Re: Dallas Smythe student
Tom says: The anxiety isn't over pleasure and sensuality per se, but over the commodification of pleasure and sensuality -- a process that is no doubt so far advanced that it becomes hard to conceive of pleasure and sensuality in any other terms. Non-commodified pleasure and sensuality under pre-capitalism and much of capitalism are, more often than not, provided by unpaid women's labor, e.g., Mom's Home-cooked Meals. Commodified pleasure and sensuality under capitalism affordable to the working class are, more often than not, provided by low-paid labor of men and women of color in sweatshops, e.g., mass produced and yet stylish Kenneth Cole goods. But for commodification of pleasure and sensuality, women today would be still spending all day carrying water, preparing food, sewing clothes, and so on (poor women in poor nations still in fact spend much of their time carrying water, etc.!). But for commodification and urbanization, which have come to allow human beings to live independently of the pre-capitalist duty to marry and procreate (or else), we wouldn't know such identities as gay men and lesbians (pre-capitalist male-male same-sex desire appears mainly to have been channeled through hierarchical relations between men and boys, as among ancient Greeks and monks and samurais in pre-modern Japan, without becoming a fixed sexual orientation -- women's same-sex desire generally went unsanctioned even in pre-modern societies that celebrated certain forms of male-male love). Just as wage labor is a necessary stage through which production must pass to become socialized enough for socialism, commodification of pleasure and sensuality is a necessary stage through which (broadly defined) reproduction gets socialized enough for socialism. -- Yoshie * Calendar of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html * Anti-War Activist Resources: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/
FW: Re: Dallas Smythe student
-Original Message- From: Yoshie Furuhashi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 26 February 2002 08:48 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:23239] Re: Dallas Smythe student Tom says: The anxiety isn't over pleasure and sensuality per se, but over the commodification of pleasure and sensuality -- a process that is no doubt so far advanced that it becomes hard to conceive of pleasure and sensuality in any other terms. [snip a lot of very good points made by Yoshie] But more broadly, why all the fuss about commodification of pleasure and sexuality? Isn't it enough zat zey be pleazant and zexy, without also demanding that they be politically correct? And what if commodified products are actually *nicer* than their non-commodified equivalents? This is certainly true of the brewing industry, and quite possibly of many others. dd ___ Email Disclaimer This communication is for the attention of the named recipient only and should not be passed on to any other person. Information relating to any company or security, is for information purposes only and should not be interpreted as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any security. The information on which this communication is based has been obtained from sources we believe to be reliable, but we do not guarantee its accuracy or completeness. All expressions of opinion are subject to change without notice. All e-mail messages, and associated attachments, are subject to interception and monitoring for lawful business purposes. ___
RE: Suppression of Marx
Hi Charles, I'm not sure which article of Michael Perelman's you are referring to. But he's on this list, of course, so perhaps the best way to clarify matters is for Michael to indicate whether there's anything in my account he disagrees with. Andrew Kliman -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Charles Brown Sent: Monday, February 25, 2002 3:40 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:23215] Suppression of Marx Suppression of Marx by Drewk 24 February 2002 20:51 UTC This is a reply to Charles Brown's pen-l 22901. (I hope to respond to Tom Walker's question in pen-l 22893 soon.) Andrew, Thanks for taking the time to give that summary of your thinking. I want to note that I got the take on the transformation issue that I posed from reading Michael Perelman's article on devaloration. Charles
Fwd: IWGVT mini-conference at the EEA Boston Park Plaza, March 13-17. Apologies for cross-posting
SESSION 1: DEFINING AND MEASURING VALUE Friday 9am Chair: Alan Freeman Estimating Gross Domestic Product Using a Surplus Value Approach Victor Kasper, Buffalo State College, USA Modelling profit-rate distributions using L-moments Julian Wells, The Open University, UK On the Identity of Value and Labour: A Defence of Intrinsic Value Phil Dunn, Independent, Britain SESSION 2: VALUE IN THE HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT Friday 11am Chair: Phil Dunn On Price and Value William Krehm, Independent Economist, Canada Stigler and Barkai on Ricardo's Profit Rate Theory: Some methodological considerations 35 years later Andrew Kliman, Pace University, USA The Labour Theory of Value: Economics or Ethics? Peter Dooley, University of Saskatchewan, Canada SESSION 3: DOES THE SRAFFIAN CRITIQUE OF MARX SUCCEED? Friday 2pm Chair: Julian Wells Vulgar Economy in Marxian Garb: A Critique of Temporal Single System Marxism Gary Mongiovi, St John's University, USA Discussants: Alan Freeman and Andrew Kliman SESSION 4: GOVERNMENT, POLICY AND CRITICAL ECONOMICS Friday 4pm Chair: Andrew Kliman Current Factors Which Make Science a Productive Force at the Service of Capital the Fourth Stage in the Running London: Practical Economics in a Growing World City Alan Freeman, University of Greenwich, UK Production Organization Dimitri Uzinidis, Universite du Littoral, Dunkerque, France Self-administration: solution via value to the urban transportations problems Vladimir Micheletti, Universidade Federal de Alagoas, Brasil, Brasil --- Dear friend Please find attached the list of sessions and abstracts for the IWGVT mini-conference at the EEA in Boston, March 15th-17th 2002. Papers will be posted on the website if time permits but may initially be available only at the conference itself do to extreme pressure of work. They may also be e-mailed on request to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . I feel I owe you all a particular apology for the extreme lateness, on this occasion, of notification about the mini-conference, in contrast with our past practice. A number of other highly significant IWGVT events took priority including the two successful Greenwich University symposia; last years colloquium at La Sapienza University in Rome, and the book which arose from it; and (finally!) the forthcoming publication of an edited collection of past papers from the mini-conferences. Other demands on the conference organizer made it impossible to achieve the required standards in organizing this conference; during the last year I have been in transition from my academic job to my present position as economist at the GLA and for most of last year I was doing both jobs. This transition is now complete; the growing level of academic and political interest and support for the views that the IWGVT was created to propound is testimony to its vitality. I look forward to seeing those of you that are coming to the Boston conference and can take this opportunity to give you an early reminder that next years EEA, and IWGVT mini-conference, will be in New York. Best wishes Alan Freeman
Hari reply/bribery and labor aristoc.
