Marx and Keynes
[This exchange originated on the Marxism list in response to the Braverman piece I posted.] Phil Ferguson: PS: I few months ago I went to a seminar in the Department of Management Studies here. One of our subscribers, who's doing her PhD there, was presenting a departmental seminar on the subject of tertiary restructuring. She spent some time on Hayek and Keynes and had an interesting quote from Keynes, in which he made it absolutely clear that he was on the side of capital against labour and his ideas were about saving the day for capital. Carlos Rebello: Yes, Phil, and the quote was undoubtely from Keynes's 1925 adress to the Liberal Party at the Liberal Sunday School (Keynes tried a lot to rescue the old Liberal Party -and Lloyd George - from political oblivion after the rise of Labour), published under the title "I'm I a Liberal?". Keynes ponders about his political sympathies, the sorry state of the liberals and says: "Ought I, then, to join the Labour Party? [...] Looked at closer, there are great difficulties. To begin with, it is a class party, and the class is not my class. If I am going to pursue sectional interests at all, I will pursue my own. When it comes to the class struggle as such, my local and personal patriotisms, like those of everyone else, except some unpleasant zealous ones [No doubt Bolshevik sympathizers, of which at the time there were a few in Keynes's *alma mater* at the King's College] are attached to my own surroundings. I can be influenced by what seems to me to be Justice and good sense; but the *Class* war will find me on the side of the educated *bourgeoisie*" (*Essays in Persuasion*, WW Norton, NYC 1963, reprint, pg.324) Nonethless...As some people here are aware, my PhD thesis was about Keynes and his socio-political underpinnings, and in it I had a lot of things to say about him, not all of them accusatory. I find Mattck's account of Keynes not very useful, in that he limits himself to find that Keynes was a reactionary - which he was, of course, but since when has this precluded serious Marxist thinkers from profitting from what is useful in bourgeois science? I believe that Keynes had, in his economics, some useful things to supplement Marx: 1st. , that in an epoch of Imperialism (although he does not use that term, of course), the hub of capitalist capital accumulation is centered around *Finance*, and that the central variable in this overall process is the setting of a complex of *interest rates* that reflect, not an equilibrium between savings and investment (that equilibrium is an accounting fiction), but the general *expectations* of the capitalist class towards various business ventures. 2nd, such expectations tend to be self-fulfilling, in that the investments actually realized actually create the markets for a myriad of others; but when, for some reason, confidence fails, the whole of the economy can enter into a self-fulfilling depression related to decreasing expectations. Keynes's theory, in fact, is a theory of capitalist accumulation from the point of view of *the actual actions of the bourgeoisie as a collection of individuals*, something that was lacking, in my view, in Marx, that still centered on the analysis of the process of production as such and set to analyze the organization of capitalist production as a whole mainly as from the abstract viewpoint of a counterfactual "proportionate" capitalist economy that does not exist, of course, but that he followers, less diatecticians than him, thought exist, something with spwned a whole ill-guided controversy about the Bk.2 reproduction schemes from which little useful can be rescued. If I'm wrong, I prefer to be wrong, perhaps, with Lenin and Trotsky, who had read Keynes's *Economic Consequences of the peace* and that considered him - although hopelessly a "petty-bourgeois pacifist" (Lenin)- still a worthy opponent. Finally, on the quote above: we Marxists could exploit it against Keynes himself, when we consider that the revolutionary necessity of the proletariat is to make its struggle not a question of its "sectional" interest, but of the interest of all non-bourgeois classes as a whole; something for which - at about the same time time Keynes spoke - Gramsci coined, in prison, the term "Historical Bloc". Carlos Rebello Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Trademarks, imperialism and insanity
G'day Pen-pals, I see the Australian Institute of Management have felt the slings and arrows of US jurisdiction without having to buy a plane ticket. They've just listed a 20-year-old course called 'Effective Negotiation Skills' on their web site. And now it's gone. A US training group called Karrass has claimed 'effective negotiation' (and permutations of that with a couple of likely other millenium-old ordinary words, like 'advanced' and 'sales') as its trademarks, and AIM had either to defend itself in an American court or cut its losses. It chose wisely. AIM are cross, because Australians are not nearly as looney as Yanks, and, in Australia, purely descriptive words do not a trademark make. Another notch for the barking behemoth, then. The internet is effectively under US jurisdiction, and the language is being enclosed word-by-word. Glad I've my Dutch to fall back on. (For those keeping an eye on these things, it's all in the February 4 (Australian) Business Review Weekly). There's a bright side for we pedagogues, I s'pose. It usually takes ages to define and explain to the first-years such terms as 'commoditisation', 'enclosure of the commons' and 'wall-biting fucking mad'. And to distinguish between 'globalism' and 'imperialism'. It should be easier now ... And should we band together and buy the trademark on 'ceterus paribus', 'supply' and 'demand'? 95% of the world's economists consigned to life-long silence - and all by 'market forces'. Luvverly. Cheers, Rob
re: More Trademark Insanity
MoneyChanger has just recently registered the names Jesus Christ (tm), Mother Mary (tm), God the Father (tm), and the Holy Ghost (tm), It is suing the Roman Catholic Church for a trillion dollars in damages and interest on the grounds of trademark infringement. Their basic argument is that a search engine request using the keyword "Jesus Christ" brings up not only the MoneyChanger sites but also the Web sites affiliated with the Roman Catholic organization. As part of this suit, MoneyChanger has asked that the Church be forbidden to use the word "Jesus Christ," not only on its Web sites, but in any of its products and services, including its publications. Tom Walker
RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Drazen's new book?
Public choice is simply theories that try to explain the behavior of the state and/or its officials. A good neutral review of the lit -- the standard one, actually -- from a mainstream standpoint is by Dennis Mueller. The better sort of lit gives full play to how the interests of capital influences the state, not just "interest groups" (which in conservative lore often devolve to workers and consumers). It isn't marx, but it can be informative, in my view. mbs Max: Thanks for the note about public choice theory. In truth, if you are talking about theories of the state, I'm more partial to O'Connor and Poulantzas. Nonetheless, I'm curious about your notion that "the executive committee of the bourgeoisie" could also be conceptualized as public choice theory--Buchanan to Marx seems a pretty steep and slippery slope-- unless you are merely saying that politics influences the policy choices that the state makes. Joel Blau Max B. Sawicky wrote: In the public choice area can be found moderateand liberal perspectives. It is true that in the fieldcan be found more Buchanan types, but its notobvious that this makes it more conservative than,say, trade.If you think the state is the executive committeeof the bourgeoisie, than you are a public choicetheorist too.There's a lot of good stuff in the field, IMO. I gota dose of it from people like Mancur Olson andDennis Mueller, who are quite different fromthe Buchanan people. One a these days I maydo a number on it myself.mbs -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Joel Blau Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2000 6:10 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:16180] Re: Re: Drazen's new book?Sure, but from the blurb, this book looks like more than simple public choice theory. "He proposes that conflict or heterogeneity of interests should be the field's essential organizing principle, because political questions arise only when people disagree over which economic policies should be enacted or how economic costs and benefits should be distributed." The "interests" are certainly there, but the tone of the blurb (and it may be inaccurate or incomplete) sounds more synthesized and middle of the road than classic Buchanan. Joel Blau Jim Devine wrote: In the new Princeton University Press economics catalogue, they are featuring a new book by Allan Drazen entitled Political Economy in Macroeconomics. Does anyone know anything about this book? Does it represent an attempt to reclaim "political economy" from the left? I don't know that book (and would be interested in hearing about it), but political economy was "rescued" from the left a long time ago, by people like James Buchanan and the Virginia school.Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: RE: Re: Re: Drazen's new book?
Max: Thanks for the note about public choice theory. In truth, if you are talking about theories of the state, I'm more partial to O'Connor and Poulantzas. Nonetheless, I'm curious about your notion that "the executive committee of the bourgeoisie" could also be conceptualized as public choice theory--Buchanan to Marx seems a pretty steep and slippery slope-- unless you are merely saying that politics influences the policy choices that the state makes. Joel Blau Max B. Sawicky wrote: In the public choice area can be found moderateand liberal perspectives. It is true that in the fieldcan be found more Buchanan types, but its notobvious that this makes it more conservative than,say, trade.If you think the state is the executive committeeof the bourgeoisie, than you are a public choicetheorist too.There's a lot of good stuff in the field, IMO. I gota dose of it from people like Mancur Olson andDennis Mueller, who are quite different fromthe Buchanan people. One a these days I maydo a number on it myself.mbs-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Joel Blau Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2000 6:10 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:16180] Re: Re: Drazen's new book?Sure, but from the blurb, this book looks like more than simple public choice theory. "He proposes that conflict or heterogeneity of interests should be the field's essential organizing principle, because political questions arise only when people disagree over which economic policies should be enacted or how economic costs and benefits should be distributed." The "interests" are certainly there, but the tone of the blurb (and it may be inaccurate or incomplete) sounds more synthesized and middle of the road than classic Buchanan. Joel Blau Jim Devine wrote: In the new Princeton University Press economics catalogue, they are featuring a new book by Allan Drazen entitled Political Economy in Macroeconomics. Does anyone know anything about this book? Does it represent an attempt to reclaim "political economy" from the left? I don't know that book (and would be interested in hearing about it), but political economy was "rescued" from the left a long time ago, by people like James Buchanan and the Virginia school.Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
executive committee
Max writes: If you think the state is the executive committee of the bourgeoisie, than you are a public choice theorist too. The Virginia public choice school would not agree (even though they share the view that politics is endogenous with Marxian political economy). The Virginia school assumes that each voter's impact in the election is the same as each of the other voters (and emphasize how this process is less rational than a market). The "executive committee" theory, on the other hand, would be based on a one dollar/one vote theory (as a first approximation), so that those who have the bucks have more impact than those without. This recognizes that "voting" (in the sense of people having an impact on political decisions) takes place all the time, through lobbying, etc. Also, there are all sorts of government agencies -- notably the Federal Reserve in the US -- which are largely independent of control by democratically-elected officials, so that they can easily be "captured" by the industries they regulate (in the case of the Fed, banking and finance). BTW, when people, especially anti-Marxists, use the phrase "executive committee of the bourgeoisie," they often forget that such committees can make errors (from the point of view of the long-term class interests of the bourgeoisie), be indecisive, represent special interests within the bourgeoisie (or among state managers), etc. (Similarly, the boards of directors of corporations make mistakes, fiddle while the bottom line burns, represent special interests among stock-holders or managers...) In addition to the exec committee, we should remember that the state as such (in all class societies) is a coercive institution that maintains the class system. The executive committee theory is only one part of Marx's complete theory of the state (see, for example, Hal Draper's multi-volume book). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Trademarks, imperialism and insanity
Did you hear that GM is buying up the words "communism", "Marxism", "Leninism", "dialectics" and "materialism" ? In the dialectic of freedom of speech, things are turning into their opposite. "You have the right to remain silent" is no longer a Fourth Constitutional Amendment right, but a TRUE FIRST AMENDMENT ( the right for the rich to make more money) power. CB Rob Schaap [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/10/00 09:43AM G'day Pen-pals, I see the Australian Institute of Management have felt the slings and arrows of US jurisdiction without having to buy a plane ticket. They've just listed a 20-year-old course called 'Effective Negotiation Skills' on their web site. And now it's gone. A US training group called Karrass has claimed 'effective negotiation' (and permutations of that with a couple of likely other millenium-old ordinary words, like 'advanced' and 'sales') as its trademarks, and AIM had either to defend itself in an American court or cut its losses. It chose wisely. AIM are cross, because Australians are not nearly as looney as Yanks, and, in Australia, purely descriptive words do not a trademark make. Another notch for the barking behemoth, then. The internet is effectively under US jurisdiction, and the language is being enclosed word-by-word. Glad I've my Dutch to fall back on. (For those keeping an eye on these things, it's all in the February 4 (Australian) Business Review Weekly). There's a bright side for we pedagogues, I s'pose. It usually takes ages to define and explain to the first-years such terms as 'commoditisation', 'enclosure of the commons' and 'wall-biting fucking mad'. And to distinguish between 'globalism' and 'imperialism'. It should be easier now ... And should we band together and buy the trademark on 'ceterus paribus', 'supply' and 'demand'? 95% of the world's economists consigned to life-long silence - and all by 'market forces'. Luvverly. Cheers, Rob
reparations: patriotism is a doubleedged sword.
Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/11/00 12:14PM A much broader political alliance could be formed, if it was simply shown that a large number of people lack the necessities of life in a late capitalist economy. Do not have suitable, housing, education, health care, etc. Talk about reparations to long dead victims of slavery is simply going to divide people, in the same way that the question has divided Lou and Brad. And hurling slings of "racists" is not going to build the political alliance required. CB: I think of the reparations movement and rhetoric as a valuable antidote to patrioticism. And I think of patriotism as an important underpinning of the political consciousness ,especially great power chauvinism, of 10's of millions of Americans today. And great power chauvinism and the related hubris are major barriers to building a progressive political alliance of the type Rod mentions, for winning suitable housing, education, health care, jobs, etc. not to mention peace and anti-imperialism. The conservative movement in the U.S. today, the main barrier to achieving the economic freedoms and democracy that Rod mentions, relies very much on the myth of the benevolent and democratic role of America in history, home of the brave and land of the free and all that. Although it may not be entirely logical, many average Americans deny today's problems because they think that America is a great country with a great history and it spoils that to think that it has a lot of social and economic problems today. When people say "America is the greatest country in the world", in their minds they mean both today and over the last 200 years. Patriotism based on this mythical history would collapse today if most Americans thought of the U.S. as an evil empire over the last 200 years, instead of some new leading country in good politics ( democracy). Despite the efforts of today's ruling class to make everybody ahistorical in their thinking, sincere love of country , singing the national anthem, pride in the flag ,etc. is instilled in a large percentage of the mass base of Reaganism/conservatism 2000. So, to me an important part of the reparations movement is the factual historical case it builds on slavery. Most patriot Americans, especially Whites, have a selective memory when it comes to their building a good feeling inside themselves about their country, which very much includes its history. The reparations movement today can do a great service to exactly the type of struggle that Rod describes if it can help to destroy some of the myths that underlie American patriotic consciousness. People should feel there are some good reasons to burn the flag given what it truly represents in history. Or at least people should be a lot more ambiguous about the meaning of the flag. And again, very few people talk about how long dead are all the Founding Fathers and early American historical figures when somebody is giving an explanation for their love of country. Then the fact that these are old dead people becomes a basis for veneration and fond "memory" . But patriotism is a double edged sword. If one identifies with what one likes about Washington, Jefferson etc. , one is obligated logically to identify with their crimes as well. And if one identifies with their crimes , then one must make amends for those crimes just as much as one wants to take patriot credit for their accomplishments. The fact that a lot of intellectuals on this list do not feel patriotic misses the point that a lot of average people do feel patriotic. Those are the ones that I want to rethink their patriotism and modify their current conduct accordingly.
Re: Re: reparations
Joel Blau writes: snip It is important to make the economic point that historically, a significant part of capital accumulation in the United States came from slave labor. Right. Which is why the comparison cases put forward are additionally problematic. We are not simply talking about reparations due for 'mistreatment' but reparations for uncompensated labor and other economic contributions. The recent work on white racial identity as a property right in law and cultural studies, but that has been picked up by a few economists, is also quite compelling. E.g., Thomas Jefferson's children with Sally Hemings were 1/8 of African descent (maybe 1/16, I forget), tops, and Jefferson had the ability to declare them to be slaves or not. He chose to deny them their property right in whiteness, with the benefits that accompanied it (freedom). Plessy vs. Ferguson takes on a whole new meaning... Brad's attitude is reflected in the rest of his colleagues in the American Economics Association. There were only a handful of people in attendance at the AEA panel on "Race as an Endogenous Variable" (in which Lani Guanier was a discussant) at the recent ASSA meetings in Boston (papers by Darity and Mason, Rogers and Williams). Members of URPE were also noticeably absent from the audience. It was the most important panel of the entire conference. Mat
RE: executive committee
The Virginia school is not the beginning and end of public choice theory. For instance, there is a median voter theory that explains how, under completely fantastical conditions, the median voter is decisive in electoral matters. There is lit on how bureaus and politicians manipulate electoral choices. There's also the rent-seeking stuff. mbs Max writes: If you think the state is the executive committee of the bourgeoisie, than you are a public choice theorist too. The Virginia public choice school would not agree . . .
Re: RE: executive committee
At 03:54 PM 2/10/00 -0500, you wrote: The Virginia school is not the beginning and end of public choice theory. For instance, there is a median voter theory that explains how, under completely fantastical conditions, the median voter is decisive in electoral matters in the Krugman column that Louis pointed us to read, PK talks as if the median voter actually is decisive! I'd say that the median dollar invested in a two-person race is decisive. Or at least that's a better first approximation than the median-voter rule. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
RE: RE: Re: RE: executive committee
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Max Sawicky I used a median voter model for my dissertation. The R-squares were beyond belief. I was more worried about them being too good than the contrary. Do tell Max. What was your dissertation about? -- Nathan Newman
Re: executive committee
Doesn't the Virginia school merge into the literature on rent seeking -- although the typical nasty rent seekers are labor unions and lawyers and the like? Jim Devine wrote: The Virginia school assumes that each voter's impact in the election is the same as each of the other voters (and emphasize how this process is less rational than a market). The "executive committee" theory, on the other hand, would be based on a one dollar/one vote theory (as a first approximation), so that those who have the bucks have more impact than those without. --- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Re: Re: Re: smartness
Brad De Long wrote: Brad De Long wrote: Why is there this extraordinary--eager--desire to take Keynes's quote out of context? Remarkable, isn't it? Didn't Hayek offer the charming interpretation that Keynes's queerness made him not care about the future? Doug I missed this. Where? Dunno, can't remember, which is why I phrased it as a question. I'm pretty sure I read that somewhere though. Does anyone else here recognize that? Doug
[Fwd: [BRC-MUMIA] Educators for Mumia Ad]
URGENT MEMO ! "EDUCATORS FOR MUMIA" NYTIMES AD NEEDS YOUR HELP NOW! From Mark Taylor, Coordinator of the "Educators for Mumia" Ad Campaign. ___ With Mumia Abu-Jamal facing the very important Federal decision expected this Spring, citizens from all public sectors need to step forward, through every media outlet possible, with the clarion call: "Stop the Execution, Grant Mumia a new trial." Your giving to the "Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal" full-page ad, which is planned for The New York Times, has been steady and shows much commitment. Thanks to all of you who have sent in your names and donations, often in remembrance of students and friends who are imprisoned or have been victims of police brutality. I am pleased to say all levels of education - elementary, secondary, community, college, university and professional schools - are represented. We still have a long way to go! We do not yet have even half of what is required for this full page ad. We need to get the ad out soon, before Mumia goes into his Federal District court hearing in Philadelphia. Before that time, as authorities now assess just how much the people care about Mumia, we need to show that we are uncompromisingly outspoken and acting on his behalf. As the National Coordinating Committee for Mumia discussed it last year, the educators' ad is a very important part of our struggle. Read the text of the ad to see how the movement for Mumia focuses so many issues crucial to work as educators. Educators teach, learn from, and work with, the young people who ARE the next generation. Yoked to that generation as we are, educators need to send a message that we will not accept a future that hustles Mumia off to the death chamber as another of the nearly 2 persons per week - predominantly Black, Brown and poor - that State officials are now averaging as they implement the death penalty. Send a message that says publicly, through The New York Times and in every metropolis, that we do not accept a future without Mumia Abu-Jamal's life and the courageous voice he has raised for so many of the rest of us. Ponder "the Appeal" to sign issued by some of the greatest educator/writers of our time: TONI MORRISON, NOAM CHOMSKY, ANGELA Y. DAVIS, JONATHAN KOZOL, RUDOLFO ANAYA, LESLIE MARMON SILKO, CORNEL WEST, FRANCES FOX PIVEN, MANNING MARABLE, SONIA SANCHEZ, JAMES H. CONE. You can find their Appeal and the Text of the ad on the web site at http://www.freemumia.org/EducatorsForMumia.html . All the information is also there for you to make your contribution. If you can print out this "Urgent Memo," along with the Appeal and Text of the ad, do so and send it to your friends. Email them now, as you can. If you supervise a web site, please post this Memo and the Appeal and Text for readier access to all. If you are doing mailings to organizations, please include this Urgent Memo as one insert. The minimum contribution for printing your name in the ad is only $35.00, but if you or people you know can make larger contributions, we do need their help. BRC-MUMIA: Black Radical Congress - Mumia Abu-Jamal News/Info/Discussion Questions/Problems: send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For the fastest and easiest way to backup your files and, access them from anywhere. Try @backup Free for 30 days. Click here for a chance to win a digital camera. http://click.egroups.com/1/337/0/_/20091/_/950216562/ -- Talk to your group with your own voice! -- http://www.egroups.com/VoiceChatPage?listName=brc-mumiam=1
Re: executive committee
Actually, John Roemer's argument about the political-economic effects of concentrated wealth is the sort of Marxoid public choice theory Max is talking about. (See: A Future for Socialism.) Peter Jim Devine wrote: Max writes: If you think the state is the executive committee of the bourgeoisie, than you are a public choice theorist too. The Virginia public choice school would not agree (even though they share the view that politics is endogenous with Marxian political economy). The Virginia school assumes that each voter's impact in the election is the same as each of the other voters (and emphasize how this process is less rational than a market). The "executive committee" theory, on the other hand, would be based on a one dollar/one vote theory (as a first approximation), so that those who have the bucks have more impact than those without. This recognizes that "voting" (in the sense of people having an impact on political decisions) takes place all the time, through lobbying, etc. Also, there are all sorts of government agencies -- notably the Federal Reserve in the US -- which are largely independent of control by democratically-elected officials, so that they can easily be "captured" by the industries they regulate (in the case of the Fed, banking and finance). BTW, when people, especially anti-Marxists, use the phrase "executive committee of the bourgeoisie," they often forget that such committees can make errors (from the point of view of the long-term class interests of the bourgeoisie), be indecisive, represent special interests within the bourgeoisie (or among state managers), etc. (Similarly, the boards of directors of corporations make mistakes, fiddle while the bottom line burns, represent special interests among stock-holders or managers...) In addition to the exec committee, we should remember that the state as such (in all class societies) is a coercive institution that maintains the class system. The executive committee theory is only one part of Marx's complete theory of the state (see, for example, Hal Draper's multi-volume book). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Trademarks, imperialism and insanity
I was told but was unable to confirm that Disney's copyright of the Tasmanian devil restricted what could be written about it in Australia. Urban legend? Rob Schaap wrote: G'day Pen-pals, I see the Australian Institute of Management have felt the slings and arrows of US jurisdiction without having to buy a plane ticket. They've just listed a 20-year-old course called 'Effective Negotiation Skills' on their web site. And now it's gone. A US training group called Karrass has claimed 'effective negotiation' (and permutations of that with a couple of likely other millenium-old ordinary words, like 'advanced' and 'sales') as its trademarks, and AIM had either to defend itself in an American court or cut its losses. It chose wisely. AIM are cross, because Australians are not nearly as looney as Yanks, and, in Australia, purely descriptive words do not a trademark make. Another notch for the barking behemoth, then. The internet is effectively under US jurisdiction, and the language is being enclosed word-by-word. Glad I've my Dutch to fall back on. (For those keeping an eye on these things, it's all in the February 4 (Australian) Business Review Weekly). There's a bright side for we pedagogues, I s'pose. It usually takes ages to define and explain to the first-years such terms as 'commoditisation', 'enclosure of the commons' and 'wall-biting fucking mad'. And to distinguish between 'globalism' and 'imperialism'. It should be easier now ... And should we band together and buy the trademark on 'ceterus paribus', 'supply' and 'demand'? 95% of the world's economists consigned to life-long silence - and all by 'market forces'. Luvverly. Cheers, Rob -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
RE: Re: RE: executive committee
I used a median voter model for my dissertation. The R-squares were beyond belief. I was more worried about them being too good than the contrary. In models "median voter" is represented by median income, which clearly could be influential for reasons outside the voting process. mbs -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Jim Devine Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2000 4:18 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:16212] Re: RE: executive committee At 03:54 PM 2/10/00 -0500, you wrote: The Virginia school is not the beginning and end of public choice theory. For instance, there is a median voter theory that explains how, under completely fantastical conditions, the median voter is decisive in electoral matters in the Krugman column that Louis pointed us to read, PK talks as if the median voter actually is decisive! I'd say that the median dollar invested in a two-person race is decisive. Or at least that's a better first approximation than the median-voter rule. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: executive committee
Doesn't the Virginia school merge into the literature on rent seeking -- although the typical nasty rent seekers are labor unions and lawyers and the like? yes. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Trademarks, imperialism and insanity
I was told but was unable to confirm that Disney's copyright of the Tasmanian devil restricted what could be written about it in Australia. Urban legend? I can tell you one thing about Disney and copyright. I entered a boolean search on the two words in Nexis, which used the default 'within six month' time-frame, and it failed because it exceeded the limit of 1,000 hits. Something is definitely going on. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: executive committee
Max writes: If you think the state is the executive committee of the bourgeoisie, than you are a public choice theorist too. *Sigh* Marx did not write in the _Manifesto_ that the state is the executive committee of the bourgeoisie. He wrote that the executive of the modern state is a committee for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie--suggesting that the democratically-elected legislature of the modern state is something else. This misquotation has served the function through the twentieth century of making Marx appear closer to Lenin than he in fact was... Brad DeLong
executive committee
