers and slave laborers. The capitalist mode of production did not prevail in these colonies and slaveries before the European conquest. So, exhange-value wealth was not being developed a la capitalist economic development before the capitalists got there. That's the direct answer to your question.Exchange occurred in between societies and in the margins in societies before the capitalist mode of production came to prevail. A further point is given the subsequent development of capitalism, it is now problematic to designate capitalist "wealth" as legitimately wealth given its overall and increasingly negative effect on the commonWEAL of humanity. It is losing its use-value underpinning which is necessary for any commodity to be a depository of exchange-value. So, it seem the non-Europeans were correct not to develop their use-values in the way the Europeans subsequently did, that is Europan capitalist economic practice is not really development. (See thread on Chinese wisely not leaping like fools into "capitalism" when they might have before Europe). Charles Brown By the way, even the raw materials plundered , use-values directly from nature, could not be had without labor. That is why Marx's mentions especially the Indians who were entombed in mines, e.g., etc. Their labor was the source of the exchange-value of gold and silver, and rubber, etc., etc. We see here that Marx's labor theory of value is inextricably linked with an anti-colonialist/ anti-slavery perspective on the subject of this thread. Marx notes especially the role of colonial and slave labor as the "chief momenta of the primitive accumulation of European capitalism". The primitive accumulation phase of European capitalism is in its merchantile and manufacturing, not industrial revolution period. But the primitive accumulation is a without which not of the subsequent industrial leap. So, though slavery continued until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in England, it was ending then. So slavery as necessary cause of the wealth in the industrial phase may be predominantly indirect ( but still NECESSARY AND CRITICAL) from the slightly earlier period. On the other hand, Brad D. and others have noted that cotton was big and that was at the industrial revolution, I believe. I believe the biggest capitalist industry at the beginning of the industrial revolution was the cotton manufacturing industry. Cotton and other clothes manufacturing were a main type industry of the initial industrial revolution in England at the beginning of the 1800's. Thus, Marx's examples in _Capital_ early chapters are of cloth making and tailoring. Charles Brown "Mathew Forstater" [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/16/99 11:44AM yes, at the time of initial contact Europe was far from "ahead" of Africa, Asia, etc., in these areas, or others. Quite the contrary. The white ages in Europe (so called "dark ages") were times of flourishing civilizations for example Ghana, Mali, Songhai, etc. with universities, long distance trade made possible by agricultural and craft production, and so on, truths not simply romanticizations--though there has been romanticizing, of course, but not all of this is romanticizing--with lots of evidence to support it. mf -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wednesday, September 15, 1999 7:47 PM Subject: [PEN-L:11099] Capitalist development Wojtek: Charles, the ethical aspects of colonialism aside - if the wealth of European capitalism originated in the third world, why did not that wealth produce economic development on a par with capitalism outside Europe prior to the plunder? I'm not Charles, but I'd like to take a crack at that. In reality, Europe was relatively underdeveloped in AD 1250-1350. Here's Janet Abu-Lughod's take on medieval China in "Before European Hegemony": In the past, before western scholars had sufficient information about China*s achievements in science and technology, it was commonly argued that Europe*s eventual triumph in the world was the result of her unique scientific and technological inventiveness, and, conversely, that Orientals, although perhaps "clever" had never been able to sustain a scientific revolution. The voluminous investigations of Needham (inter alia, 1954*85, 1970, have more than corrected this error. We now have much documentation on Chinese contributions to medicine and physiology, physics and mathematics, as well as their more practical applications in technology. According to Sivin (1982: 105*106), Needham did not go far
[PEN-L:11139] Re: Re: Back to Smith, Bentham, Cobden Bright? (was Re: Role of theColonial Trade)
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Why do they insist on going back before Keynes Marx??? Heck, lets go back to the Bronze Age. "...Sumerians took the lead in developing their raw materials periphery from Asia Minor to the Iranian highlands. Even in these Bronze Age millenia it was the industrial centre that took the lead in developing a foreign raw materials producing capacity to supply needed metals, stone, wood and other geographically specific products not founs at home. It is also significant that Bronze Age Mesopotamian industry was developed initially in public hands (the temples and palaces) only later passing into private hands. The implication is that the privatisation of industry and policy tends to follow its public inception, being introduced only when public enterprise and policy have done their jobs successfully." *Trade, Development and Foreign Debt*, MIchael HUdson,460. sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:11138] FW: A Tale of a Community College
-Original Message- From: Craven, Jim Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 1999 6:06 PM To: Campus Master List Cc: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: A Tale of a Community College Here is a true tale about an Indian community college; it shall remain nameless as it doesn't matter and sadly it is not atypical from that found on many Indian reservations in America and reserves in Canada. This community college was visited by an accreditation team and passed. The accreditation team visited, surveyed and made some suggestions but essentially gave it a clear pass. They were shown around the school and reservation, but there was a whole other reality--sub rosa--they were never shown and didn't do much to look for. For example, the accreditation team missed the fact that the President and her husband, a faculty member, plus other family members also on staff or faculty, were running up travel bills amounting to $73,000 per year for one person and close to that amount for others individually. They were going to "conferences" in Stockholm, Paris, Hawaii. Recently, the bookkeeper of that College quit out of disgust and out of fear of a federal investigation. The key computer person of that college, with access to all the records, and herself trained in law and who had tried to leak some sensitive information out of the college, was recently found dead in a highly suspicious car wreck that several insiders are calling murder. The accreditation team missed the fact that for over three years, planning and funding had been in place to put in a T-1 line and to hook up the college to internet (especially critical since the library at the college is abysmal) but that college still remains not hooked up due to the squandering