date:20020711


Elections for delegates to the island's Parliament

Havana, July 10 (RHC)-- Cuban President Fidel Castro has called for
municipal, provincial and national elections for delegates to the
island's Parliament -- also known as the National Assembly of People's
Power.

The elections are scheduled to take place on October 20th, with
run-off elections slated for the following week, on October 27th.

Candidates are nominated in their work places and neighborhoods, with
their photos and short biographical sketches posted; under Cuban law,
no other political campaigning or advertising is allowed.

Observers point out that the Cuban electoral process has no problem
with campaign financing, because candidates cannot spend money or
campaign for a political office. Delegates to the Cuban Parliament
receive no salary for service to their country.

On the occasion (June 29, '99) of a Brecht Forum book party for Democracy
in Cuba and the 1997-1998 Elections, Canadian author Arnold August
remarked that there is no other story that is more censored than this. In
the period leading up to the elections, AP filed 69 stories from Cuba, but
only 2 dealt with the elections. But AP chose not even to distribute them.
CNN was no better. They have a state-of-the-art website that includes a
section on elections worldwide. There was no mention of Cuba. To confirm
this press blackout for myself, I accessed Lexis-Nexis with the keywords
Cuba and elections. Of the 562 items returned, this June 2, 1998
Financial Times was typical:

An agreement between the EU and US over sanctions on CUBA, announced with
great fanfare two weeks ago, is in serious jeopardy in Congress. Unless the
House and Senate amend the Helms-Burton law, designed to discourage foreign
investment in Cuba, the EU-US deal will come unstuck...

Greg Mastel, an economic and foreign policy analyst with the
Washington-based Economic Strategy Institute, said it will be increasingly
difficult for the administration to work with Congress as the autumn
mid-term ELECTIONS approach, but there could be a window of opportunity
early next year. It's possible to get things done in Congress which Mr
Helms opposes; it happens all the time, he said. But it isn't easy,
particularly on issues like this, where he is willing to fight.

But nothing about the Cubans participating in their own elections. This is
the goal of August's book, to show the Cuban electoral process in action.
He is the first non-Cuban to be allowed to monitor and write about this
process. As such, his book is an important weapon in the defense of Cuba's
sovereignty. It will allow her friends to answer the lies of the Toricelli
and Helms-Burton act supporters. Their justification for economic blockade
is the lack of democracy. August's book refutes this lie.

August defines democracy in the same sense as Ellen Meiksins Wood does in
Democracy Against Capitalism: rule by the majority where the common
people exercise power. He adds that this is also the same definition that
can be found in Webster's Dictionary.

The first stirrings for democracy in Cuba date back to October 10, 1868
when the fight for independence from Spain began. In this struggle for
power, slaves became part of the fight for the first time as political and
social emancipation were intertwined. At Guaymaro, in the eastern part of
the island, a group of 15 delegates drafted the first democratic constitution.

Meanwhile the United States had its own ideas about the particular forms
democracy should take in Cuba. In the first humanitarian intervention in
its history, US imperialism intervened in Cuba in order to thwart the
ambitions of the sickly Spanish empire. Its goal was to bring Cuba and its
rich resources under its own control using the excuse of Spanish depravity.

In order to safeguard its economic interests, a two-party system proved
useful. Enlisting the support of the Cuban upper class, two electoral
parties were imposed on the Cuban people based on reform and stability.
They traded places periodically when one or the other became too unpopular.
The mafia, as depicted in the great movie Godfather Part 2, was another
important financial base for the two parties.

This system persisted from 1895 to 1959 when Fidel Castro decided that the
essence of democracy was not being respected. He struggled to empower
ordinary workers and farmers, who would provide the new social base of the
revolution. After nearly sixty years of a multi-party system, the Cuban
people were not anxious to set up a carbon copy of what they had just
overthrown. They voted with their bodies and their guns.

Within the parameters of the socialist revolution, there were important
measures to institutionalize democracy including elections. The 1974
electoral laws were primarily responsible for giving shape to the voting
procedures that August writes about. In particular, August examined the
operations of municipal elections in the period from June 1997 to February,
1998.

For the

the state and democracy

Title: the state and democracy





[was: RE: [PEN-L:27870] Re: Re: variety in capitalist markets]


I wrote:What I'm saying is that
1. given the fact that we live in an interdependent world, in
which my actions affect others and vice-versa, often independent
of what the other wants, we are stuck with each other. We have to
somehow decide who is allowed to do what.


2. So some sort of subordination is required -- at least in the
short run, until we can learn to get rid of it. (We don't know how
to abolish subordination overnight.)


3. The best kind of subordination that I know of is the democratic
subordination of the individual to the collective will (which
includes allowing for individual rights, if that is the collective
decision).



Ian writes:
3. seems to ignore the extreme heterogeneity of societies. Right
now people can't even agree as to the scale and scope of rights.
Hence, Demosclerosis.



I think that democracy (majority rule with minority rights) is the best way to deal with heterogeneity. Can you think of a better way, since we can't figure out how to allow each individual and group to be totally autonomous? 


4. Subordination may be a public bad, but it may have its
benefits, for example avoiding environmental destruction. Unlike
other forms of subordination, democratically-organized
subordination is more likely to allow the eventual abolition of
subordination.