Dear Comrade Melvin: Let me try to explain my viewpoint more clearly. 1) However I do not think I should have to explain myself any further, for asking a question - any further. After all Marx writes: If it is scientific task to resolve the outward visible movement into the inward and actual movement….. the conceptions…… will differ widely from the real laws.. He is talking here of the laws of production - but I truncate the quote for convenience to utilize its thrust that it is in fact mandatory for Marxists of all stripes - to ask questions. This is necessary in the question of the Labour Aristocracy. Since Engels first put his finger on the strategy of capital in bribing the highest echelons of labour lieutenants; and then Lenin took the analysis further - there has been an interesting phenomenon. That is to say that there is a tendency amongst a certain section of the left to extrapolate Lenin and Engels to the entire 'working class'. Indeed elements of the Maoist left deny there is an actual working class - except that in the USA it be black and the most downtrodden. This why I used the term Maoists - by the bye, I did not really accuse you of being one! However, it is indeed a relic from the Three Worlds Theory - but this can be put aside for the time being. To return to the Labour Aristocracy. The problem is how cans such a conception of the entire working class being bribed; aid us in the strategy of change? To my mind, there are relatively few studies on the ML-ist left (I am no economic academic - as my pathetic forays will have by now made clear - I am trying to glean some pearls here - although the Eureka moments seem rather few to me thus far! But that is life I guess! So perhaps the analysis has in reality been made in some obscure dusty tome that I am blithely unaware of……?), that address the question. Here is one ML-ist study, which was written by W.B.Bland in the UK in the 60's, when indeed he was still a Maoist. It argues using official figures, that in the UK of that time, the amount of total bribe to the workers was very low; and that the number of actual aristocrats in the working class was also very low. There is naturally an evolution from the times of any of our previous great leaders (I hope no one here can deny that there were such - thus not object to the term? I myself do not genuflect to any - but due credit.). In the period of the last 50 odd years, there has become a huge problem in my view, with the 'sociological' attempts to explain class. This has infected the left with - in my view - revisionist attempts to further narrow the class of workers by for instance, denying that 'intellectual workers' are workers. [This is attempted to be dealt with in more detail at this web-address. http://www22.brinkster.com/harikumar/AllianceIssues/All24-CLASS97.htm ] Conclusion to this part of my reply: Deciding who are the class forces that will bring the revolution is a critical part of the strategy and tactics of moving from our current situation to the phase of re-invigorating the working class movement and creating the subjective force required for change. I cannot therefore apologize for asking the questions of: How big is the labour aristocracy, and of whom it is composed; of what does that mean in terms of strategy for revolution in the so-called developed world? 2) You say, Virtually all of us with a little gray in our heads developed a conception of Marxism based on boundaries within capital that no longer exist. I think as a vestigial die-hard, that the fundamentals have NOT changed, that all economic avenues for capital are ultimately doomed. Because capital is failing has had some leeway from the benefits of Keynesian rescue therapies - but this is ultimately sterile for capital. I do not think in any way that this is controversial amongst the left [The view of our grouping is at: http://www22.brinkster.com/harikumar/AllianceIssues/ALLIANCE3ECONOMICS.html ] And of course the car industrial workers are crunched and are (apparently) less important currently than other sectors of workers. I am not going to deny that the unemployment of car workers reflects massive changes in where profit is highest and into which sectors capital will shunt part of its booty in order to get more. But this is decidedly not the same as saying that the industrial proletariat is irrelevant in today's economy in the Western world. Setting workers apart on the basis of what transparently is petty differences between them in wage-remuneration - AS COMPARED to the amount of profit they create for the ruling class - seems to play into the hands of those that would divide rule. Indeed it seems to me that you well agree with that since you yourself write: Right now the auto industry is in the process of shedding between 150,000 and 200,000 autoworkers world-wide. Where will these workers go? Where every they go into society
God
There is a very powerful argument against the existence of a a 3-A God: the problem of evil. jks ^ CB: Yes, and are those who are agnostic about God agnostic about the Devil ?
Suppression of Marx
Suppression of Marx by Drewk 26 February 2002 13:51 UTC Hi Charles, I'm not sure which article of Michael Perelman's you are referring to. But he's on this list, of course, so perhaps the best way to clarify matters is for Michael to indicate whether there's anything in my account he disagrees with. Andrew Kliman ^^^ CB: I should note that it was my speculation that extended an idea that Michael discussed to the transformation problem. And I might add that your helpful comment shows me that I was wrong in extending it that far. I will be taking a study at Vol. III, Chapter 9. I think I was thinking that the price of any given individual commodity would not be related in a mathematical function to its value. That may be trivial , I don't know. But your correction of me regarding the totality of prices and values is interesting, although I had learned that before at some point. Lets see, price is the expression of the value of a commodity in temrs of the money commodity or in terms of money. ^^^ Suppression of Marx by Drewk 24 February 2002 20:51 UTC This is a reply to Charles Brown's pen-l 22901. (I hope to respond to Tom Walker's question in pen-l 22893 soon.) Andrew, Thanks for taking the time to give that summary of your thinking. I want to note that I got the take on the transformation issue that I posed from reading Michael Perelman's article on devaloration. Charles
Commodity fetish
Doug Henwood wrote: I'll bet a lot of PEN-Lers don't approve of makeup or stylish clothes either. Doug ^ Depends on the style. I have discriminating tastes. Charles
RE: God
There is a very powerful argument against the existence of a a 3-A God: the problem of evil. jks ^ CB: Yes, and are those who are agnostic about God agnostic about the Devil ? *** JD: I wasn't raised as a Christian, but as I understand that faith, it's humanity that's the source of evil. (The Devil is most important to the fundamentalists, not the more sophisticated Christians.) God gave us free will and we mostly chose to be evil. In my view (as far as I can tell), we also created good (and God), along with the definition of good vs. evil.
Re: Dallas Smythe student
Hey! What is this Yoshie? Theory of inevitable progress? Let me assure Yoshie and Daniel that I am not a woozy pre-capitalist romantic. But I will continue to wonder why such assurances are necessary at all. Look at my primitive tools, youse guys: notebook computers, scanners, printers, spreadsheet programs, web sites, etc. I hope no one is offended when I confess that I actually derive sensual pleasure from using these running-dog bourgeois instruments of oppression and exploitation. HORRORS! But my pleasure doesn't prevent me from bearing witness to the violence that takes place every day in the name of my sovereign right to possess a separate notebook computer for each colour in the rainbow. Let's simplify this discussion: undialectical critique of capitalism: bad undialectical apology for capitalism: bad dialectical critique of capitalism: good dialectical apology for capitalism: intellectually dishonest The latter proceeds by mistaking a dialectical critique for an undialectical critique and correcting it where it needs no correcting. Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Just as wage labor is a necessary stage through which production must pass to become socialized enough for socialism, commodification of pleasure and sensuality is a necessary stage through which (broadly defined) reproduction gets socialized enough for socialism. to which Daniel Davies added: But more broadly, why all the fuss about commodification of pleasure and sexuality? Isn't it enough zat zey be pleazant and zexy, without also demanding that they be politically correct? And what if commodified products are actually *nicer* than their non-commodified equivalents? This is certainly true of the brewing industry, and quite possibly of many others. Tom Walker
RE: Commodity fetish
Doug Henwood wrote: I'll bet a lot of PEN-Lers don't approve of makeup or stylish clothes either. Hold on. Readers of the WSJ (a few days ago) know that the _newest_ fashions have rips, tears, and wrinkles and look, in general, very beat up and old. Because of this fashion development, I am now--and have for years--exceedingly and proudly stylish. Eric
BLS Daily Report, Tuesday Feb. 26
North Carolina, at 5.5%, had the highest unemployment-rate increase among states last year from the year before, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics (The Wall Street Journal, page A1). The home-buying market remained strong in January, as existing home sales across the U.S. surged to a monthly record. The data got a lift from unusually warm weather and continuing low interest rates. Seasonally adjusted, existing homes sold at an annual rate of 6.04 million units in January, up 16.2% from 5.20 million units in December, according to the National Association of Realtors. January marked the first time the nation's home-sales rate exceeded six million units, and it outpaced the previous record of 5.49 million units in August 2001. In addition, January's strength was broad-based, as each of the nation's four regions reported record sales levels (The Wall Street Journal, page A2). Mild weather and low mortgage interest rates combined to produce the biggest January ever for home resales. Across the USA, existing homes sold during the month at an annualized rate of 6.04 million. The strong monthly sales pace, the first above six million, far exceeded economists' expectations and blew away the 5.49 million sales rate in August of last year. Prices in January were up sharply, too, the National Association of Realtors said. The sales midpoint in January of $151,100 is up 10.2% from January 2001 (The New York Times, page C10; and The Washington Post, page E3). application/ms-tnef
Re: RE: God
There is a very powerful argument against the existence of a a 3-A God: the problem of evil. jks CB: Yes, and are those who are agnostic about God agnostic about the Devil ? JD: I wasn't raised as a Christian, but as I understand that faith, it's humanity that's the source of evil. (The Devil is most important to the fundamentalists, not the more sophisticated Christians.) God gave us free will and we mostly chose to be evil. In my view (as far as I can tell), we also created good (and God), along with the definition of good vs. evil. The strongest version of the problem of evil involves natural suffering of nonhuman origin. (The free will defense doesn't work fot this sort of evil.) Unnecessary pain is intrinsically evil, so how can there be an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful God whopermits, for example, a little fawn to die in pain when a rotten tree falls and braeks its back, or an elephants to starve to death when its teeth wear out? Can't hew just tweak the tree so that it misses the fawn, or have the tree hit it so that it dies immediately; or give theelephants teeth that last another ten years? Or maybe He doesn't want to, or can't do anuthing about it, or doesn't know? Any of these hypothese are inconsiastent with the usual three-A God. jks _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
Re: Dallas Smythe student
Tom Walker wrote: Hey! What is this Yoshie? Theory of inevitable progress? Let me assure Yoshie and Daniel that I am not a woozy pre-capitalist romantic. This thread had (mostly) developed in terms of characterizations of either the participants in the thread or of leftists-in-general. (Tom mostly avoided this trap, since his posts mostly focused on or attempted to define the issues involved independently of who believed what, but Doug's whole concern seemed to be not the issues but a moral characterization of those who disagreed with him. My own 'contribution' to the thread was also on character rather than substance -- I apologize.) If we let Yoshie's post and Tom's response control the discussion, we might say something useful. Carrol P.S. An empirical point. I believe a poll of leftists today whould reveal that Doug's position is that of the overwhelming majority. I believe -- I don't know, and neither does anyone else on this list.