of designated funds and a now former dean who was a chronic and lazy alcoholic and coke-head. The accreditation team missed the fact that on the Board of Trustees, all but one were trusted insiders put and kept on the Board through insider processes by other trusted insiders of a corrupt Tribal Council and several prominent and corrupt families; those Board members acted as a rubber stamp for anything the College administration wanted to do. The accreditation team missed the fact that several of the faculty members had been hired through insider and family connections, had no teaching experience, had embellished or falsified credentials, or no credentials, and were nonetheless in critical positions and caused critical damages vis-a-vis critical and foundational subjects not being properly taught by those with proper qualifications. The accreditation team missed the fact that large amounts of funds designated for capital expenditures had been diverted into travel and to cover deficits in non-capital accounts such that critical capital construction was put off and when a pending audit was coming down, faculty and staff were pressured to surrender 10% of their monthly salaries in an attempt to cover the illicitly diverted funds. The accreditation team missed the fact that "honors graduates" of this college were being admitted to surrounding colleges and universities and were being found horribly deficient in the most basic skills and knowledge necessary for any beginning freshman or sophomore to have any chance of success; the non-honors graduates were even in worse shape, and the graduates of the college, percentage-wise, were small in relation to total enrollees and potential graduates. They missed diversions of Pell Grant and Workforce/Worker Retraining funds--to cover shortages in other accounts-- desperately needed by poor students on limited time and money allotments of training.( Some students getting checks for $4.95 after normally getting checks around $80 to $160) And when these and other matters are investigated, as they will be some time, there will be even more damages as the college is turned upside down with possibly excellent faculty and staff lost--along with hopefully the corrupt ones. In all of this and in much much more missed by the accreditation team, this college and its students were given no favor by being given a pass. No doubt, some of the acccreditation team members with genuine sympathies for the plight of Indians and the pressures/constraints of an Indian community college, were motivated out of a desire not to be too harsh and to give the college a chance to improve. But out of this accreditation visit, and all that was hidden or missed, many opportunity costs ( lost potential returns of lost or foregone opportunities) occurred and are mounting. This college, and its precious young--and older--students, the only hope for a Tribe on the verge of extinction--in terms of training the future leaders and workers and families of the Tribe--was left neglected and superficially or parochially examined; and worse of all, it was left with some very corrupt elements still in
[PEN-L:11136] RE: Re: AIDS, Inhuman Experiments, Imperialism
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, September 16, 1999 7:56 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:11125] Re: AIDS, Inhuman Experiments, Imperialism Did anybody mention the importance of workers living away from their families in labor camps? I might have missed it if they did. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] No Michael it was not mentioned and this observation is extremely important. With globalization and IMF-like measures forcing highly volatile labor mobility at increasing distances from families of workers, and given that workers are more highly dispersed over greater distances than any informational and preventative measures could be dispersed, and givne normal sexual appetities and drives, and given that prostitutes are highly mobile and/or people seek substitutes when at long distance, all of these add up to mounting AIDS epidemics among the most vulnerable to the vicissitudes of imperialism who must be the most mobile to live. In India, for example, and I remember when there was no AIDS and I remember when it started, the main transmission mechanisms were/are: long-distance lorry drivers using prostitutes and bringing AIDS home; poverty-driven hetero and gay prostitution in Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta, Bangalore and elsewhere; sexual tourism primarily from Europe; tainted blood supplies due to lack of state-of-the-art blood screening for transfusions; But as with everything else under imperialism, the precious resources including scientists, necessary for the war on AIDS, are all induced and locked up in the "rich countries" working for those who will ultimately selectively charge for or make available, state-of-the-art medicines that will invariably and disproportionately go to the rich, comfortable and white or mostly white while they hope that the poor and marginalized just go off somewhere and die. Jim C.
[PEN-L:11132] Re: Back to Smith, Bentham, Cobden Bright? (was Re: Role of theColonial Trade)
Mat wrote: But Smith, contrary to much popular misconception clearly stated the many advantages that came to the colonizers as well as the disadvantages to the colonized. The chapters on mercantilism, etc. are filled with this stuff, including the increase in natural resources and land, and gold and silver, the markets for exports of European manufactured goods and capital goods, and on and on. In addition, Smith's particular emphasis on the opening up of new markets for European manufactures feeds right back into the theory begun to be developed right from book 1 ch. 1-3 on the division of labor. This is what Kaldor was reviving, in combination with a dynamic extension of Keynes's principle of effective demand. Smith saw a mutually reinforcing dynamic between capital accumulation and technological advance, and key was the expansion of markets as outlets for European manufactures. Everything was there in Smith except for the principle of effective demand, you just have to piece it together, as many authors have done. I agree. I simply wrote that post to point out that leftist analyses that discount the roles of colonialism imperialism in the development of capitalism end up implying, in a manner reminiscent of neoclassical economic ideology, that there was no inherent difficulty (whether you analyze it as the problem of 'effective demand' or 'the natural tendency of profits to fall,' depending on your political persuasions) within capitalism that colonialism imperialism helped to 'solve' in some real economic sense for capitalists. (Perhaps I should have titled my post 'Back to Say's Law?') The world of counterfactuals allows such leftists to also ignore the fact that a solution to a problem has to be found 'in time,' under given social relations. Why do they insist on going back before Keynes Marx??? Yoshie
[PEN-L:11130] Re: Capitalist development