5. There is no way to decide on what the public good is -- nor
what the meaning of the public bad is -- independent of this
kind of democratic decision-making. Philosophers or economists may
claim to know what the public good is, but they cannot impose
their views on society.



Ian And neither should anyone else if you follow the induction you've
started.


that's right. Power must come from below, rather than from some condescending saviors.



6. I don't understand the meaning of the phrase Back to
Condorcet. Please explain.


Condorcet; intellectual grandfather of Arrow's theorem.


people should realize that Arrow's theory is a critique of _all_ collective decision-making mechanisms, not just democracy. It also applies to markets. Can you think of a method of collective choice that isn't subject to the theorem?

given the environmental mess, some sort of state is needed until
you can figure out a better way: if we don't have some sort of
subordination of the individuals to the whole, people will simply
pollute like crazy. There's nothing in an anarchist scheme to
prevent the anarcho-syndicalist commune across the river from
building a nuclear power-plant or using weapons to impose a
dictatorship.


There seems to be nothing democratic states can do to stop
pollution in the medium term either.


we need some sort of state to prevent the kind of opportunistic behavior I sketch. A democratic state is the best kind. The current democratic states are pretty good at being states without being very democratic. In any event, for even a truly democratic state to fight environmental devastation, people have to actively want the state to do so. 

As for the Keynesian-Darwinian long run well


I don't understand the reference, or rather its meaning in this context.


Given the need for some kind of state, I prefer a democratically
controlled one. To attain such a state, we may have to get rid of
the actually-existing one -- or at least conquer it.


The actually existing one in the US is probably unconquerable without a bunch of nukes going off and it doesn't appear to be desirous of listening to it's citizens given its cynical acceptance and exploitation of the problems posed by Condorcet and Arrow so why should we even attempt to subordinate it to democratic will?

so you're against democracy and you think that the currently-existing state will oppress us forever? 


Jim

Philippines: At the mouth of a volcano

2002-07-11 Thread Ulhas Joglekar


Frontline

Volume 19 - Issue 14, July 06 - 19, 2002

ESSAY
At the mouth of a volcano

The Philippines as the next target in the 'war against terrorism'.
AIJAZ AHMAD

In this article, Professor Aijaz Ahmad first deals with the flimsiness of
U.S. claims with regard to its moves in the Philippines, and then reflects
upon the as-yet-invisible strategic designs underlying the 'visible'
actions, for the country and for the region of South East Asia as a whole.
He goes on to provide some extended comment on the historical background to
the conflict in southern Philippines in order to clarify what is at stake.

IN a key policy speech some 10 days after the September 11 events, George
Bush Jr., the not-entirely-legally elected President of the United States,
declared a war against terrorism that was to be global and perpetual:
moving across some 60 countries, he said, in a task that never ends. In
his State of the Union address on January 20 this year he was at least on
one count more explicit: While the most visible military action is in
Afghanistan, he said, America is acting elsewhere. We now have troops in
the Philippines... The key operative word here was visible, since no one
had until then heard that U.S. troops had already arrived in that
unfortunate country and the visible understanding even today is that they
started arriving in Basilan and Zamboanga, in southern Philippines, only in
February. Bush, however, was not the only one making such pronouncements at
that point of time. U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, who sits on the Foreign
Relations Committee, had been quoted already in the media as saying: It
appears the Philippines is going to be the next target after Afghanistan.

Considering that U.S. troops had already taken charge of four airfields in
Pakistan and were fanning out across the northern regions of that country;
considering also that the U.S. had swiftly secured bases and 'facilities' in
a number of Central Asian countries so as to target their oil wealth; and
considering, finally, that some of the highest U.S. officials and key policy
pundits were at that time passionately arguing in favour of making Iraq the
immediate target of a full-scale war and 'regime change', this avowed
prominence of the Philippines as the next target in the war against the
virtually mythical Osama bin Laden, and against what Bush had called
terrorism with a global reach, was at least very surprising. The
justifications that the U.S. has been presenting for its military designs
there have been paltry, implausible and deliberately misleading, as if a
sovereign country whose Constitution forbids the deployment of foreign
troops on its soil could be declared the next target after Afghanistan
with the bald statement that We [Americans] now have troops in the
Philippines on the pretext of a group of local bandits having taken two
American hostages some months earlier.
Now, it is certainly true that the Abu Sayyaf, a kidnapping-for-ransom
group, whom the Philippines President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo herself
regards as not an Islamic extremist group but a money-crazed gang of
criminals, was holding two Americans hostages, Martin and Gracia Burnham,
when the next target rhetoric first began. Those hostages had been taken
almost a year earlier, however, and they were only the most recent of the
many hostages, including earlier American hostages, that the Abu Sayyaf had
taken over the years. The U.S. State Department put the group on its list of
terrorist organisations only in 1997-98, some six years after its rather
spectacular initial emergence, and no links with bin Laden had been asserted
before September 11. Even after September 11, Rigoberto Tiglao, spokesperson
for the Philippine President, had declared that while the Abu Sayyaf may
have been funded by bin Laden in the early 1990s, after 1995, or as early
as 1995, there has been no bin Laden link with Abu Sayyaf. Tiglao then
cited an intelligence report saying that the bin Laden people thought the
Abu Sayyaf were too ignorant and too mercenary. Only after the U.S. kept on
insisting that it was going to extend its war on terrorism to the
Philippines, and used the Abu Sayyaf as the excuse, did the national
government stop referring to the group as mere bandits and criminals.
Even so, and without presenting a shred of evidence, the U.S. proceeded to
declare that an Al Qaeda cell was operating in the Philippines and that the
immediate despatch of U.S. troops, including 160 of the elite Special
Forces, was necessary. Its initial demand was that U.S. troops go into
combat duty alongside the local forces. The Philippine Constitution forbids
the deployment of foreign troops on the country's soil, however, and the
fiction was therefore created that the U.S. troops would come only to train
and assist the Philippine Army personnel through joint exercises and only
in an advisory capacity during operations.
This too was surprising on several counts. For one thing, it was very odd