Re: Dallas Smythe student
Let's simplify this discussion: undialectical critique of capitalism: bad undialectical apology for capitalism: bad dialectical critique of capitalism: good dialectical apology for capitalism: intellectually dishonest The latter proceeds by mistaking a dialectical critique for an undialectical critique and correcting it where it needs no correcting. Tom, we can't focus on the individual's role when discussing solutions to the planet's problems (as Shawna Richer says Sut Jhally does) such as the individual's consumer choices. That's not a dialectical critique of capitalism. That's more like a program of Global Exchange, Oxfam, Simply Living, and so on. All staffed and supported by well-intentioned people, I'm sure, but that's ultimately a liberal dead end. Socialism's point is not so much to oppose commodification as to take collective control of _what has already been socialized through commodification_ by abolishing the private ownership of the means of production. Criticisms of commmodification make sense mainly when what's being commodified, that is privatized, is _already explicitly publicly owned or customarily in the public domain_, like air, water, electric power, public education, public transportation, public broadcasting, and so on. When a housewife becomes _a wage laborer_, her labor power becomes, well, _commodified_, but socialists don't object to that, do we? When what used to be provided by unpaid women's labor becomes _commodified_ -- for instance, care of the old, now often provided by nursing homes -- should socialists bitch and mourn commodification as such? Or should we rather seek to turn a commodified service provided by capitalists into a social program provided by the government, raise wages and benefits for workers, etc.? -- Yoshie * Calendar of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html * Anti-War Activist Resources: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/
Re: Re: RE: God
Justin Schwartz wrote: Or maybe He doesn't want to, or can't do anuthing about it, or doesn't know? Any of these hypothese are inconsiastent with the usual three-A God. The key lines (God himself speaking)in Milton's dramatization of the Free Will Defense are: But yet all is not don; Man disobeying, Disloyal breaks his fealtie, and sinns Against the high Supremacie of Heav'n, Affecting God-head, and so loosing all, To expiate his Treason hath naught left, But to destruction sacred and devote, He with his whole posteritie must dye, Dye hee or Justice must; unless for him (III, 203-210) Die he [Adam, 'Man'kind] or justice must -- A sheer abstraction balances billions of lives (not to mention the animal pain Justin notes). Carrol
reply-part 2
3) You wrote: A new qualitative development must take place within the working class whose growth and development is prevented by the framework of capital. Electronic-digital production is its trajectory of development is absolutely incompatible with a system based on the buying and selling of labor, further depresses wages driving greater sections of the class into destitution, polarized society into a camp of wealth and poverty and engenders a new class of proletariats who cannot live based on the purchase and sell of labor and consequently driven along a logic of fighting for their needs. Perhaps indeed 'objectively' the working class is hampered from developing - in the long run - that is why objectively revolution is needed. But while indeed wages are depressed, etc.; it is manifestly not true that Electronic-digital production is its trajectory of development is absolutely incompatible with a system based on the buying and selling of labor. I have not seen the revolution yet in North America. Sincere Fraternal Greetings, Hari The communist movement, or the Marxist movement, or the movement associated with the methodology of Marx and Engels is historically and currently, primarily an intellectual movement by definition. As an intellectual movement we are among the most conservative human beings on earth and cannot admit this. When the world changes we cannot change our thinking until the world changes again and we end up in the same position. We demand change in society along the direction of the productive forces, yet change comes hard to Marxist. In my opinion soul searching and a spiritual awakening is needed. In the language of our ideological doctrine we - me, need an ideological drubbing. Marxism as a social movement is in denial and refuses to subject itself to its own method of inquiry. We need a world wide Marxist Anonymous with a 12 Step Program of recovery and resurrection. Allow me to talk about myself. Hello Comrades, my name is comrade Melvin P., former head of the propaganda division of the regional party committee and I am a grateful recovering Marxist, taking things one day at a time. Although I may never achieve sobriety I can state to all you good people, that I am clean today, no longer trying to build military bases in Detroit from which to wage the armed struggle; have cast off trade unionism, anarcho-syndicalist formulations, doctrines of worker control devoid of property relations, and calls for socialism without knowing what I was calling for. With the help of you good people and the working masses who repeatedly kicked me hard between the two pockets on the back of my pants, pleading with me to stop building foxholes and military units, I have come to recognize that not only are there boundaries in all of life, but boundaries in capital, quantitative expansion of the productive forces and qualitative changes in technology that define boundaries in the economy. Then there are the limits of the boundary of my own thinking. The root of my stinking thinking was I never did like the capitalist class or for that matter my brothers and sisters, the war danger, my first 4 wives - not including the second one, and could not escape the boundaries of the doctrine of the class struggle that arose in another period of history. Heck, I felt if it was good enough for Lenin I wanted some of that and if one drink of Lenin was good, then I wanted 100 drinks of Lenin. Now that I have admitted that I am powerless over my own thinking and submitted to a power higher than my self - the ceaseless self-movement of matter, did a fearless moral inventory and reread Marx, I feel pretty good about myself and grasping polarization, historical limitations and boundaries and finally movement as antagonism. Thank You comrades for letting me express myself and I would like to offer a cup of coffee to all our new comers and welcome you to the group. You don't have to say anything but remember to take it one day at a time. If you don't believe in a higher power then rely upon the strength of the group and remember stinking thinking is the enemy. Our thinking is what got us to the circumstances that lead us to these tables trying to catch up to the new boundaries. In closing I would like to give a shout out to brother Engels - the General, and Karl Marx who said - I don't remember the exact quote, but it went something like this, I'm glad than a Mut*, I ain't a gott-damn Marxist. The dialectic of the development of the working class is interactive with the development of capital as a social power. The emergence of and ascendancy to the helm of the world total social capital - speculative capital, is a mode of investment and appropriation increasingly divorced from the material production of commodities. Speculative capital as a specific mode of capital at this phase in the development of the productive forces,
God
God by Devine, James 26 February 2002 15:10 UTC JD: I wasn't raised as a Christian, but as I understand that faith, it's humanity that's the source of evil. (The Devil is most important to the fundamentalists, not the more sophisticated Christians.) God gave us free will and we mostly chose to be evil. In my view (as far as I can tell), we also created good (and God), along with the definition of good vs. evil. CB: Fundamentally speaking, the Devil tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The Devil made them do it and the Devil do exist. But consistent with what you say, the first act of free will, independent of God, is the original sin , in this mythology. The Devil seduced them to use free will. But then the Devil, the Ruler of the World and Earthliness , is also sort of the moving force for materialism, and against idealism and religion. So, then fundamentally, we materialists and free thinkers are the Devil's children Interestingly with regards to your good and evilcomment, the forbidden fruit was from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I interpret this myth to mean , paradoxically, that the original sin resulted in the origin of morality ( knowledge of good and evil). This is suggestive as perhaps a view through the glass of ancient mythology darkly of the origin of homo sapiens in the origin of culture or symbolling in the form of , for example, the distinction between good and evil, between do's and don'ts. Your view sounds like Marx's. Marx doesn't say God doesn't exist, but that God is alienated man ( which I take to be humanity). And directly to what you say, he says the basis of irreligious criticism is man (sic) makes religion, religion doesn't make man. ( A feminist critique might note that it is indeed men who make religion, not women)
RE: God