yes, at the time of initial contact Europe was far from "ahead" of Africa, Asia, etc., in these areas, or others. Quite the contrary. The white ages in Europe (so called "dark ages") were times of flourishing civilizations for example Ghana, Mali, Songhai, etc. with universities, long distance trade made possible by agricultural and craft production, and so on, truths not simply romanticizations--though there has been romanticizing, of course, but not all of this is romanticizing--with lots of evidence to support it. mf -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wednesday, September 15, 1999 7:47 PM Subject: [PEN-L:11099] Capitalist development Wojtek: Charles, the ethical aspects of colonialism aside - if the wealth of European capitalism originated in the third world, why did not that wealth produce economic development on a par with capitalism outside Europe prior to the plunder? I'm not Charles, but I'd like to take a crack at that. In reality, Europe was relatively underdeveloped in AD 1250-1350. Here's Janet Abu-Lughod's take on medieval China in "Before European Hegemony": In the past, before western scholars had sufficient information about Chinas achievements in science and technology, it was commonly argued that Europes eventual triumph in the world was the result of her unique scientific and technological inventiveness, and, conversely, that Orientals, although perhaps "clever" had never been able to sustain a scientific revolution. The voluminous investigations of Needham (inter alia, 195485, 1970, have more than corrected this error. We now have much documentation on Chinese contributions to medicine and physiology, physics and mathematics, as well as their more practical applications in technology. According to Sivin (1982: 105106), Needham did not go far enough; he stopped short of admitting that, by Sung times, China had had a true scientific "revolution," a position strongly argued by Chinese scholars (e.g., Li et al., 1982; although Chang, 1957, dissents). Whether or not the term "scientific revolution" is justified, there can be no doubt that in late medieval times the level of Chinese technical competence far exceeded the Middle East, which, in turn, had outstripped Europe for many centuries. Space permits only a few examples here: paper and printing, iron and steel, weaponry (including guns, cannons, and bombs), shipbuilding and navigational techniques, as well as two primary manufactured exports, silk and porcelain. According to Tsien (in Li et al., 1982: 459): "paper was invented in China before the Christian era, adopted for wnting at the beginning of the 1st century A.D., and manufactured with new and fresh fibres from the early 2nd century... . Woodblock printing was first employed.., around 700 A.D. and moveable type in the middle of the 11th century." Some time in the ninth century, the Arabs learned the process of paper making from the Chinese and later transmitted that precious knowledge to "westerners." Braudel (1973: 295) suggests that the first European paper mills appeared in twelfth-century Spain but that the Italians did not begin to produce paper until the fourteenth Century; Cipolla (1976: 206), basing his remarks on a 1953 article by Irigoin, however, claims that by the second half of the thirteenth Century the court in Byzantium no longer bought its paper from the Arabs but from Italy. (For more details, see T. F. Carter, 1925, revised 1955.) But in any case, Chinas edge was significant. Even more impressive than paper manufacture were Chinese advances in siderurgy, which were several hundred years in advance of Europes. From at least the eighth century onward, coal was being mined in northern China and used in furnaces that produced high-quality iron and even steel "either by means of the Co of pig iron and wrought iron, or by direct decarbonization in a cold oxidizing blast" (Elvin, 1973: 86; see also Needham and Steel Production in Ancient and Medieval China," 19 reproduced in Needham, 1970: 107112, and the works of Hartwell, 1962, 1966, 1967). Hartwells (1967) estimates of the scale of iron production are truly staggering. By his calculations, the tonnage of coal annually in the eleventh century for iron production alone in northren China was "roughly equivalent to 70 percent of the amount of coal annually used by all metal workers in Great Britain at the beginning of the eighteenth century" (Hartwell, 1967: 122) By the end of the eleventh century the Sung were minting coins and making many metal products as well. According to Hartwell (1967: 122123): "7,000 workers were engaged in actually mining the ore and fuel operating the furnaces, forges, and refining hearths. . . [while] others were engaged in transporting the raw materials from the mines to the iron works. The scale of production at individual establishments was unprecedented.. . and probably was not equalled
[PEN-L:11129] Re: Re: recession?
I asked: what's Alan G. to do? Rob replies: Dare a foreign layman reply 'whatever the political situation of the day requires, given the context of an 18-month election campaign and a current world situation that depends on propping up the bubble and its concomitant orgiastic consumerism'? Mebbe he's gambling on the possibility that (a) we really might be in a new economy - a 100-1 shot; (b) the external world might one day be such as to withstand a tank (100-1) or support the bubble from outside (100-1). That's a blue-sky scenario with a 3% probability, but it's one that might keep Gore electable for the moment. I expect that Alan G. will try to keep the Wall Street/Main Street bubble economy growing as long as possible. But do you really think he cares about Gore? He's an erstwhile follower of Ayn Rand after all, while Gore embraces a totally technocratic ideology. And George Dubya may draw the all-important Greenspan vote by endorsing school vouchers, killing more prisoners, etc. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/~JDevine
[PEN-L:11127] Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Why China Failed to Become Capitalist
one of my colleagues has pointed out that much of what is blamed on "AIDS" are other diseases ultimately rooted in poverty, malnutriotion, poor health care, rough lives. For some, these other diseases are diagnosed as these diseases, while for others they are called HIV or AIDS. I can't explain it very well, obviously, but I hope I'm getting my point across. -Original Message- From: Craven, Jim [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' [EMAIL PROTECTED]; '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wednesday, September 15, 1999 5:34 PM Subject: [PEN-L:11084] RE: Re: RE: Re: Why China Failed to Become Capitalist Jim, Most of your points in this message are well taken. But I am a bit perplexed regarding the question of HIV. Quite aside from whether the rate of infection is as high as you say, although it may be that high in a few countries, I fail to see what that has to do with imperialism. Last I checked most people think that HIV was initially contracted by humans in Africa probably from chimpanzees, probably while killing them to eat. You're not going to give us some theory that HIV is a Jewish doctors' plot to wipe out people of color are you? I hope not. I would grant that poverty and related weak immune systems make people more susceptible to dying from HIV, although it is unclear that it makes them more susceptible to contracting HIV in the first place, although maybe it does. If there is a link with imperialism, that would be it. Is imperialism responsible for the failures of some of these countries to implement strong condom and safe sex programs? Barkley Rosser Hi Barkley, Uh no I'm not going to