Re: the state and democracy





people should realize that Arrow's theory is a critique of _all_ collective
decision-making mechanisms, not just democracy. It also applies to markets.
Can you think of a method of collective choice that isn't subject to the
theorem?

Um, how so? The theorem says you can't have: nondictatorship, independence 
of irrelevant alternatives, independence of order of choice, and, dammit, 
one other thing I can't recall, all together. It's a theorem in voting 
theory. These things are irrelevant to markets. Of course a market with 
dictatorship (a monopoly) is distorted, but the independence conditions 
simply don't matter to formulating a market model.

jks

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Re: Re: markets profit maximization



In all fairness the same anomymity is possible under planning. Sensible 
proposals for planning generally do NOT abolish money (though they may call 
it something else). Yes, I know you have been arguing with people who do 
think money could be abolished; but this is rather as though I argued with 
extreme Randites and attributed their views to you.

Well, I've been arguing with folks hereabouts. Ia gree that some anonmytity 
is possible under planning. However there is little under, for example, the 
Albert-Hahnel and Devine models, both of which require the consumer to 
justify her choices to the world. Still, it's good to see someone 
acknowledge that the democractization of choice is not an unqualified good. 
The best planning model on this dimension is Madel's cleaned up version of 
the Soviet system, where planning is basically  matter of projecting from 
current demand. There are other problems with the model, such as 
insensitivity to changes in demand and stifling of innovation, but 
preserving anonymity isn't one of them.



I do think you give more weight to Hayekian incentive for information 
gathering and transaction costs than neccesary.

In terms of incentives, planning can be market like in this respect: A 
workplace is rated on efficiency based on actual output vs. actual input. 
(input being measure in money costs of buying the the inputs, output being 
measured what people willing to pay for what is produced). If efficiency 
falls below the minimum (say the average for the economy as a whole, or for 
  the particulars sector) then the workplace is dissolved. Short of this 
workers have incentives to discover how to do things right because they get 
feedback as to how close to having this happen they are or how far away. In 
short, the further from bankruptcy you are the more secure your job is; the 
close to bankruptcy you are the less secure.

That's an interesting thought. It does create consequences, which provide 
incentives, for inefficient behavior. Note, though, that the incentivesa re 
purely negative. There si the threat of bankruptcy, but no promise of 
profit for doing things better. Maybe you could mimic markets further by 
financially rwwarded more efficient enterprises more than less efficient 
ones.


In terms of transaction costs; assuming planning is done through an 
iterative feedback rather than micro planning , the transaction costs need 
be no more than that of planning under capitalism or market socialism.


Iterative feedback--like Albert and Hahnel? I think the transactions costs 
would be horrendous.

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Re: the state and democracy

2002-07-11 Thread Ann Li

Title: the state and democracy



Well here's one solution:


http://www.nandotimes.com/opinions/story/460746p-3687821c.html

from United Press 
International (n.b. owned by 
the moonies)


  
  

SAN FRANCISCO (July 9, 
2002 2:38 p.m. EDT) - According to a recent newspaper story, a person will soon 
be able to spend his whole life in the Rev. Jerry Falwell's planned Christian 
community in Lynchburg, Va. Think of it as eternity right here on earth. 
"You'll never have to leave this place," Falwell told a reporter whom he 
gave a tour of the building site. "You can come in at age 2, in our early 
learning center ... age 5, into our kindergarten, age 6-18 in our elementary and 
high school. Then on to Liberty University for four years."

Re: Re: Re: markets profit maximization




Is that why you blatantly distort what I wrote?

And why do you paint me as an enemy of democracy? Do you think I actually 
disagree with any of the things you said about democratic advances?

I did not write
anything resembling what you put forth.  I did not say things are
great with our democracy nor that we have overcome all the problems
except those that are due to inequality.  I said there are flaws
still in today's political system; in fact there are a great many of
them, as anyone except a complete idiot would avow.  Next time, try
arguing without ly*ng about what I said.

How about avoiding inflamamtory language. I was being sarcastic.



 American democracy in particular is remarkably narrow and close-minded.

Sure, if you only look at CNN, ABC, Forbes, the NY Times, Democrats,
and Republicans.

That is, all the effective public expressions of democracy in the country.

But American democracy is much broader than that,
including a wide array of groups who oppose such arcane things as
trade policy, who have the power to mobilize thousands in vigorous
protest against these policies.

Sigh. I have spent 25 years working in these groups, and the ability to 
mobilize thousands,when we have it, is pretty fucking pathetic compared to 
what the other side--and here I don't mean the big bourgeoisie but the 
populist right--can do.