*Sigh* Marx did not write in the _Manifesto_ that the state is the executive committee of the bourgeoisie. He wrote that the executive of the modern state is a committee for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie--suggesting that the democratically-elected legislature of the modern state is something else. This misquotation has served the function through the twentieth century of making Marx appear closer to Lenin than he in fact was... Brad DeLong There is no real difference between Marx and Lenin on the theory of the state. Lenin's "State and Revolution" was based on both the example of the Paris Commune--the prototype for a workers state--and various writings by Marx and Engels. Lenin, "State and Revolution": It is well known that in the autumn of 1870, a few months before the Commune, Marx warned the Paris workers that any attempt to overthrow the government would be the folly of despair. But when, in March 1871, a decisive battle was forced upon the workers and they accepted it, when the uprising had become a fact, Marx greeted the proletarian revolution with the greatest enthusiasm, in spite of unfavorable auguries. Marx did not persist in the pedantic attitude of condemning an "untimely" movement as did the ill-famed Russian renegade from marxism, Plekhanov, who in November 1905 wrote encouragingly about the workers' and peasants' struggle, but after December 1905 cried, liberal fashion: "They should not have taken up arms." Marx, however, was not only enthusiastic about the heroism of the Communards, who, as he expressed it, "stormed heaven". Although the mass revolutionary movement did not achieve its aim, he regarded it as a historic experience of enormous importance, as a certain advance of the world proletarian revolution, as a practical step that was more important than hundreds of programmes and arguments. Marx endeavored to analyze this experiment, to draw tactical lessons from it and re-examine his theory in the light of it. The only "correction" Marx thought it necessary to make to the Communist Manifesto he made on the basis of the revolutionary experience of the Paris Commune. The last preface to the new German edition of the Communist Manifesto, signed by both its authors, is dated June 24, 1872. In this preface the authors, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, say that the programme of the Communist Manifesto "has in some details become out-of-date", and the go on to say: "... One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that 'the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes'" The authors took the words that are in single quotation marks in this passage from Marx's book, The Civil War in France. Thus, Marx and Engels regarded one principal and fundamental lesson of the Paris Commune as being of such enormous importance that they introduced it as an important correction into the Communist Manifesto. Most characteristically, it is this important correction that has been distorted by the opportunists, and its meaning probably is not known to nine-tenths, if not ninety-nine-hundredths, of the readers of the Communist Manifesto. We shall deal with this distortion more fully farther on, in a chapter devoted specially to distortions. Here it will be sufficient to note that the current, vulgar "interpretation" of Marx's famous statement just quoted is that Marx here allegedly emphasizes the idea of slow development in contradistinction to the seizure of power, and so on. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: Re: executive committee
Yeah, all the AMs are lefty pub choicers. See also Pzrzworski on social democracy. I am having been developing a version of the argument that Marx's state theory is a pub choice view for a paper I am working on about Marx and the rule of law, although admittedly my motive is partly to annoy the Chicago Econ Law crowd that proliferates around here. --jks In a message dated Thu, 10 Feb 2000 1:02:40 PM Eastern Standard Time, Peter Dorman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Actually, John Roemer's argument about the political-economic effects of concentrated wealth is the sort of Marxoid public choice theory Max is talking about. (See: A Future for Socialism.) Peter Jim Devine wrote: Max writes: If you think the state is the executive committee of the bourgeoisie, than you are a public choice theorist too. The Virginia public choice school would not agree (even though they share the view that politics is endogenous with Marxian political economy). The Virginia school assumes that each voter's impact in the election is the same as each of the other voters (and emphasize how this process is less rational than a market). The "executive committee" theory, on the other hand, would be based on a one dollar/one vote theory (as a first approximation), so that those who have the bucks have more impact than those without. This recognizes that "voting" (in the sense of people having an impact on political decisions) takes place all the time, through lobbying, etc. Also, there are all sorts of government agencies -- notably the Federal Reserve in the US -- which are largely independent of control by democratically-elected officials, so that they can easily be "captured" by the industries they regulate (in the case of the Fed, banking and finance). BTW, when people, especially anti-Marxists, use the phrase "executive committee of the bourgeoisie," they often forget that such committees can make errors (from the point of view of the long-term class interests of the bourgeoisie), be indecisive, represent special interests within the bourgeoisie (or among state managers), etc. (Similarly, the boards of directors of corporations make mistakes, fiddle while the bottom line burns, represent special interests among stock-holders or managers...) In addition to the exec committee, we should remember that the state as such (in all class societies) is a coercive institution that maintains the class system. The executive committee theory is only one part of Marx's complete theory of the state (see, for example, Hal Draper's multi-volume book). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
RE: Re: Trademarks, imperialism and insanity
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Louis Proyect I can tell you one thing about Disney and copyright. I entered a boolean search on the two words in Nexis, which used the default 'within six month' time-frame, and it failed because it exceeded the limit of 1,000 hits. Something is definitely going on. One reason Disney is the antichrist in the eyes of a lot of leftleaning copyright activists is that is was the main engine for passage of the Bono (as in Sonny) amendment which extended corporate copyrights from seventy years to ninety years, conveniently just in time to preserve Disney's copyright on Mickey Mouse, which premiered in the early 30s. What pissed people off most is the bankruptcy of the arguments; a case can intellectually be made for offering copyrights to new artists, even lengthening the copyright period for new authors, in order to increase incentives for artistic production. But extending copyrights on existing works can have no incentive effects- the works are already created, the artists usually dead, so it's a pure transfer of wealth from the public domain to the estates and heirs of the original artists. The Berkman Center at Harvard is mounting a challenge to the Disney-Bono law on the grounds that the government is prohibited from giving away public resources without compensation to that public. Most corporate welfare has some bogus incentive justification, but the complete intellectual bankruptcy of this law gives the lawyers involved some hope of prevailing. I personally am dubious but am not familiar with the constitutional law they are using. -- Nathan Newman
and Gramsci again on the state
At 14:01 10/02/00 -0500, Louis Proyect wrote: There is no real difference between Marx and Lenin on the theory of the state. Lenin's "State and Revolution" was based on both the example of the Paris Commune--the prototype for a workers state--and various writings by Marx and Engels. Lenin, "State and Revolution": etc. I discussed more fully on marxism-thaxis Gramsci's view of the state, which I had raised here at the beginning of the year but did not pursue on this list. The discussion on the executive of the bourgeoisie however makes it relevant to return to the subject. I was surprised that on 2nd January Louis appeared to dismiss Gramsci's argument on the grounds that it was written in prison: Gramsci wrote his Prison Notebooks in a prison of all places. That's how it got its name. The *Prison* Notebooks. Unlike American prisons, where Mumia or Leonard Peltier can take advantage of democratic rights, Gramsci had to use circumlocutions and euphemisms. An unambiguous call for the overthrow of Mussolini would have led to torture or death. I do not know if the guidelines of Louis's marxism list have changed but they used to say: Despite the name of the mailing list, we must resist the temptation to turn the powerful method of Marx into some sort of revealed truth. Fortunately, we have examples of creative Marxism to draw upon: Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, Jose Carlos MariƔtegui's journal "Amauta" and the essays of C.L.R. James. The wide range of interests of these Marxist thinkers, and their fresh approach to social reality, must inspire us. Is Louis's position that we should be inspired by Gramsci's prison notebooks over a wide range of matters *with the exception of* Gramsci's remarks about the state, which were distortions of his true position? Of course the notebooks do not call explicitly for the revolutionary overthrow of Mussolini and one would not expect them to. Yet Gramsci refers to *coercion*, so the code is surely clear. What is wrong with the concept of *hegemony protected with the armour of coercion* in this passage? - page 263 of "Selections from the Prison Notebooks" 1971, Lawrence and Wishart: "the general notion of the State includes elements which need to be referred back to the notion of civil society (in the sense that one might say that State = political society + civil society, in other words hegemony protected with the armour of coercion). In a doctrine of a State which conceives the latter as tendentially capable of withering away and of being subsumed into regulated society, the argument is a fundamental one. It is possible to imagine the coercive element of the State withering away by degrees, as ever-more conspicuous elements of regulated society (or ethical State or civil society) make their appearance." 1932 Chris Burford London
Re: executive committee
Brad De Long [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/10/00 01:43PM Max writes: If you think the state is the executive committee of the bourgeoisie, than you are a public choice theorist too. *Sigh* Marx did not write in the _Manifesto_ that the state is the executive committee of the bourgeoisie. CB: That was Marx and Engels , who wrote _The Manifesto of the Communist Party_ . And Engels wrote _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_. He wrote that the executive of the modern state is a committee for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie--suggesting that the democratically-elected legislature of the modern state is something else. CB: Yea , and that statement in _The Manifesto_ was a sort of poetic thing. Extending the metaphor which is based on the structure of a joint stock company, the executive is the subordinate of the "board of directors", not the "board of directors"itself. The "board of directors" picks and fires the executive officers , such as the President in the U.S. The less poetic, more scientific and complete Marxist theory of the state is in Engels' _ The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_ ( This misquotation has served the function through the twentieth century of making Marx appear closer to Lenin than he in fact was... CB: Lenin's theory of the state in _The State and Revolution_ is based on Engels' in _The Origin_. Also, it is Marx who proudly proclaimed that he had not discovered classes but rather the "dictatorship of the proletariat", as the form of the socialist state. Lenin was in fact virtually identical with Marx and Engels on the general character of the state. Lenin was a loyal executor of Marx and Engels' "estate on the state". CB
Re: Re: executive committee
Max writes: If you think the state is the executive committee of the bourgeoisie, than you are a public choice theorist too. Brad sighs: Marx did not write in the _Manifesto_ that the state is the executive committee of the bourgeoisie. He wrote that the executive of the modern state is a committee for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie--suggesting that the democratically-elected legislature of the modern state is something else. It is clear that the democratically-elected legislature in most countries is more representative of the people than is the executive branch, which is more likely to be beholden to the bourgeoisie. However, this depends on how well non-bourgeois forces are organized and class-conscious. If the working class is atomized and considers itself as "middle class" (only a slightly exaggerated picture of the US), then the legislature by-and-large represents capital, given the latter''s massive monetary resources for influencing politics. Politics is basically about debates within the bourgeoisie (Boy George Bush vs. McCain vs. Gore/Bradley). On the other hand, if the working class is well organized and class conscious (as in Chile in 1970), not only may the legislature but the executive may be subordinated to non-bourgeois forces. The problem, of course, is that in the Chilean case, the repressive component of the state (the armed forces) stepped in to suppressed the democratic component -- aided and abetted by the US and US-based multinational corporations -- so that capitalism and the international relationships of domination could be restored to their "normal" status. In the situation of Chile in 1973, either capitalism was going to be preserved by military force or there had to be a socialist break from capitalism. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clawww.lmu.edu/~JDevine "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
Re: Re: Re: executive committee
if the working class is well organized and class conscious (as in Chile in 1970), not only may the legislature but the executive may be subordinated to non-bourgeois forces. The problem, of course, is that in the Chilean case, the repressive component of the state (the armed forces) stepped in to suppressed the democratic component -- aided and abetted by the US and US-based multinational corporations -- so that capitalism and the international relationships of domination could be restored to their "normal" status. In the situation of Chile in 1973, either capitalism was going to be preserved by military force or there had to be a socialist break from capitalism. Jim Devine Chilean constitution called for presidential selection by legislature if no electoral majority occurred. Constitutional transfer of power took place in which Allende agreed to leave military bureaucracy intact. Popular Unity (UP) controlled only 36% of congressional seats and had no appointments on Constitutional Court. Thus, many disposed to preventing fundamental changes were situated in official positions, often outside public accountability. Possession of limited formal power was heavily outweighed by opposition control of key economic, military, political sectors. Plus, opposition forces controlled mass media and used it for purposes of political sabotage. Reproduction of capitalist relations was threatened in Chile in early 1970s and context in which Allende government operated was historic - concrete example of test of peaceful transition to socialism. Fundamental contradiction within UP was between its stated intention - abolishing capitalism - and adherence to constitutional means. Thus, UP was not only restricted by power of opposition, it was limited by its own character. Coalition contained several elements not committed to working-class socialism and standard bearers - Socialists and Communists - had long accepted constitutional path to socialism. These factors limites popular mobilization, created conflict, prevented development of alternative strategies for seizing state power, and bought time for opposition.Michael Hoover
Re: Re: Drazen's new book?
What do you mean by political economy was rescued from the left by James Buchanan and the Virginia School. Warm regardsGeorge Pennefather Be free to check out our Communist Think-Tank web site athttp://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/ Be free to subscribe to our Communist Think-Tank mailing community bysimply placing subscribe in the body of the message at the following address:mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ? In the new Princeton University Press economics catalogue, they are featuring a new book by Allan Drazen entitled Political Economy in Macroeconomics. Does anyone know anything about this book? Does it represent an attempt to reclaim "political economy" from the left? I don't know that book (and would be interested in hearing about it), but political economy was "rescued" from the left a long time ago, by people like James Buchanan and the Virginia school. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: reparations
I was recently thinking about Robinson's call for reparations. Suppose that United States was called upon to pay reparations for what they imposed on the slaves, what they took from the indigenous people, the damage that they caused through imperialism. How many years of gross domestic product might be involved? -- Michael Perelman I'm still waiting for my reparations from the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes... Brad DeLong
Re: Re: reparations
Brad, your comment, as usual was clever, but I was aiming at something something else -- that our system is both extractive and exploitative. Brad De Long wrote: I was recently thinking about Robinson's call for reparations. Suppose that United States was called upon to pay reparations for what they imposed on the slaves, what they took from the indigenous people, the damage that they caused through imperialism. How many years of gross domestic product might be involved? -- Michael Perelman I'm still waiting for my reparations from the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes... Brad DeLong -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Trademarks, imperialism and insanity
I was told but was unable to confirm that Disney's copyright of the Tasmanian devil restricted what could be written about it in Australia. Urban legend? Nope. Absolutely true. The Tasmanian Trade Commission wanted to use a Tassie Devil as the graphic fulcrum of an expensively produced marketing strategy in 1998. Disney threatened legal action - on a critter that looks nothing like their fanciful version - and Tassie. the only place in the world where you can see a wild devil, had to pull the plug on the campaign. Cheers, Rob.