give you the "Jewish Doctors" plot as I have neither anti-Semitism nor such garbage concepts in me. I will however give you the imperial "plot" to divert critical resources to compliant elites rather than to desperately-needed programs in epidemiology, prevention, sanitation etc; I will give you the imperial "plot" to vacuum out and transfer to the metropoles the best minds and other critical resources necessary in the fight against AIDS and such diseases; I will give you the imperial "plot" to engineeer unconscionable terms of aid/trade/loans that result in net outflows of critical financial resources that could be employed in a variety of ways in the war against AIDS; I will give you the imperial "plot" to engineer "Third World" educational systems that serve to create and train compliant clones/sycophants of US imperial ideology rather than self-reliant scientists capable to launching local-conditions-sensitive campaigns against AIDS; I will give you the imperial "plot" to reinforce systems and images that keep women and children down, servile, dependent, vulnerable and exploited and vulnerable to conditions and vicissitudes that create and exacerbate all sorts of horrors including AIDS; I will give you the imperial plot to export to the "Third World" all sorts of inferior and dangerous drugs not allowed for sale in the imperial metropoles while denying and making prohibitive in cost the most effective drugs and treatment regimes; I will give you the imperial plot to use UN and other international agencies charged with dealing with global epidemics for other more narrow and more mercenary and more pro-imperialist purposes; I will give you the imperial "plot" to arm and train death squads that keep in power kleptocracies and brutal regimes that insulate the privileged while hoping for--and abetting--AIDS killing off the poor and oppressed; etc etc. Jim C BTW these long lines and panicking consumers rushing to get batteries, canned foods etc and these long lines of traffic leaving Florida and South Carolina look like images from the "old" USSR. Must be that capitalism and markets have failed in Florida and south Carolina eh? What's this stuff about "context" and history anyway? ;-)
[PEN-L:11126] Re: Back to Smith, Bentham, Cobden Bright? (was Re: Role of the Colonial Trade)
But Smith, contrary to much popular misconception clearly stated the many advantages that came to the colonizers as well as the disadvantages to the colonized. The chapters on mercantilism, etc. are filled with this stuff, including the increase in natural resources and land, and gold and silver, the markets for exports of European manufactured goods and capital goods, and on and on. In addition, Smith's particular emphasis on the opening up of new markets for European manufactures feeds right back into the theory begun to be developed right from book 1 ch. 1-3 on the division of labor. This is what Kaldor was reviving, in combination with a dynamic extension of Keynes's principle of effective demand. Smith saw a mutually reinforcing dynamic between capital accumulation and technological advance, and key was the expansion of markets as outlets for European manufactures. Everything was there in Smith except for the principle of effective demand, you just have to piece it together, as many authors have done. Included here is the vent-for-surplus theory, recognizing joint production and foreign markets as outlets for the joint products, the supply of which has no necessary relation to domestic demand (Heinz Kurz has laid this out very clearly). So the higher demand means increased sales, development of the manufacturing sector as a whole with the benefits of increasing returns and economies of scale (see Allyn Young's article from the twenties on Increasing Returns and Economic Progress, probably available on Rod's web site) so capital accumulation and technical advance increasing the competitive strength to capture more markets and so on and on. See Eatwell's _Whatever Happened to Britain_ or even the New Palgrave enbtry on cumulative causation. By the way, we should not get caught in the trap of Hume's or anybody else's price specie flow mechanism or conventional interpretations (old or more recent) of the quantity equation (the causality may be from P to M as Shaikh and others have pointed out). More recently, endogenous money may also play a role here. Given time, I can lay this all out with the proper quotes from Smith, etc. Despite Smith's opposition to monopoly, mercantilism, we should be careful about buying the line that Smith is clearly and purely a free trader. There is a clear alternative view supported by evidence. The implications of this stuff can lead right into things like Prebisch-Singer, and critiques of IMF austerity vs. expansionary approaches. and on and on mf -Original Message- From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wednesday, September 15, 1999 5:29 PM Subject: [PEN-L:11082] Back to Smith, Bentham, Cobden Bright? (was Re: Role of the Colonial Trade) Ricardo wrote: Come on, progressive economists, Fostater pleads, how can you say that the colonial trade was not responsible for the industrialization of Europe? I would suggest, rather, that the political effect of dependency theory on the left has been divisive, setting up countries and ethnic groups against each other, foregoing universalist aspirations, which the right quite effectively took on as its own in the late 70s. But I really dont want to get into this. Here's more on O'Brien and some of his other, subsidiary, arguments, which I think might very well be enough to settle this issue here in pen-l: 1) It has not yet been shown that the rates of profits which European colonialists enjoyed in the periphery were "persistently" above the the rates "which they could have earned on feasible investments" in their home countries, or in other economies of the world. Citing studies on profits from the sugar plantations, he says that, over the long run, such earnings were *average*, fluctuating around or below 10%. Or, if I may add another figure, the percentage of slve profits in the formation of British capital was a tiny 0.11% (Anstey). Engerman, for his part, has calculated "the gross value of slve trade output" to England's national income to be 1%, to rise to 1.7% in 1770. (Of couse, if we take the triangular trade as a whole we are dealing with something more substantial, but I would agree with Rod that forward and backward linkages hold for any industry.) O'Brien also cites other studies which question the profitability of the Navigation Acts. If I may cite one source discussing a particular aspect of these Acts "...The benefit to the home country corresponding to the burden on the North American colonies was still smaller. In fact, it was itself probably a burden, not a benefit. Requiring certain colonial exports and imports to pass through Britain had the beneficial effects of reducing the prices of such goods to British consumers...The cost to British taxpayers of defending and administering the North American colonies was, by contrast, five times the maximun benefit" (Thomas and McCloskey, 1981). Likewise, even if Europeans had been
[PEN-L:11124] Social structue and hierarchy ofcapital:superprofiteers at thetop