 Toqueville said that he knew of no other country where there was so 
little
 freedom of thought. I don't think that has changed much, despite the
 progress. ...

And you ignore why he said that.  He said that the private media had
much to do with it:

  When  many  organs  of  the press adopt the same line of conduct,
  their influence in the long run becomes irresistible, and  public
  opinion,  perpetually  assailed  from  the  same side, eventually
  yields to this attack.

No, I am aware that he said this, and that it's true, although it does not 
solely explain the close-mindedness of our democracy. Hisexplanation is 
rather nuanced and multi-factored, emphasizing (among other things) 
religiosity, widespread small ptroperty ownership, regional diversity, etc.


Since the 1960s we have seen a much broader range of opinion express
itself outside of the mainstream media, and despite being assailed on
all sides, the public still retains such ugly proclivities as seeing
the Vietnam War as immoral, and generally hewing to New Deal
liberalism --- or to its left --- on a wide range of socio-economic
issues.

I am aware of the poll data and often cite it myself. But the fact is that 
the preferences that get expressed for greater labor protection, 
environmental protection, businessregulation, and the like, don't find 
effective institutional expression.

The total shut-out of the left from public life is just a joke.  The
left has been shut out from most of mainstream politics, but the left
is still very much with us, and much stronger, wiser, and more
articulate than it was 150 years ago.

No, the left is a joke today, and we're not going to get anywhere unless we 
recognize the fact.

With the
resources expended, there is no surprise that the public feels angry
at the wrong people.


No doubt. But we have to deal with the fact that they do.

 The context in which I brought the point up is quite specific: I said 
that
 markets and the privatization of certain choices are valuable, because it
 would be in the broad sense totalitarian to have to justify all our 
choices
 to others on groups of public acceptability. Do you disagree with this?


There is no reason choice cannot be private and private ownership of
production abolished.

Well, I agree, that's why I support market _socialism._ But abolition of 
private property is not abolition of markets.

And yes, you should be free to choose your own
basket of goods, but I think the public should have a big say in how
big each person's basket is.


Agreed.

jks


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Re: Re: Coke, Value Science - Market Socialism

2002-07-11 Thread Waistline2

During the era of the overthrow of Soviet power or rather public property relations in the USSR industrial infrastructure, I became a market socialist for about 86 hours. At that time I imagined to have discovered a hidden truth in Polany's "Great Transformation." Later it became obvious that the hidden truth remained hidden - undiscoverable.

Value is not a theoretical fiction or "clinging with dogmatic obstinacy to the redundant concept of the law of value," in my opinion.

The law of value is a law - the most fundamental, of commodity production - not capitalism. A law or law system is the underlying principles that govern a process or what is the same, a recurring series of events that distinguish one thing from another and drives the process or gives a process its self-movement.

The law of value begins emerging in human society when individuals or groups of individuals are able to produce more articles than they consume - achieve a surplus, and in connection with others, engage in the exchange of articles. This process of exchange, which arises on the basis of the aforementioned surplus, (which does not exclude human needs and needs/desires) is the vortex in which privately produced articles undergo a transformation into commodities.

The form of human intercourse called exchange is the definition of the word market. With the development of production - communications and transportation, the exchange process "distant" itself from the production process and begins to operate on the basis of a self-movement unique to exchange. That is the expansion of the means of distribution, which are dependent on communications and transportation, gives exchange as market the appearance of an independent existence. The appearance of an independent existence becomes a fact of independence as distribution.

However distribution is always limited to what is available to be distributed or exchanged. The mode of distribution, born in the womb of exchange, which arises from human laboring, separates itself from its creative mother and achieves its independence outside of the creative mother and constitutes itself as the scaffolding of the market - exchange.

Value is not a theoretical fiction. As the most fundamental component of the law system of commodity production the law of value means how, by what means or on what basis commodities become exchangeable, since their production arises under specific conditions by varying individuals.

The value of commodities is bound up with the expenditure of human labor - the material activity of real human beings and its magnitude grasped - as articulated by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, as human labor in the abstract. The expenditure of human labor in the production of commodities varies from one era to another based on the progressive development of the productive forces. Consequently, the values of commodities vary from one era and one epoch to another and with it the mode of distribution.

Marx conception of the science of society and his assertion and daily pushing to teach the Workingmen and indeed the proletariat why it must fight for a society of associated producers is bound up with his understanding of the direction of the progressive development of the productive forces, as opposed to historically distinct stages in the development of the mode of distribution.

If value is bound up with human laboring - mental and physical, and the productive forces are technically capable of providing the world peoples with a secure minimum basis of human existence based on needs, what justifies private ownership of bridges, factories and distribution routes? At our current state of development an enormous sector of capital are speculators and are totally detached from any element of production and distribution of the social products. As a class they are superfluous to production.

In the last instance, market socialism - in my estimate as an individual not belonging to any political associations, is a theory of looking for the perfect "mode of distribution" for that, which is produced. That which is produced means "what" and "how much." "What is produced" is governed by the relationship between heavy and light industry and historical development. "How much" is governed by the development of the productive forces. Generally these factors are articulated by "market socialist" as the need for "price" signals in the act of exchange that indicates product need and desires, devoid of the "what" and "how much" as development. This understanding accounts for my rather short romance with market socialism - a lengthy "one night stand."

