War on the War on Drugs
The Herald, 28 March 2001 Socialists in call to let NHS prescribe heroin MURRAY RITCHIE THE Scottish Socialist Party yesterday placed action against drug abuse at the centre of its general election campaign, with a radical policy for decriminalising cannabis and introducing heroin prescriptions on the NHS to cut out criminal dealers. To the alarm of Labour, Tommy Sheridan, the SSP leader, appears to be gathering cautious support from other opposition parties and even from some Labour MSPs. An SNP official confirmed that "most" of the 35 Nationalists in the Scottish Parliament now support Margo MacDonald's call to legalise cannabis for medical use. A minority of the SNP even support Mr Sheridan's call to do the same for recreational users as a means of breaking the link with pushers of hard drugs. Greens support legalising cannabis and the Liberal Democrats want a royal commission to investigate decriminalisation. A senior Labour MSP said about six of his colleagues support decriminalising cannabis altogether and a substantial minority want the law on medical use changed. Phil Gallie, the hard-line Tory justice spokesman, said the Conservatives were "relaxed" about moves to legalise cannabis for the sick. Mr Sheridan is planning an assault on Labour policy with a rally on Sunday afternoon in Clyde Street, Glasgow, in direct opposition to a Labour-backed rally organised by the Daily Record. Tony Blair praised the Record's campaign during his speech to its Scottish conference last month and the paper has since unleashed a campaign of sustained vilification of Mr Sheridan without, so far, giving him the right of reply. Most recently Mr Sheridan was denounced as a "working class zero" for challenge executive policy on drugs and demanding a fresh approach. Kevin Williamson, SSP drugs spokesman, said the executive's anti-drugs strategy was strong on celebrity endorsement but, he said, it lacked support from medical experts and field workers. Mr Sheridan claimed the attacks from the Record showed the SSP was getting to Labour. "They are running scared of what we can do to them in the general election." He wants cannabis legalised so that users can avoid contact with dealers pushing hard drugs. Under the "kill the link" slogan he wants the executive to declare war not just on dealers but on the poverty which he claims prompts drug abuse and the "hypocrisy" of the executive in promoting "populist" stunts such as Sunday's Record-backed protest. He said: "The past ten years of populist tub-thumping have tragically failed working class kids and communities. It is time for a new approach. We are not pro-drugs. We are anti drugs, all drugs. I do not use drugs and I don't smoke or drink. But I believe hash is no more harmful than alcohol." His strategy is to legalise cannabis to keep youngsters away from dealers who would introduce them to heroin. At the same time he would encourage the NHS-supervised prescription of heroin to discourage contact with dealers and criminal behaviour. The executive said it spent 250m a year on its anti-drugs programme and it had announced another 100m over three years for anti-drugs education. "We have a well balanced programme," a spokesman said. Scotland Yard said yesterday that drug users found with small amounts of cannabis are to be let off with a formal warning instead of being arrested. Police in Brixton are introducing the policy to target their resources on the fight against harder drugs. Meanwhile, scientists at Dundee University have been awarded 241,000 to study the effects of cannabis on the brain. Full story: http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/28-3-19101-0-22-52.html Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Interesting new book?
At 01:53 PM 3/26/01 +0300, Michael Keaney wrote: Penners Last week the new Zed Books catalogue dropped through the letter box. Among its delights was a forthcoming volume authored by Steve Keen, University of Western Sydney, entitled "Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences." The blurb explains that the book "explains why economists think the way they do, and points out the flaws in their thinking which they don't realise, don't appreciate, or just plain ignore. Most of these flaws were established by dissident academic economists decades ago, yet modern economics pretends that it can continue with 'business as usual'." Among those praising the book are erstwhile Penner Henry Liu, URPE stalwart Don Goldstein and Hugh Stretton. Anybody know anything about this? Rob? Michael K. Michael Keaney Mercuria Business School Martinlaaksontie 36 01620 Vantaa Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED] Here's the URL for a Web site on the book, which includes an overview, some sample chapters, and info on Professor Keen himself. I have been impressed with what I've seen of the book. The author hits mainstream economics in some of its "soft underbellies" without, as far as I've been able to tell, adopting a philosophically indefensible postmodern epistemology or buying some of the more dubious notions of Marxist thought (i.e., the core of Marxism, in my view. Sorry folks, gotta call it as my somewhat Neibuhresque suspicion of Marxism sees it). http://bus.macarthur.uws.edu.au/Steve-Keen/DE/ -- Jeffrey L. Beatty Doctoral Student Department of Political Science The Ohio State University 2140 Derby Hall 154 North Oval Mall Columbus, Ohio 43210 (o) 614/292-2880 (h) 614/688-0567 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement-- President Jimmy Carter
[Fwd: Student Protests Against Horowitz Ad]
Original Message Subject: Student Protests Against Horowitz Ad Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2001 05:56:49 -0500 (EST) From: Black Radical Congress [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - This is a Press Release/Statement from the Black Radical Congress - The Black Radical Congress (BRC) For Immediate Release March 28, 2001 Contact: Erica Smiley, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sam Anderson, [EMAIL PROTECTED] BRC STATEMENT ON STUDENT PROTESTS AGAINST HOROWITZ AD The recent attack on Black people mounted by ultra-right winger David Horowitz, in full-page, anti-reparations advertisements which he attempted to publish on more than 50 university campuses nationwide, has created an unsafe climate for Black students on those campuses. The content of the ads, particularly in the absence of any refuting arguments, constitutes a message of hate, pure and simple. In attacking the basic concept of reparations, a concept the Black Radical Congress strongly supports and which is rapidly gaining diverse support around the country, the ad maliciously misrepresents the activities and perspectives of historical Black movements. We stand by the declaration in our Freedom Agenda, that "As the descendants of enslaved Africans, we have the legal and moral right to receive just compensation for the oppression, systematic brutality and economic exploitation Black people have suffered historically, and continue to experience today." But even more outrageous than Horowitz's views -- views he is constitutionally entitled to express -- is his use of campus newspapers as the principal weapon to specifically target a nearly defenseless population: Black youth. Obviously, he knows that Black students lack access to the financial means required to mount a counter-attack. The Black Radical Congress applauds the valiant efforts of Black students and their supporters -- White, Latino, Asian and Native American students -- who are protesting the use of institutional publications by the equivalent of a Holocaust-denier to purvey his white supremacist ideology. We join these students in demanding that universities provide a safe and positive environment for all of their students, equally. The First Amendment does not justify racism or entitle hateful people to destabilize and render dangerous the learning environments of Black youth. -30- Black Radical Congress National Office Columbia University Station P.O. Box 250791 New York, NY 10025-1509 Phone: (212) 969-0348 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.blackradicalcongress.org -- BRC-PRESS: Black Radical Congress - Official Press Releases/Statements -- Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?body=unsubscribe%20brc-press -- Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?body=subscribe%20brc-press -- Help: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=brc-press -- Archive1: http://www.mail-archive.com/brc-press@lists.tao.ca -- Archive2: http://groups.yahoo.com/messages/brc-press -- Archive3: http://archive.tao.ca -- www.blackradicalcongress.org | BRC | [EMAIL PROTECTED] --
Re: Re: Interesting new book?
At 02:35 PM 3/26/01 -0500, Barkley Rosser wrote: For those interested in more detailed background, Steve held a seminar on his book over on pkt several months ago. It was quite lively with extensive commentary and discusssions. Much of the book is very punchy and it is well written, but in places it kind of gets lost on tangencies and wanders about too much. I apologize that I do not remember the website address for the pkt archives. Barkley Rosser The URL for the PKT archives is http://csf.colorado.edu/pkt/ -- Jeffrey L. Beatty Doctoral Student Department of Political Science The Ohio State University 2140 Derby Hall 154 North Oval Mall Columbus, Ohio 43210 (o) 614/292-2880 (h) 614/688-0567 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement-- President Jimmy Carter
Facts about electricity consumption
12,133 -- per capita annual electricity consumption (kilowatt-hours) in the U.S. in 1997 1,381 -- per capita annual electricity consumption (kilowatt-hours) in the rest of the world in 1997 21.5 -- percent increase in U.S. electricity consumption from 1990 to 1999 43 -- percent decrease in utility funding for energy efficiency from 1993 to 1998 90 -- percent of total U.S. coal consumption used to generate electricity in 1998 33 -- percent of all mercury emissions in the U.S. that came from coal power plants in 1999 30,000 -- number of lives cut short in the U.S. each year due to pollution from electric utilities 37 million -- number of cars necessary to produce the amount of smog-forming pollution that comes from U.S. coal power plants each year 7.5 -- percent of total U.S. energy consumption from renewable sources in 1998 94 -- percent of total U.S. renewable energy consumption from hydropower and bio-mass (trash and wood incinerators) $216.7 billion -- revenue of the U.S. electric utility industry in 1999 $124 billion -- approximate combined revenues of all the governments in Africa 90 -- percent of total electricity used by a standard incandescent lightbulb that is wasted as heat 1,000 -- reduction in pounds of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by replacing one incandescent lightbulb with a compact fluorescent bulb, over the bulb's lifetime Statistics and sources are available at: http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/counter/counter031601.stm Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
iht.com article | More on Call Centers in India
- In Bangalore, Pretending to Be Chicago Mark Landler New York Times Service Thursday, March 22, 2001 http://www.iht.com./articles/14201.htm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence indexsurges
Rob Schaap wrote: But you don't really tell the likes of my morbid self why exactly we shouldn't be worried, and why we shouldn't be croos with all that market deregulation of the last twenty years, and why we shouldn't wonder if we might not have a real problem with excess capacity and underconsumption (eg. semiconductors and auto in both the capital goods and consumer sectors), and why Reserve Bankers might not be stuck with very little room for manouvre in the area of interest rates and currency values. You don't need depression - or even a depression lite - to validate the critique. All the market dereg of the last 20 years has resulted in greater inequality (the production of great poverty alongside great wealth), environmental degradation, a stupider greedier culture, and lots of other ills besides. It sucks as it is, and need not collapse to earn a withering critique. But if our critique won't stick now, then we're doomed. Doug
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges
This post is way out of line. I have not been monitoring the list carefully because I am trying to spend more time with my visiting daughter. Nothing that Doug said called for this sort of response. I suspect that Doug's "disaster sniffer" remark was aimed more at me. That is a legitimate difference between Doug and me. Please desist immediately. On Tue, Mar 27, 2001 at 06:36:08PM -0500, Louis Proyect wrote: Okay, Doug, you believe that Karl Marx would have supported NAFTA if he was alive today because he wrote something about free trade in 1848. If you want to have a debate with me about Mexico or whatever, sub me to your list where I will skin you alive. Just don't provoke me on PEN-L because whenever I answer you like this you run crying to Perelman to throw me off PEN-L. Go ahead, sub me to LBO-Talk and I'll teach you a little something about class politics, you Yale-educated snob. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/ -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges
That is probably because Marxists have lost self-confidence in our own political tradition. Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, etc. used to argue that humanity can do better than even what the *best* of capitalism can offer. Many of us today, in contrast, sound as if Marxism can be *no competition* to capitalism in *boom times* (even though the neoliberal recovery has been a *paltry* one). *If* the only virtue of Marxism were that it's better than the Great Depression, the working class would be correct not to take interest in it. Yoshie I have an entirely different take on the question. What I believe the differences are about can best be understood by comparison with the battles inside the Second International with Rosa Luxemburg on one side and Eduard Bernstein on the other. In the late 1800s capitalism experienced a prolonged expansionary phase which led many Marxists to believe that something qualitatively had changed. "Evolutionary socialism" was premised on the belief that the institutions of monopoly capitalism could be gradually transformed into socialism by expanding the power of the working class through peaceful, legal parliamentary and trade union activity. Luxemburg argued that the rising standard of living and democratic openings were largely connected to the rise of imperialism which allowed the class struggle to be co-opted in countries like England and Germany. While the Kaiser was instituting the first social security system in modern times, he was at the same time turning the territory now called Namibia into a concentration camp, which served as a model for Hitler's camps years later. Over the past 55 years or so, we have experienced a similar trend. It also has had a similar disorienting effect. While the Second International of today has long ago dropped any pretensions to socialism, and while the Communist Parties have tended to fill the vacuum left by such parties, the Marxist intelligentsia has worked overtime to restyle a Bernsteinian worldview suitable for the modernist and postmodernist epoch. As Ellen Meiksins Wood has pointed out, the growth of postmodernism can be directly linked to the bull market that kicked in during the early 1980s. By the same token, postmodernism has begun to lose strength because of the difficulty of sustaining illusions in a permanent boom, especially in the financial markets. Some of the Marxist sects tend to adopt a "worse the better" kind of catastrophism. Despite their "stopped clock is right once a day" tendencies, there is useful information to be gleaned from something like Ted Grant's "In defense of Marxism" website which specializes in this sort of thing. (http://www.marxist.com/) But in reality, the broader issues are about the continuing relevance of some of Marx's core theoretical precepts, especially the declining rate of profit. Frankly, I find much of the chatter about the NASDAQ rather limited. It does tend to look at the stock markets as some kind of rectal thermometer that can be used to determine the health of the patient. What I find much more interesting is the changes in the American economy brought on by deregulation, which have reached something of a climax in the rolling blackouts in California. The real question for Marxists and progressive economists is whether this tendency is some kind of momentary abberation brought on by the machinations of crooked capitalists or something more intrinsic to the system. I am of the opinion that such tendencies are as central to the operations of the US economy as unemployment is to the post-USSR economy and for many of the same reasons that I will explore in detail when I post something here on airline deregulation. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Bye-Bye Family Farm, an Exchange
Of course, irrigating sugar beets is a ridiculous waste of resources. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges
I suspect that Doug's "disaster sniffer" remark was aimed more at me. That is a legitimate difference between Doug and me. Please desist immediately. -- Michael Perelman As I told you yesterday, Michael, this was aimed at me: "Or with yet another saying it's all hopeless here, because the real action is in Mexico - even though the holder of that point of view is comfortably situated in the comfortable part of the world." It was obviously in response to my comment that: "You can't tell workers that they are exploited because of a formula in Wage-Labor and Capital. Some people, using the math in a perverse fashion, have even argued that workers in the US are more exploited than they are in places like Mexico since they produce more surplus value here per average worker." Finally, Doug has not baited you about what you do for living or where you live, but he has baited me (and Henry Liu before he came to grief here) repeatedly. AND I AM TELLING YOU RIGHT NOW THAT THE NEXT TIME I GET BAITED THIS WAY, I WILL RESPOND IN KIND. IF YOU WANT TO THROW ME OFF RIGHT NOW, GO AHEAD. I WILL NOT PUT UP WITH THIS KIND OF BULLSHIT. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
the Kaiser
[was: Re: [PEN-L:9662] Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges] Louis says: Luxemburg argued that the rising standard of living and democratic openings were largely connected to the rise of imperialism which allowed the class struggle to be co-opted in countries like England and Germany. While the Kaiser was instituting the first social security system in modern times, he was at the same time turning the territory now called Namibia into a concentration camp, which served as a model for Hitler's camps years later. two notes: (1) it's important to remember that at the same time the Kaiser stole the Social Democratic program -- and adapted it to his purposes -- he also banned the Social Democratic Party. Though this is hardly as bad as what he did in Namibia, it indicates that a simple "the Social Democrats were bought off" story is exactly that -- too simple. The Kaiser -- or rather, Bismarck, who was acting as the Kaiser's Dick Cheney -- used not only the carrot but the stick. (2) What the Kaiser did to Namibia was not the same as what Hitler did. The former involved looting, robbing, enslaving, to attain wealth by any means necessary (i.e., killing lots of people who were assumed to be "inferior"). The latter involved a true social psychosis, seeing certian paraiah groups -- Jews, gays, the mentally retarded, etc. -- as being so horrible that they needed to be totally and utterly exterminated. Forced labor and looting were more side-effects, efforts to deal with the labor shortage (due to the war), etc. - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://bstar.net/panda/
The Wrath of Doug
I don't get it. Every morning on the radio after the seven o'clock news Charlie Chucklehead from Swindlemore Securities comes on to tell me it's a Good Thing if the Dow is up and it's Bad Thing if the Dow is down. On the way across town, I pass half a dozen billboards telling me my future's secure if I invest in the Admiration Mutual Fund. At noon and at six o'clock a talking head comes on the screen with scrolling numbers across the bottom to reinforce the message that it's a Good Thing if NASDAQ is up and a Bad Thing if NASDAQ is down. Presidents and newsweeklies don't fail to point out that the American economy is the greatest in the world, ever, and the value of shares is proof of that. But it irks Doug if someone on the left pooh-poohs the miasma of Ponzi scheme glad tidings. I don't get it. Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: the Kaiser
Jim Devine: two notes: (1) it's important to remember that at the same time the Kaiser stole the Social Democratic program -- and adapted it to his purposes -- he also banned the Social Democratic Party. Though this is hardly as bad as what he did in Namibia, it indicates that a simple "the Social Democrats were bought off" story is exactly that -- too simple. The Kaiser -- or rather, Bismarck, who was acting as the Kaiser's Dick Cheney -- used not only the carrot but the stick. Whether or not the Social Democratic Party was banned at one time or another does not alter the basic political point I was making. The objective conditions in England and Germany in the late 1800s to the outbreak of WWI tended to foster illusions in capitalism among the left. (2) What the Kaiser did to Namibia was not the same as what Hitler did. The former involved looting, robbing, enslaving, to attain wealth by any means necessary (i.e., killing lots of people who were assumed to be "inferior"). The latter involved a true social psychosis, seeing certian paraiah groups -- Jews, gays, the mentally retarded, etc. -- as being so horrible that they needed to be totally and utterly exterminated. Forced labor and looting were more side-effects, efforts to deal with the labor shortage (due to the war), etc. Actually, until reversals on the Russian battlefields during the Barberossa campaign, persecution of the Jews was not that much more extreme than the treatment of blacks in the south, so argues Arno Mayer in "Why the Heavens did not Darken." Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges
Lou says: I have an entirely different take on the question. What I believe the differences are about can best be understood by comparison with the battles inside the Second International with Rosa Luxemburg on one side and Eduard Bernstein on the other. In the late 1800s capitalism experienced a prolonged expansionary phase which led many Marxists to believe that something qualitatively had changed. "Evolutionary socialism" was premised on the belief that the institutions of monopoly capitalism could be gradually transformed into socialism by expanding the power of the working class through peaceful, legal parliamentary and trade union activity. Luxemburg argued that the rising standard of living and democratic openings were largely connected to the rise of imperialism which allowed the class struggle to be co-opted in countries like England and Germany. While the Kaiser was instituting the first social security system in modern times, he was at the same time turning the territory now called Namibia into a concentration camp, which served as a model for Hitler's camps years later. It seems to me that both Kautsky's "evolutionary socialism" Luxemburg's theory of imperialism have been incorrect, though Kautsky's is more fundamentally wrong than Luxemburg's (if it makes sense to evaluate degrees of errors). Yoshie
Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges
It seems to me that both Kautsky's "evolutionary socialism" Luxemburg's theory of imperialism have been incorrect, though Kautsky's is more fundamentally wrong than Luxemburg's (if it makes sense to evaluate degrees of errors). Yoshie I wasn't aware that Kautsky spoke about evolutionary socialism. In fact, he was on the same side as Luxemburg in the fight against Bernstein, who did write "Evolutionary Socialism". Kautsky, for that matter, was considered the paragon of Marxist principles by Lenin, for whatever that's worth. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Course
Someone is planning a course for Spring 2002 on employee safety and health and related topics (e.g. worker's compensation, genetic testing in employment, disabilities work, etc.). Following are some things they need help with: 1. Any relevant syllabi, readings lists, etc. Also any suggestions for a text. 2. A bibliography or list of books (fiction or non), films, videos, plays of a more general or popular interest that deal with or have themes related to worker health and safety (e.g. The Triangle Fire, The Jungle, Silkwood) Any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Re: Re: the Kaiser
Louis wrote: ... until reversals on the Russian battlefields during the Barberossa campaign, persecution of the Jews was not that much more extreme than the treatment of blacks in the south, so argues Arno Mayer in "Why the Heavens did not Darken." that does not go against what I was saying. The residents of Namibia were slaughtered or tortured _as a means to an end_, whereas Jews, gays, the mentally retarded, etc., were slaughtered because they were seen as devils. The social psychosis that involved such perceptions worsened as the Nazi project hit upon hard times, just as a delusional individual reacts violently when people start undermining his or her delusions, saying it ain't so, etc. When things go bad, scapegoating becomes more necessary. (This last point is one of the down-sides of a (possible) recession, of course, since the last one in the U.S. encouraged the likes of Timothy McVeign (the non-AOL one). Similarly, though obviously to a much smaller degree, when the U.S. Democratic Party wimp out fall apart in the face of the Cheney Gang, they seem to strive more strenuously to blame their favorite scapegoat.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges
It seems to me that both Kautsky's "evolutionary socialism" Luxemburg's theory of imperialism have been incorrect, though Kautsky's is more fundamentally wrong than Luxemburg's (if it makes sense to evaluate degrees of errors). Yoshie I wasn't aware that Kautsky spoke about evolutionary socialism. In fact, he was on the same side as Luxemburg in the fight against Bernstein, who did write "Evolutionary Socialism". Kautsky, for that matter, was considered the paragon of Marxist principles by Lenin, for whatever that's worth. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org Sorry, I was thinking of adding Kautsky's theory of ultraimperialism to the list of errors, in addition to Bernstein's Luxemburg's, but in the process I bungled put Kautsky Bernstein together. Yoshie
Re: the Kaiser
Jim says: [was: Re: [PEN-L:9662] Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges] Louis says: Luxemburg argued that the rising standard of living and democratic openings were largely connected to the rise of imperialism which allowed the class struggle to be co-opted in countries like England and Germany. While the Kaiser was instituting the first social security system in modern times, he was at the same time turning the territory now called Namibia into a concentration camp, which served as a model for Hitler's camps years later. two notes: (1) it's important to remember that at the same time the Kaiser stole the Social Democratic program -- and adapted it to his purposes -- he also banned the Social Democratic Party. Though this is hardly as bad as what he did in Namibia, it indicates that a simple "the Social Democrats were bought off" story is exactly that -- too simple. The Kaiser -- or rather, Bismarck, who was acting as the Kaiser's Dick Cheney -- used not only the carrot but the stick. The most generous social democracy has not been found in the belly of the beast -- once England, now the USA -- but in Scandinavia. Imperialism has been costly to the working class of imperial hegemons. Yoshie
Kautsky vs. Luxemburg
[was: Re: [PEN-L:9668] Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges] Yoshie wrote: It seems to me that both Kautsky's "evolutionary socialism" Luxemburg's theory of imperialism have been incorrect, though Kautsky's is more fundamentally wrong than Luxemburg's (if it makes sense to evaluate degrees of errors). yes it does make sense to evaluate degrees of error, since it's better than the either/or thinking we sometimes see on pen-l. Better than quantifying matters, though, would be to try to decide who was right on each specific issue, whose theory was right and whose was wrong in which specific way, etc. There might be -- though there often isn't -- room for a synthesis of the right parts of the different thinkers' positions and theories. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges
At 11:23 AM 3/28/01 -0500, you wrote: It seems to me that both Kautsky's "evolutionary socialism" Luxemburg's theory of imperialism have been incorrect, though Kautsky's is more fundamentally wrong than Luxemburg's (if it makes sense to evaluate degrees of errors). Yoshie I wasn't aware that Kautsky spoke about evolutionary socialism. In fact, he was on the same side as Luxemburg in the fight against Bernstein, who did write "Evolutionary Socialism" The point has been made by more than one historians that one of the reasons why Bernstein made such a splash was that he vocalized the evolutionary-type socialism that was implicit in the "Marxist orthodoxy" at the time, including that of the "Pope of Marxism" (Kautsky). In many ways, in other words, Kautsky was an evolutionary socialist without knowing it. Bringing the "shameful secret" to the fore shook things up. Of course, then just as now, Marxists have had a hard time being revolutionaries in a non-revolutionary period. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
ACTION ALERT: ASK CONGRESS TO STOP IMF/WB OBSTRUCTION OF MOZAMBIQUE'SDEVELOPMENT
- Original Message - From: Robert Weissman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2001 4:30 PM Subject: [stop-imf] ACTION ALERT: ASK CONGRESS TO STOP IMF/WB OBSTRUCTION OF MOZAMBIQUE'SDEVELOPMENT ACTION ALERT Tuesday, March 27 Recent reports indicate that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are *still* pressuring Mozambique not to support its cashew nut processing industry, contravening the will of Mozambique's democratically elected parliament and imposing a policy discredited by World Bank-sponsored research. Please ask your Member of Congress to sign the following letter being sent to the U.S. Treasury department by Representative Cynthia McKinney. The Congressional switchboard is 202-225-3121. To sign on, offices should contact Jonathan Fremont in Rep. McKinney's office at 225-1605 by Friday, April 6th. --- Robert Weissman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Essential Information P.O. Box 19405, Washington, DC 20036, USA Tel: 1-202-387-8030 Fax: 1-202-234-5176 www.essential.org --- Paul H. O'Neill Secretary of the Treasury Dear Secretary O'Neill: As you are no doubt aware, in the last several years Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have become increasing dissatisfied with the policies promoted and imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in developing countries, using U.S. tax dollars. One particular case stands out: for the last several years, the IMF and the World Bank have undermined Mozambique's efforts to rehabilitate its cashew nut processing industry. As a result, thousands of workers have lost their jobs in an industry that was once one of the largest private sector employers. Production has shifted to India, which uses child labor to shell the nuts. Ironically, the United States is a major market for processed cashew, so that as a result of the IMF/World Bank intervention, U.S. consumers are subsidizing child labor. For years the World Bank persisted in pressuring Mozambique to remove support for its cashew industry, despite opposition to the World Bank policy by Mozambique' s democratically elected parliament and despite the fact that a study commissioned by the World Bank indicated that the World Bank's policy was unsound. Last year, the new head of the IMF, Horst Khler, promised that IMF policies would change, that the IMF would stop imposing policies on developing countries that have nothing to do with the IMF's core mission. Unfortunately, like so much rhetoric in the past concerning "reform" at the international financial institutions, it is far from clear that the change in rhetoric has been matched by a change in reality. Recent reports indicate that the IMF is still pressuring Mozambique to remove support for its cashew industry. We regard the IMF's continued obstruction of Mozambique's democratically determined economic development policies to be an abuse of the authority and resources granted to the IMF by the United States. We ask you to instruct the United States Executive Directors at the IMF and the World Bank to communicate that it is the policy of the United States that the IMF and the World Bank should cease obstructing Mozambique's efforts to rehabilitate its cashew industry. Please keep us apprised of your efforts in this regard. Sincerely, Cynthia McKinney Member of Congress ___ stop-imf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/stop-i mf
WTO and Canadian Health Care
Published on Wednesday, March 28, 2001 in the Toronto Star World Trade Organization Targets Canadian Health Care System by Stuart Laidlaw Despite its failure to get a mandate in Seattle, the World Trade Organization has been progressing with free trade talks in Geneva for more than a year. The talks, required to start by 2000 under past trade deals, have been held with very little fanfare, behind closed doors and with little input from those affected. This week, three more days of talks will take place - again in Geneva, again behind closed doors and again without input from those affected. And make no mistake about it: health care will be on the table. Ottawa, of course, has vigorously claimed otherwise. It has, after all, invoked a feature of existing world trade deals allowing countries to specifically exempt parts of their economies from international free trade rules. On the face of it, this would seem to protect our cherished health care services from foreign and private incursion. A closer look, however, reveals several concerns. First off, both the U.S. and Europe have said they will be demanding an end to such exemptions. If they are successful - and these two working together make a powerful team - Canada's protection will be gone. Canada's own bargaining position at these talks - demanding the right to export health care while not allowing any imports - dangerously undermines our credibility in arguing to keep health care off the table. But even if the U.S. and Europe are not successful, and even if we can successfully negotiate our import-banning, export-pushing trade position, there is still plenty of reason to worry. That's because, while health care itself is exempted, much of what makes it up is not. Take public health insurance. Canada has registered health insurance at the World Trade Organization as a financial service, leaving the very heart of medicare vulnerable to trade deals requiring Canada to open the field to foreign and private investors. You would hope that this classification applies only to the private health insurance plans many of us enjoy at work to cover dental care or medication, but there's nothing in Canada's WTO commitments to spell that out. It just says "health insurance," leaving it up to the WTO to define for us. There's more. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives - echoing sentiments by more conservative trade experts such as John Kirton of the University of Toronto - argues that Canada could see much of its medicare system whittled away under the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services. Services such as labs, food services, janitorial services, accounting, data processing, telecommunications (such as Ontario's new phone-a-nurse service) and even hospital administration in the form of management consulting are already under the purview of the WTO's agreement on trade in services. A foreign company could argue that it is not trying to tell Canada how to run its health-care system, but just wants a shot at managing parts of it. If the WTO agrees - and it tends to favour free market arguments - we would be forced to allow private companies into our health-care system. Not that private companies aren't already in the health business in Canada - which further weakens the government's assertion that medicare is safe from the WTO. Here's how: The WTO allows governments to exempt any service provided "in the exercise of government authority," as long as such services are not also available commercially. In other words, if a service is exclusively provided by the government, it is exempt. But if that service is provided through a mix of both government and private interests, it is open to the full force of the WTO. Health care is such a service. The government, through medicare, obviously plays a huge role. But much of the health-care system is, in fact, privately run. Doctors' offices operate as private businesses. So do the labs in many hospitals, after-hours clinics, dental offices, homecare providers and nursing homes. Even the hospitals themselves are often private, non-profit corporations. This makes our health-care system a mixed private-public system, and therefore subject to WTO rules. Ottawa's trade negotiators have characterized such concerns as "hypothetical," and doubt any such challenges would ever materialize. That is folly, and we need only look as far as the recent death of the Auto Pact to see the threat to health care. The 35-year-old pact regulating the manufacturing of cars in North America was struck down by the WTO last year under its General Agreement on Trade in Services, the deal being refined and expanded this week in Geneva. The Auto Pact required that the Big Three automakers make as many cars in Canada as they sold. Japan and Europe successfully argued before the WTO that the deal actually regulated the marketing of cars, not the manufacture. And because marketing is a service, the Auto Pact fell under the
Re: Re: the Kaiser
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: The most generous social democracy has not been found in the belly of the beast -- once England, now the USA -- but in Scandinavia. Imperialism has been costly to the working class of imperial hegemons. Discussion of the relationship of imperialism to the _whole_ of the working class in the imperialist centers has tended more toward moalistic posturing than careful analysis. I have the index to Lenin, CW, in front of me. There is one reference to "labour aristocracy" in Vol. 10 (1905-6), one to Vol. 12 (1907), one in Vol. 13 (1907-08), two in Vol. 18 (1912-13)(one in an unpub. ms., one in an article on England), three on vol. 19 (1913), one in vol. 20 (1913-14), then _18_ references for vol. 21 (Aug. 1914-Dec. 1915), and a flood of references in the later volumes. As we know, it was the imperialist war and the collaboration of European workers in tht war which brought the question of the labor aristocracy to the forefont of Lenin's thought. I've only sampled this material today, and its been over two decades since I read it carefully, but my impression was and is that _It was ONLY an upper strata of workers (and even within that strata primarily leaders, not rank and file, that Lenin regarded as being bribed by imperialist profits_. The empirical case (and this is mostly though not wholly an empirical question) has not been made that either the bulk of the workers individually _or_ the working class _as a class_ in the imperialist nations benefit from imperialism. There is a strong _appearance_ of that being or having been the case -- but marxists are supposed to investigate rather than merely accept appearances. It goes without saying that the millions of workers who died or were disabled in The Great War did not benefit from imperialism. Carrol
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges
Hi again Doug, I'd written: And if the tech sector is leading the rally, it must be a sucker rally, no? I mean, semiconductors are leading a rally in a moment where world buying power is stretched to the limit and the computer-demand curve is flattening out dramatically, aren't they? Excess capacity, consequently low profit projections, yet also apparent global underconsumption. If that's right, ain't that a daft scenario in which to allocate portfolio chunks to the sector? I reckon a 'rally' thusly based, is a rally with a very imminent use-by date, anyway Whilst I accept your position that we shouldn't predict things too narrowly (as to be wrong hurts the left a lot), I believe most fervently we should point to the fragility of this fools' paradise and the entirely thinkable consequences as part of what's wrong with the way the world's run. And I see now http://finance.yahoo.com/mo that the suckers have had their wallets lightened already. The 'rally' is over. Nearly two per cent off the Dow and more than four per cent off the NASDAQ in three hours, with the tech sector spewing out earnings warnings all over the place, and declines belting advances by nearly 2-1 (nearly 3-1 in the tech sector). Not one gimmick or silly poll they throw at this force has more than a couple of days in it. Sez Yahoo: "Macroeconomic concerns have returned to the forefront following earnings warnings from Nortel Networks (NT -2.80) and Palm Inc. (PALM -48%). Both companies cited a soft domestic economy as the driver of weak operating results. This has raised the question among investors as to whether the intermediate term outlook for the U.S. economy may be even worse than previously believed. Market leader Cisco Systems (CSCO -2.06) is also getting crushed."
Fwd: News: Kyoto Oh No
from SLATE: The [Washington POST] fronts a report carried inside elsewhere that [U.S.] EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman told reporters yesterday that the Kyoto protocol for emission reduction--signed by the U.S. but not ratified--is (in the paper's words) "dead as far as the administration was concerned." The Post has the extra dimension of an "administration source" saying that the White House recently sought advice from the State Department about how the U.S. can legally withdraw its signature from the agreement. The paper foresees a stunned reaction from European Union officials. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: The Wrath of Doug
Timework Web wrote: But it irks Doug if someone on the left pooh-poohs the miasma of Ponzi scheme glad tidings. I don't get it. Because that's not what I'm doing. I'm criticizing the leftish habit of simplemindedly putting negative signs in front of the glad tidings, and viewing a collapsing Dow as good news. A lot of bad shit has gone on under a rising market, but that doesn't mean that a falling market will unleash lots of good shit. Sorry to break my promise to be quiet. Doug
RE: Re: Re: Interesting new book?