Roger Odisio writes: Doug, Charles, What stats on foreign profitability are you guys talking about? The publication of gross product of foreign affiliates of US nonfinancial corps was discontinued in the 80s wasn't it? This is important because you need the capital consumption adjustment to reported profits provided by the BEA in corp. gross product numbers to make the foreign profits comparable to US domestic data. Moreover, there never has been reliable data on net fixed capital of foreign affiliates to use in the denominator in calculating profit rates, has there? What am I missing? Charles, does Perlo claim the foreign numbers are comparable to US domestic data? Charles: I'm not sure, Roger. Does the below help ? Interesting that they discontinued reporting gross product of foreign affiliates of U.S. nonfinancial corps. Probably because it helps to show exactly what is being discussed right here. Half-data is a demogogic method. On page 357 of _Superprofits and Crises_ is a Table (14-1) "Income from Foreign Investments and Total Property Income, U.S Selected Years, 1929 -1984 Income from Foreign Investments goes from 1.15 billion in 1929 to 105.15 billion in 1986. This income from For. Investments goes from 3.2 % of Total Property Income in 1929 to 11.8 % in 1986. The Sources: (1) SCB, 3/87, T. 1-2, p.44; ERP 1987, B-99, p. 358; Hist. Stat, Vol.II, U5-U7, p.864. Includes fees and royalties from abroad, which are estimated for 1929 -1959. For 1986 only, includes an estimated $5 billion income on U.S. investments in Puerto Rico. (2) EROP, 1987, B-23, pp.270-71; Property income on a before-tax basis. On page 360 of _Superprofits and Crises_, Perlo has a Table (14-2) "Direct Foreign Investments, Leading Capitalist Countres Selected Years, 1950 -1982 (billions of dollars)" The U.S. goes from 12 billion in 1950 to 221 billion in 1982. UK gos from 8 to 77. etc. The Sources are "U.S - Hist. Stat; SCB", et al. CB
[PEN-L:11123] Re: Role of the Colonial Trade
Once it dawn on them that the working class was not going to perform the historic role it was supposed to, they decided to blame it on the exploiting *English* workers...but then Lenin had already said that the entire European-Russian working class could not rise beyond 'trade-union' consciousness, to conclude later that perpaps Marxists ought to look to the less developed areas of the world for revolution - against everyone else, including the easy-going, aristocratic European working class. In a letter to Marx, dated October 7, 1858, Engels wrote: "...The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is of course to a certain extent justifiable." In a letter to Sorge, dated September 21, 1872, Engels informs him that Hales kicked up a big row in the Federal Council of the International and secured a vote of censure on Marx for saying that "the English labour leaders had sold themselves". Marx wrote to Sorge on August 4, 1874: "As to the urban workers here [in England], it is a pity that the whole pack of leaders did not get into Parliament. This would be the surest way of getting rid of the whole lot." In a letter to Marx, dated August 11, 1881, Engels speaks about "those very worst English trade unions which allow themselves to be led by men sold to, or at least paid by, the bourgeoisie." In a letter to Kautsky, dated September 12, 1882, Engels wrote: "You ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy. Well, exactly the same as they think about politics in general. There is no workers' party here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals. and the workers gaily share the feast of England's monopoly of the world market and the colonies." On December 7, 1889, Engels wrote to Sorge: "The most repulsive thing here [in England] is the bourgeois 'respectability', which has grown deep into the bones of the workers Even Tom Mann, whom I regard as the best of the lot, is fond of mentioning that he will be lunching with the Lord Mayor. If one compares this with the French, one realises, what a revolution is good for, after all." In a letter, dated April 19, 1890: "But under the surface the movement [of the working class in England] is going on, is embracing ever wider sections and mostly just among the hitherto stagnant lowest [Engels's italics] strata. The day is no longer far off when this mass will suddenly find itself, when it will dawn upon it that it itself is this colossal mass in motion." On March 4, 1891: "The failure of the collapsed Dockers' Union; the 'old' conservative trade unions, rich and therefore cowardly, remain lone on the field" September 14, 1891: at the Newcastle Trade Union Congress the old unionists, opponents of the eight-hour day, were defeated "and the bourgeois papers recognise the defeat of the bourgeois labour party" (Engels's italics throughout) That these ideas, which were repeated by Engels over the course of decades, were so expressed by him publicly, in the press, is proved by his preface to the second edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1892. Here he speaks of an "aristocracy among the working class", of a "privileged minority of the workers", in contradistinction to the "great mass of working people". "A small, privileged, protected minority" of the working class alone was "permanently benefited" by the privileged position of England in 1848-68, whereas "the great bulk of them experienced at best but a temporary improvement" ..."With the break-down of that [England's industrial] monopoly, the English working class will lose that privileged position..." The members of the "new" unions, the unions of the unskilled workers, "had this immense advantage, that their minds were virgin soil, entirely free from the inherited 'respectable' bourgeois prejudices which hampered the brains of the better situated 'old unionists"' "The so-called workers' representatives" in England are people "who are forgiven their being members of the working class because they themselves would like to drown their quality of being workers in the ocean of their liberalism.. Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
[PEN-L:11122] Re: Role of the Colonial Trade
Barkley, The profits from the slave trade is only one aspect of a series of statistical arguments I have made showing that the colonial trade was not crucial to the industrialization of Europe, or England. I have some stuff on the cotton trade which I may post later on. But I have to say that, except for some points Ajit has made, what I have said still awaits a serious challenge here in pen-l, unless you think that arguments, full of sound and fury about the pillage of the colonies, but lacking any factual-analytical content regarding the issue at hand, should be taken seriously. Ricardo, You have focused on the profits from the slave trade, which was certainly a focus of Williams himself. But what about the argument mentioned by Brad De Long regarding lower cotton prices due to the exploitation of slave labor? Barkley Rosser Come on, progressive economists, Fostater pleads, how can you say that the colonial trade was not responsible for the industrialization of Europe? I would suggest, rather, that the political effect of dependency theory on the left has been divisive, setting up countries and ethnic groups against each other, foregoing universalist aspirations, which the right quite effectively took on as its own in the late 70s. But I really dont want to get into this. Here's more on O'Brien and some of his other, subsidiary, arguments, which I think might very well be