The historic comparison has been between the production of consumer goods and their distribution within the orbit of Soviet imperial authority or rather the imperial authority of the proletariat, and that of the imperial authority of the bourgeoisie. What is lacking in such a comparison is reality.

The comparison should looks at the rate of

Re: Re: Re: Re: markets profit maximization

2002-07-11 Thread Doug Henwood


Justin Schwartz wrote:

American democracy in particular is remarkably narrow and 
close-minded. Toqueville said that he knew of no other country where 
there was so little freedom of thought. I don't think that has 
changed much, despite the progress. Consider: the drug war, the 
punitive nature of our criminal justice system, our unrelenting 
religiosity, the total shut-out of the left from public life--all 
off which are popular, lowest-common-denominator policies.

The context in which I brought the point up is quite specific: I 
said that markets and the privatization of certain choices are 
valuable, because it would be in the broad sense totalitarian to 
have to justify all our choices to others on groups of public 
acceptability.

So, markets promote diversity and protect minority tastes. But this 
most market-besotted society of any on earth is closed-minded and 
punitive. There's no connection? Bourdieu's argument that competition 
promotes not variety but sameness - he applied it to the media, but 
it works elsewhere too - has no relevance? The absolute dominance of 
money in American life has nothing to do with the dominance of 
markets and the narrowing of the political and cultural sphere?

Doug

Market socialism as a form of utopianism


Jutsin Shwartz:
Well, I've been arguing with folks hereabouts. Ia gree that some anonmytity 
is possible under planning. However there is little under, for example, the 
Albert-Hahnel and Devine models, both of which require the consumer to 
justify her choices to the world. Still, it's good to see someone 
acknowledge that the democractization of choice is not an unqualified good. 
The best planning model on this dimension is Madel's cleaned up version of 
the Soviet system, where planning is basically  matter of projecting from 
current demand. There are other problems with the model, such as 
insensitivity to changes in demand and stifling of innovation, but 
preserving anonymity isn't one of them.

Ernest Mandel never thought in terms of models. This, of course, is as it
should be. He was a Marxist, not a utopian socialist. Although most people
associate utopian socialism with the generally benign experiments of the
19th century (one of which was dramatized in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The
Blithedale Romance), it is less about concrete projects than it is about a
way of thinking.

For Marx and Engels, the three main features of utopian thought were: 

1) Ahistoricism: The utopian socialists did not see the class struggle as
the locomotive of history. While they saw socialism as being preferable to
capitalism, they neither understood the historical contradictions that
would undermine it in the long run, nor the historical agency that was
capable of resolving these contradictions: the working-class. 

2) Moralism: What counts for the utopian socialists is the moral example of
their program. If there is no historical agency such as the working-class
to fulfill the role of abolishing class society, then it is up to the moral
power of the utopian scheme to persuade humanity for the need for change. 

3) Rationalism: The utopian scheme must not only be morally uplifting, it
must also make sense. The best utopian socialist projects would be those
that stood up to relentless logical analysis. 

As Engels said in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

To all these socialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and
justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue
of its own power. And as absolute truth is independent of time, space, and
of the historical development of man, it is a mere accident when and where
it is discovered. 

All of these themes are present to one degree or another in the projects of
market socialists like John Roemer or their new left rivals Albert and
Hahnel. 

At first blush, John Roemer seems an unlikely utopian since he couches his
schema in hard-headed microeconomics. In Market Socialism, a Blueprint:
How Such an Economy Might Work, he says that it is possible to use
markets to allocate resources in an economy where firms are not privately
owned by investors who trade stock in them with the purpose of maximizing
their gain, and that the government can intervene in such an economy to
influence the level and composition of investment should the people wish to
do so. 

This doesn't sound particularly 'visionary', does it? What is particularly
utopian about the schemas of Schweickart, Roemer et al is not that they
have the redemptive and egalitarian power of Saint-Simon or Robert Owens,
but that it is based on an ahistorical notion of how socialism comes into
existence. 

Specifically, there is no historical agency. Roemer shares with the 19th
century utopians a tendency to present a vision that is detached from
history. Since history play very little role in Roemer's thought overall,
it is understandable why he would devote himself to utopian schemas.
Furthermore, since AM is based on removing one of the key aspects of the
Marxist understanding of capitalism --the labor theory of value-- it is
difficult to see how any historical agency can carry this social
transformation out. Once the class-struggle is removed, the socialist
project becomes an exercise in game-playing by rational actors. Since
rationalism is a cornerstone of utopian thought, market socialism would
have an appeal because it is eminently rational. 

Answering the question of whether his schema will work, Roemer offers the
following assurance: 

Is it possible for a market system to equilibrate an economy in which
profits are distributed as I have described and in which the government
intervenes in the investment behavior of the economy by manipulating
interests if the managers of firms maximize profits, facing market prices,
wages and interest rates? My colleagues Joaquim Silvestre, Ignacio Ortuno,
and I have studied this question, and the answer is yes. 

My, isn't this reassuring. There is only one problem. The difficulties we
face in building socialism are not on the theoretical front, but in the
application of theory. The reason for this of course is that such
applications always take place in the circumstances of war, economic
blockade, internal counter-revolution, etc., where even the best

markets profit maximization



So, markets promote diversity and protect minority tastes.