Gramsci again on the state
Chris: I discussed more fully on marxism-thaxis Gramsci's view of the state, which I had raised here at the beginning of the year but did not pursue on this list. The discussion on the executive of the bourgeoisie however makes it relevant to return to the subject. Well, okay. I am coming over to marxism-thaxis to discuss that with you. Look for me. I am about 6 feet tall, very muscular, and have blond hair down to my shoulders. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
reparations
I was recently thinking about Robinson's call for reparations. Suppose that United States was called upon to pay reparations for what they imposed on the slaves, what they took from the indigenous people, the damage that they caused through imperialism. How many years of gross domestic product might be involved? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
WTO Congressional testimony 2-8-00
http://www.house.gov/ways_means/trade/106cong/tr-18wit.htm Ian
The Internet Anti-Fascist: Tuesday, 8 Feb 2000 -- 4:12 (#387)
SPECIAL NOTE: MORE ON HAIDER AT "LATEST ANTI-FASCIST READINGS" via http://www.anti-fascism.org __ The Internet Anti-Fascist: Tuesday, 8 February 2000 Vol. 4, Number 12 (#387) __ CONTENTS Action Alerts AFAA #94: Evolution Under Attack In Arizona AFAA #95: State Religion Pushed in Indiana Haider and Austrian Fascism George Jahn (AP), "New Austria Coalition Takes Power," 4 Feb 00 Richard Howitt (Financial Times), "Don't underestimate Haider's threat," 3 Feb 00 Johan Huizinga (Radio Netherlands), "Austria: Haider Pulls the Strings," 4 Feb 00 N.Y. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Haider Robert Lederman (A.R.T.I.S.T.), "GiulianiĀs Hitler Connection," 2 Feb 00 AP, "Giuliani Criticized by Koch [Over Haider]," 19 Jan 00 John Bachtell (Communist Party U.S.A.), "Clean up New York: Dump Giuliani and the ultraright," 2 Feb 00 Web Sites Of Interest Rightwing Quote of the Week -- ANTI-FASCIST ACTION ALERT #94: Evolution Under Attack In Arizona Act Now To Protest the Teaching of Evolution! Defend Science and Stop Religion From Invading Our [Arizona] Public Schools! Americans United For Separation of Church and State 9 Feb 00 The [Arizona] House will be voting shortly on HB 2585 -- legislation that would require public schools to teach "alternative theories" of life in conjunction with the teaching of evolution. This bill is merely a transparent attempt to advance the religious tenet of creationism, at the expense of evolution. It is unconstitutional and should be rejected. The clear command of Constitution is that public schools not endorse or favor religion or any religious perspective. (Edwards v. Aguillard) Accordingly, the Supreme Court has held that the "equal treatment" of religious theories of creation in science classes violates the Constitution. Another way public schools cross this line is when they tailor their curriculum to conform to the religious beliefs of one faith or dogma by omitting the teaching of evolution. (Epperson v. Arkansas) ... ftp://ftp.nyct.net/pub/users/tallpaul/publish/afaa/afaa94.txt - - - - - ANTI-FASCIST ACTION ALERT #95: State Religion Pushed in Indiana Help Stop the Ten Commandments From [Indiana] State Promotion! Help Keep State Government From Sponsoring Religion! Americans United For Separation of Church and State 9 Feb 00 Legislation calling for the posting of the Ten Commandments on public property has already passed in the House and the Senate. Thankfully, it may not be too late to stop this unconstitutional train. In our state, each bill must pass by both the House and the Senate. We may be able to derail this train. We can stop the House from passing the Senate's bill and the Senate from passing the House's bill. But we must ACT! This bill is unconstitutional and violates established case law. ... * The display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms and hallways is unconstitutional. In Stone v. Graham, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Kentucky law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in school classrooms, despite the law's avowed secular purpose of teaching the origins of the American legal tradition. The Court held that "the Ten Commandments are undeniably a sacred text in the Jewish and Christian faiths, and no legislative recitation of a supposed secular purpose can blind us to that fact." The underlying rationale for the posting of the document is for children to read and "perhaps to venerate and obey the Commandments," which violates the Constitution's command that the state be neutral toward religion. ftp://ftp.nyct.net/pub/users/tallpaul/publish/afaa/afaa95.txt -- HAIDER AND AUSTRIAN FASCISM New Austria Coalition Takes Power George Jahn (AP) 4 Feb 00 VIENNA -- A governing coalition tainted by a party identified with Nazi sympathies took power Friday, triggering diplomatic sanctions and egg- throwing protests that forced the new ministers to leave the swearing-in ceremony through an underground tunnel. "There is no Hitler on the rise," the new chancellor, Wolfgang Schuessel of the People's Party, told a nationwide television audience. President Thomas Klestil, who swore in the new center-right coalition, appealed to the world to give the new government a chance to fulfill its promises to govern under European standards of democracy and human rights. As the ministers were taking their oaths, some 5,000 protesters massed outside the presidential offices, pelting police with eggs and paint. One protester, Wilhelm Popovic, said he was showing his opposition "in the name of my father," who he said spent seven years in a Nazi
The Bill of Gates fallacy
Rob: Then there's the Marxish reservation that you can't go around impoverishing the rest of the world for long, seeing as how you have to grow markets if you want to grow profits. It is important not to rely on too literal an interpretation of this bit of "Marxish" doctrine. Impoverishment has to be seen in a dialectical manner. In point of fact, for those in the Third World who have managed to get hooked up with some imperialist commercial or industrial venture, there is evidence to support the claim that their living conditions might have improved. Specifically, when a peasant who has been pushed to marginal lands gets the chance to take a job in a maquila, there is little doubt that his or her economic indicators might show an uptick. I suspect that until a serious worldwide depression on the scale of the 1930s erupts, we will be facing a general political and economic situation where "impoverishment" does not quite describe the reality. There will instead be 3 distinct socio-economic realities: 1. The imperialist countries will continue as they have since WWII, fraying around the edges but not undergoing any kind of crisis in the true Marxist sense. Workers in the US, Japan and Western Europe will not be interested in alternatives to the system. 2. The third world will consist of pockets of trade, commerce and industrialization not unlike the East Coast development zones in China. In these zones, workers will not be thinking in terms of alternatives despite the fact that the level of exploitation is much higher than in the first world. 3. The third world will also be host to very large sections of completely disenfranchised peasants and subproletarians who will not even be sharing in the dubious bounties of "globalization". Instead of a job at Nike, they will be lucky to be able to sell chewing gums in the streets of some megalopolis like Mexico City or Dakar. Often this segment of the population is so consumed with frustration and despair that it will throw itself into senseless civil wars based on ethnicity. This is the reality all across Africa. In other cases, it will be attracted to Marxist-oriented struggles that challenge capitalist rule. This is the case in Colombia where the US is poised to become embroiled in another Vietnam. In this case, the shock to the system might provoke a crisis that will bear no relation to the actual level of economic indicators in the wealthy imperialist nations making war on desperately poor peasants and subproletarians. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: reparations
Lou, Please do not accuse others here of being racist. I had been thinking about reparations in the context of understanding what our economy does. The economy grows. NASDAQ soars. But I have a sneaking suspicion that the negative side of the balance sheet may exceed the positive side. From time to time, Brad has emphasized the positive side. Averages improve in terms of life expectancy, income, I had been trying to argue that a small group, perhaps, suffers terrible setbacks in the process than and that we have no way of adequately measuring the social welfare function. In the case of reparations, we have a debt being presented. If this debt exceeds the net worth of the system, then it is indeed bankrupt. So much of what we enjoy is built upon destruction of other people and the environment, I wonder what the concept of accumulation really means. Mind you, I'm writing this on a Pentium notebook computer. I live a comfortable life on land that this U.S. stole from Mexico, which was earlier stolen from indigenous people. And -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
reparations
Michael Perelman wrote: Brad, your comment, as usual was clever, but I was aiming at something something else -- that our system is both extractive and exploitative. Clever? How about racist. It is one thing to make a Rush Limbaugh type comment--and this is exactly what it is--on a list that has one African-American out of 400 subscribers. If Brad was the only white on a list of 400 black academics, one wonders how eager he would be to make racist wisecracks. It is fascinating how the right wing loves to disparage the idea of a debt to blacks or American Indians but keeps quiet on the same exact question vis-a-vis Israel and Germany. I suppose that Brad is opposed to Swiss banks paying back the families of murdered Jews. Let's hear a smart-alec quip about that. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
RE: Re: Re: Trademarks, imperialism and insanity
On Behalf Of Rob Schaap Nope. Absolutely true. The Tasmanian Trade Commission wanted to use a Tassie Devil as the graphic fulcrum of an expensively produced marketing strategy in 1998. Disney threatened legal action - on a critter that looks nothing like their fanciful version - and Tassie. the only place in the world where you can see a wild devil, had to pull the plug on the campaign. Although to keep our villians straight, wouldn't that have been Warner Brothers (I mean Time-Warner, I mean AOL-TimeWarner) doing the suing? Heaven forbid we confuse the more subtle humor and satire of Bugs Bunny and friends with Disney's pop art :) -- Nathan Newman
RE: reparations
" . . . Clever? How about racist. . . . Oh please. I heard a paper at the AEA meetings by Cecilia Conrad about reparations which took one of her relatives as a point of departure. There was apparently a very clear system of discriminatory pay in New Orleans, where the aunt was a school teacher or nurse, I forget which. She made a good case. It should be obvious that the proximity of the people in question, in terms of time, has something to do with the salience of the issue. It's one thing to refer to a close and familiar relative, whether it's CC's aunt or somebody's grandparents killed by the Nazis. At some point, however, going back in time becomes an exercise in political rhetoric rather than one of social justice. How far back is appropriate? What about indentured Irish servants? Chinese railroad builders? Suppose the debt is so high (a realistic possibility, I would say, as I did in my little essay on this topic) that repayment is utterly implausible. Or suppose we had socialism. Would a socialist govt extract from those who 'owed' and make those who were owed richer on that account? I doubt it. The distribution of wealth has little moral rationale in many dimensions. That's a worthwhile topic for political discourse -- maybe the most important one. But you can't turn history inside out, and a politics based on some illusory approximation of that is incoherent emotionalism. Slavery in the Western Hemisphere endured over centuries. So why shouldn't the jews petition Christendom for a similar period of oppression? Why is that any less serious? That's the irony underlying the joke. Now someone could say, oppression deriving from slavery endures to this day. But in that case reparations is no longer the issue: current circumstances are. Those with no historic claim (i.e., the Hmong people in Minnesota) are no less relevant than the descendants of slaves. I think this follows regardless of how much race should be elevated as a political issue. If I was a BRC person, I would talk about the injustice of wealth and its historic roots, including the obvious racial dimension. I would not elevate reparations as a remedy. One reason reparations gets the attention it does is the landscape of likely remedies seems so barren. It there was a movement pressuring the Gov to enact all manner of progressive programs and laws, or for that matter a serious revolutionary movement, nobody would be wasting their time on reparations. mbs
Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy
Microsoft Timeline Business @ the Speed of Thought Remarks by Bill Gates Georgetown University School of Business March 24, 1999 QUESTION: During the course of the presentation, you mentioned job reduction a number of times. While, as business students, we can all appreciate what that means for the bottom line, have you put any thought into what it means for society as a whole? MR. GATES: Well, part of the lesson of economics is that there are infinite demands for jobs out there, as long as you want class sizes to be smaller, or entertainment services to be better, there's not a lump of labor where there's a finite demand for a certain number of jobs. And so, as efficiency changes, such as in food production, the jobs shifted to manufacturing. As efficiencies were gained there, those jobs moved into services. In fact, there's no shortage of things that can be done. So, it's not like we're going to run out of jobs here. Tom Walker Well, we haven't, have we? The physiocrats in 1770 were really worried about mass urban unemployment that would follow should the agricultural share of the French labor force drop below 70%. Today 2% (IIRC) of our labor force is engaged in agriculture as farmers or farm laborers. And there are more gardeners, groundskeepers, and growers of ornamental plants than there are members of the agricultural labor force. Getting people the skills to take new jobs as old kinds of jobs vanish is, of course, a problem we are doing a bad job of dealing with... Brad DeLong
Re: reparations
Max: At some point, however, going back in time becomes an exercise in political rhetoric rather than one of social justice. How far back is appropriate? Its not about going back in time. It is about political power. Zionism was a joint project of Jewish ruling-class figures and Anglo-American imperialism. Reparations strengthened the state of Israel which was then used to keep the Arab revolution on the defensive. Louis Proyect Give me a break. There is no "Arab revolution" to be put on the defensive. There never was. Brad DeLong
Re: RE: Re: Re: Trademarks, imperialism and insanity
Although to keep our villians straight, wouldn't that have been Warner Brothers (I mean Time-Warner, I mean AOL-TimeWarner) doing the suing? Quite right, Nathan - it musta been AOLTimeWarnerEMI. Sorry 'bout that, chief. Heaven forbid we confuse the more subtle humor and satire of Bugs Bunny and friends with Disney's pop art :) Right again. Although I'm very much a Foghorn Leghorn man, meself. One of the joys of fatherhood is the excuse to watch Foghorn all over again. And while His Verbosity is there upbraiding dawgs and dodging precocious chickenhawklets, I don't have to watch the ghastly Ash and his verminous poke-bloody-mons. Progress has been going in altogether the wrong direction for some little while ... Cheers, Rob.
Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy
It is important not to rely on too literal an interpretation of this bit of "Marxish" doctrine. Impoverishment has to be seen in a dialectical manner. In other words, "impoverishment" is simply not happening. we will be facing a general political and economic situation where "impoverishment" does not quite describe the reality. There will instead be 3 distinct socio-economic realities: 1. The imperialist countries will continue as they have since WWII, fraying around the edges but not undergoing any kind of crisis in the true Marxist sense. Workers in the US, Japan and Western Europe will not be interested in alternatives to the system. That's one billion people. 2. The third world will consist of pockets of trade, commerce and industrialization not unlike the East Coast development zones in China.. That's three billion people. 3. The third world will also be host to very large sections of completely disenfranchised peasants and subproletarians... That's two billion people. Now ideas about how to move category (3) into category (2) and category (2) into category (1) would be helpful.
reparations
To make the point that a substantial part of the wealth moved by "reparations" is moved to people--like Alexis Herman, Thomas Sowell, Ward Connerly, Vernon Jordan--who don't especially need it (hell, it's highly probable that at least one of my ancestors involuntarily took the middle passage around 1800) is not "racist." What is your motive for claiming that it is? Brad DeLong I don't think you are a conscious racist, Brad, if that is any help. You just demonstrate a insensitivity of the sort that would drive people of color from PEN-L. Most PEN-L'ers are better educated on these questions, but unfortunately are too much into collegiality to make a point about it. Addressing the substantive question, Randall Robinson has not put forward a particular solution to the reparations question, not even one involving a pricetag as Michael alluded to. What is not in question is the morality. "The moral basis for reparations is simply stated: 1) slaves were not paid for their labor for more than two hundred and sixty-five years, thereby depriving the descendants of slaves of their inheritance; the descendants of the slavemasters inherited the benefit derived from slave labor, which properly belonged to the descendants of slaves; 2) the United States Government promised ex-slaves forty acres and a mule and did not make good on that promise; and 3) systematic and government-sanctioned economic and racial oppression since the abolition of slavery impeded and interfered with the self-determination of African Americans and excluded them from sharing in the growth and prosperity of the nation." Vincene Verdun Associate Professor, The Ohio State University College of Law Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy
K Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit on 11/2/00 3:19 pm, Brad De Long at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well, we haven't, have we? The physiocrats in 1770 were really worried about mass urban unemployment that would follow should the agricultural share of the French labor force drop below 70%. Today 2% (IIRC) of our labor force is engaged in agriculture as farmers or farm laborers. And there are more gardeners, groundskeepers, and growers of ornamental plants than there are members of the agricultural labor force. Not surprisingly, since the costs of agriculture have been collectivised and in part socialised while the diseconomies of private gardens make it difficult to employ combine grass-cutters, shears and pruners on the scale of your average agribusiness. In addition, the dictates of emulation and ostentatious display demand a degree of craftsmanship absent from typical mass production. Getting people the skills to take new jobs as old kinds of jobs vanish is, of course, a problem we are doing a bad job of dealing with... Paying folks to do necessary jobs instead of spending vast sums on at best useless military projects, to name but one example, would at least in part solve the problem of skills, since that is as much the product of imbecile capitalism as it is any genuine lag between technological development and human capital formation. Michael
reparations
Lou Can you document this? It is of some historical interest. Rod Louis Proyect wrote: 2) the United States Government promised ex-slaves forty acres and a mule and did not make good on that promise; -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://home.golden.net/~rodhay 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
marriage penalty
from Scott Shuger's SLATE "Today's Papers" column: The NYT quotes a Treasury Dept. finding lending much perspective to the marriage penalty discussion: according to the latest available figures, nearly the same number of people pay [get?] a marriage bonus (21 million joint returns) as pay a marriage penalty (24.8 million). And the amount of money at stake is about the same too. The penalty payers fork over an average extra of $1,141 and the bonus receivers get an average extra of $1,274. But why hold this data until the 22nd paragraph? what do pen-l's tax wonks think of the alleged "marriage penalty" of the US tax system? (Forget the GOP plan. It won't go anywhere.) continuing Shuger's story: At one point, the Times quotes a Republican House member's question, "What is more immoral than taxing people just because they fall in love?" Oh, that's easy...not letting them get married. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: reparations
another comment: the above suggests that perhaps capitalism has _never_ produced a surplus-product. Rather, all of the surplus that was spent on capitalist accumulation and rich people's luxuries and the like was simply the result of _redistribution_ from other people. Then why is infant mortality these days so low? Brad DeLong
Re: Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy
G'day Brad, The US has low unemployment for a variety of reasons, I'd've thought. Some may have to do with the domestic 'labour cost' strata, such that you have an extraordinary number of 'working poor' (Greider's book comes to mind). And more has to do with 'globalism' - a salient component of which may be termed (if Chossudovsky is to be believed) 'the regulation of international labour costs'. And then you've got nearly half a billion unemployed people 'over there' as well! So, yeah, we do get better at doing what we do, and this does open up investment opportunities in new places and sectors, ultimately generating new jobs. But surely you share my annoyance at economists who hail globalism enthusiastically one minute, and then pretend the currently bubbling US economy is a closed system in the next. Part of what globalism seems to mean, is to do with cores exporting the bad bits (like unemployment and super-exploitation) to the periphery. Then there's the Marxish reservation that you can't go around impoverishing the rest of the world for long, seeing as how you have to grow markets if you want to grow profits. And then there's the one that would have annoyed JMK. Even if Gates's endearing take is correct, the gales of creative destruction to which he implicitly refers create, inter alia, traumatic bouts of worker-shedding, and it is precisely to these (very generalisable) 'special cases' that the JMK 'long term' quote you so rightly admire seems most appropriate. We gotta stop, for instance, treating those tens of millions of SE Asians who got deposited on the slagheap in '97/'98 as the cost of progress. It eventually comes to look like we're breaking eggs so that we can break more eggs later. Brown ones, preferably - natch. Yours gloomily, Rob. (and I think that quote of JMK's that you rightly like so much could also be brought to bear) Well, we haven't, have we? The physiocrats in 1770 were really worried about mass urban unemployment that would follow should the agricultural share of the French labor force drop below 70%. Today 2% (IIRC) of our labor force is engaged in agriculture as farmers or farm laborers. And there are more gardeners, groundskeepers, and growers of ornamental plants than there are members of the agricultural labor force. Getting people the skills to take new jobs as old kinds of jobs vanish is, of course, a problem we are doing a bad job of dealing with... Brad DeLong
Re: reparations
At 08:34 PM 2/10/00 -0800, you wrote: I was recently thinking about Robinson's call for reparations. Suppose that United States was called upon to pay reparations for what they imposed on the slaves, what they took from the indigenous people, the damage that they caused through imperialism. How many years of gross domestic product might be involved? sorry to distract from the Brad/Louis set-to, but if this is the same Robinson who was interviewed on US National Public Radio the other day, he's not calling for reparations in the form of checks to those who were superexploited or their descendants. He was talking about aid in the form of education grants, below-market business loans, and the like. He was clearly against reparation checks. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: executive committee
And don't omit the $8 million that the U.S. spent--in part, thru the CIA, for the trucker's strike and other mischief. Remember Kissinger's comment that if the Chilean people were so "irresponsible" as to choose a socialist government in a free election, appropriate measures would have to be taken? Joel Blau Michael Hoover wrote: if the working class is well organized and class conscious (as in Chile in 1970), not only may the legislature but the executive may be subordinated to non-bourgeois forces. The problem, of course, is that in the Chilean case, the repressive component of the state (the armed forces) stepped in to suppressed the democratic component -- aided and abetted by the US and US-based multinational corporations -- so that capitalism and the international relationships of domination could be restored to their "normal" status. In the situation of Chile in 1973, either capitalism was going to be preserved by military force or there had to be a socialist break from capitalism. Jim Devine Chilean constitution called for presidential selection by legislature if no electoral majority occurred. Constitutional transfer of power took place in which Allende agreed to leave military bureaucracy intact. Popular Unity (UP) controlled only 36% of congressional seats and had no appointments on Constitutional Court. Thus, many disposed to preventing fundamental changes were situated in official positions, often outside public accountability. Possession of limited formal power was heavily outweighed by opposition control of key economic, military, political sectors. Plus, opposition forces controlled mass media and used it for purposes of political sabotage. Reproduction of capitalist relations was threatened in Chile in early 1970s and context in which Allende government operated was historic - concrete example of test of peaceful transition to socialism. Fundamental contradiction within UP was between its stated intention - abolishing capitalism - and adherence to constitutional means. Thus, UP was not only restricted by power of opposition, it was limited by its own character. Coalition contained several elements not committed to working-class socialism and standard bearers - Socialists and Communists - had long accepted constitutional path to socialism. These factors limites popular mobilization, created conflict, prevented development of alternative strategies for seizing state power, and bought time for opposition.Michael Hoover
Re: reparations
To make the point that a substantial part of the wealth moved by "reparations" is moved to people--like Alexis Herman, Thomas Sowell, Ward Connerly, Vernon Jordan--who don't especially need it (hell, it's highly probable that at least one of my ancestors involuntarily took the middle passage around 1800) is not "racist." What is your motive for claiming that it is? Brad DeLong I don't think you are a conscious racist, Brad, if that is any help. You just demonstrate a insensitivity of the sort that would drive people of color from PEN-L Vincene Verdun Associate Professor, The Ohio State University College of Law So it is "insensitive" and "unconsciously racist" to argue that reparations are a flawed idea because a substantial part of the money goes to people who don't really need it? Something is very, very wrong here. Brad DeLong
Re: Re: reparations
A much broader political alliance could be formed, if it was simply shown that a large number of people lack the necessities of life in a late capitalist economy. Do not have suitable, housing, education, health care, etc. Talk about reparations to long dead victims of slavery is simply going to divide people, in the same way that the question has divided Lou and Brad. And hurling slings of "racists" is not going to build the political alliance required. Rod Jim Devine wrote: At 08:34 PM 2/10/00 -0800, you wrote: I was recently thinking about Robinson's call for reparations. Suppose that United States was called upon to pay reparations for what they imposed on the slaves, what they took from the indigenous people, the damage that they caused through imperialism. How many years of gross domestic product might be involved? sorry to distract from the Brad/Louis set-to, but if this is the same Robinson who was interviewed on US National Public Radio the other day, he's not calling for reparations in the form of checks to those who were superexploited or their descendants. He was talking about aid in the form of education grants, below-market business loans, and the like. He was clearly against reparation checks. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://home.golden.net/~rodhay 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
Re: Re: reparations
sorry to distract from the Brad/Louis set-to, but if this is the same Robinson who was interviewed on US National Public Radio the other day, he's not calling for reparations in the form of checks to those who were superexploited or their descendants. He was talking about aid in the form of education grants, below-market business loans, and the like. He was clearly against reparation checks. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine Touche... Brad DeLong
The Bill of Gates fallacy
2. The third world will consist of pockets of trade, commerce and industrialization not unlike the East Coast development zones in China.. That's three billion people. False. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: reparations
At 08:34 PM 2/10/00 -0800, you wrote: I was recently thinking about Robinson's call for reparations. Suppose that United States was called upon to pay reparations for what they imposed on the slaves, what they took from the indigenous people, the damage that they caused through imperialism. How many years of gross domestic product might be involved? another comment: the above suggests that perhaps capitalism has _never_ produced a surplus-product. Rather, all of the surplus that was spent on capitalist accumulation and rich people's luxuries and the like was simply the result of _redistribution_ from other people. I guess even in Marxian theory there's redistribution going on, since the workers are not being fully paid for the labor they do (since they are paid for the price of their labor-power instead). That can be seen as a redistribution, since workers are losing free time for leisure and family obligations. what do people think? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
reparations
Give me a break. There is no "Arab revolution" to be put on the defensive. There never was. Brad DeLong I am not sure what you mean by "revolution", since I use the term in a Marxist sense. The word revolution, as you are probably are aware, is used in a myriad of ways. There was a "Dodge Revolution" and a "Pepsi Revolution". Then some people talked about the Reagan revolution as well. I refer to "Arab revolution" in the sense of a grass roots revolt against feudalism and privilege. While it did not take explicitly socialist forms, it did lead to the creation of one or another radical and anti-imperialist government, Nasser being the prime example. In the 1956 war over Suez, imperialism joined with Zionism to crush Nasser's bid to gain reparations of a certain sort, namely the canal that had been imposed on the Egyptian people just the way that the Panama Canal had been imposed. Arguments against returning the Panama Canal to the people of Panama were mustered by the same reactionary forces who argue against reparations to African-Americans or Indians. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
reparations
Matt, the cute little quips, convey a serious point. -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://home.golden.net/~rodhay 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
Re: RE: reparations