enough to settle this issue here in pen-l: 1) It has not yet been shown that the rates of profits which European colonialists enjoyed in the periphery were "persistently" above the the rates "which they could have earned on feasible investments" in their home countries, or in other economies of the world. Citing studies on profits from the sugar plantations, he says that, over the long run, such earnings were *average*, fluctuating around or below 10%. Or, if I may add another figure, the percentage of slve profits in the formation of British capital was a tiny 0.11% (Anstey). Engerman, for his part, has calculated "the gross value of slve trade output" to England's national income to be 1%, to rise to 1.7% in 1770. (Of couse, if we take the triangular trade as a whole we are dealing with something more substantial, but I would agree with Rod that forward and backward linkages hold for any industry.) O'Brien also cites other studies which question the profitability of the Navigation Acts. If I may cite one source discussing a particular aspect of these Acts "...The benefit to the home country corresponding to the burden on the North American colonies was still smaller. In fact, it was itself probably a burden, not a benefit. Requiring certain colonial exports and imports to pass through Britain had the beneficial effects of reducing the prices of such goods to British consumers...The cost to British taxpayers of defending and administering the North American colonies was, by contrast, five times the maximun benefit" (Thomas and McCloskey, 1981). Likewise, even if Europeans had been forced to pay 'free market prices' for their colonial products, that would have simply worsened the terms of trade *within* this sector, which constituted a small share of total trade and an even smaller, "tiny" share of gross product. 2) What about Deane's claim that the colonial re-exports allowed Europe to acquire essential raw materials - never mind profit margins? First, O'Brien says that colonial foodstuffs contributed marginally to the supplies of calories available to Europeans. Second, that without the imported colonial produtcs, Europe would merely have experienced, *in the short run*, before substitutions were found, "a decline of not more than 3% or 4% in industrial output.
[PEN-L:11121] Re: Re: Re: Role of the Colonial Trade
Without getting too deeply into this wouldn't the transaction surpluses accumulated during colonial entrepots' trans-shipment and exchange and the media of those exchanges ( I think of the use of opium as an asian medium of exchange rather than consumption in the 17th -19th C.) tend to support those ideas if nothing else a structural, (new or old) institutional or even structuration argument could be supported on those grounds? Remember the members of the middle classes who leave the home country and get their administrative training in the colonies only to use them eventually ( as industrial capitalists) upon return to the mother country. And finally, isn't this also a kind of capital involved in what is currently called micro-finance that was not the kind or scale of data examined during all those studies of capital export done when Deane was doing his research? Ann - Original Message - From: Ajit Sinha [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, September 16, 1999 7:12 AM Subject: [PEN-L:8] Re: Re: Role of the Colonial Trade Ricardo Duchesne wrote: Come on, progressive economists, Fostater pleads, how can you say that the colonial trade was not responsible for the industrialization of Europe? I would suggest, rather, that the political effect of dependency theory on the left has been divisive, setting up countries and ethnic groups against each other, foregoing universalist aspirations, which the right quite effectively took on as its own in the late 70s. But I really dont want to get into this. Here's more on O'Brien and some of his other, subsidiary, arguments, which I think might very well be enough to settle this issue here in pen-l: 1) It has not yet been shown that the rates of profits which European colonialists enjoyed in the periphery were "persistently" above the the rates "which they could have earned on feasible investments" in their home countries, or in other economies of the world. Citing studies on profits from the sugar plantations, he says that, over the long run, such earnings were *average*, fluctuating around or below 10%. Or, if I may add another figure, the percentage of slve profits in the formation of British capital was a tiny 0.11% (Anstey). Engerman, for his part, has calculated "the gross value of slve trade output" to England's national income to be 1%, to rise to 1.7% in 1770. (Of couse, if we take the triangular trade as a whole we are dealing with something more substantial, but I would agree with Rod that forward and backward linkages hold for any industry.) O'Brien also cites other studies which question the profitability of the Navigation Acts. If I may cite one source discussing a particular aspect of these Acts "...The benefit to the home country corresponding to the burden on the North American colonies was still smaller. In fact, it was itself probably a burden, not a benefit. Requiring certain colonial exports and imports to pass through Britain had the beneficial effects of reducing the prices of such goods to British consumers...The cost to British taxpayers of defending and administering the North American colonies was, by contrast, five times the maximun benefit" (Thomas and McCloskey, 1981). Likewise, even if Europeans had been forced to pay 'free market prices' for their colonial products, that would have simply worsened the terms of trade *within* this sector, which constituted a small share of total trade and an even smaller, "tiny" share of gross product. 2) What about Deane's claim that the colonial re-exports allowed Europe to acquire essential raw materials - never mind profit margins? First, O'Brien says that colonial foodstuffs contributed marginally to the supplies of calories available to Europeans. Second, that without the imported colonial produtcs, Europe would merely have experienced, *in the short run*, before substitutions were found, "a decline of not more than 3% or 4% in industrial output. __ I think the method of counterfactual is simply a poor way of doing economic history. The colonial empires were part of the rising capitalist and industrializing cores. A historian should be interested in seeing how they fitted in in the scheme of things. Colonialism was led by the mercantilist capital, and it established one form of relationship with the colonies. As the industrial capital came into ascendancy the relationship went through a change. A study of this changing relationship should through much light on the question of what that relationship meant to the rising industrial capital. When it comes to historical data, I think they are usually of rough nature and should be taken with more than a pinch of salt. And then who is to decide whether 3 to 4 percent fall in industrial output is big or small? There is no scientific way of establishing what is big or small in connection