Is Lou sure the Spoons Marxism list archives are not accessible anymore? At least via google and then clicking the cache link I've read some of those old screamathons. Recently read some pro-nuke shiite from Comrade Martens, for example there on those lists. Michael Pugliese From: "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 3/27/01 12:54:45 PM Louis, Well, michael probably does not want us to get into some kind of OPE-L discussion (and I suspect you don't really want to either, Louie), but what you have quoted in no way implies what you have deciphered from it, although I think you are probably correct about what Steve's views of things are. In short, although it is widely and deeply entrenched out there that he did, Marx never labeled what he had as a "labor theory of value." He always referred to the "theory of value." Steve's remarks are perfectly consistent with Marx and perfectly consistent with being a socialist, even if he is not one and just some reprobate social democratic semi-Post Keynesian (he has a lot of criticisms of Post Keynesians, although he comes closer to identifying with them than with any other postion, his critical remarks in that regard engendering considerable discussion during the seminar on the Post Keynesian Thought (pkt) list, big surprise). Barkley Rosser - Original Message - From: "Louis Proyect" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2001 8:25 AM Subject: [PEN-L:9595] Re: Interesting new book? Louis, your comment re the welfare state is intriguing. Resisting caricature, what exactly is Keen's justification for claiming that to move beyond the welfare state would be disastrous? Michael K. I'll let Steve speak for himself: "Post Keynesian economics is thus not as eclectic as both its major proponents and opponents believe; it has merely lacked a clearly articulated theory of value, and an axiomatic basis derived from that theory of value. Both of these exist in Marx, and can be adopted by Post Keynesians without fear of contamination by the labor theory of value, and without abandoning any of the valued aspects of Keynes's philosophical approach to economics." ftp://csf.colorado.edu/econ/authors/Keen.Steve/A_Marx_for_Post_Keynesians.tx t In other words, he is an advocate of welfare state capitalism, not socialism. Like many other left economists who find capitalism a nasty business, there is a tendency to embellish what is basically an accomodationist approach with a dollop or two of Marxish thought or terminology. Mostly, I find this sort of thing harmless unless the author is claiming the mantle of Marx, which to Steve's credit he does not do. As far as him wringing his hands over the terrible tragedy of Bolshevism, I can't come up with anything since the archives for the old Marxism list were flushed down the toilet after the Spoons Collective postmodernists gave us the boot. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence indexsurges
Rob Schaap wrote: Whilst I accept your position that we shouldn't predict things too narrowly (as to be wrong hurts the left a lot), As far as the stock market goes I agree with Jim -- leftists have better things to do than worry or enthuse about stocks -- but it simply isn't true that "to be wrong hurts the left a lot." I still believe the greatest mistake of my whole involvement in political activity took place a year or two before I became a marxist: Starting with my very earliest participation in the anti-war movement I should have begun predicting loudly and without any face-saving hedges that the Vietnamese were going to win. Had it turned out differently no one would have remembered, and the early prediction would have been a useful reference point in '68 '69. I did predict large U.S. casualties in the Gulf War -- everyone has forgotten it. Fear of being wrong, of being intellectually embarassed is what hurts the left a lot. Someone not willing to make a fool of him/herself is pretty useless in left politics. This kind of fear is endemic on university campuses and among journalists -- that is, among those intellectuals whom think in terms of truth in the abstract rather than in terms of political strategy. Carrol P.S. It is overwhelmingly clear that the actions of the Brown students were and will continue to be a smashing success in terms of developing the politics of reparations.
Re: Re: Re: the Kaiser
I've only sampled this material today, and its been over two decades since I read it carefully, but my impression was and is that _It was ONLY an upper strata of workers (and even within that strata primarily leaders, not rank and file, that Lenin regarded as being bribed by imperialist profits_. Carrol Of course. Lenin referred to the upper strata as furnishing "the bulk of the membership of co-operatives, of trade unions, of sporting clubs and of numerous religious sects" in Great Britain. The trade unions that Lenin referred to were craft unions, which in the USA were composed of the upper strata as well. Those outside the craft unions did not benefit from imperialism, at least that's the argument. During the 1930s, the unorganized and excluded masses of lower strata workers were drawn into the industrial trade union movement (and it was a movement) that challenged capitalism and imperialism. Although the CIO concentrated more on specifically American problems of economic and racial injustice, it also solidarized with working class resistance throughout the world. During the cold war two things happened. The prosperity made it easier for workers to forget they were workers. When an auto worker can buy a 4 bedroom house in Detroit and own a boat, etc., it makes it more difficult for them to achieve class consciousness. On top of this, you have the problem of reds being purged from the unions. With the long boom and the anticommunist purges, workers organized in basic industry such as teamsters, steel, auto, oil and chemical, etc. have evolved into a kind of upper strata that Lenin talked about in 1916. This is not to say that militant trade unionism is not possible--just look at the Teamsters for a Democratic Union--just that socialism on the scale of the 1930s is not on the agenda. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges
Louis, Declining rate of profit? Oh, so you really are into all that OPE-L stuff after all, eh? Do you buy the Kliman-McGlone counterattack against the Okishio Theorem to save the idea, or do you prefer Fred Moseley's more empirical approach with its special categorizations of labor? Barkley Rosser - Original Message - From: "Louis Proyect" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2001 10:09 AM Subject: [PEN-L:9662] Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges That is probably because Marxists have lost self-confidence in our own political tradition. Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, etc. used to argue that humanity can do better than even what the *best* of capitalism can offer. Many of us today, in contrast, sound as if Marxism can be *no competition* to capitalism in *boom times* (even though the neoliberal recovery has been a *paltry* one). *If* the only virtue of Marxism were that it's better than the Great Depression, the working class would be correct not to take interest in it. Yoshie I have an entirely different take on the question. What I believe the differences are about can best be understood by comparison with the battles inside the Second International with Rosa Luxemburg on one side and Eduard Bernstein on the other. In the late 1800s capitalism experienced a prolonged expansionary phase which led many Marxists to believe that something qualitatively had changed. "Evolutionary socialism" was premised on the belief that the institutions of monopoly capitalism could be gradually transformed into socialism by expanding the power of the working class through peaceful, legal parliamentary and trade union activity. Luxemburg argued that the rising standard of living and democratic openings were largely connected to the rise of imperialism which allowed the class struggle to be co-opted in countries like England and Germany. While the Kaiser was instituting the first social security system in modern times, he was at the same time turning the territory now called Namibia into a concentration camp, which served as a model for Hitler's camps years later. Over the past 55 years or so, we have experienced a similar trend. It also has had a similar disorienting effect. While the Second International of today has long ago dropped any pretensions to socialism, and while the Communist Parties have tended to fill the vacuum left by such parties, the Marxist intelligentsia has worked overtime to restyle a Bernsteinian worldview suitable for the modernist and postmodernist epoch. As Ellen Meiksins Wood has pointed out, the growth of postmodernism can be directly linked to the bull market that kicked in during the early 1980s. By the same token, postmodernism has begun to lose strength because of the difficulty of sustaining illusions in a permanent boom, especially in the financial markets. Some of the Marxist sects tend to adopt a "worse the better" kind of catastrophism. Despite their "stopped clock is right once a day" tendencies, there is useful information to be gleaned from something like Ted Grant's "In defense of Marxism" website which specializes in this sort of thing. (http://www.marxist.com/) But in reality, the broader issues are about the continuing relevance of some of Marx's core theoretical precepts, especially the declining rate of profit. Frankly, I find much of the chatter about the NASDAQ rather limited. It does tend to look at the stock markets as some kind of rectal thermometer that can be used to determine the health of the patient. What I find much more interesting is the changes in the American economy brought on by deregulation, which have reached something of a climax in the rolling blackouts in California. The real question for Marxists and progressive economists is whether this tendency is some kind of momentary abberation brought on by the machinations of crooked capitalists or something more intrinsic to the system. I am of the opinion that such tendencies are as central to the operations of the US economy as unemployment is to the post-USSR economy and for many of the same reasons that I will explore in detail when I post something here on airline deregulation. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges
michael, I don't think you need to worry. It's just a Bard College-educated snob huffing at a Yale- educated snob, :-). Barkley Rosser - Original Message - From: "Michael Perelman" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2001 10:04 AM Subject: [PEN-L:9661] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges This post is way out of line. I have not been monitoring the list carefully because I am trying to spend more time with my visiting daughter. Nothing that Doug said called for this sort of response. I suspect that Doug's "disaster sniffer" remark was aimed more at me. That is a legitimate difference between Doug and me. Please desist immediately. On Tue, Mar 27, 2001 at 06:36:08PM -0500, Louis Proyect wrote: Okay, Doug, you believe that Karl Marx would have supported NAFTA if he was alive today because he wrote something about free trade in 1848. If you want to have a debate with me about Mexico or whatever, sub me to your list where I will skin you alive. Just don't provoke me on PEN-L because whenever I answer you like this you run crying to Perelman to throw me off PEN-L. Go ahead, sub me to LBO-Talk and I'll teach you a little something about class politics, you Yale-educated snob. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/ -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges
Louis, Declining rate of profit? Oh, so you really are into all that OPE-L stuff after all, eh? Do you buy the Kliman-McGlone counterattack against the Okishio Theorem to save the idea, or do you prefer Fred Moseley's more empirical approach with its special categorizations of labor? Barkley Rosser Actually, I prefer not to get involved in these sorts of arcane debates abstracted from the real economy. What I am much more interested in is how the airline industry, which accounts for some 30 percent of the US export market, ran into a profit crunch in the late 1960s. This has to do with the price of fuel, the investment in 747s, etc. So I suppose that I am something of a Moseley-ite if push comes to shove. In any case, I start out with the premise that profits did hit a brick wall. When I sit down to write my analysis, I will probably delve into Ernest Mandel for a theoretical orientation. He stands head and shoulders over anybody else who has done economics in the past-WWII period. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Bush Cuts