Charles writes:Your view sounds like Marx's. Marx doesn't say God doesn't exist, but that God is alienated man ( which I take to be humanity). And directly to what you say, he says the basis of irreligious criticism is man (sic) makes religion, religion doesn't make man. ( A feminist critique might note that it is indeed men who make religion, not women) I have been influence by Marx, a lot. It's also Freud's view -- and Feuerbach's -- that God is a human projection of our own inner images. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Charles Brown [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 9:07 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:23256] God God by Devine, James 26 February 2002 15:10 UTC JD: I wasn't raised as a Christian, but as I understand that faith, it's humanity that's the source of evil. (The Devil is most important to the fundamentalists, not the more sophisticated Christians.) God gave us free will and we mostly chose to be evil. In my view (as far as I can tell), we also created good (and God), along with the definition of good vs. evil. CB: Fundamentally speaking, the Devil tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The Devil made them do it and the Devil do exist. But consistent with what you say, the first act of free will, independent of God, is the original sin , in this mythology. The Devil seduced them to use free will. But then the Devil, the Ruler of the World and Earthliness , is also sort of the moving force for materialism, and against idealism and religion. So, then fundamentally, we materialists and free thinkers are the Devil's children Interestingly with regards to your good and evilcomment, the forbidden fruit was from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I interpret this myth to mean , paradoxically, that the original sin resulted in the origin of morality ( knowledge of good and evil). This is suggestive as perhaps a view through the glass of ancient mythology darkly of the origin of homo sapiens in the origin of culture or symbolling in the form of , for example, the distinction between good and evil, between do's and don'ts. Your view sounds like Marx's. Marx doesn't say God doesn't exist, but that God is alienated man ( which I take to be humanity). And directly to what you say, he says the basis of irreligious criticism is man (sic) makes religion, religion doesn't make man. ( A feminist critique might note that it is indeed men who make religion, not women)
(Fwd) Petition against nomination of Bush and Blair for peace
--- Forwarded message follows --- To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date sent: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 16:23:34 PST Subject:Petition against nomination of Bush and Blair for peace prize Petition against nomination of Bush and Blair for peace prize On the Internet, there is a petition against nominating US President Bush and British Prime Minister Blair for the Nobel peace prize. A Norwegian MP of the extreme Right racists of the self styled Party of Progress nominated these two. Opponents of this can sign the petition at http://www.eskimo.com/~cwj2/actions/bushblairnobel.html Met vriendelijke groet/Best wishes, - Herman de Tollenaere --- End of forwarded message ---
On the necessity of socialism
On the necessity of socialism by Waistline2 22 February 2002 19:17 UTC Melvin: On and off I have followed the politics of the CPUSA a little over thirty years; met some wonderful members of their party and engaged in common work; used to live at their old bookstore off Wayne Campus and later relocated to Highland Park and had assembled 85% of their Theoretical Journal Political Affairs from the early or mid 1930s to 1963 or 64. I am always amazed at their lack of theortical depth. ^ CB: Hey, comrade, good to see the criticism/self-criticism. Is there a specific theoretical shallowness that you note in this article ? ^^ A century ago, even 50 years ago, the working class and its allies faced huge challenges. Capitalism at that time was brutal, raw and violent and as a consequence it gave rise to a powerful movement against its injustices. This is an astonishing statement and nothing more than glorification of the old Roosevelt Coalition. Fifty years ago the last quantitative expansion of capital was underway that completed - more than less, the mechanization of agriculture and realigned the social contract allowing a segment of industrial and state employee the legal right to unionize. This was the era of the anti-colonial revolts and within our country the emergence of the Civil Rights movement as political realignment to stabilize the working of the productive forces. ^^^ CB: What I noticed when I looked back at what you quote is that it says a century ago too. So , the time frame is more 1902 to 1952 which is more than the era of the old (Franklin) Roosevelt Coalition. However, myself I would take a neo -Roosevelt Coalition today if we could build one. I said so on this list. What also strikes me is that your programatic discussion for meeting basic economic needs below seems very much to be a call for a Rooseveltian type Bill of Economic Rights , as he called for in his last State of the Union address. One of his Four Freedoms is Freedom from Want. Can you imagine getting an American President to call for that today ! We would definitely be cooking with gas. The question I would raise is concerning the neo-Economist quality of confining yourself to economic demands and issues. In other words, in _What is to be done_, Lenin critcized the Mensheviks for confining working class concerns to economic issues and demands alone, and not including political ( ideological ) issues for the working class to concern itself with. He dubbed it Economism or trade unionism pure and simple. In other words, when you say The battle is not for ideology but food supplies based on ones family size, shelter (rent subsidy), medical care, transportion, education for our diverse peoples based on needs as opposed to place of employment or employment this sounds Economistic. The battle IS for ideology and bread, both. Our job is to raise class consciousness, no ? On the direct issue, surely the Roosevelt Coaltion was not formed because of the influence of the bourgeois Roosevelt. On the contrary, it was precisely a social movement of the working class - Unemployed Councils, Ford Hunger March, returning evicted tenants to their housing, unionizing industrial plants,vast working class struggle in the 20's and 30' - that forced Roosevelt to go as far as he did to head off more radical change. So, Webb is accurate that there was a social movement behind the changes 50 ( and 100) years ago. ^ The social movement did not arise because of the brutal nature of capital. The African American people for instance, have a record of sustained and unbroken struggle against police violence, the hangman noose and horrible discrimination and this struggle intersected with the needs of a sector of capital that allowed the militant bravery and ingenuity of Montgomery Alabama to assume the proportions of a mass movement. I cannot accuse Mr. Webb of lacking a Marxist approach to the working class since that is not his claim. What are the quntitative boundaries that define the framework of the various stages of the working class movement is an elementary question for communist. I had an oppotunity to read and study the preconvention documents and one would think that the increased polarization of wealth and poverty did not exist in America, although millions have been added to the homeless, the list of those without medical care, the list of those unable to properly feed their family and unable to afford housing. It is not merely a question of captialism being rent but defining the specific property of this phase of the decay of private property relations. One must always start with an anaylsis of the economy and its quantitative and qualitative dimensions. Electronic production and the increasingly digitalization of the production process defines this era of capital and is the reason society is being pulled from its foundation. The
Productive Forces, was Re: reply-part 2
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We demand change in society along the direction of the productive forces, No. Not true. _Many_ Marxists but by no means all put central emphasis on the productive forces. Others argue that this proposition about the necessary growth of productive forces applies not to all history (and certainly not to socialism or communism) but only to capitalism. It is this drive to unleash the productive forces that turns capitalism into a destructive force. See esp. the works of Ellen Meiksins Wood, Edward Thompson, Raymond Williams, and Robert Brenner. Carrol
Re: Origins of 'Dutch Disease'
On Mon, 25 Feb 2002, Devine, James quoted an AIMS paper by Fred McMahon saying: Beginning in the late 1960s, the Dutch economy was damaged by what should have been good news -- the discovery of natural gas in the Slochteren offshore fields. Offshore revenues did not increase the economy's productivity, but the inflow of these revenues led to an appreciation of the guilder; the price of domestically produced goods rose relative to the price of foreign goods, a deviation from purchasing power parity. Dutch exports were suppressed and imports replaced domestically produced goods; output and employment fell, particularly in the trade-oriented sectors of the economy. Two questions: 1) Can one theoretically avoid Dutch Disease by pricing your natural resource export in dollars, as is commonly done with oil? Wouldn't your currency not immediately appreciate then? And instead you'd build up large dollar reserves? Those latter could cause appreciation of the local currency or local currency inflation depending on how you used them -- but it seems you would also have several policy options to counteract that. And aren't most of the world's primary exports priced in dollars? In which case, aren't the Dutch and the English kind of an exception -- rich countries (with trusted currencies) who are primary product exporters? 2) This article says Dutch disease started in the late 60s. But wouldn't it have had to have waited until 1973 and the breakdown of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange system for this mechanism of currency appreciation to come into play? I thought BW revaluations were far and few between; less than four years seems an unusually short response time. Michael
Fat Cats
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4349061,00.html
RE: God
I always liked Lennon's (not Lenin's) definition: God is a concept by which we measure our pain. Though I'm not exactly sure what it means.