Actually, you are reading the variety conversation into this one. I said 
the markets protect _privacy_ but not requiring individuals to justify their 
choices  to the public at large,

But this
most market-besotted society of any on earth is closed-minded and punitive. 
There's no connection?

Probably there is, Tocqueville thought so. However there are other things 
that go into those unattractive features of Ameriac society as well.

Bourdieu's argument that
competition promotes not variety but sameness - he applied it to the media, 
but it works elsewhere too - has no relevance?

Absolutely. Though variety wasn't my point. Again, I think that theresults 
of markets on the variety end are contradictory. There was precious little 
variety under actual planning. Markers both create and destroy variety.


The absolute
dominance of money in American life has nothing to do with the dominance of 
markets and the narrowing of the political and cultural sphere?

Doug

Whar's got into you, Doug, you think I have come around to supporting the 
domiannce of money and that I would deny that it narrow the political and 
cultural sphere?

jks


_
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com

Planning, Market Unemployment

2002-07-11 Thread Michael Hoover


below are several posts i sent to another list a few 
years ago during 'market/planning' discussion...

1.
Soviet central planning generally eliminated 
long-term secular unemployment and short-term 
cyclical unemployment associated with capitalist 
business cycles from the 1920 onwards. While 
elimination of mass unemployment was, in part, 
the result of extensive industrial growth, Soviets 
and other 'actually-existing' socialist states 
provided job security that was perceived as 
positive achievement and cannot be lightly 
dismissed nor should it be sacrificed as a valued 
goal. (my utopian self prefers a post-work society  
but that's for another post). Doing away with 
generalized unemployment gave working people 
confidence and encouragment to develop abilities 
and talents. 

Of course, critics asserted that the type of security 
existing in these economies, over time, undermined 
work discipline and failed to provide incentives for 
efficient and diligent work. And some people couldn't 
find kind of employment for which they were trained 
because of planning errors or geographical preferences (Soviet's had hard time getting 
highly skilled folks to 
go to frigid climare and barren landscape of Far North). 
A bit of frictional unemployment (i.e., people changing 
jobs and 'layabouts') also existed. 

In the main, however, central planning eliminated 
mass chronic unemployment as a social problem. 
There was nothing comparable to working-class 
districts in capitalist societies where jobless line 
sidewalks, hanging out in summer and winter, in 
good years and in bad, a constant feature of the 
social landscape. 

Yugoslav 'market socialism' provided for worker 
participation in a decentralized economy, availibility 
of Western-style consumer goods (and development 
of Western-style consumerism among more affluent 
social groups and economic regions; i.e., Slovenia  
Croatia, the first to 'secede'), room for small private 
business and agriculture, and market-oriented price 
and wages systems. 
 
Costs of above included mass unemployment (up to 
15% in 1980s, figure would have been higher except 
for migration of 'guest workers' to West Germany, 
Sweden,  Switzerland), chronic inflation, and foreign 
debt. Unskilled working class and poor regions bore 
brunt of joblessness, exacerbating already existing 
inequalities among social strata and ethnic groups. 

Opponents of central planning must consider that the 
return of large-scale unemployment is a large price for dropping that planning 
capacity of the political system.

2.
Soviet central planning system certainly mobilized 
human (and natural) resources for rapid 
industrialization. Maximum investment was channeled 
into heavy industry (steel, iron, coal, electric power, 
machine building, and military). A kind of permanent 
war-time economy, Soviet economic mobilization was 
not directed to fulfiling individual consumer demands. 
Central planning system paid less attention to efficiency 
and technological innovation in pursuit of bulk output. 
And it worked. 

Between 1928 and 1975, Soviet growth rates averaged 4.7%/year, even including the 
devastation of WW2. 
By the 1980s, Soviet oil production peaked, new labor 
force entrants declined, and the environmental costs 
of industrial 'gigantomania' were revealed. The old 
extensive growth model had reached its outer limits. 
Gorbachev leadership launched greater initiatives for intensification of production 
methods and greater 
reliance on market-type demands. This also meant 
accepting inevitable trade-off of considerable 
joblessness since any return to a predominantly 
market-driven economy produces not just temporary 
mass unemployment, but unemployment as as basic 
feature of the social landscape, with all the 
consequences that this brings for market societies. 
(*real* point of my previous post) 

I stated in my previous post that *job security was 
perceived as positive achievement not to be dismissed 
nor to be sacrificed*. I should have indicated that, 
based on data collected from public opinion polls that 
were introduced, this was the view of the overwhelming percentage of working people in 
the Soviet Union in the 
1980s. I spent some time with Soviet sociologists 
engaged in this work back then and they were very clear: professional/managerial types 
were more supportve of 'reforms' than was working class. 

Despite acknowledged poor quality of consumerable 
durables compared to capitalist West, most working 
people expressed relative satisfaction in these polls. Professional/managerial stratum 
expressed greatest dissatisfaction, as did younger folks who increasingly 
knew about and longed for Western consumer lifestyle. 
Perestroika initiatives neither sufficiently redressed 
exhaustion of 'extensive growth' model nor satisfied 
new consumer demands. In fact, such policies resulted 
in growing criticism and dismissal of planning system and increasing calls for

Bristol-Myers under investigation


http://news.ft.com/home/us

SEC opens Bristol-Myers investigation 
By Adrian Michaels in New York 

Published: July 11 2002 5:00 | Last Updated: July 11 2002 5:00 
 
US regulators are investigating whether Bristol-Myers Squibb, one of the
world's largest pharmaceuticals companies, inflated its revenues by $1bn
last year.