Budget Cut for Russia Nuke Program March 13, 2001 By H. JOSEF HEBERT WASHINGTON (AP) - A program to help Russia safeguard its nuclear materials is facing deep budget cuts by the Bush administration, although a bipartisan commission recently called these efforts essential to protecting U.S. national security. President Bush's proposed fiscal 2002 budget, now being put together, would cut spending for Russia nuclear nonproliferation activities by more than $72 million, government and private sources who have seen the numbers said Thursday. The Energy Department had planned to increase the program, which the Clinton administration had earmarked for a 50 percent increase to $1.2 billion for the fiscal year that will begin Oct. 1. The final funding levels will be set in Congress, where some lawmakers already were expressing concern. ``Dramatic cuts to these programs ... may cripple our efforts to secure nuclear material in Russia and ensure that Russia's nuclear physicists are gainfully employed in non-defense related industries,'' Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., wrote to Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser. Tauscher is a member of the House Armed Services Committee. The cuts were ordered by the White House, despite several attempts by Energy Secretary Spence Abraham to obtain more money, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity. In January, a bipartisan commission issued a report calling the risk of theft of Russian nuclear materials ``the most urgent unmet national security threat'' facing the United States and urged sharp increases in spending for the Russia nonproliferation programs. The Energy Department initiatives targeted by budget cutters include programs aimed at enhancing security at Russia's nuclear weapons facilities, providing help to economically strapped Russian nuclear scientists and helping Russia convert weapons-grade plutonium to less threatening materials. While changes may still be made in the funding levels before President Bush sends his final fiscal 2002 budget to Congress, several attempts by the department to get additional money have been rebuffed by the White House Office of Management and Budget, the sources said. ``This budget signals a retreat from a decade worth of work with Russia to secure nuclear weapons expertise and materials,'' said William Hoehn of the Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council, a nonproliferation advocacy group. According to the latest DOE budget document, programs to increase security at Russia nuclear facilities would be cut by $31 million to about $170 million. The Energy Department had sought an increase to $225 million. A program aimed at finding jobs and getting economic assistance to Russian nuclear scientists would be cut by $20 million to about $7 million, according to the sources. Bush will ask for more money to dispose of Russia's excess plutonium stocks, but the amount falls far short of the proposed doubling of the $226 million program that the Clinton administration had proposed, the sources said. The bipartisan commission included experts in nuclear nonproliferation and national security and was chaired by former GOP Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker and former Democratic White House counsel Lloyd Cutler. Others on the panel included Former Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, both Democrats and widely respected experts on national security and nuclear nonproliferation. Their report, requested by the Energy Department, concluded that the risks of Russian nuclear materials being obtained by terrorists or hostile states is significant and real. The report urged stepped up spending for programs to help Russia safeguard these materials and help Russia's atomic scientists, some of whom are facing dire economic times in the post-Cold War era, find jobs. It said $30 billion is needed over the next 10 years to do the job, adding that such spending would be a prudent investment in U.S. and world security.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges
Louis, Accounting profits go up and down (others can do all kinds of things depending on how they are measured). One of the reasons we had the stock market bubble was because profits generally went up during the 1980s and 1990s, at least in the US, although I stand to be corrected by that notorious Yale-educated snob if I am wrong. Much of that reflected well-known attacks against the working class that succeeded. One reason the bubble has been coming down has been that indeed, profits have been declining again recently. But that is hardly the same thing as a general, secular tendency to decline. BTW, I think that a little mentioned reason for the stock market bubble, and at least some of the rise in profits in the 1990s, was due to the end of Soviet socialism. This is the great unmentioned secret factor. The risk of nationalization in a foreign country of a subsidiary of a US-based multinational corporation has gone way down, way down. This probably justifies a permanent increase in the average price-earnings ratio on Wall Street. But, of course bubble dynamics came in and it was all overdone. No, I am not approving of this at all. Just noting it. Mandel, eh? He is pretty good on a lot of stuff, but certainly has his limits. Sounds like you are still at some level enamored of "that prostitute Trotsky" (who is so often right ), :-). Both of them were long wave guys. Where are we now? Still not too far up an upswing or at the beginning of a long downswing? Barkley Rosser - Original Message - From: "Louis Proyect" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2001 2:21 PM Subject: [PEN-L:9688] Re: Re: Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges Louis, Declining rate of profit? Oh, so you really are into all that OPE-L stuff after all, eh? Do you buy the Kliman-McGlone counterattack against the Okishio Theorem to save the idea, or do you prefer Fred Moseley's more empirical approach with its special categorizations of labor? Barkley Rosser Actually, I prefer not to get involved in these sorts of arcane debates abstracted from the real economy. What I am much more interested in is how the airline industry, which accounts for some 30 percent of the US export market, ran into a profit crunch in the late 1960s. This has to do with the price of fuel, the investment in 747s, etc. So I suppose that I am something of a Moseley-ite if push comes to shove. In any case, I start out with the premise that profits did hit a brick wall. When I sit down to write my analysis, I will probably delve into Ernest Mandel for a theoretical orientation. He stands head and shoulders over anybody else who has done economics in the past-WWII period. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
RE: Reaganite ideological war
Here is a new angle on an old line about the Vietnam War. Going through an issue of the NYRB last night from last yr. saw notice of new academic book that alleges Shell Oil, in contravention of trade sanctions regime, I'd assume, shipped oil and inverstment capital to N. Vietnam during the U.S. aggression. Puts upside down, the allegation that LBJ and Lady Bird had investments in S.Vietnam because of suppossed oil deposits off the coast. Michael Pugliese Date: 3/26/01 2:35:54 PM [EMAIL PROTECTED] 03/26/01 05:23PM I am very much against the trend around these lists to disdain any conspiracy theories on today's politics. The ruling class had a conscious policy to make Reagan look good. No more Watergates ! was the discipline of the ruling class at the time. On the monopoly media methods, see Michael Parenti's _Inventing Reality_ Charles Brown * Well we need to have some rather stringent criteria whereby we sort deliberation and strategizing by the ruling class to achieve and reproduce their hegemony from trying to see patterns of intentionality that just ain't there. Problematic to say the least... ( CB: Nobody said revolutionary struggle and thinking things out is easy, but I agree we need the stringent criteria. On the other hand, because the criteria must be stringent doesn't mean the left can take the easy route, fall out of touch with realiity into a never-never land that sees no conspiracies in the operation of capitalism. I mean Marxism certainly holds that capitalism is a system , not a policy, but that doesn't mean there aren't conspiracies that we must point out in demonstrating the rottenness of the way things work. Many people first come to the struggle because they are fed up with a specific outrage, such as the CIA running drugs in LA or J. Edgar Hoover murdering Black Panthers or JFK Or lying conspiracies in the operation of the Viet Nam war, etc. To ignore these and not be ready to explicate them or whatever doesn't make any sense. I see the problem of forfeiting the responsibility to sort out patterns of intentionality that are there as a much bigger problem than claiming patterns of intentionality that are not there.
Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges
Louis, Accounting profits go up and down (others can do all kinds of things depending on how they are measured). One of the reasons we had the stock market bubble was because profits generally went up during the 1980s and 1990s, at least in the US, although I stand to be corrected by that notorious Yale-educated snob if I am wrong. Much of that reflected well-known attacks against the working class that succeeded. One reason the bubble has been coming down has been that indeed, profits have been declining again recently. But that is hardly the same thing as a general, secular tendency to decline. I think many of the Marxist abc's have to be re-evaluated, but I tend to be skeptical about seeing them as rooted in the basic logic of Capital. Mostly I think there has been an underestimation about capital's ability to displace crisis geographically. Whatever complaints I have about David Harvey's musings on green issues, on this he has been right on. I also think that Harry Braverman's reconsideration of some of the abc's in the pages of American Socialist are worth reviewing: "All the above difficulties in Marxism obviously stem from the fact that the capitalist system has persisted, and restabilized itself repeatedly, over a much longer period than had been expected. The great expansion in labor productivity which has created such new and different conditions was not unexpected in the Marxian economic structure, a structure which, as no other before or since, focused on the technological revolutions which capitalism is forced to work continuously as a condition of its existence. What was unexpected was capitalism's length of life and its ability to expand. Marx and the movement he shaped operated on the basis of imminent crisis. If he never gave thought to the kind of living standard inherent in a capitalism that would continue to revolutionize science and industry for another hundred years, that was because he thought he was dealing with a system that was rapidly approaching its Armageddon. He thought the social wars that would usher in socialism would take place under the social conditions he saw around him. In that sense, the economic obsolescence we can easily find in him today is of a piece with his errors of political foreshortening." http://www.mail-archive.com/marxism@lists.panix.com/msg04887.html In any case, I will have lots more to say about these sorts of matters using the question of deregulation as a peg to hang my analysis on. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Re: Re: Re: the Kaiser
- Original Message - From: "Louis Proyect" [EMAIL PROTECTED] During the cold war two things happened. The prosperity made it easier for workers to forget they were workers. When an auto worker can buy a 4 bedroom house in Detroit and own a boat, etc., it makes it more difficult for them to achieve class consciousness. On top of this, you have the problem of reds being purged from the unions. With the long boom and the anticommunist purges, workers organized in basic industry such as teamsters, steel, auto, oil and chemical, etc. have evolved into a kind of upper strata that Lenin talked about in 1916. And yet blacks are more likely to be in unions than whites at this pont and the autoworkers and such are an increasingly smaller proportion of the labor movement. The largest single new block of workers in the last few years has been home health care workers with a range of other service workers following up. In fact, most studies show that the vast block of white well-paid blue collor unionists, what was dubbed the "labor aristocracy" by Maoists and others in the late 60s and early 70s, have been the ones who have suffered the largest relative decline in wages and standard of living in the last twenty-five years. A vestigal group through seniority have held on at a few outposts like the Big Three automakers, but they are a tiny fraction of the vast number who saw their wages collapse under them. And yet that group feeling the collapse of their status did not necessarily turn to class consciousness- instead race and religious consciousness and even guin-based cultural consciousness were powerful political organizers. Which reinforces the idea that bad economic times is not necessarily good news for the Left. In fact, historically, militant unionism has done well only during good times or during times of expected improving times. This includes the Depression where unionists made gains only when the New Deal had gained enough momentum to give hope to folks- and unionism took a big step back with the 1938 recession to be revived numerically with the full employment policies of World War II. -- nathan Newman
Re: Re: minimum wage increases
$3.35 before 1990, $3.80 in 1990, $4.25 in 1991, and then in two stages to $5.15 (1996 and 1997). Joel Blau Martin Watts wrote: Could a kind person list the Federal minimum wage increases in the USA since the mid-1980s. Thanks. Kind regards Martin Martin Watts Deputy Director Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE) Department of Economics University of Newcastle New South Wales 2308 Australia Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://e1.newcastle.edu.au/coffee/ Office: (61) 2 4921-5069 (Phone) Office: (61) 2 4921-6919 (Fax) Home: (61) 2 4981-8124 (Fax) Home: (61) 2 4982-9158 (Phone) Mobile: 0414 966 751
Snow in August?