[PEN-L:11120] BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1999 RELEASED TODAY: CPI -- On a seasonally adjusted basis, the CPI-U increased 0.3 percent in August, the same as in July. Energy costs increased sharply for the second consecutive month--up 2.7 percent in August -- accounting for about two-thirds of the August advance in the overall CPI. ... For the second consecutive month in August, the food index increased 0.2 percent and the index for food at home, 0.1 percent. Excluding food and energy, the CPI-U rose 0.1 percent, following an increase of 0.2 percent in July. Downturns in the indexes for airline fares and cigarettes accounted for the smaller advance in the August all items less food and energy index. ... REAL EARNINGS -- Real average weekly earnings increased by 0.2 percent from July to August after seasonal adjustment. This rise stemmed from a 0.3 percent gain in average weekly hours and a 0.2 percent gain in average hourly earnings. This was partially offset by a 0.2 percent increase in the CPI-W. ... Over the year, real average weekly earnings grew by 1.2 percent. ... BLS released its latest compendium of analyses on major industry employment trends, with the focus on "just-in-time" responses to increasingly competitive environments in the auto and temporary help industries. The volume -- titled Report on the American Workforce 1999 -- also includes chapters on the links between schooling and earnings and evolving issues pertaining to how much time Americans spend at work. The book was compiled and written by BLS economists, and it includes tabular material supporting the analyses. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A-2). The Office of Management and Budget's schedule of release dates for principal federal economic indicators for the year 2000 is carried in the Daily Labor Report (page A-3; text, page E-1). The statistics describing the condition of the economy are compiled and released according to procedures established by OMB Statistical Directive No. 3. Each agency issuing economic indicators gives OMB its schedule of releases for the upcoming calendar year. That includes the Agriculture Department, the Commerce Department's Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Treasury Department, and the Federal Reserve Board. Consumer spending increased 1.2 percent in August -- the largest increase in 6 months -- helped by strong auto and durable goods sales, the Commerce Department reports. August's showing was slightly above the upwardly revised 1 percent gain logged in July, according to seasonally adjusted data compiled by the Census Bureau. ... Market expectations had pegged retail sales to expand by only 0.7 percent. ... (Daily Labor Report, page D-1) The U.S. trade deficit soared to a record $80.7 billion in the second quarter amid a huge rise in imports, including a big increase in the cost of foreign oil. ... (USA Today, page 1B). Retail sales surged in August as people bought up cars and clothing, indicating optimism about an economy that is closing in on a record expansion. ... Apparel sales rose for the first time in 3 months, as back-to-school sales lured buyers. Auto sales last month reached their highest level in almost 13 years, aided by manufacturer discounts. ... A separate report showed that the United States trade deficit in goods, services, and investments widened to a record in the second quarter. ... (New York Times, page C21; Washington Post, page E1; Wall Street Journal, page A2). As investors and traders on Wall Street fret about today's release of the latest inflation report, small business owners have already weighed in -- and the news is comforting. After 7 months of gradual increases in the ratio of businesses raising prices to those cutting them, the trend is reversing. The August survey of small business confidence by the National Federation of Independent Business shows that 16 percent of businesses increased prices while 13 percent dropped them. That would make August the least inflationary month since March. ... (Wall Street Journal, page A2). Work/life balance programs are playing an increasingly important role for companies seeking to keep sought-after information technology (IT) employees, according to a RHI Consulting survey. The survey questioned 1,400 U.S. chief information officers (CIOs), 88 percent of whom responded that meeting IT employees' personal needs is more important today than it was 5 years ago. ... To accommodate balance needs, 73 percent of respondents offered their employees flexible hours, and 72 percent provided paid time off, such as personal day. In addition, telecommuting and part-time work were both popular responses, mentioned by 38 percent and 34 percent, respectively. Job sharing was included by 27 percent of the survey participants. ... (Daily Labor Report, page A-5). DUE OUT TOMORROW:
[PEN-L:11115] FW: Genocide
Atrocities reported in West Timor camps Refugees: Army sends relief food into the hills for the first time Maggie O'Kane in Darwin The Guardian, Thursday September 16, 1999 United Nations officials who stayed behind in Dili when their compound was abandoned have been bombarded with calls alleging atrocities in the refugee camps of West Timor to which thousands of East Timorese have fled. "We've had calls saying that the refugee camps are being dominated by the militia. The callers are reporting violence, intimidation and executions in the camps," said Colin Stewart, a UN political officer and one of the 11 who volunteered to stay behind. "The militia are coming into the camps with lists and calling out certain people, most of them young men, and taking them away," he said by mobile phone from the Australian consulate in Dili, the only fortified building in the city, where the UN mission has been relocated. "But generally there's a feeling here that if people can hang on things will be OK. A couple of days ago the militia were shooting at our cars; now they are confining themselves to rude gestures. They have looted everything by now." There are also reports that young men are still being dragged off the army trucks used to deport civilians. "I stress that these are unconfirmed reports," Mr Stewart said. "My impression is that they are winding down." Yesterday three UN workers were allowed out of the consulate under Indonesian army guard and allowed to travel to the mountains above the city, where 30,000 people are hiding with virtually no food or water. "The situation is very bad up there, though some food went up today for the first time," said another UN worker, who asked not to be named. "We have five reported dead, mostly people who needed medical attention but couldn't get it." The army has sent food up to the mountains for the first time, for refugees surviving on tree roots. "Almost all the kids have diarrhoea and people were getting pretty desperate, but we are hoping supplies will be dropped tomorrow by the UN," the worker said. "The Indonesian army have also said they will send more food." The army's newfound concern for the 30,000 people they drove into the hills a week ago comes days before the international peacekeepers are expected, and as new evidence emerges of direct collusion between the army and militia. On tapes of an alleged walkie-talkie conversation between an army officer and a militia leader, played on Darwin's Channel 9 television, the army officer tells the militiaman: "We cannot start it, otherwise Unamet [UN monitors] will say we are the bad guys. But you are on 24 hours' notice for the go-ahead." Mr Stewart said widespread reports that the UN compound had been burned to the ground were wrong.