Re: RE: God
Forstater, Mathew wrote: I always liked Lennon's (not Lenin's) definition: God is a concept by which we measure our pain. Though I'm not exactly sure what it means. And there's Wallace Stevens' line - sad men made angels of the sun Doug
RE: RE: God
See Jeffrey Russell Burton's 5 vols. on the Devil from Cornell U. Press. And, yup, I can't imagine say, Hans Kung or Jurgen Moltmann, say believing in that guy with horns and pitchfork. BTW, Proctor Gamble has for yrs. been, 'er, bedeviled, with allegations over the yrs. by Xtian fundies that they are ruled by satan! Michael Pugliese--- Original Message --- From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED] ' [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 2/26/02 7:02:50 AM There is a very powerful argument against the existence of a a 3-A God: the problem of evil. jks ^ CB: Yes, and are those who are agnostic about God agnostic about the Devil ? *** JD: I wasn't raised as a Christian, but as I understand that faith, it's humanity that's the source of evil. (The Devil is most important to the fundamentalists, not the more sophisticated Christians.) God gave us free will and we mostly chose to be evil. In my view (as far as I can tell), we also created good (and God), along with the definition of good vs. evil.
Mon., Mar. 4: Edmund Hanauer, SEARCH for Justice Equality inPalestine/Israel
Monday, March 4 Edmund Hanauer's Lecture on US Policy towards Palestine/Israel: How Americans Can Work for Peace in Palestine/Israel Speaker: Edmund Hanauer, SEARCH for Justice and Equality in Palestine/Israel Time: 5:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m. Location: the African/African-American Hall of Fame in the Frank W. Hale Jr., Black Cultural Center, 153 West 12th Avenue, Columbus, OH About the Speaker: Edmund Hanauer is the director of SEARCH for Justice and Equality in Palestine/Israel (SEARCH) and edits SEARCH's Palestine/Israel File. In addition to numerous lectures at leading universities and talks to civic, educational, and human rights groups, Hanauer has spoken twice to the Nieman Fellows in Journalism at Harvard and the State Department's Open Forum of the Secretary of State. Hanauer's articles on the Arab-Israeli conflict have appeared in more than 30 major newspapers, and he has been interviewed numerous times on TV and radio, including C-SPAN and National Public Radio. Sample Articles by Edmund Hanauer: Double Standard Must End, _Milwaukee Journal Sentinel_ 25 February 2002; Mideast Policy Counterproductive, _Seattle Post-Intelligencer_ 7 February 2002, http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0208-10.htm; Palestinians' Rights Ignored, _USA Today_ 26 July 2000, http://www.searchforjustice.org/articles/07.26.00.html; Camp David and the Al-Aqsa Intifada, http://www.searchforjustice.org/articles/summary2000.html; U.S. Policy Must Force Barak's Hype into Real Action, _Houston Chronicle_ 20 July 1999, http://www.searchforjustice.org/articles/07.20.99.html. About SEARCH: SEARCH is a national non-profit human rights and educational organization, founded in 1972, which seeks a just Israeli-Palestinian peace based on the inalienable rights of both peoples. SEARCH's focus is on improving media coverage on Palestine/Israel. SEARCH believes that justice for Palestinians and security for Israeli Jews are not mutually exclusive, but interdependent. The attainment of Palestinian rights is therefore a desirable goal in itself, as well as a means of securing Israel's future. That future cannot be assured while Palestinian rights are denied. SEARCH seeks a US policy committed to the rights of both peoples. Unfortunately, US policy, which includes aid to Israel of over three billion dollars a year, enables Israel to disregard international law, human rights, and democratic values (Human Rights Petition 1999, http://www.searchforjustice.org/petition_intro.html). No peace is possible without a change in US policy. A prerequisite for such change is a US public both better informed and insistent on a just resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Sponsor: the Student International Forum Contact: Yoshie Furuhashi, 668-6554 or [EMAIL PROTECTED]; or Mark D. Stansbery, 252-9255. -- Yoshie * Calendar of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html * Anti-War Activist Resources: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/
Re: Productive Forces, was Re: reply-part 2
In a message dated Tue, 26 Feb 2002 1:21:30 PM Eastern Standard Time, Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We demand change in society along the direction of the productive forces, No. Not true. _Many_ Marxists but by no means all put central emphasis on the productive forces. Others argue that this proposition about the necessary growth of productive forces applies not to all history (and certainly not to socialism or communism) but only to capitalism. It is this drive to unleash the productive forces that turns capitalism into a destructive force. See esp. the works of Ellen Meiksins Wood, Edward Thompson, Raymond Williams, and Robert Brenner. Carrol Acknowledged. I - me personally,(it is incorrect to state we as if I represented the marxist) desire change in society that conforms to and along the trajectory of the technical development that reflect the new qualitative change in the productive forces that makes an abundance of commodities availabe to all. I acknowledge my arrogance and mistake in assuming a posture that articulates anyones voice other than my own and those who I agree with. I will be more careful not to make this mistake in the future. Everyone wants something different. What makes captialism capitalism - in my opinion, (that is to say to me as an indivdual) is not the productive forces as an abstraction or merely a technical state of development - as the fundamental distinction of social production on the basis of the industrial infrastructure and all the properties this entail, but the the character of appropriation. I am aware that many do not agree with this focus on property relations. You are correct. In the final instance I speak for myself only. Melvin P.