Penners: Is expecting Wall St. analysts to recommend a "sell" to investors like waiting for snow in August? Seth 'Sell' Ratings Were Few as Market Tanked Many analysts failed to sound alarm on tech, telecom stocks Kathleen PenderWednesday, March 28, 2001 Investors who were waiting for Wall Street analysts to tell them when to sell tech and telecom stocks last year would have waited a long, long time. During the first three months of 2000, out of 1,019 analysts covering 811 tech and telecom stocks, there were only nine new "sell" recommendations, according to San Francisco's StarMine, which tracks analysts' recommendations using data from IBES. Brokerage firms have different names for their recommendations, but most rate stocks on a five-point scale. StarMine considers the two lowest ratings -- whatever they're called -- a "sell." During the second three months of last year -- after the Nasdaq had peaked - - there were only 13 new "sell" recommendations. In the third quarter, another 13. During the fourth quarter, when the carnage was everywhere, there were a grand total of 47 new "sell" recommendations. It's no secret that analysts are loath to issue "sell" recommendations. The usual reason given is that analysts don't want to antagonize companies that might do investment banking business with their firms. So it's interesting to note that of the 82 new sell signals issued last year, 23 came from Standard Poor's, which doesn't do investment banking business. "It's a touchy subject," says Arnold Kaufman, editor of the SP Outlook. "Without panning any other organization, SP is an independent organization that does not get involved with investment banking or any other sell-side activities. We don't have a retail brokerage operation. Our analysts are pretty much free to choose the recommendation that they think is appropriate without any political pressures. So we generate a lot of 'sell' recommendations here. Beyond that, it's too ticklish a subject to get into." Since SP started its five-star rating system in 1987, its five-star (top- rated) stocks are up 1,198 percent, compared with a 412 percent gain for the SP 500 index. Its one-star (lowest-rated) stocks are down 17.4 percent. Last year, its five-star stocks gained 6.4 percent, beating the SP 500, which was down 10.1 percent. Oddly, its lowest-rated, one-star stocks also beat the market, declining only 9.5 percent. The firm with the second-largest number of "sell" signals, 15, was San Francisco's Robertson Stephens, which does have an investment banking division. I asked StarMine to sift through its database looking for heroes -- analysts who made gutsy "sell" recommendations early in the year. Although lots of analysts made a good call or two -- hey, anybody can get lucky -- StarMine limited its search to analysts who had at least three tech or telecom stocks rated "hold" or lower (one of the lowest three ratings) for more than a couple of weeks during the first half of last year. Only a few analysts made the cut. One was a team of telecom analysts at Bear Stearns: William Deatherage and Bette Massick-Colombo. According to IBES, they picked up coverage of three telecom companies -- Level 3, Williams Communications and Global Crossing -- with a "hold" recommendation in February. Since then, all three stocks are down substantially, but if these analysts are heroes, they're reluctant. Deatherage didn't return my call. Massick-Colombo wouldn't discuss the subject. Issuing a "sell" signal "doesn't help you out with the companies," she said. But, I asked, doesn't it help your clients who are investors? "Not if they own the stock," she said. Stocks sometimes fall when an analyst cuts a rating, which doesn't sit well with shareholders who don't want to sell. Another gutsy call came in May, when Lawrence Borgman of Josephthal Co. downgraded a bunch of chip companies -- Intel, AMD, Teradyne, Altera and Pericom Semiconductor -- from "buy" to "hold." Although most of these companies didn't peak until a few months later, they all ended the year lower than they were in May. Borgman didn't get much publicity when he made the call. Analyst Ashok Kumar of U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray got much more attention in early September, when he downgraded Intel one notch from his highest rating, a "strong buy," to a "buy." Kumar's timing was better than Borgman's, but pity the poor shareholder who thought "buy" means "buy." Intel stock is down 60 percent since Kumar's call. "Analysts are pretty limited in how they can express themselves," says David Lichtblau, a vice president with StarMine. "It's hard for me to say with a straight face that a 'buy' on a stock that went down more than 50 percent is a good call. It's noteworthy that they're changing their opinion. Still, it would have been nice if they went all the way to 'sell.' " The moral of this story: Take analysts' ratings with a truckload
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: US Consumer Confidenceindex surges
While this might seem like humor to some, Barkeley, this sort of language can re-inginite the flaming. "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: michael, I don't think you need to worry. It's just a Bard College-educated snob huffing at a Yale- educated snob, :-). Barkley Rosser -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: the Kaiser
Nathan: And yet blacks are more likely to be in unions than whites at this pont and the autoworkers and such are an increasingly smaller proportion of the labor movement. The largest single new block of workers in the last few years has been home health care workers with a range of other service workers following up. Black autoworkers and black home health care workers? Something doesn't go together here. In fact, most studies show that the vast block of white well-paid blue collor unionists, what was dubbed the "labor aristocracy" by Maoists and others in the late 60s and early 70s, have been the ones who have suffered the largest relative decline in wages and standard of living in the last twenty-five years. This is true. But this is in the context of a qualitative change following the postwar period. Erosion takes place within that reality. Let me reiterate. I am not talking about workers voting for Democrats. I am talking about proletarian revolution. If anybody thinks that such a topic is on the minds of UAW workers, they are kidding themselves. Most workers dream of a return to the 1950s or early 60s. This was accounted for the phenomenon of "Reagan Democrats". Whether this can become a reality is another question. And yet that group feeling the collapse of their status did not necessarily turn to class consciousness- instead race and religious consciousness and even guin-based cultural consciousness were powerful political organizers. Guin-based? I'd call that naked revisionism. Which reinforces the idea that bad economic times is not necessarily good news for the Left. In fact, historically, militant unionism has done well only during good times or during times of expected improving times. This includes the Depression where unionists made gains only when the New Deal had gained enough momentum to give hope to folks- and unionism took a big step back with the 1938 recession to be revived numerically with the full employment policies of World War II. No, this is a misreading of the 1930s. What happened is that an uptick in the economy made it more difficult to break strikes because the reserved army of the unemployed was not as vast as it was in 1930. This is different from American society today, when a worker in the typical sit-down strike unions of the 1930s is looking for a bigger slice of the pie and little else. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges
Look, I don't wish mass impoverishment on anybody, but the plain fact of the matter is that as long as the "boom" continues, the ethic of looking out for number 1 will persist, and we are just pissing into the wind. Joel Blau Doug Henwood wrote: Jim Devine wrote: Also, Doug, doesn't it get a little tiring making the same point (that leftist hope for bad times) over and over again? No more tiring than it gets to see leftists making the same point over and over again. It's stunning how this list comes alive at a hint of panic. Michael wants PEN-L to be relevant to political activists, but disaster-sniffing doesn't seem to be the way to go about it. Look, for much of the world, "disaster" is the norm. That hasn't worked to the left's advantage in too many places, at least not yet. For the more comfortable part of the world, disaster has rarely worked to the left's advantage either. In the light of that, there's something pathological and self-marginalizing about getting excited when the Dow loses 300 points - or dredging up a sucker rally from 1930 as a precedent on a day when it's up 200. Or with an alleged progressive wishing mass impoverishment on the American working class. Or with yet another saying it's all hopeless here, because the real action is in Mexico - even though the holder of that point of view is comfortably situated in the comfortable part of the world. The hell with it. I'll shut up for a long while. Doug
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence indexsurges
Joel Blau wrote: Look, I don't wish mass impoverishment on anybody, but the plain fact of the matter is that as long as the "boom" continues, the ethic of looking out for number 1 will persist, and we are just pissing into the wind. Sally Lee, editor, Parents Magazine: "In the last two or three years, there's a sense of let's start raising kids who are not so individualistic. In a bad economy, everyone wants to raise this Horatio Alger. Now we want to raise kids who are good citizens who will help people." - quoted in Belluck, Pam (2000). "New Advice for Parents: Saying 'That's Great!' May Not Be," New York Times, October 18, p. A18.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges
That's not my take among students and other people of good will who are not leftists. Doug, I still don't understand why this view sets you off. I'd like to hear you sketch a plausible political scenario favorable to the left that doesn't include a bursting of the bubble. Joel Blau Doug Henwood wrote: Joel Blau wrote: Look, I don't wish mass impoverishment on anybody, but the plain fact of the matter is that as long as the "boom" continues, the ethic of looking out for number 1 will persist, and we are just pissing into the wind. Sally Lee, editor, Parents Magazine: "In the last two or three years, there's a sense of let's start raising kids who are not so individualistic. In a bad economy, everyone wants to raise this Horatio Alger. Now we want to raise kids who are good citizens who will help people." - quoted in Belluck, Pam (2000). "New Advice for Parents: Saying 'That's Great!' May Not Be," New York Times, October 18, p. A18.
Re: US Consumer Confidence indexsurges
CB: Anyway, following Marx on the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall does not entail agreeing that there is a "transformation problem" with Marx's theory, does it ? Although I have big problems with Brenner's thesis on the origins of capitalism, I'd have to say that his general methodological approach on the recent economic crisis is attractive in its tendency to stay away from all that arcane business about the transformation problem, etc. I believe that's one of the reasons he pissed off so many value theorists, leaving aside questions of substance as to whether the crisis was related to international competition or working class gains at the expense of the bourgeoisie, was that he did not genuflect before Okishoki et al. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: The Wrath of Doug
1. Doug's "critique" came in response to no one actually doing the simpleminded leftish habit thing that it criticizes. Jim Devine wrote something about the consumer confidence bounce reminding him of the suckers' rally after 1929. Hey, today's another day. Did the bear shit in the woods again? Or is that simpleminded? 2. There is a sense in which "bad news" can appropriately be received with satisfaction, if not joy. That is when the bad news confirms our grasp on reality in the face of relentless 'optimistic' disinformation telling us we're assholes for not celebrating the official fables. 3. There's no reason to expect that a falling market will unleash a lot of good shit. They may be reason to hope that the harsh light of reality will unleash some energies to struggle against the bad shit. 4. For many people, the loss of the illusion of prosperity will be no no more of a hardship than was the illusion of prosperity, if you get my drift. On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Doug Henwood wrote: Because that's not what I'm doing. I'm criticizing the leftish habit of simplemindedly putting negative signs in front of the glad tidings, and viewing a collapsing Dow as good news. A lot of bad shit has gone on under a rising market, but that doesn't mean that a falling market will unleash lots of good shit. Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: Re: The Wrath of Doug
"The only thing about the Situation that gave Stencil satisfaction was that his theory explained it." --Thomas Pynchon, V. (quoted from memory) I myself have too much money in the goddamn market to celebrate when it tanks. --jks 2. There is a sense in which "bad news" can appropriately be received with satisfaction, if not joy. That is when the bad news confirms our grasp on reality in the face of relentless 'optimistic' disinformation telling us we're assholes for not celebrating the official fables. _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
US Consumer Confidence indexsurges
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 03/28/01 02:21PM Louis, Declining rate of profit? Oh, so you really are into all that OPE-L stuff after all, eh? Do you buy the Kliman-McGlone counterattack against the Okishio Theorem to save the idea, or do you prefer Fred Moseley's more empirical approach with its special categorizations of labor? Barkley Rosser Actually, I prefer not to get involved in these sorts of arcane debates abstracted from the real economy. What I am much more interested in is how the airline industry, which accounts for some 30 percent of the US export market, ran into a profit crunch in the late 1960s. This has to do with the price of fuel, the investment in 747s, etc. So I suppose that I am something of a Moseley-ite if push comes to shove. In any case, I start out with the premise that profits did hit a brick wall. When I sit down to write my analysis, I will probably delve into Ernest Mandel for a theoretical orientation. He stands head and shoulders over anybody else who has done economics in the past-WWII period. ((( CB: Anyway, following Marx on the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall does not entail agreeing that there is a "transformation problem" with Marx's theory, does it ?
A Fair Deal?
