Re: what is happening

[Sabri Oncu]

> 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

Re: what is happening

[Doug Henwood]

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

what is happening

[Michael Perelman]

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]

Referencing Pen-l 23220 The tooth Fairy

[Doyle Saylor]

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 brain/mind

Re: Dallas Smythe student

[Tom Walker]

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 tac

Re: Re: RE: God

[Waistline2]

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: reply-part 3-end

[Waistline2]

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-indust

Re: Re: RE: God

[Carrol Cox]

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: RE: God

[Greg Schofield]

--- 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 evil"comment,  
> 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]
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Foreign funds in China gear up for profitless decade

[Ulhas Joglekar]

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.

sustainable agriculture job in Thailand

[Michael Perelman]

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]

Re: On the necessity of socialism

[Waistline2]

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 a

Re: Productive Forces, was Re: reply-part 2

[Waistline2]

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.  

Mon., Mar. 4: Edmund Hanauer, SEARCH for Justice & Equality inPalestine/Israel

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

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, 
; "Palestinians' 
Rights Ignored," _USA Today_ 26 July 2000, 
; "Camp David 
and the Al-Aqsa Intifada," 
; & "U.S. 
Policy Must Force Barak's Hype into Real Action," _Houston Chronicle_ 
20 July 1999, 
.

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, 
).  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: 

* Anti-War Activist Resources: 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 

RE: RE: God

[michael pugliese]

   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. 
>
>

Re: RE: God

[Doug Henwood]

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: God

[Forstater, Mathew]

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.

Fat Cats

[Frederick Guy]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4349061,00.html

Re: Origins of 'Dutch Disease'

[Michael Pollak]

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

Productive Forces, was Re: reply-part 2

[Carrol Cox]

[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

On the necessity of socialism

[Charles Brown]

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.

(Fwd) Petition against nomination of Bush and Blair for peace

[phillp2]

--- 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 ---

RE: God

[Devine, James]

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 evil"comment,  
> 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)
> 

God

[Charles Brown]

 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 evil"comment,  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)

reply-part 2

[Waistline2]

>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 devel

Re: Re: RE: God

[Carrol Cox]

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

Re: Dallas Smythe student

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>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: 

* Anti-War Activist Resources: 
* Student International Forum: 
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: 

Re: Dallas Smythe student

[Carrol Cox]

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: RE: God

[Justin Schwartz]

>
>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


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BLS Daily Report, Tuesday Feb. 26

[Richardson_D]

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).


<>

RE: Commodity fetish

[Eric Nilsson]

 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

Re: Dallas Smythe student

[Tom Walker]

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: God

[Devine, James]

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. 

Commodity fetish

[Charles Brown]

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

Suppression of Marx

[Charles Brown]

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

God

[Charles Brown]

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 ?

Hari reply/bribery and labor aristoc.

[Waistline2]

>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 

Fwd: IWGVT mini-conference at the EEA Boston Park Plaza, March 13-17. Apologies for cross-posting

[Drewk]

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
transportation’s 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
year’s 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 year’s EEA, and IWGVT mini-conference, will be in New York.

Best wishes

Alan Freeman

RE: Suppression of Marx

[Drewk]

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

FW: Re: Dallas Smythe student

[Davies, Daniel]

-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


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Re: Dallas Smythe student

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

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

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