Re: On the necessity of socialism
In a message dated Tue, 26 Feb 2002 12:54:17 PM Eastern Standard Time, Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On the necessity of socialism by Waistline2 22 February 2002 19:17 UTC Melvin: On and off I have followed the politics of the CPUSA a little over thirty years; met some wonderful members of their party and engaged in common work; used to live at their old bookstore off Wayne Campus and later relocated to Highland Park and had assembled 85% of their Theoretical Journal Political Affairs from the early or mid 1930s to 1963 or 64. I am always amazed at their lack of theortical depth. ^ CB: Hey, comrade, good to see the criticism/self-criticism. Is there a specific theoretical shallowness that you note in this article ? ^^ A century ago, even 50 years ago, the working class and its allies faced huge challenges. Capitalism at that time was brutal, raw and violent and as a consequence it gave rise to a powerful movement against its injustices. This is an astonishing statement and nothing more than glorification of the old Roosevelt Coalition. Fifty years ago the last quantitative expansion of capital was underway that completed - more than less, the mechanization of agriculture and realigned the social contract allowing a segment of industrial and state employee the legal right to unionize. This was the era of the anti-colonial revolts and within our country the emergence of the Civil Rights movement as political realignment to stabilize the working of the productive forces. ^^^ CB: What I noticed when I looked back at what you quote is that it says a century ago too. So , the time frame is more 1902 to 1952 which is more than the era of the old (Franklin) Roosevelt Coalition. However, myself I would take a neo -Roosevelt Coalition today if we could build one. I said so on this list. What also strikes me is that your programatic discussion for meeting basic economic needs below seems very much to be a call for a Rooseveltian type Bill of Economic Rights , as he called for in his last State of the Union address. One of his Four Freedoms is Freedom from Want. Can you imagine getting an American President to call for that today ! We would definitely be cooking with gas. The question I would raise is concerning the neo-Economist quality of confining yourself to economic demands and issues. In other words, in _What is to be done_, Lenin critcized the Mensheviks for confining working class concerns to economic issues and demands alone, and not including political ( ideological ) issues for the working class to concern itself with. He dubbed it Economism or trade unionism pure and simple. In other words, when you say The battle is not for ideology but food supplies based on ones family size, shelter (rent subsidy), medical care, transportion, education for our diverse peoples based on needs as opposed to place of employment or employment this sounds Economistic. The battle IS for ideology and bread, both. Our job is to raise class consciousness, no ? On the direct issue, surely the Roosevelt Coaltion was not formed because of the influence of the bourgeois Roosevelt. On the contrary, it was precisely a social movement of the working class - Unemployed Councils, Ford Hunger March, returning evicted tenants to their housing, unionizing industrial plants,vast working class struggle in the 20's and 30' - that forced Roosevelt to go as far as he did to head off more radical change. So, Webb is accurate that there was a social movement behind the changes 50 ( and 100) years ago. ^ The social movement did not arise because of the brutal nature of capital. The African American people for instance, have a record of sustained and unbroken struggle against police violence, the hangman noose and horrible discrimination and this struggle intersected with the needs of a sector of capital that allowed the militant bravery and ingenuity of Montgomery Alabama to assume the proportions of a mass movement. I cannot accuse Mr. Webb of lacking a Marxist approach to the working class since that is not his claim. What are the quntitative boundaries that define the framework of the various stages of the working class movement is an elementary question for communist. I had an oppotunity to read and study the preconvention documents and one would think that the increased polarization of wealth and poverty did not exist in America, although millions have been added to the homeless, the list of those without medical care, the list of those unable to properly feed their family and unable to afford housing. It is not merely a question of captialism being rent but defining the specific property of this phase of the decay of private property relations. One must always start with an anaylsis of the economy and its quantitative and qualitative dimensions. Electronic production
sustainable agriculture job in Thailand
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT STUDIES PROGRAM An International Program of Kalamazoo College, USA at the Faculty of Economics, Chiang Mai University, Thailand --- SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT STUDIES, a study-abroad program for American undergraduate students, is an innovative study-abroad program focused on field-based learning about development and globalization. On-campus courses are integrated with weekly field-visits to villages, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other locations where local responses to the impacts of development and globalization are played out. Approximatly half of the time during the fall semseter is spent in the field--working with villagers while studying sustainable agriculture, hiking through the mountains and learning about the environment, and other activities. Students on the Thailand program are expected to be engaged and active learners--balancing the challenges of learning a new langauge and studying at the university with the rewards of exploring the different cultures and environments of Northern Thailand. The next program will run fall semester, 2002 (September through December) with an NGO internship January through February 2003. Interested students should explore the program website at http://www.kzoo.edu/cip/thailand/. For applications and further information, please contact: Center for International Programs Kalamazoo College 1200 Academy Street Kalamazoo, Michigan 49006 USA E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (616) 337-7133 Fax: (616) 337-7400 ---[end]--- -- - Mark A. Ritchie, Ph.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Director International Sustainable Development Studies Institute http://www.isdsi.org - Office/Fax: 66-053-942-189 Home/Fax: 66-053-278-242 Mobile phone: 66-01-724-0860 Faculty of Economics, Chiang Mai University Chiang Mai, 50200 THAILAND - -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Foreign funds in China gear up for profitless decade
The Financial Express Tuesday, February 19, 2002 Foreign funds in China gear up for profitless decade ahead Hong Kong, February 18 : Foreign firms face a profitless decade developing China's fledgling fund management market and when the earnings eventually come, the industry must resist the temptation to cash in fast, a senior executive said on Monday. I don't think we, as an industry, will make any meaningful money out of China for at least five to seven years, Mr Michael Benson, chief executive officer at Invesco Global, told Reuters. We are willing to make an investment in China because it will pay off, not in five years and maybe not even in ten, but it will pay off eventually because the industry is changing and at some point, China will supplement Japan as Asia's most important economy, he added. Foreign fund managers eagerly eye the estimated $100 billion hoard of domestic savings that China's 1.2 billion people squirrel away each year, while creating a deep and sophisticated fund management industry is crucial to China's economic reforms. Analysts say that the murky nature of Chinese financial markets, where scandals are common, keeps many ordinary investors out. But industry leaders say the presence of foreign firms would encourage retail investors to put their savings to work through mutual funds and reduce China's need for foreign capital inflows, which topped more than $40 billion in 2001. I believe it will. But I also think that this imposes on the foreign companies a high level of responsibility, said Mr Benson, who heads the non-US arm of Anglo-US fund house, Amvescap Plc, which manages some $400 billion of assets worldwide, around $3.5 billion of which are in ex-Japan Asia. One does not want to see again what happened in India in the middle-1990s when foreign firms went in, had some very bad performance and set the industry back by five years, added Mr Benson, while he was in Asia to visit clients around the region. - Reuters © 2002: Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd. All rights reserved throughout the world.