I found this cited elsewhere. I don't know the book. Queenan, Joe. 1992. The Imperial Caddy: The Rise of Dan Quayle and the Decline and Fall of Practically Everything Else (New York: Hyperion). 132-33: "Leftist intellectuals with hare-brained Marxist ideas get to control Stanford, MIT, Yale, and the American Studies department at the University of Vermont. In return, the right gets IBM, Honeywell, Disney World, and the New York Stock Exchange. Leftist academics get to tryout their stupid ideas on impressionable youths between 17 and 21 who don't have any money or power. The right gets to tryout its ideas on North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and parts of Africa, most of which take Mastercard. The left gets Harvard, Oberlin, Twyla Tharp's dance company, and Madison, Wisconsin. The right gets NASDAQ, Boeing, General Motors, Apple, McDonnell Douglas, Washington D.C., Citicorp, Texas, CocaCola, General Electric, Japan, and outer space." -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: The Wrath of Doug
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 03/28/01 12:55PM Timework Web wrote: But it irks Doug if someone on the left pooh-poohs the miasma of Ponzi scheme glad tidings. I don't get it. Because that's not what I'm doing. I'm criticizing the leftish habit of simplemindedly putting negative signs in front of the glad tidings, and viewing a collapsing Dow as good news. (( CB: What's the evidence that it is simplemindedly done ? ((( A lot of bad shit has gone on under a rising market, but that doesn't mean that a falling market will unleash lots of good shit. Sorry to break my promise to be quiet. Doug
Re: US Consumer Confidence indexsurges
Charles, Most of those who insist on the falling rate of profit as an inevitable law attempt to get around the transformation problem one way or another. This is the case with Kliman-McGlone, without getting into the technical details. The approach of Moseley is separate from what one thinks of the transformation problem, I think, although I stand to be corrected if wrong. His approach involves defining some workers as productive and others as unproductive, and then doing the calculations from there. Barkley Rosser - Original Message - From: "Charles Brown" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2001 4:27 PM Subject: [PEN-L:9700] US Consumer Confidence indexsurges [EMAIL PROTECTED] 03/28/01 02:21PM Louis, Declining rate of profit? Oh, so you really are into all that OPE-L stuff after all, eh? Do you buy the Kliman-McGlone counterattack against the Okishio Theorem to save the idea, or do you prefer Fred Moseley's more empirical approach with its special categorizations of labor? Barkley Rosser Actually, I prefer not to get involved in these sorts of arcane debates abstracted from the real economy. What I am much more interested in is how the airline industry, which accounts for some 30 percent of the US export market, ran into a profit crunch in the late 1960s. This has to do with the price of fuel, the investment in 747s, etc. So I suppose that I am something of a Moseley-ite if push comes to shove. In any case, I start out with the premise that profits did hit a brick wall. When I sit down to write my analysis, I will probably delve into Ernest Mandel for a theoretical orientation. He stands head and shoulders over anybody else who has done economics in the past-WWII period. ((( CB: Anyway, following Marx on the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall does not entail agreeing that there is a "transformation problem" with Marx's theory, does it ?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence indexsurges
At 11:59 AM 3/28/01 -0600, you wrote: I did predict large U.S. casualties in the Gulf War -- everyone has forgotten it. weren't these _all_ due to "friendly fire"? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges
Joel Blau wrote: Look, I don't wish mass impoverishment on anybody, but the plain fact of the matter is that as long as the "boom" continues, the ethic of looking out for number 1 will persist, and we are just pissing into the wind. quoth Doug: Sally Lee, editor, Parents Magazine: "In the last two or three years, there's a sense of let's start raising kids who are not so individualistic. In a bad economy, everyone wants to raise this Horatio Alger. Now we want to raise kids who are good citizens who will help people." - quoted in Belluck, Pam (2000). "New Advice for Parents: Saying 'That's Great!' May Not Be," New York Times, October 18, p. A18. also, prosperity like that of the late 1960s actually promoted rebellion. Unequally-distributed prosperity like that of the 1990s might encourage mass rebellion against defining what we want from our economy in terms of aggregate averages like _per capita_ GDP. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges
Barkley wrote: One of the reasons we had the stock market bubble was because profits generally went up during the 1980s and 1990s, at least in the US, although I stand to be corrected by that notorious Yale-educated snob if I am wrong. Much of that reflected well-known attacks against the working class that succeeded. One reason the bubble has been coming down has been that indeed, profits have been declining again recently. But that is hardly the same thing as a general, secular tendency to decline. why did the "Market" soar until last year? (1) the rise in profit rates until 1998 or so, with relatively minor declines (as far as I can tell) since then. (2) a shift in the distribution of income toward those parts of the population most likely to speculate on the market, i.e., the upper classes. (3) a kind of "new economy" triumphalism, in conjunction with faith in Alan Greenspan, which encouraged the normal bubbly tendencies of speculative markets. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the Kaiser
Nathan writes: In fact, most studies show that the vast block of white well-paid blue collor unionists, what was dubbed the "labor aristocracy" by Maoists and others in the late 60s and early 70s, have been the ones who have suffered the largest relative decline in wages and standard of living in the last twenty-five years. A vestigal group through seniority have held on at a few outposts like the Big Three automakers, but they are a tiny fraction of the vast number who saw their wages collapse under them. this fits with my prejudice: I've thought for a long time that though some "elite" blue collar workers gained from imperialism in the short run (since it allowed employers to make concessions and governments to allow stable welfare states), they lose in the long run (due to capital mobility, the race to the bottom, etc.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges
Rob wrote: if, as now, US baby-boomer pension-investors have to cut consumption because their eggs have fallen out of the NASDAQ basket and they only have five years to prepare for their suddenly-not-so-golden years this makes it sound as if we'll soon see a baby-boomer movement to strengthen deepen the US social security system in its traditional form. Hey, we blew our savings by speculating, so Uncle Sam should help! Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Fwd: News: Kyoto Oh No
At 09:41 28/03/01 -0800, you wrote: from SLATE: The [Washington POST] fronts a report carried inside elsewhere that [U.S.] EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman told reporters yesterday that the Kyoto protocol for emission reduction--signed by the U.S. but not ratified--is (in the paper's words) "dead as far as the administration was concerned." The paper foresees a stunned reaction from European Union officials. BBC commentary: " The Swedish Government, which currently holds the European Union presidency, described the move as appalling and provocative, while the environmental group Friends of the Earth said it threatened "climate disaster". Sweden's Environment Minister, Kjell Larssen, told the BBC that the new US administration seemed to be preparing to withdraw from the global community's effort to deal with a major threat to the future of the world." The provocative nature of the new US administration seems to be becoming a feature. It might help the emergence of a group of states not so tactily opposed to US hegemonism. Chris Burford Chris Burford London
Re: A Fair Deal?
He's a regular visitor to "Imus in the morning" and does screenplays among other things and is as provocative as such commercial cynicism can be allowed in mainstream media. Perhaps anti-Limbaugh Lite? - Original Message - From: "Michael Perelman" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2001 4:58 PM Subject: [PEN-L:9705] A Fair Deal? I found this cited elsewhere. I don't know the book. Queenan, Joe. 1992. The Imperial Caddy: The Rise of Dan Quayle and the Decline and Fall of Practically Everything Else (New York: Hyperion). 132-33: "Leftist intellectuals with hare-brained Marxist ideas get to control Stanford, MIT, Yale, and the American Studies department at the University of Vermont. In return, the right gets IBM, Honeywell, Disney World, and the New York Stock Exchange. Leftist academics get to tryout their stupid ideas on impressionable youths between 17 and 21 who don't have any money or power. The right gets to tryout its ideas on North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and parts of Africa, most of which take Mastercard. The left gets Harvard, Oberlin, Twyla Tharp's dance company, and Madison, Wisconsin. The right gets NASDAQ, Boeing, General Motors, Apple, McDonnell Douglas, Washington D.C., Citicorp, Texas, CocaCola, General Electric, Japan, and outer space." -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
RE: Re: A Fair Deal?
Hate to disappoint you, but Queenan's on my side. Think of him as a P.J. O'Rourke type, but even more cynical. He has been a contributor to The American Spectator for years. David Shemano -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of ann li Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2001 2:44 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:9714] Re: A Fair Deal? He's a regular visitor to "Imus in the morning" and does screenplays among other things and is as provocative as such commercial cynicism can be allowed in mainstream media. Perhaps anti-Limbaugh Lite? - Original Message - From: "Michael Perelman" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2001 4:58 PM Subject: [PEN-L:9705] A Fair Deal? I found this cited elsewhere. I don't know the book. Queenan, Joe. 1992. The Imperial Caddy: The Rise of Dan Quayle and the Decline and Fall of Practically Everything Else (New York: Hyperion). 132-33: "Leftist intellectuals with hare-brained Marxist ideas get to control Stanford, MIT, Yale, and the American Studies department at the University of Vermont. In return, the right gets IBM, Honeywell, Disney World, and the New York Stock Exchange. Leftist academics get to tryout their stupid ideas on impressionable youths between 17 and 21 who don't have any money or power. The right gets to tryout its ideas on North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and parts of Africa, most of which take Mastercard. The left gets Harvard, Oberlin, Twyla Tharp's dance company, and Madison, Wisconsin. The right gets NASDAQ, Boeing, General Motors, Apple, McDonnell Douglas, Washington D.C., Citicorp, Texas, CocaCola, General Electric, Japan, and outer space." -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: dollar and universal money
Chris B. writes: As Jim indicates we do not have to be rigidly dogmatic about Marx's approach to claim that he wrote not a little about credit money and debt, and about capitalist crises. The point Jim makes about the hegemonic position of the US in global capitalism is important in current world politics. I suppose it is a small step towards demystifying gold. (Interesting that the price of gold has not yet risen significantly.) gold prices rise when inflation is expected, no? if pen-l fears of deflation are relevant, gold prices should fall. (And why does anyone really care about gold prices? it seems more irrelevant than the Dow.) ... even if the majority of peoples and states of the world are not yet ready to abandon capitalism, they could begin to see the advantages of a world financial system that is a little more rational than relying on US hegemony. Although Marx did assume the gold standard, he analyses it as universal money, and one of the things that is needed now is a more rational form of universal money. To some extent capitalism is groping towards such an entity in that the Federal Reserve does consider to a degree its communications with other central banks and the overall shape of the global economy as part of its decisions. To some extent conceptual tools are emerging like baskets of currencies. There are also IMF special drawing rights. Bancor? The US probably calcuates that is has several more decades before the dollar needs to be threatened in its role of universal money, by the renminbi. ?? the renminbi? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: The Gripes of Wrath (was Doug)
Justin: "The only thing about the Situation that gave Stencil satisfaction was that his theory explained it." --Thomas Pynchon, V. (quoted from memory) I have to confess to feeling awful Stencil-like some of these days. Or would that be doubly redundant? Tom Walker (604) 947-2213
Re: A Fair Deal?
Queenan's book, "Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon" is funny. Among other sensical observations, he heroically rebukes Billy Joel for his horrendous Top 40 hits. Andrew Hagen [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Wed, 28 Mar 2001 13:58:31 -0800, Michael Perelman wrote: I found this cited elsewhere. I don't know the book. Queenan, Joe. 1992. The Imperial Caddy: The Rise of Dan Quayle and the Decline and Fall of Practically Everything Else (New York: Hyperion). 132-33: "Leftist intellectuals with hare-brained Marxist ideas get to control Stanford, MIT, Yale, and the American Studies department at the University of Vermont. In return, the right gets IBM, Honeywell, Disney World, and the New York Stock Exchange. Leftist academics get to tryout their stupid ideas on impressionable youths between 17 and 21 who don't have any money or power. The right gets to tryout its ideas on North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and parts of Africa, most of which take Mastercard. The left gets Harvard, Oberlin, Twyla Tharp's dance company, and Madison, Wisconsin. The right gets NASDAQ, Boeing, General Motors, Apple, McDonnell Douglas, Washington D.C., Citicorp, Texas, CocaCola, General Electric, Japan, and outer space." -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: RE: Re: A Fair Deal?
David, I'm not disappointed at all. It looks like a fair representation of what the academic left in the United States had won in the 1970s. As for O'Rourke, I never saw any humor in his material. On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 02:40:15PM -0800, David Shemano wrote: Hate to disappoint you, but Queenan's on my side. Think of him as a P.J. O'Rourke type, but even more cynical. He has been a contributor to The American Spectator for years. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Venezuelan strikes
Venezuelan Opposition Calls Oil, Teachers Strikes By REUTERS Filed at 5:08 p.m. ET CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Opposition-run unions began strikes on Wednesday for higher pay in Venezuela's vital oil industry and its state schools, heralding a wave of labor unrest for President Hugo Chavez's government. With state electricity employees, steelworkers and the staff of the Caracas Metro also threatening action, the government promised a hard line against the strikers. Interior Minister Luis Miquilena said a small group of ringleaders had manipulated wage grievances to win support in crucial union elections to be held this year. ``This is a vulgar provocation,'' Miquilena told reporters. ''It is an action by a small group of workers operating at the margin of the law. ... They do not deserve to sit at the negotiating table.'' Voters in a December referendum backed the populist Chavez's plan for elections to oust opposition union leaders. The labor movement is one of Venezuela's last bastions of anti-Chavez power. During his two years as president, the former paratrooper has redrawn the South American nation's political map, rewriting the constitution and sweeping aside traditional political parties. Around 60,000 petroleum workers lay down their tools early on Wednesday in the world's No. 3 petroleum exporter as oil union Fedepetrol flexed its muscles in a wage dispute. REASSURANCE ON OUTPUT While oil is vital for Venezuela's economic health, accounting for over half of government revenues and three-quarters of exports, state petroleum company PDVSA said it could maintain normal output for 10 days under a contingency plan. The powerful oil union inflicted an embarrassing defeat on Chavez's government in October when it forced the state oil company to grant a 50 percent pay increase. ``As a government, we cannot permit what is obviously blackmail by the union sector, which is using these labor demands as a platform for the forthcoming union elections,'' said Elias Juau, minister of the Presidential Secretariat. Also on Wednesday, roughly 160,000 teachers in the state education sector began a 72-hour strike, charging that a collective contract signed last year had been violated. ``This does not make us proud,'' said Jaime Manzo, president of the Venezuelan Teachers Federation. He said the strike would continue if the government did not meet teachers' demands. Miquilena dismissed the teachers' action as ``an imaginary strike'' and said the vast majority of the 6.5 million children in state schools attended classes on Wednesday. Authorities have not set a date for union elections this year, due within six months of December's referendum, amid confusion over the leadership of Chavez's Bolivarian Workers Movement. Labor groups and human rights organizations said the referendum violated international labor rights and Venezuela's constitution.