First, remember that the Enslavement is not so far back in time. Persons who are still alive had grandparents who were slaves. Second, no one wants to get into a comparison of whose exploitation was 'worse.' But that doesn't mean that we cannot recognize that the Enslavement and the African American experience in general is a distinct and unique experience, in the sense that it is truly incomparable in terms of scale, degree, and kind. Only the genocide of indigenous peoples is anywhere in the same ball park. That is an objective fact. It is the American Holocaust. But in any case, support of reparations in one case does not mean that one cannot or does not support other reparations or restitutions. 'Cute little quips,' dismissiveness, etc., show an insensitivity that should not be tolerated. Mat -Original Message- From: Max Sawicky [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, February 11, 2000 9:19 AM Subject: [PEN-L:16231] RE: reparations " . . . Clever? How about racist. . . . Oh please. I heard a paper at the AEA meetings by Cecilia Conrad about reparations which took one of her relatives as a point of departure. There was apparently a very clear system of discriminatory pay in New Orleans, where the aunt was a school teacher or nurse, I forget which. She made a good case. It should be obvious that the proximity of the people in question, in terms of time, has something to do with the salience of the issue. It's one thing to refer to a close and familiar relative, whether it's CC's aunt or somebody's grandparents killed by the Nazis. At some point, however, going back in time becomes an exercise in political rhetoric rather than one of social justice. How far back is appropriate? What about indentured Irish servants? Chinese railroad builders? Suppose the debt is so high (a realistic possibility, I would say, as I did in my little essay on this topic) that repayment is utterly implausible. Or suppose we had socialism. Would a socialist govt extract from those who 'owed' and make those who were owed richer on that account? I doubt it. The distribution of wealth has little moral rationale in many dimensions. That's a worthwhile topic for political discourse -- maybe the most important one. But you can't turn history inside out, and a politics based on some illusory approximation of that is incoherent emotionalism. Slavery in the Western Hemisphere endured over centuries. So why shouldn't the jews petition Christendom for a similar period of oppression? Why is that any less serious? That's the irony underlying the joke. Now someone could say, oppression deriving from slavery endures to this day. But in that case reparations is no longer the issue: current circumstances are. Those with no historic claim (i.e., the Hmong people in Minnesota) are no less relevant than the descendants of slaves. I think this follows regardless of how much race should be elevated as a political issue. If I was a BRC person, I would talk about the injustice of wealth and its historic roots, including the obvious racial dimension. I would not elevate reparations as a remedy. One reason reparations gets the attention it does is the landscape of likely remedies seems so barren. It there was a movement pressuring the Gov to enact all manner of progressive programs and laws, or for that matter a serious revolutionary movement, nobody would be wasting their time on reparations. mbs
Re: Re: Re: reparations
Child mortality is a case in point. For example, even in the prosperous United States, child mortality is extraordinarily high in places, such as Harlem -- higher than in Bangladesh. It is very low in prosperous areas. My basic question, Brad, relates to this use of averages without an taking into account the inequalities that they obscure. Brad De Long wrote: another comment: the above suggests that perhaps capitalism has _never_ produced a surplus-product. Rather, all of the surplus that was spent on capitalist accumulation and rich people's luxuries and the like was simply the result of _redistribution_ from other people. Then why is infant mortality these days so low? Brad DeLong -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
reparations
At 12:08 PM 2/11/00 -0500, you wrote: Lou Can you document this? It is of some historical interest. Rod Louis Proyect wrote: 2) the United States Government promised ex-slaves forty acres and a mule and did not make good on that promise; Absolutely. I just spoke to Wanda who sits 3 cubicles down from me. She swears that nobody in her family ever got 40 acres and a mule. Furthermore, she says that she favors reparations right now and no more fooling around. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: reparations
America, Richard F.(ed.), Paying the social debt : what White America owes Black America, Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 1993. America, Ricxhard F.(ed.), The Wealth of races : the present value of benefits from past injustices. New York : Greenwood Press, 1990. Browne, Robert S., "The Economic Case for Reparations to Black America" The American Economic Review, Vol. 62, No. 1/2. (1972), pp. 39-46. -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, February 10, 2000 10:28 PM Subject: [PEN-L:16224] reparations I was recently thinking about Robinson's call for reparations. Suppose that United States was called upon to pay reparations for what they imposed on the slaves, what they took from the indigenous people, the damage that they caused through imperialism. How many years of gross domestic product might be involved? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: RE: reparations
This exactly demonstrates the point I was making. You are arguing that the existence of another wrong means that justice is unnecessary in another case, a seriously logically flawed argument. No justice should be sought in one case unless all other injustices are remedied? -Original Message- From: Brad De Long [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, February 11, 2000 10:45 AM Subject: [PEN-L:16249] Re: Re: RE: reparations 'Cute little quips,' dismissiveness, etc., show an insensitivity that should not be tolerated. Mat Go learn something about the experience of French Protestants, Spanish Jews, Gypsies, Poles during World War II, Soviet or Chinese or North Korean peasants, Cambodian city-dwellers, the Albigensians, the Irish, or people unlucky enough to be in parts of central Asia conquered by Timur-i-Lang. Then come back and we'll talk. Brad DeLong
Re: Re: Re: RE: reparations
But you are living in the USA not in Central Asia. You have benefited from slavery and exploitation of black persons as have I and every other white person. This is our history and it is we who have to confront it. Michael Yates Brad De Long wrote: 'Cute little quips,' dismissiveness, etc., show an insensitivity that should not be tolerated. Mat Go learn something about the experience of French Protestants, Spanish Jews, Gypsies, Poles during World War II, Soviet or Chinese or North Korean peasants, Cambodian city-dwellers, the Albigensians, the Irish, or people unlucky enough to be in parts of central Asia conquered by Timur-i-Lang. Then come back and we'll talk. Brad DeLong
Re: RE: reparations
Now someone could say, oppression deriving from slavery endures to this day. But in that case reparations is no longer the issue: current circumstances are. Those with no historic claim (i.e., the Hmong people in Minnesota) are no less relevant than the descendants of slaves. I think this follows regardless of how much race should be elevated as a political issue. If I was a BRC person, I would talk about the injustice of wealth and its historic roots, including the obvious racial dimension. I would not elevate reparations as a remedy. One reason reparations gets the attention it does is the landscape of likely remedies seems so barren. It there was a movement pressuring the Gov to enact all manner of progressive programs and laws, or for that matter a serious revolutionary movement, nobody would be wasting their time on reparations. mbs Bingo! Brad DeLong
Re: Re: RE: reparations
'Cute little quips,' dismissiveness, etc., show an insensitivity that should not be tolerated. Mat Go learn something about the experience of French Protestants, Spanish Jews, Gypsies, Poles during World War II, Soviet or Chinese or North Korean peasants, Cambodian city-dwellers, the Albigensians, the Irish, or people unlucky enough to be in parts of central Asia conquered by Timur-i-Lang. Then come back and we'll talk. Brad DeLong
reparations
Although the discussion has centered on reparations for slavery, it also involves American Indians who, unlike blacks, have made land claims--a form of reparation--central to the struggle. NY Times, January 30, 2000 Tribal Justice? They'd Settle for Syracuse By MATTHEW PURDY ONONDAGA INDIAN NATION -- WHEN representatives of the Onondaga Nation met with state officials last year to identify land that they say was illegally taken from them, they mentioned one eye-catching parcel: a piece of ground commonly known as the city of Syracuse. "The city of Syracuse, 160,000 people," Chief Powless said the other day in his large log home on rural Onondaga land just south of Syracuse. "It's in total violation." Consternation and hostility over Indian land claims are boiling in central New York. The Onondagas's announced plans to sue alleging theft of the state's fifth-largest city is hardly lowering the flame. But the question of who owns Syracuse is not just about land, since few debate who was here first. Like the other land disputes, it is also about time. To the white landowners, the Indians are living in the past. "To claim the whole city of Syracuse, it's mind-boggling," said Mary Teelin, a Syracuse nurse. Said Leon Koziol, a lawyer for the landowners, "It is an excellent way to raise large amounts of cash on the backs of taxpayers to settle a 200-year-old wrong that could never be corrected in modern times..." I suppose that Brad and Max agree with Leon Koziol and Mary Teelin. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: marriage penalty
what do pen-l's tax wonks think of the alleged "marriage penalty" of the US tax system? (Forget the GOP plan. It won't go anywhere.) I'd be interested to know the income brackets that are getting nailed. I know that if you're low income and collecting the earned income tax credit getting married is a penalty -- which is the irony since they supposedly want to encourage the heathen poor to shack up legally. kelley
Re: reparations
Rod: The 40 acres and a mule promise comes from the Freedman's Bureau (1865-1872), along with civil war pensions, one of the few 19th century federal social welfare measures. The Bureau was underfunded and hobbled by opposition at every turn, but it did exist, and it did make these promises. On the other hand, economic reparations seem calculated to spur another round of competitive suffering. I agree--if our energies are to be put in anything, it should be into measures that would address the universal social needs that you mention--housing, education, health care. These measures seem much more likely to build a progressive political coalition. Besides, it is not clear to me how reparations could be awarded even if you could do the calculations. Practically speaking, to whom would they go? To all African-Americans? To African-Americans who could demonstrate that an ancestor was a slave? To people of color who came to the United States after the Civil War and experienced segregration but not slavery? It is important to make the economic point that historically, a significant part of capital accumulation in the United States came from slave labor. But politically, it courts disaster. Joel Blau Rod Hay wrote: Lou Can you document this? It is of some historical interest. Rod Louis Proyect wrote: 2) the United States Government promised ex-slaves forty acres and a mule and did not make good on that promise; -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://home.golden.net/~rodhay 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
Re: Re: Re: reparations
I wrote: another comment: the above suggests that perhaps capitalism has _never_ produced a surplus-product. Rather, all of the surplus that was spent on capitalist accumulation and rich people's luxuries and the like was simply the result of _redistribution_ from other people. Brad writes: Then why is infant mortality these days so low? The lower infant mortality rate seems mostly a result of government investment in public health (rather than relying on the market). (This fall in the infant death rate also has a distributional aspect: it's lower in Berkeley or Marin County than it is in East Oakland (all in California). But I'll ignore that for now.) Nonetheless, that says that an actual surplus-product was produced (rather than redistributed), so that some of which could be invested in public health. That settles my Marxist conscience, which insists that capitalism produces a surplus-product (unlike, say, Jim Blau (sp?), who seemed to being saying otherwise, blaming profits totally on redistribution). Of course, the spending on public health must be looked into. As Engels pointed out, some investment of this sort was needed to make sure that the illnesses of the working-class side of Manchester didn't infect the rich. Second, political and social ferment among the working people encourages government investment of this sort. During the Cold War, a lot of public-health dollars were put into Latin America and other poor countries because of the Soviet and Cuban threat. (Of course, some of that involved forced birth control...) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
[Fwd: [Fwd: [BRC-NEWS] Affirmative Action: Moving Beyond the Myths]]
This article by the fine economist, Patrick Mason, may be useful for this discussion of reparations. Michael Yates Subject: [BRC-NEWS] Affirmative Action: Moving Beyond the Myths Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 03:52:52 -0500 From: Patrick L Mason [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] February 6, 2000 Affirmative Action: Moving Beyond the Myths by Patrick L. Mason, Ph.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED], Department of Economics, Florida State University The current discussion in America and in Florida on racial inequality, affirmative action, and a host of associated issues is often clouded with half-truths, deliberate misinformation, and irrelevant questions. To the extent that public or private organizations have an effective affirmative action program, the program is designed as a partial offset to current and on-going discrimination. For example, current discrimination in the labor market costs African Americans 15 percent of earnings relative to whites. This discrimination does not occur because of different pay for the same work, so much as it occurs because of access to different work for persons of the same ability. That is to say, there are differences in access to employment information, hiring, training, promotion, and layoffs. The 15 percent penalty suffered by African Americans does not include the impact of discrimination that takes place in so-called pre-labor market activities that influence earnings. For example, access to persons who control resources and information often depends on what neighborhood one lives in, what church one attends, what club one belongs to, or other affiliational relations. Nor does the 15 percent labor market penalty suffered by African Americans take into account discrimination in housing, education, and access to credit. Finally, significant discriminatory treatment exists in the distribution of public resources. One notes that African Americans have never had their interests adequately represented in state or federal governing bodies. African Americans are strongly underrepresented as legislators, judges, and decision-making officials in Florida and across America. Clearly, the claim that discrimination does not exist within important institutions and processes within American society is without merit. A second false claim is that there is nothing we can or should do about past discrimination. Most of today's conservatives are willing to admit that discrimination "existed in the past." Nevertheless, they claim that those who were the victims of such discrimination should simply get over it. Move on. Moving on requires dealing with a social justice issue that is nowhere on the current public policy agenda. Past racism created tremendous racial wealth inequality. A recent economic study published by University of Michigan economists showed that in 1994, 30 percent of African American households had zero or negative net worth, compared to only 8 percent of white families. The median wealth of African American families was $10,329, while the median for white American households was $76,519. Thus, the median white family had a net worth near the 84th percentile of the black wealth distribution ($79,048). Yet, a family would have required net worth of at least $310,081 in order to enter the white wealth elite (those at or above the 84th percentile). Finally, the median black family places at just the 22nd percentile of the white wealth distribution ($10,539). Slavery and Jim Crow are the causes of this great racial divide in wealth. Even if racial discrimination were to completely disappear from every aspect of American society today, the current differences in wealth (which were caused by past racism) would cause racial inequality to persist for all time. Until we take seriously the issue of redistributing wealth, racial inequality and the attending racial conflict will always be with us. It is unjust in the highest to say to African Americans that although "past" white privilege in the access to public and private resources created a great racial gulf in the distribution of wealth, any and all claims for compensatory justice by African Americans are unwarranted. A third false claim is that affirmative action has discriminated against whites, especially white males. This is a shameful claim. I am unaware of any study in the top 100 professional economics journals that purports to show discrimination against whites. Granted, in a society with more than 270 million people there may be specific cases of discrimination against individual whites. But, there exists no evidence that even remotely suggests that a particular group of whites have been the victims of discrimination due to affirmative action efforts. A fourth false claim is that affirmative action requires quotas. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Re: Trademarks, imperialism and insanity