Re: RE: God
--- Message Received --- From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 09:31:43 -0800 Subject: [PEN-L:23257] RE: God Good points below (Jim and Charles). It could be said that God exists is so far as it is a projection of (hu)man (which puts a different twist on atheism then the simple contention that it does not). By the way, the original sin was eating of the tree of knowledge, which proved its own punishment, as Adam and Eve sought to clothe their nakedness (ie sought possessions because of this knowledge). God's expulsion of them from the Garden of Eden appears as a final confirmation of this sin, something of a foregone conclusion given what they had done. The story is simple and very profound, once at one with nature, they were naked (without possessions) but they broke with this, gained knoweldge and because of this could no longer live in innocence, knowledge caused them to be ashamed at not having clothes (possessions), knowing their nakedness was to know how to rectify it and begin the labour to do so. IT is an old story large parts taken from Babylonian/Summarian sources (Epic of Gilgamesh which is also transformed into the story of Noah). Quite possibly both stories reach back to the transition from hunting gathering to agriculture. The snake is a low thing of the earth - thought to issue forth from the bowels of the earth, while its yearly slothing of skin was seen as representing the change of seasons which dictate the fertility of the soil. Thus this feature of the earth (its fertility) tempted man with the fruit of the tree of knowledge - it was woman who took to this (discovers of horticulture) from which man ate. Of course a lot of other ideas are piled on top, but given the lack of science and abstract nature of theology, not a bad story at all - God is truely the reflection of humanity. The problem with fundementalists is that they really don't try to understand what they read. JIM: Charles writes:Your view sounds like Marx's. Marx doesn't say God doesn't exist, but that God is alienated man ( which I take to be humanity). And directly to what you say, he says the basis of irreligious criticism is man (sic) makes religion, religion doesn't make man. ( A feminist critique might note that it is indeed men who make religion, not women) I have been influence by Marx, a lot. It's also Freud's view -- and Feuerbach's -- that God is a human projection of our own inner images. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Charles Brown [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 9:07 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:23256] God God by Devine, James 26 February 2002 15:10 UTC JD: I wasn't raised as a Christian, but as I understand that faith, it's humanity that's the source of evil. (The Devil is most important to the fundamentalists, not the more sophisticated Christians.) God gave us free will and we mostly chose to be evil. In my view (as far as I can tell), we also created good (and God), along with the definition of good vs. evil. CB: Fundamentally speaking, the Devil tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The Devil made them do it and the Devil do exist. But consistent with what you say, the first act of free will, independent of God, is the original sin , in this mythology. The Devil seduced them to use free will. But then the Devil, the Ruler of the World and Earthliness , is also sort of the moving force for materialism, and against idealism and religion. So, then fundamentally, we materialists and free thinkers are the Devil's children Interestingly with regards to your good and evilcomment, the forbidden fruit was from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I interpret this myth to mean , paradoxically, that the original sin resulted in the origin of morality ( knowledge of good and evil). This is suggestive as perhaps a view through the glass of ancient mythology darkly of the origin of homo sapiens in the origin of culture or symbolling in the form of , for example, the distinction between good and evil, between do's and don'ts. Your view sounds like Marx's. Marx doesn't say God doesn't exist, but that God is alienated man ( which I take to be humanity). And directly to what you say, he says the basis of irreligious criticism is man (sic) makes religion, religion doesn't make man. ( A feminist critique might note that it is indeed men who make religion, not women) Greg Schofield Perth Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ ___ Use LesTecML Mailer (http://www.lestec.com.au/) * Powerful filters. * Create you own headers. * Have email types launch scripts. * Use emails to automat your work. * Add comments
Re: Re: RE: God
Greg Schofield wrote: It could be said that God exists is so far as it is a projection of (hu)man (which puts a different twist on atheism then the simple contention that it does not). No it doesn't; the claim that god is a human projection _presupposes_ the non-existence of god, the simple contention that it does not. For unless one first assumes the simple non-existence of god there is no need to develop an explanation for human conceptions of and belief in that which is not. Carrol
Re: reply-part 3-end
2) You say, Virtually all of us with a little gray in our heads developed a conception of Marxism based on boundaries within capital that no longer exist. I think as a vestigial die-hard, that the fundamentals have NOT changed, that all economic avenues for capital are ultimately doomed. Because capital is failing has had some leeway from the benefits of Keynesian rescue therapies - but this is ultimately sterile for capital. I do not think in any way that this is controversial amongst the left [The view of our grouping is at: http://www22.brinkster.com/harikumar/AllianceIssues/ALLIANCE3ECONOMICS.html Hari Dear Comrade, I have used this opportunity to simply discuss some current issues and in no way mean any disrespect. I earnestly would not reply if I did not believe in my heart we are one. I have profound feelings - as do you, about the road to freedom. There is nothing left for me but the hard line. I swore to this long ago and cannot forsake everthing in my history. To genuflect is to be condemned to that endless eternity. Going out like a sucker is not option. What is new in the Marxist movement - in my opinion, is making concrete the conception and articulation of the concepts of boundary, polarization, antagonism as a specific movement applicable to today's reality, the question and issue of the new class, defining speculative capital as a specific domination of an identifiable sector of the world total social capital, making concrete the conception mode of production in the public sphere, identifying the lower section of the working class as the arena of a strategic thrust, defining the boundary of value as a forces is human history mediating the social affairs of humans and articulating all of this on the basis of the lexicon of the historic doctrine of the class struggle. This contribution in the English-speaking sector of the world belongs to a segment of Marxist in North America. This is stated because in North America, we have more than less been the personification of the historic distortion within Marxism and the authors of insanity parading as science and good old common sense. Who else but a North American could claim more than a half century ago modern communism was Americanism, when Negro's were still being hang from trees - strange fruit, glorify the Roosevelt Coalition as a historical archetype, while North American imperialism was tightening its murderous grip of the planet earth and murdering a million people a day? Tragically - to me as an individual, communist in North American, cling to a boundary of capitalism dead and try to fight along a path to recreate a period in world history that led to my imperialist domination of the world. This does not make me proud but demands that the boundary in which this caricature of Marxism was born be repeatedly defined, so that we may pass to a higher state of righteousness. Such is my history and I am aware that the son pays the wages of sin of the father. Restitution is valid and the world check book will be balanced after settling an outstanding debt with my own bourgeoisie. A period of history will unfold where all that has been stolen from the world peoples shall be returned with interest and then more. The various diverse peoples of America and our working class are decent people trying very hard to escape the boundaries of the ideology of an era that is dead. Only the degenerate among us derived satisfaction from bombing human beings no matter what the rationale. Two wrongs never make a right. Today our imperialist must convince the people of America they are trying to make the world better because very few people in North America - indeed any of the imperial countries, can spiritually and emotionally accept murder without an ideology of a greater good, sustained by continuous feeding, housing, water supplies and sustaining the current cultural level. Bribery unfolds itself for anyone with the courage to look him in the eye. Transforming the Marxist movement in North American where everyone must speak on the basis of polarization, movement as antagonism, creating a conceptual framework where the labor movement is understood as distinct from the trade union movement will constitute an era in our history. This battle will be won in the next decade, because no one can deny development of the productive forces - for long. Comrade Hari, we - meaning me and the tiny group of indigenousness communist in North America, lost in the last period of the ideological struggle for class doctrine in North America and will probably lose in the one unfolding. To have never triumphed over the chauvinist gives one patience. The one after this one unfolding we cannot be denied. What we won in our defeat is the only coherent class policy for the workers in the face of identity movements. No one else knows the tactics of organizing industrial or non-industrial workers
Re: Re: RE: God
Beginning in 1978 Zecharia Sitchin - one of the world renown linguist, revolutionized this field of inquiry - including a substantial translation of Gilgsmesh, with his 12th Planet, The Stairway to Heaven. The Wars of Gods and Men, The Lost Realms, When Time Began, Devine Encounters, The Cosmic Code, and a new book whose title I forget and will purchase this weekend. All of this books I found to be substantial. Sitchin basically state that modern man is the result of genetic manipulation by the Gods whose inhabit a planet in the farthest reaches of our solar system, traveling opposite the motion of the solar system in a trajectory that circles the sun once every 3,600 years. For laughs the scientist at NASA followed his drawing predicting the probably location of this alleged 12th Planet and located it three years ago and gave Professor Sitchin the rights to name the planet. He choose to name it after the ancient Sumarians. Sitchin can be located through goggles. Actually, the first book published in 1978 - the 12th Planet is profound in its research and has an excellent bibliography. A companion addition to this series is his Genesis Revisited with an excellent analysis of the fundamental of DNA and specifically the mitrochronida of DNA in tracing species origin through the female. Chapter 9, The Mother Called Eve is extremely thought provoking. M.P