Company officials have met the Securities and Exchange Commission to
discuss the circumstances behind sales to drug wholesalers that boosted
inventories to unsustainable levels. Regulators are asking whether the
company gave inappropriate incentives to wholesalers to help meet 2001
earnings expectations.

There is no suggestion at this stage that the company has acted improperly,
or that the creation of excessive inventories was a deliberate attempt to
inflate sales.



Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org

A recommendation to Justin Schwartz


Not only are you posting all out of proportion to the daily per capita on
pen-l, your posts are filled with misspellings. This suggests to me that
you are dashing things off rather than giving questions the attention they
deserve. This appears to be a misuse of electronic communications. I would
strongly advise you to eschew tit-for-tat replies, which at this point
simply amount to repeated professions of your core beliefs. For example, in
your reply to Doug Henwood, you state, There was precious little variety
under actual planning. Markers [sic] both create and destroy variety. Do
you think this adds anything to our knowledge or understanding at this
point? Repeating things like this ad infinitum, ad nauseum remind me of the
sort of interventions heard on Marxism lists of yore. People thought that
by repeating things like without a revolutionary party, there can be no
revolution they were making some sort of contribution to Marxist theory.
All they were doing was cheapening the discussion.

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org

RE: Re: Re: markets profit maximization

Title: RE: [PEN-L:27891] Re: Re: markets profit maximization

someone said: In all fairness the same anomymity is possible under planning. Sensible proposals for planning generally do NOT abolish money (though they may call it something else). Yes, I know you have been arguing with people who do think money could be abolished; but this is rather as though I argued with extreme Randites and attributed their views to you.

Justin writes: Well, I've been arguing with folks hereabouts. Ia gree that some anonmytity is possible under planning. However there is little under, for example, the Albert-Hahnel and [Pat] Devine models, both of which require the consumer to justify her choices to the world.

It should be noted that Pat Devine is not the same as yours truly. Instead, he is my long-lost granduncle fifteenth removed (though neither he nor I acknowledge that fact).

Still, it's good to see someone acknowledge that the democractization of choice is not an unqualified good...

Democratization of choice is not an unqualified good, as I've said again and again: it's a necessity, given the interdependence of human life (or what economists call externalities). As I said to Ian, subordination -- including democratic subordination -- may be a public bad, but it has its potential benefits, such as protecting the natural environment. This is NOT saying that democratization of choice is an unqualified good. Is there anyone who thinks that it is? Justin, can you quote anyone who says that democracy is an unqualified good? or is that just a strawdog?

It's important to realize that democracy is a basic political principle, that which says that rule by the dictators, the capitalists, the economists, the lawyers, and other minorities do not have a legitimate claim to power over the majority. They can only rule with the consent of the governed, while _real_ consent involves democracy (and not the kind of BS democracy we see in most countries).

Re: markets profit maximization

2002-07-11 Thread Doug Henwood


Justin Schwartz wrote:

Whar's got into you, Doug, you think I have come around to 
supporting the domiannce of money and that I would deny that it 
narrow the political and cultural sphere?

I'm trying to see how you relate economic organization to politics 
and culture. You write as if markets are simply engineering 
institutions, designed to maximize efficiency, rather than deeply 
political ones.

Doug

RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: markets profit maximization

Title: RE: [PEN-L:27894] Re: Re: Re: Re: markets  profit maximization





Doug writes: Bourdieu's argument that competition promotes not variety but sameness - he applied it to the media, but it works elsewhere too - has no relevance? 

I don't know Bourdieu's argument, but it's pretty clear that competition encourages sameness. For example, today the L.A. TIMES announced that Midnight Special Bookstore, a highly successful leftist bookstore run as a collective, was being driven out of the Santa Monica Promenade (an outside mall) -- because the owner of the building was raising the rent steeply, ending the prior rent-subsidy. (That is, the landlord was reverting to market principles.) The store will likely be much smaller and in a completely different part of town. The LA TIMES also reported that there was only one other store in the entire mall that wasn't part of a national chain (a high-end art store). This is the norm with malls, of course, while shopping malls seem to be the highest stage of the market.

This is merely anectdotal evidence, but take a look at Frank  Cook's THE WINNER-TAKE-ALL SOCIETY. It's a better description of how markets work than those in H*yek or the textbooks. BTW, the authors aren't leftists. 

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: markets profit maximization


At 08:46 AM 7/11/2002 -0700, you wrote:
   I don't know Bourdieu's argument, but it's pretty clear that
competition encourages sameness. 


NY Times, July 11, 2002
With By-the-Numbers Radio, Requests Are a Dying Breed
By LAURA M. HOLSON

LOS ANGELES, July 10  Few executives better reflect the changes in the
music industry these days than Tom Poleman, program director for Z-100
(WHTZ-FM), the top pop radio station in New York City and one of 1,200
stations owned by the conglomerate Clear Channel Communications.

Mr. Poleman rarely plays his favorites. Instead, he spends each day
crunching numbers in his office in Jersey City, reviewing spreadsheets and
computer-generated data chronicling what listeners will want to hear.

The loss of even one rating percentage point, Mr. Poleman said, could cost
his station as much as $10 million a year. I feel the pressure day to
day, he said. There is too much at stake.
 