On Behalf Of Rob Schaap Heaven forbid we confuse the more subtle humor and satire of Bugs Bunny and friends with Disney's pop art :) Right again. Although I'm very much a Foghorn Leghorn man, meself...I don't have to watch the ghastly Ash and his verminous poke-bloody-mons. Progress has been going in altogether the wrong direction for some little while ... Again unfair. Warner has been producing excellent new cartoons in the LooneyTunes family in collaboration with Steven Spielberg, with much of the same satiric and sophisticated humor of old, along with quite interesting Batman episodes inspired by the Frank Miller "Dark Knight" tradition that added great sophistication to the whole superhero genre in the book form. (okay, okay... I have some serious lowbrow media consumption tastes, but within that context, I will defend some of the new product, so this is a counterargument to the threat of quality of the megamergers.) -- Nathan Newman
Re: Re: reparations
So much of what we enjoy is built upon destruction of other people and the environment, I wonder what the concept of accumulation really means. Mind you, I'm writing this on a Pentium notebook computer. I live a comfortable life on land that was stolen . . . * * * In _To Those Born Later_, Brecht writes (I paraphrase): The bread that I eat was taken from the mouth of a man who is starving. The water I drink belongs to one dying of thirst. And yet, I eat and drink. It's good to recall this, and advisable not to agnize about it. As to reparations, to make sense of the notion, if you are seriously advocating it, you have to decide what your theory of justice is. We might not agree with all these theories. Thus the theory underlying reparations to slave laborers in Nazi work camps seems to be that workers should be paid wages. Socialists can only approve this relatively, in comparison to slavery. After all, we think that workers should share in the fruit of their collective labors, and not, ideally, be paid wages. The theory underlying the return of socialized property in the ex-Bloc countries is that it was wrong of the communists to take private property. Although we cannot approve of Stalinism, we reject the principle. A lot of theories of justice in this connection have a strong historical element which often leads to unfortunate discussions about which peoples did what to whom back when. After all, the Mexicans from whom the Americans stole CAlifornia itself stole it from the Indians who stole pieces of it from each other. Maybe it would be best to think about how to make things fair looking forward. Or you might not be seriously advocating reparations in any practical sense but just using the demand to highlight a history of oppression. I suspect that Vincenne Verdun, whom I somehow missed as a law prof when I was at OSU, is doing just this. --jks
Warner Bros.
I might mention that the Warner Brothers are relatives. They offered both my grandfather, as well as most other people in town, a full partnership for $50. My grandfather told them that nobody would pay a nickel just to see a shadow on a wall. I must have the genetic predisposition to bad business sense, since my father told his golfing partner that he couldn't make a profit selling roast beef sandwiches. He did and Arby's became quite profitable. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Re: child mortality
I don't know why everyone is talking about infant mortality being so low. The last time I looked up the international comparisons, we were something like #19. Joel Blau -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy
Jim Devine wrote: 2) Tom W., could you give a 25-word-or-less summary of the "lump of labor fallacy" and a "25-word-or-less" summary of _why_ it's a fallacy. Maybe I'm dumb, but I can't seem to get my mind around what the target of the main stream of your missives is. Maybe you give an Econ. 1 version? Yes. Please do. The term rather baffles me. Carrol
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: reparations
This exactly demonstrates the point I was making. You are arguing that the existence of another wrong means that justice is unnecessary in another case, a seriously logically flawed argument. No justice should be sought in one case unless all other injustices are remedied? No. But giving money to Vernon Jordan doesn't strike me as "justice." Brad DeLong
Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy
In 1960 left-wing intellectuals and politicians argued that the close economic links between Batista's Cuba and the United States was impoverishing Cuba. Today everyone--left, right, and center--agrees that it is the lack of close economic links with the U.S. that impoverishing Cuba. Today, Cuba does not ask for "close" economic relations with the US, but only to be treated with respect. If the US established the same kind of economic relations with Cuba that it does with Canada, Cuba would be in far better shape. Louis Proyect Game, set, and match. Brad DeLong
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: reparations
It does not matter that your ancestors suffered in Europe. They, and especially their children, still gained here from being white. And I haven't noticed that concern for whites has ever benefited black people much. For me it's not a matter of white guilt but of elemental justice. Why is it a problem that asking whites to confront their history is divisive. Maybe divisiveness is a prerequsitie to ultimately getting justice. Michael Yates [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But you are living in the USA not in Central Asia. You have benefited from slavery and exploitation of black persons as have I and every other white person. This is our history and it is we who have to confront it. * * * True enough. But I, at least, am living in AMerica because my Jewish ancestors were oppressed in Russia, Poland, and Hungary, and not so long ago--my father's mother was born in Russian Poland. That is also part of my history. In fact, most white Americans can say something similar. Ask anyone of Irish descent, etc. That doesn't mean we don't have to come to accounts with the central question for America of the last two centuries, the color line. But it does suggest we might find a more productive approach than reparations or even suggesting that anyone with light skin in America is specially indebted to Black Americans because of slavery. As someone suggested, you want a diviusive strategy, a political loser, guaranteed to promote resentment and divisions, even if the underlying premise has truth to it, then white guilt is that approach. --jks
Re: Re: reparations
Jim Devine wrote: I wrote: another comment: the above suggests that perhaps capitalism has _never_ produced a surplus-product. Rather, all of the surplus that was spent on capitalist accumulation and rich people's luxuries and the like was simply the result of _redistribution_ from other people. Brad writes: Then why is infant mortality these days so low? The lower infant mortality rate seems mostly a result of government investment in public health (rather than relying on the market). (This fall in the infant death rate also has a distributional aspect: it's lower in Berkeley or Marin County than it is in East Oakland (all in California). But I'll ignore that for now.) Nonetheless, that says that an actual surplus-product was produced (rather than redistributed), so that some of which could be invested in public health. That settles my Marxist conscience, which insists that capitalism produces a surplus-product (unlike, say, Jim Blau (sp?), who seemed to being saying otherwise, blaming profits totally on redistribution). Jim, Brad, Public health spending does not come out of surplus value, or the surplus product, as you put it. It, like education costs, e.g., are part of labor's social subsistence. According to Marx: subsistence is that bundle of goods and services necessary to "produce, develop, maintain, and perpetuate" productive labor as a class. Thus subsistence includes not only that of the worker, but also the nurture of offspring to "perpetuate" labor. Think about it . There is nothing "surplus" about health spending; it's a necessity. And it doesn't matter whether the health care is provided privately (which a worker must buy with part of his wages), or free by a public agency funded through taxes. Surplus value is that product remaining after labor's social necessities are provided, and replacement of the means of production (rougly depreciation of capital) is accounted for. In other words surplus value = total product - (reproduction cost of capital + labor). And Jim: your discussion about whether or not capitalism produces a surplus product makes no sense to me, since capitalism is *defined* by capital's exploitation of labor--called surplus value, which is the difference between what workers produce (labor) and the reproduction cost of labor power (roughly corresponding to what labor is paid) and the means of production. Could Jim Blau or anyone else think otherwise? Note to Carrol: Please note the inclusion of education as part of labor's necessities as defined by Marx. That debate you had with Phil Ferguson (?) on Lou's list (which you posted here, or was it LBO, a week or two ago), was based on the false premise that education was funded out of surplus value. When you realize that education is part labor's necessities (it is mentioned specifically by Marx as part of subsistence, btw, if an appeal to "authority" matters to you), the whole question changes, doesn't it? Not that it was a very interesting question, at least as posed by Phil (?). RO
Brad, Bundle Them Up, Please! (was Re: reparations)
Brad: This exactly demonstrates the point I was making. You are arguing that the existence of another wrong means that justice is unnecessary in another case, a seriously logically flawed argument. No justice should be sought in one case unless all other injustices are remedied? No. But giving money to Vernon Jordan doesn't strike me as "justice." Brad DeLong Could you please bundle up your replies to you opponents into one long post and leave it at that? All your replies in this thread boil down to the mentions of Vernon Jordan, infant mortality rates, wrongs done to non-blacks anyhow. Anything else? Yoshie
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: reparations
But you are living in the USA not in Central Asia. You have benefited from slavery and exploitation of black persons as have I and every other white person. This is our history and it is we who have to confront it. * * * True enough. But I, at least, am living in AMerica because my Jewish ancestors were oppressed in Russia, Poland, and Hungary, and not so long ago--my father's mother was born in Russian Poland. That is also part of my history. In fact, most white Americans can say something similar. Ask anyone of Irish descent, etc. That doesn't mean we don't have to come to accounts with the central question for America of the last two centuries, the color line. But it does suggest we might find a more productive approach than reparations or even suggesting that anyone with light skin in America is specially indebted to Black Americans because of slavery. As someone suggested, you want a diviusive strategy, a political loser, guaranteed to promote resentment and divisions, even if the underlying premise has truth to it, then white guilt is that approach. --jks
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Bill of Gates fallacy
this is an apt description of the whole neoliberal vision of trickle-down. The neoliberal view says "if you want to make an omelette (the neoliberal market utopia), you've got to break eggs (peoples' lives, traditions, communities, etc.)" Hypothetical compensation will make up for the actual cost of forcing the world into the Procrustean bed of neoliberalism. But egg-breaking simply sets the stage for more egg-breaking (until people start fighting back in a big way, all over the world). two questions: 1) Brad deL., why do you describe yourself as a neoliberal? What's good about it? Well, what's the alternative? Ahem... From left and right alike we hear something called "globalization" condemned. The forces driving the world economy toward increased economic integration are sinister. On the left politicians like Democratic congressman David Bonior begin speeches by noting three things that come to the U.S. from Mexico--dirty trucks, drugs, and hepatitis. On the right politicians like ex-Republican Pat Buchanan blame a century-old conspiracy to deliver America into the hands of the international bankers--and somehow to Buchanan the bankers are always named Goldman, Sachs, or Rubin; never Morgan or Baker. In books with titles like The Case Against Free Trade: GATT, NAFTA, and the Globalization of Corporate Power, Ralph Nader and his coauthors tell us that increased international trade and investment are responsible for the ills of the American economy, from disappointing blue-collar wage growth to pesticide-laden fruit. These cries of alarm from left and right about the destructive consequences of rapid international economic integration were a constant part of the background. Then in 1997 and 1998 came the calamitous flight of capital from the previously fast-growing economies of East Asia. The East Asian crisis left almost every observer believing that the global marketplace was badly out of control. Something was amok, it seemed, when traders in lower Manhattan could cause widespread bankruptcies and unemployment in Bangkok. The alarming crisis in Asia led to a swelling of the volume of a broad anti-trade chorus. This chorus, in turn, inspired a counter-chorus. Chin-stroking neoliberals apologized for the "excesses" of the market. They agreed that market forces are occasionally a little reckless in their roughhousing. But they stressed--like any owner of a Rotweiller--that if you only realized that you shouldn't make any sudden moves to disturb the animal, you wouldn't get bitten again. Now I am a card-carrying neoliberal: a believer that a bet on increased international economic integration is our best hope for rapidly moving to a truly human world, an advocate of NAFTA and GATT, a former not-very-senior official in the Bentsen and Rubin Treasury Departments, and a believer that those fighting to hold back world economic integration are or are the dupes of foes of global prosperity and liberty. But I also think that this bet on increased international economic integration is a bet. It is not a sure thing. And I think that it is less important to assure people that it is a good bet (although I think that it is) than to help people distinguish the light from the rhetorical heat. After all, there will be other bets and other policy choices to be made in the future. And to fail to understand what is going on now will diminish our chances of collectively choosing wisely tomorrow. There are some excellent anti-globalization arguments. The granddaddy of them all is Karl Polanyi's (1944) more than half a century-old The Great Transformation, published more than half a century ago. Polanyi--a journalist and refugee born in central Europe whose teaching career included stints at Oxford, Bennington, and Columbia--argued that the market economy erodes the web of relationships that holds human society together. The market for labor pressures people to move around the globe to where they can earn the most--creating strangers in strange lands. The market for consumer goods rewards people for being fortunate or for responding to the incentives--making status a product of market forces rather than the result of social norms or visions of distributive justice. Moreover, Polanyi argued, the market's undermining of social order threatens to destroy the very societal and institutional structures on which the market economy rests. Now you can disagree with Polanyi, or with his values, but even a card-carrying neoliberal like me finds his arguments hard to dismiss completely. Consider hate crimes committed against Turkish workers and their families in Germany, or women working in New York's garment industry who cannot both provide for their extended families in China and raise their children--and so send their babies back to China to live with their grandmothers. Consider the extent to which special-interest politics means that it is not the
Re: Re: reparations
Browne, Robert S., "The Economic Case for Reparations to Black America" The American Economic Review, Vol. 62, No. 1/2. (1972), pp. 39-46. I remember thinking that Browne's piece was very nice... Brad DeLong
RE: marriage penalty
I wrote this about it two yrs ago. http://www.prospect.org/columns/sawicky/sa980723.html JD: what do pen-l's tax wonks think of the alleged "marriage penalty" of the US tax system? (Forget the GOP plan. It won't go anywhere.) The 'bonus' can be misconstrued. Those whose taxes fall by marrying can reduce them again by getting a divorce and splitting their income. (i.e. alimony is taxed to the recipient, not the donor) You can eliminate the 'penalty' and have any distribution of taxes you like, and any revenue level you like. The simplest way is to just have the standard deduction and brackets for couples be twice those of singles. Then marriage can never put you in a higher bracket. Bob McIntyre did numbers on how to do it while leaving the system progressive and not losing money. Problem is, if you get rid of the penalty, you create a problem re: householders. A single parent w/child could owe more tax than a couple with no children and the same income. If you give the householder the same standard deduction and brackets as the couple, then two householders who marry can get . . . you guessed it, a marriage penalty. The real problem w/the 'penalty' is with EITC recipients. Combining incomes of spouses can push them out of range of any benefits (the limit is $30K). That's what should be fixed, if anything. mbs
The Bill of Gates fallacy
Brad:
In 1960 left-wing intellectuals and politicians argued that
the close economic links between Batista's Cuba and the United States
was impoverishing Cuba. Today everyone--left, right, and
center--agrees that it is the lack of close economic links with the
U.S. that impoverishing Cuba.