FW: Rich Leftists Bankroll John McCain's Assault on Freedom
Heh, blame the Hollywood Left, the liberal foundations and esp. George Soros! Michael Pugliese From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 3/28/01 2:51:38 PM To: ACU Members and Supporters From: Christian Josi, Executive Director As you know, we've been very busy here at the ACU. We've successfully worked to generate grassroots support for President Bush's Tax Relief Plan, filed complaints with the FEC and the IRS against Jesse Jackson and Rainbow / PUSH, and most recently we've been educating the public and Congress about the very real dangers of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance "Reform" bill, currently in the senate. Yesterday, the ACU Foundation released the eye-opening report "Who's Buying Campaign Finance 'Reform'?" Below you will find an article summarizing our findings that appeared today on NewsMax.com. Of course, additional information on all of our current projects can be found at our online headquarters, http://www.conservative.org. NewsMax.com March 28, 2001 Rich Leftists Bankroll John McCain's Assault on Freedom By Steve Farrell If you are not yet alarmed and outraged by radical Republican John McCain's "bipartisan" campaign finance "reform" package, which is in no way bipartisan, Monday's revelation from the American Conservative Union Foundation (ACU) should put an end to your complacency. In its latest report, "Who's Buying Campaign Finance Reform?" the ACU unveils the secret that some conservatives have suspected all along: The campaign finance reform 'movement' has, contrary to its anti-big money agenda, raised and spent more than $73 million since 1996; has, contrary to its bipartisan claims, been funded by "wealthy Democratic Party soft-money donors, ultra-liberal foundations and Democratic operatives; and has, contrary to its equality of donations philosophy, received astronomical donations from a few key individuals and foundations. "There's too much money in campaign finance reform," the ACU quips. A few examples of individual contributions: George Soros contributed $4.7 million to the "movement for reform"; funneled more than $600,000 to Arizonans for Clean Elections (ACE), single-handedly accounting for more than 71 percent of the group's entire funding; and Soros, and "seven of his wealthiest friends, created their own political committee - the Campaign for a Progressive Future - which funded almost $2 million of political activities in 2000, including $200,000 to the Million Mom PAC." Steven T. Kirsch, soft-money "abolitionist," contributed $500,000 in soft money to finance campaign finance "reform" groups in 2000, and $1.8 million in independent expenditures against the candidacy of President George W. Bush last year. "Jerome Kohlberg, who spent more than $400,000 of his own money against the campaign of Republican Senator Jim Bunning, R-Ky., in 1998, also donated $100,000 to the Campaign for America." He "subsequently bought television ads pleading 'Let's get the $100,000 checks out of politics.' " Or how about some of their liberal foundation donors: The Carnegie Foundation - $3,198,300 The Ford Foundation - $3,000,000 The Joyce Foundation - $3,898,900 Florence and John Schuman - $7,511,000 Pew Charitable Trusts - $6,726,000 Not a convincing argument, then, for opposition to big donors buying unequal political influence. Further, the report reveals that Mr. McCain has personally received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from these same wealthy donors. If the money is coming from the left, chances are the left will benefit. It's fairly simple: When one considers the proposed ban against all political advertising 60 days prior to an election, who, at that critical juncture, will control the hearts and minds of Americans going into Election Day, other than the leftist press? But a soft-money ban easily translates into another problem: the drying up of public advertising efforts (perhaps educational endeavors too) of conservative issue groups, whose work is critical to balancing the debate against the media, the public school system and the government's own ability to lobby on behalf of itself. Again, advantage to the left and advantage to the media. Rush Limbaugh insightfully dubbed McCain's bill "The Media Empowerment Act." That it is. The ACU reports: "Since 1996 Joyce has made grants in its "Money Politics" category totaling more than $13 million to finance every conceivable campaign finance reform endeavor anyone can think of, including financing specific projects to insure that the media is properly 'trained' on the issue of campaign finance reform - to the tune of $1.16 million. "Taxpayer-supported National Public Radio has received $212,141 from the Joyce Foundation since 1996 for 'coverage of finance, government ethics and political influence issues.' "... When viewed in the context of the other recipients of Joyce Foundation largesse at the same time, a
Once again history is stranger than fiction
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/serbia/article/0,2479,464930,00.html Ian Traynor in Belgrade Thursday March 29, 2001 The Guardian Search for the missing millions The United States has set Belgrade a deadline of this Saturday for arresting the former Yugoslav despot Slobodan Milosevic. The Guardian opens a three-part investigation into the crimes of his regime. Today: the plundering of Serbia. Slobodan Milosevic, the former leader of Yugoslavia, lost three wars in the disastrous drive to create a Greater Serbia. He is indicted at the Hague tribunal for crimes against humanity. His legacy is still visible in flattened buildings and destroyed communities from Kosovo to Bosnia and beyond. Now he could be put in the dock - for buying himself a new back garden. Two days before Nato started bombing Belgrade two years ago last weekend, Milosevic bought 8,000 square metres of prime land behind his Belgrade villa in the elite suburb of Dedinje for around 3,000. He could face charges of abuse of power for buying the plot at such a knock-down price. "It's absurd," snorts Braca Grubacic, a veteran Belgrade analyst. "The butcher of the Balkans goes on trial for illegally buying an outhouse and a bit of garden." A fortnight ago Milosevic received a summons to the investigating magistrate looking into the alleged property fiddle. He ignored it. It was his first brush with the law at home. It won't be the last, for the property affair is the tip of an iceberg of allegations and indictments concerning the crimes of the Milosevic era. The former president is being hounded from several directions: from inquiries into political assassinations of opponents under his regime, to claims that he committed electoral fraud and probes into alleged war crimes against Bosnia, Kosovo, and Serbs themselves. And then there are the allegations of large-scale embezzlement, running perhaps to hundreds of millions of pounds over the past decade. "Financial crimes will be the main and the most promising charges against Milosevic," says Goran Vesic, a lawyer, politician and chief aide to the current Yugoslav interior ministry. The Guardian has pieced together the jigsaw of Milosevic's missing millions. Our investigation, drawing on interviews with many of his closest advisers, including his personal banker and Serbian ministers, as well as with Hague investigators and senior western officials, has tracked the labyrinthine route in which money was gathered and then salted away. The scale of the plundering of Serbia is awesome. Investigators at the Yugoslav central bank have posited an overall figure of $4bn. Regime insiders, including Milosevic's close relatives, are believed to have hundreds of millions of pounds held abroad in private, numbered or alias accounts in Cyprus, Switzerland, Lebanon, Russia, Greece, and Israel, to name a few of the most favoured destinations. Cyprus was the hub of an intricate money system. Through Cyprus, billions were spirited out of Serbia in cash and redistributed around the world. The banker masterminding the system was Borka Vucic, 73, retired, a Milosevic family friend. Before returning to head Serbia's biggest bank, Beogradska Banka, in 1998, she spent nine years in Cyprus as head of the bank's offshore subsidiary. Speaking in her elegant Belgrade flat around the corner from Milosevic's villa, she admits managing a vast surreptitious exercise in cash dispersal. "I am not authorised to say how much," she smiles. "All the banks did the same to survive. A lot of people were taking money into Cyprus. There were other people on airplanes carrying the money, but not with me. If someone was taking money without the permission of the bank or the companies, it's not my responsibility." Milosevic's brother, wife and daughter have bank accounts, now frozen, in Switzerland, according to Yugoslav government sources and western diplomats in Belgrade. So do Mirko Marjanovic, the former Serbian prime minister who controlled the lucrative grain export business to Russia throughout the 1990s, and Dragan Tomic, a Milosevic aide and former parliament speaker. Two key Milosevic supporters, Nikola Sainovic, a former deputy prime minister who controlled the precious metals trade and is indicted for war crimes in Kosovo, and Dusan Matkovic, ex-deputy leader of Milosevic's Socialist party and head of the giant Sartid steel works at Smederovo outside Belgrade, have bank accounts in Beirut, according to a former banker inside the regime. Mladjan Dinkic, the new central bank governor who is on a crusade to recover the cash, estimates the overall sum at $4bn. The bulk was used not for personal gain, but to keep Serbia trading through a decade of United Nations economic sanctions. "Milosevic does not have billions stashed abroad. The money was spent on survival and some people got enormously wealthy," says a knowledgeable Serbian source who asked not to be named. So where did the money come from? Flawed
RE: Re: RE: Re: A Fair Deal?
Michael -- I am not surprised at all that you don't find P.J. O'Rourke funny. You don't strike me as a Republican Party Reptile. What about Dave Barry -- another semi-libertarian? In fact, do Lefties have a sense of humor? Or do you have to wait until the revolution comes before you are permitted to smile? Question: How many Lefties does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: That's not funny. David Shemano -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Michael Perelman Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2001 3:54 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:9719] Re: RE: Re: A Fair Deal? David, I'm not disappointed at all. It looks like a fair representation of what the academic left in the United States had won in the 1970s. As for O'Rourke, I never saw any humor in his material. On Wed, Mar 28, 2001 at 02:40:15PM -0800, David Shemano wrote: Hate to disappoint you, but Queenan's on my side. Think of him as a P.J. O'Rourke type, but even more cynical. He has been a contributor to The American Spectator for years. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Transformation problem [was US Consumer Confidence...]
At 17:03 28/03/01 -0500, Barkley wrote: Charles, Most of those who insist on the falling rate of profit as an inevitable law attempt to get around the transformation problem one way or another. This is the case with Kliman-McGlone, without getting into the technical details. The approach of Moseley is separate from what one thinks of the transformation problem, I think, although I stand to be corrected if wrong. His approach involves defining some workers as productive and others as unproductive, and then doing the calculations from there. Barkley Rosser It was a fair, if typically mischievous, challenge to ask what people thought about the detailed debates on OPE-L. But a broad reply like that of Charles also was fair. In broad terms it is quite reasonable to accept a tendency to a falling rate of profit under capitalism but see countervailing forces. At times of a crisis there is a superfluity of capital, partly in the form of debt, partly in an excess of commodities. That comes into sharp contradiction with the limited purchasing power of the masses. The sort of technical discussions on OPE-L, some of which are arcane, are not necessary for everyone to grasp. The term "transformation problem" should, I submit, always be put in inverted commas, because critics and doubters of marxism like to emphasise what they see as the problematic nature of marxism. IMO through failing to see Marx's calculations as illustrative of the fundamental forces which he is describing in a dialectical model they want exact literal translations, expecting a living economy to work like a piece of clockwork machinery. Who problematises whom, is one of the basic rules in politics. Where the new marxist economists have made important technical progress, is in posing models of the economy that are "non-equlibrium" and challenge the idea of a one to one mechanical interpretation of Marx's dynamic analysis. I don't belittle all technical economic discussions as arcane. I think Barkley's contributions staking out the ground for the importance of non-linear processes including chaotic phenomena in economics, are progressive and not-coincidentally compatible with marxism. However, even though "the transformation problem" is extremely boring, I note that Barkley does not necessarily imply inverted commas around it. He does not appear to think it can be dismissed, as I do, as an artefact of mechanical thinking applied to Marx's dialectical materialist model. Without expecting him to be definitive, could he summarise in one paragraph which handling is most relevant. Why is it a "problem" and why does it help to consider some workers as productive (of surplus value presumably) and some as unproductive? Chris Burford