[PEN-L:11113] Theory vs. History (was Why China Failed to Become Capitalist)
Rod, countries no longer have that option. Rod wrote, Sure Michael, Canada defaulted on some of the railway bonds too. But that just makes my point even stronger. Countries can industrialise with the aid -- Michael Perelman While the mechanism of surplus value production must be analyzed in a theoretical manner, abstracting from particular historical conditions, an understanding of colonialism imperialism can't be had without taking history seriously. It seems to me that in arguments that discount the role that colonialism imperialism played in the development of capitalism, theory is substituted for history -- hence Rod's assumption that the same process can be repeated at a much later time, under much changed conditions. Yoshie
[PEN-L:11112] Counterfactuals (was Re: Role of the Colonial Trade)
From Carrol to Ricardo: Yet, according to O'Brien's tentative findings, England;s trade with the periphery, and the profits thereof, were still too small a percentage of its total economy to explain its expansion through the 18th century. Thus, by means of a counterfactual demonstration, he argues that, if Britain had not traded with the periphery, its gross annual investment expenditures would have decreased by no more than 7%. In constructing this counterfactual O'Brien makes the rather optimistic assumption that colonial profits were very high and that capitalists reinvested 30% of their profits. It doesn't seem to me that analysis of total profits are of much use in historical/political analysis. Those profits did not go to the "Nation" nor were they prorated among the various enterprises. They went to only a few sectors. It is the political/economic influence of those sectors that is of analytic importance. In so far as British taxpayers had to bear the expenses of empire, those expenses (in India, for example) could have been greater even than the returns and still have been of more importance politically than larger domestic profits. I don't know whether this is the case or not, but I do feel that an analysis that does not explore it or account for it should be held suspect. Maybe in the world of counterfactuals there exists no multiplier effects. No problem of oversaving either. If only Japan existed in the world of counterfactuals Yoshie
[PEN-L:11109] Re: AIDS, Inhuman Experiments, Imperialism
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: [Quoting from the Times: ...In the United States, for example, informed consent is required for people who take part in drug tests. They need to know what the test will do, what the risks are and what the rewards are. Currently there is a scandal concerning failure to acquire such consent at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I have not followed the news accounts carefully, but reading Jim's and Yoshie's posts suddenly makes me wonder about the race of those uninformed research subjects at the UIC. Anyone from Chicago on the list who has any information? Carrol
[PEN-L:11107] Re: recession?
G'day Jim, You write: A falling dollar would broadcast recession to the rest of the world, no? On the other hand, _cutting_ interest rates might encourage further stock-market inflation. And keeping interest rates constant won't delay the above scenario because the US trade and current-account surpluses are increasingly unsustainable. what's Alan G. to do? Dare a foreign layman reply 'whatever the political situation of the day requires, given the context of an 18-month election campaign and a current world situation that depends on propping up the bubble and its concomitant orgiastic consumerism'? Mebbe he's gambling on the possibility that (a) we really might be in a new economy - a 100-1 shot; (b) the external world might one day be such as to withstand a tank (100-1) or support the bubble from outside (100-1). That's a blue-sky scenario with a 3% probability, but it's one that might keep Gore electable for the moment. The odds on a successfully-looking-busy-while actually-doing-nothing (we used to call this 'boondoggling') strategy paying of within an 18-month window might be acceptable, I s'pose. All the more so if there's absolutely no other option in the race. Cheers, Rob.
[PEN-L:11097] Re: IMF to become autonomous? Social Structureof Big Biz
At 10:41 15/09/99 -0400, you wrote: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/14/99 05:36PM b) The marxist analysis is real. Ultimately capital has no country and no human body. There is a potential space for a world bank to serve this function even though for a long time to come it will be slanted towards US influence. The IMF will not become autonomous but the struggle to make it more autonomous is progessive. (( Charles: Speaking of Lenin, the multi/trans-national capitalist organs ,such as the World Bank, IMF, U.S. Treasury, WTO, GATT, NAFTA , are an actualization of Karl Kautsky's idea of ultra-imperialism. Kautsky was just wrong that it will automatically, like a clock, without the revolutionary intervention of the workers of the world, become socialism. Yes, not without class struggle. Where exactly though did Kautsky argue that it will automatically beome socialism? eg Anthony Brewer, Marxist Theories of Imperialism second edition 1990, Routledge, page 130 quotes Kautsky writing shortly after the outbreak of the first world war: "Hence from the purely economic standpoint it is not impossible that capitalism may still live through another phase, ... a phase of ultra-imperialism, which of course we must struggle against as energetically as we do against imperialism" Chris Burford London