Re: Dallas Smythe student
Yoshie wrote, Tom, we can't focus on the individual's role when discussing solutions to the planet's problems (as Shawna Richer says Sut Jhally does) such as the individual's consumer choices. That's not a dialectical critique of capitalism. That's more like a program of Global Exchange, Oxfam, Simply Living, and so on. All staffed and supported by well-intentioned people, I'm sure, but that's ultimately a liberal dead end. Socialism's point is not so much to oppose commodification as to take collective control of _what has already been socialized through commodification_ by abolishing the private ownership of the means of production. May we allow for the possibility of more than one dead end? I agree that individual consumer choices, no matter how well-intentioned do not add up to social transformation. However, taking collective control and abolishing private ownership are actions. As verbs they demand nouns. Who is the we to do the doing? The party? The state? The masses? Organized labour? A bunch of folks who show up at demos and read theory? The p-p-p-proletariat? I ran into a former colleague this morning on his way to deliver a talk about his organization's Community Development Institute, a high-minded enterprise that teaches folks social skills for the world of the 1970s. I admire such dogged . . . well doggedness. I guess. Organized labour? Don't get me started. Unions are my bread and butter (not to mention rent and all the rest). Despite occasional rhetorical flourishes, they are not in the business of fundamental social transformation. If Doug can be cynical about anti-consumer hairshirts, allow me my reservations about the class in itself, of itself and for itself. Funny you should mention the individual (or the Individual). My sandwichman project and my graphic dwell on the mythos of the self-made man. Can't get more individual than that. Note I said _mythos_ not myth. The OS is crucial and conveniently suggests precisely an operating system. That operating system can perhaps be better understood through a series of thought experiments: 1. Take simple living for example. Read Benjamin Franklin's prescription for self-sufficiency, the locus classicus of the self-made man genre. What you will see is that voluntary simplicity is pure, unadulterated Ben Franklin. Those other guys, Horatio Alger, Andrew Carnegie and a host of 19th century success touts represent a digression. 2. Take Aunt Jemima. Now think of Oprah Winfrey. What do they have in common? How are they different? In what sense could one imagine Jemima morphing into Oprah? I'm not the first to make the connection. See http://www.cegur.com/html/oprahimage.html. What's the point? Oprah shows that even a woman -- EVEN a woman of colour can become a self-made man, provided she's willing to lose enough weight. That is to say to renounce that which, by its excess, signifies her otherness -- her mammytude, shall we say. No personal offense intended to Ms. Winfrey, but her celebrity in racist America (like pre-Bronco O.J.'s celebrity) rests on her being the exception that proves the rule. 3. Do a google search on self-made man; next do a google search on autonomous subject; finally do a combined search. With only a very few exceptions, there isn't an overlap between texts that use the terms. Why is this so when the pair of terms is virtually synonymous (leaving aside connotations)? Isn't it, then, precisely the relationship between the individual and the collective that remains the problem? If that's so isn't it begging the question to pre-emptively reject individual solutions and posit a collective revolutionary subject to do all the abolishing, socializing and taking control? Doesn't even the possibility of a collective revolutionary subject come down to a matter of individual commitments to build such a collective? Aren't these all rhetorical questions? Criticisms of commmodification make sense mainly when what's being commodified, that is privatized, is _already explicitly publicly owned or customarily in the public domain_, like air, water, electric power, public education, public transportation, public broadcasting, and so on. When a housewife becomes _a wage laborer_, her labor power becomes, well, _commodified_, but socialists don't object to that, do we? I don't know where to begin to respond to a question that assumes socialists don't object to the commodification of labour power. It was not Marx's position that wage labour represents the pinnacle of human emancipation. I'm inclined to agree. And it is not the case that the commodification of women's labour is a recent innovation. It also is not the case that socialists (including women) have always, unequivocally supported full participation of women in the labour force. Nor can such positions be dismissed on purely ideological grounds (against patriarchy) without also taking into account the strategic and tactical considerations behind claims
Referencing Pen-l 23220 The tooth Fairy
Greetings Economists, PEN-L:23220 necessity of god, goddess,... 25 February 2002 21:40 UTC Charles: I don't know if this is an interesting response (replying to Robert Scott Gassler and not to Doyle's remark that was the subject of Robert's reaction), but what popped into my head when I read your comment was that the logical arguments for the non-existence of God are similar to the logical arguments for the non-existence of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Doyle There is a lot to be said for how Charles replies above compared to how my reply reads. I think for most people Charles' statement sounds simple and understandable given the convoluted thinking my comment often exhibits. I take the position though that Charles' logical arguments while useful in the context of clarity fails to take into account how religious people might feel about the 'logic' of the argument. My reaction to what I perceive as implied weaknesses in taking Charles tack toward god, reflects an historical conflict between rational methods of argument and what others like myself observe about how the common person 'feels' about the logic of god. Don't we all know that most people who use religion aren't amendable to the logic of arguments. What they want from religion reflects their social needs for a place to go that takes on the implied content of god as a projection of a mind. I think it important to not just argue about the parallel to the tooth fairy, which most Christians would feel offended by, but to understand the process that people use to a religious end. Capitalism will as time goes by make available new tools of expression for the religious to further their activities. One has to feel as people are drawn into using a computer in every activity of life, that how we understand what a mind is will be transformed. Hence the comparison Charles makes doesn't give us much insight in what it means a mind/god projected upon the world would endure as the technology transform the expression of a projected mind. JD remarked, Jim, I have been influence by Marx, a lot. It's also Freud's view -- and Feuerbach's -- that God is a human projection of our own inner images. Jim Devine Doyle Jim's comment has a visual evocation, but for Christians, and more so for Judaic believers and of course the Taliban, an image does not convey god. For all these flavors of religion their god primarily is the 'literal' word of god. So there is in Christianity a sensitivity to how the mind is as words not image, which is at root their shared beginnings with the Greek culture they had come to live in after Christ was crucified. The 'word' more closely summarizes what their religious concept of the projected mind means. Hardly able to compete with movies, but why? When we construct an image (perhaps a slide projected in a church) which is religious like, an image that serves the purpose of suggesting a mind/god we need to take into account the depth that religions invest in the content of god/mind. The tooth fairy implies something obviously false only a child would believe. So we miss the difficulty that goes with religious belief by making the simple logical comparison and neglecting the feelings that hold the belief in place. The elaboration of morality for example that goes into the heart of many human behaviors, rather than the stealthy parental grab for a tooth. The properties of a mind, such as memory, are important to creating a mind-like avatar essential tasks to construct a god or religion. How can we express the complexity that an atheist faces in the religious persons concept of a god? Christian churches are local groups of people attempting in gathering together on holy days, to build the larger social networks that the projected mind historically served Christian sects. Morality regulates those local social networks for the sake of stability of the reproduction of the working class. Church members are constrained by direct contact in the church to build their communities primarily through that physical contact as opposed to standing in an empty field and wondering how they could find human company. The working class through the physical site of their churches has certain kinds of options for understanding what a mind might be. That physical contact implies what a mind would be like. And that mind would substantially change as the method of depicting a mind projects upon the landscape with out direct physical contact like a church. The common person might want to say to their child that your loose tooth under your pillow will be taken by the tooth fairy and paid for in cash. That mythic figure meant by a parent to comfort a child cannot match for a child the impact of a teletubby. A religious person or any body is drawn to the greater power of the media to express what a mind might be communicated as. A mind that might be anywhere or anytime (rather than tied to a church). Such projections of the
what is happening
I wonder what's happening. The two most active threads concern god and fashion. Another long-running thread seems to involve only two people and seems to be repeating itself quite a bit. I was expected Jim Devine's little article that he posted from Business Week to have created more interest. I would expected Steve Diamond's article regarding debt to have created more interest. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: what is happening
Michael Perelman wrote: I wonder what's happening. The two most active threads concern god and fashion. Face it, Michael - economics is boring. Even economists would rather discuss almost anything else. Doug
Re: what is happening
Face it, Michael - economics is boring. Even economists would rather discuss almost anything else. Doug Doug, Sorry but this time we found something to disagree. I think economics is very interesting. Not neoclassical economics though. There I agree with you: I know enough to say that it is rubbish. Sabri