Actually, the left-wing intellectuals were correct.
As the Cuban economy was based on export agriculture--a function of "close
economic links" to the US, the main crop was sugar, followed by tobacco,
cattle and coffee. Agricultural resources were underutilized. For the
hacienda owner, this was no problem. It might mean spending January through
March in the US or Europe, shopping or attending the opera. For the farm
worker, this meant unemployment and suffering. In 1954, for instance,
Cuba's 424,000 agricultural wage earners averaged only 123 days of work;
farm owners, tenants and sharecroppers also fared poorly, averaging only
135 days of employment.
Unemployment led to all sorts of hardship. 43% of the rural population was
illiterate. 60% lived in huts with earth floors and thatched roofs. 2/3
lived without running water and only 1 out of 14 families had electricity.
Daily nutrition was terrible. Only 4% of rural families ate meat regularly.
Most subsisted on rice, beans and root crops. Bad diet and housing caused
bad health. 13% of the population had a history of typhoid, 14%
tuberculosis and over 1/3 intestinal parasites.
When Castro ousted Batista, rapid improvements were made, far in excess of
anything ever seen in this hemisphere in the 20th century. For example,
Claus Brudenius ("Growth With Equity: The Cuban Experience, 1959-1980")
points out that the health indicator index went from 100 to 205 between
1959 and 1980, education from 100 to 446.
Since the method used to achieve these improvements were hostile to the
capitalist system, Washington launched wars, economic subversion and
assassination attempts to bring Cuba to its knees. Today, Cuba does not ask
for "close" economic relations with the US, but only to be treated with
respect. If the US established the same kind of economic relations with
Cuba that it does with Canada, Cuba would be in far better shape. Since the
US ruling class has the same kind of aversion to socialism that the
slavocracy had toward freedom, it persists in its barbaric behavior.
Ultimately, Cuba's economic model will be embraced by all of humanity since
it is the only one that allows us to transcend the current irrational,
war-breeding, resource-wasting system.
Louis Proyect
(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
RE: Re: marriage penalty
The penalty is not getting married per se, but marrying and setting work arrangements such that joint income exceeds the income of the beneficiary family(s). The phase-out for a family (married or no) with children starts at $12,500 and ends between $26K and $30K. So insofar as your combined income spills over $12,500, you start to lose benefits, and if over $30K, you become ineligible. So to retain all your benefits you need a house-spouse who works (or whateva) at home. mbs I'd be interested to know the income brackets that are getting nailed. I know that if you're low income and collecting the earned income tax credit getting married is a penalty -- which is the irony since they supposedly want to encourage the heathen poor to shack up legally. kelley
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: reparations
But you are living in the USA not in Central Asia. You have benefited from slavery and exploitation of black persons as have I and every other white person. This is our history and it is we who have to confront it. Michael Yates Very true. But does "confronting it" have to mean giving money to Vernon Jordan? Brad DeLong
Re: Re: Re: Re: reparations
Child mortality is a case in point. For example, even in the prosperous United States, child mortality is extraordinarily high in places, such as Harlem -- higher than in Bangladesh. It is very low in prosperous areas. My basic question, Brad, relates to this use of averages without an taking into account the inequalities that they obscure. But infant mortality is a lot lower now than it was a century ago, right? Both because (as Jim Devine correctly points out) of governments doing a much better job with public health, and because of improvements in material standards of living, right? Brad DeLong
reparations
No. But giving money to Vernon Jordan doesn't strike me as "justice." Brad DeLong William F. Buckley, "And yes, 50 percent of those who receive Social Security are 'rich.' Nearly half (47 per cent) of those who benefit from Medicare are rich, and one-fifth of those who get Medicaid." (From a 1994 article calling for the elimination of Social Security.) Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: Re: Re: reparations
JKS wrote: As to reparations, to make sense of the notion, if you are seriously advocating it, you have to decide what your theory of justice is. George DeMartino did a very good paper a few years ago at one of Richard America's NEA sessions that looked at Rawls vs. Sen on justice and argued persuasively that reparations are best looked at from Sen's framework, though certainly justifiable on Rawlsian grounds. The paper is in one of the America edited volumes. Mat
reparations
Brad De Long [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/11/00 02:47PM No. But giving money to Vernon Jordan doesn't strike me as "justice." CB: How about if we make a special stipulation that every Black person except Vernon Jordan gets money ? Or just every Black person with a net worth below x ? CB
Re: reparations
Charles Brown wrote: CB: How about if we make a special stipulation that every Black person except Vernon Jordan gets money ? Or just every Black person with a net worth below x How do you define a black person? Where would the reparations come from? General tax revenues? If so, then people of non-European origin would be paying in. These may sound like wonky practical questions, distractions from the principles under consideration, but they really go to the heart of how difficult it is to define race. Doug
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: reparations
Some years ago Johan Galtung was part of study that calculated loss of potential lifespan from persistent deprivation - insufficient food, shelter, health care - associated with social inequality. Norwegian political scientist Tord Hoivik termed such loss 'structural violence' because it is result of 'normal' functioning of current world system. Galtung, Hoivik, Gernot Kohler, Norman Alcock concluded that about 20 million people were victims of structural violence. Michael Hoover 20 million per year... MH
RE: reparations
Ummm. Where did this "report" come from? max William F. Buckley, "And yes, 50 percent of those who receive Social Security are 'rich.' Nearly half (47 per cent) of those who benefit from Medicare are rich, and one-fifth of those who get Medicaid." (From a 1994 article calling for the elimination of Social Security.) Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: reparations
I don't get it. The history of Jews doesn't matter (Irish, whatever), what matters is that white people who wouldn't have regarded my ancestors as white kept slaves. The history doesn't matter that immediate descendents hated my ancestors almost as much as they hated blacks, passed effective immigration laws to keep Jews and other Eastern Europeans out--what matters is that those same bigots who hated Jews and other immigrants also instituted lynch law (applied, now and then, against Jews--see Leo Frank) and Jim Crow oppressed blacks. Or maybe, since Jews are pretty much accepted now, and are not oppressed, it doesn't matter what happened to them, but since Blacks are nota ccepted and are oppressed, it does matter to them. Look, I don't dispute that Blacks were subject to horrible injustice and that we have to be clear on our history as part of doing justice. For what it's worth, I spend a lot of time with my kids making sure they know about slavery, Jim Crow, etc. I am not religious or heavily in things Judaic, I don't think the world or even the Germans or the Poles owe the Jews an apology or a special break because of the Holocaust. I don't disagree that people now regarded as white have a great advantage because of it. I would be more than delighted if they didn't. But I don't think it will get us in that direction to talk in the way you propose. Yes, we need to be divisive. yes, we need to polaruze society. yes, we need to anathematize racism and bigotry. But no, we do not need to divide Blacks from whites by adopting a strategy that is guaranteed to create the wrong sort of divisions. Do you _want_ the Jews to feel "white"? Then, by God, they'll act like it, And no better way to make them feel "white" than to try to demand that they apologize for things done by Jew-haters. --jks In a message dated Fri, 11 Feb 2000 1:56:48 PM Eastern Standard Time, Michael Yates [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: It does not matter that your ancestors suffered in Europe. They, and especially their children, still gained here from being white. And I haven't noticed that concern for whites has ever benefited black people much. For me it's not a matter of white guilt but of elemental justice. Why is it a problem that asking whites to confront their history is divisive. Maybe divisiveness is a prerequsitie to ultimately getting justice. Michael Yates [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But you are living in the USA not in Central Asia. You have benefited from slavery and exploitation of black persons as have I and every other white person. This is our history and it is we who have to confront it. * * * True enough. But I, at least, am living in AMerica because my Jewish ancestors were oppressed in Russia, Poland, and Hungary, and not so long ago--my father's mother was born in Russian Poland. That is also part of my history. In fact, most white Americans can say something similar. Ask anyone of Irish descent, etc. That doesn't mean we don't have to come to accounts with the central question for America of the last two centuries, the color line. But it does suggest we might find a more productive approach than reparations or even suggesting that anyone with light skin in America is specially indebted to Black Americans because of slavery. As someone suggested, you want a diviusive strategy, a political loser, guaranteed to promote resentment and divisions, even if the underlying premise has truth to it, then white guilt is that approach. --jks
reparations
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/11/00 03:24PM But I don't think it will get us in that direction to talk in the way you propose. Yes, we need to be divisive. yes, we need to polaruze society. yes, we need to anathematize racism and bigotry. But no, we do not need to divide Blacks from whites by adopting a strategy that is guaranteed to create the wrong sort of divisions. Do you _want_ the Jews to feel "white"? Then, by God, they'll act like it, And no better way to make them feel "white" than to try to demand that they apologize for things done by Jew-haters. CB: Partisans of the working class ( as a whole) ,who are concerned about the reparations campaign for descendents of victims of slavery dividing the working class and undermining support of many white workers for progressive struggles could take a different approach than those on this list are. Why not be bold creative and say, yes, Black people deserve reparations, Indians deserve reparations, AND THE DESCENDENTS OF WHITE WORKERS DESERVE REPARATIONS TOO ! In other words, why not use the whole thing to approach socialist revolution from another angle. Go through the history of white workers and make the very Marxist argument that they are due compensation for the exploitaton of surplus value that they suffered. And then the overall "settlement" , and we lawyers settle cases much more often than going to trial , would be something like, it is a bit difficult to calculate all the specifics of who gets what but, we can just call it even if we agree that every human being in America is due a basic living from now on. We know that AT LEAST the uneven distribution of wealth to the extent that there is mass poverty can be attributed significantly to these historical exploitations, and so we will eradicate them as the damages given in this suit. The court issues an injunction that every human in America will be provided with a minimum of a decent wage or income. Also the court hereby cancels the national debt , because we know the fortunes of the banks can be traced to the exploited value. We need some militant, creative, bold thinking like that of the white radicals from the 60's. Rather than nitpicking at flaws in the logic of the reparations movement, come up with an elaboration of it that does unify the whole working class. CB
Re: Re: Re: Re: reparations
Jim Devine wrote: The lower infant mortality rate seems mostly a result of government investment in public health (rather than relying on the market). But greater wealth and scientific progress - both of which are products of capitalism - are what made government investment and the science of public health possible. Obviously they're not enough, or I wouldn't be an anti-capitalist, but it's pointless to deny that capitalism has something to do with lower infant mortality and longer lifespans. Doug