Long gone are the days when radio programmers simply played pop songs
requested by listeners or bet on a band discovered at a hometown club. As
the world of radio hardens into an industry dominated by three or four
major chains, the use of research is accelerating and has become far more
sophisticated, leading to mounting criticism that the quest for ratings is
homogenizing music radio and making it harder for a different sound to
break through.

Researchers rely mainly on telephone polls, playing eight-second sound
bites from songs, called hooks, to decide what is played. Recording
executives have taken to pretesting songs with listeners, in some cases
rerecording them to meet their critiques.

And a division of Clear Channel, the largest chain of radio stations, has
begun charging record labels as much as $20,000 a song to test unreleased
music on its nationwide network of programmers (information record labels
use to gauge a band's promise), altering what once had been largely
informal discussion about taste among colleagues.

The use of research is having a huge effect on the relationship between
record labels and radio stations. Blockbuster acts benefit. The star rapper
Eminem's Without Me, for instance, has played on radio stations
nationwide more than 125,000 times since it made a debut more than a month
ago, a spectacular amount for that length of time.

You could make the case that doing research is better than some program
director on the take, spinning discs, said Craig Marks, editor of Blender,
a music magazine based in New York. But if a song does not test well it is
dead even before it hits the streets. The coldness of it all is a new
phenomenon. And bands think that is demoralizing.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/11/business/media/11RADI.html

===

WSJ, July 9, 2002

More Local Restaurants Struggle
As Big Chains Eat Their Lunch

By SHIRLEY LEUNG 
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

CHICAGO -- After more than 20 years in the restaurant business, chef David
Schy pursued the dream of many an entrepreneurial American: He opened his
own restaurant.

To make his mark, he whipped up American cuisine, with a twist.
Caribbean-flavored skirt steak. Big salads tossed with crunchy flatbread.
Ketchup blended with jalapenos. Hubbard Street Grill opened eight years ago
to gleaming reviews. Innovative, proclaimed the Zagat Survey. At the
restaurant's peak in 1998, Mr. Schy along with his wife and business
partner, Debbie, took home a tidy profit of roughly $300,000.
 
Then came the chains. In downtown Chicago's trendy River North section,
upscale chain restaurants started popping up within blocks, hemming in
Hubbard Street Grill on all sides. Rock Bottom Restaurant  Brewery. Smith
 Wollensky . Spago. Sullivan's Steakhouse.

Against the interlopers, the 44-year-old Mr. Schy (pronounced: SHY) threw
everything but the kitchen sink. He held prices steady for several years.
He mailed thousands of coupons. He matched rivals' popular menu items -- at
one point devising a Crispy Fried Onion Stack as a rejoinder to a staple
of many of these chains, the deep-fried blooming onion.

But a month ago, with his profit crumbling, Mr. Schy closed down his
200-seat restaurant. We're a dinosaur, he says. It's all going to be
chains.

(clip)



Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org

Re: Re: Re: markets profit maximization




Justin Schwartz wrote:


 
 
 Well, I've been arguing with folks hereabouts. Ia gree that some 
 anonmytity is possible under planning. However there is little under, 
 for example, the Albert-Hahnel and Devine models, both of which require 
 the consumer to justify her choices to the world.


No neither require it. In the Parecon model, justfifying private choices 
was once advocated. But they have pretty much acknowledged that it is 
not a REQUIREMENT of the model, and most advocates of Parecon don't 
support discussion of consumption at the private level. In short, if you 
want to spend your entire allocation on booze and drugs, your choice, 
your consequences. Albert and Hahnel themselves may still favor this 
sort of  nattering, but it is not required by their system.


 Still, it's good to 
 see someone acknowledge that the democractization of choice is not an 
 unqualified good. The best planning model on this dimension is Madel's 
 cleaned up version of the Soviet system, where planning is basically  
 matter of projecting from current demand. There are other problems with 
 the model, such as insensitivity to changes in demand and stifling of 
 innovation, but preserving anonymity isn't one of them.


Like I said I doubt any planning system REQUIRES discussion of personal 
choices, at least it most cases. Advocates of a particular model may 
tack it on, but that is not same thing as making a requiremetn of planning.

 
 

 I do think you give more weight to Hayekian incentive for information 
 gathering and transaction costs than neccesary.

 In terms of incentives, planning can be market like in this respect: A 
 workplace is rated on efficiency based on actual output vs. actual 
 input. (input being measured in money costs of buying the the inputs, 
 output being measured what people willing to pay for what is 
 produced). If efficiency falls below the minimum (say the average for 
 the economy as a whole, or for  the particulars sector) then the 
 workplace is dissolved. Short of this workers have incentives to 
 discover how to do things right because they get feedback as to how 
 close to having this happen they are or how far away. In short, the 
 further from bankruptcy you are the more secure your job is; the close 
 to bankruptcy you are the less secure.
 
 
 That's an interesting thought.


Not new to  you I hope.

 It does create consequences, which  provide incentives, for inefficient behavior. 
Note, though, that the 
 incentivesa re purely negative. There si the threat of bankruptcy, but 
 no promise of profit for doing things better.


I think job security is a pretty strong postive incentive. I note that 
in capitalism, during tough times people may go for years without a 
raise, and work damn hard and well for increased job security.  But what 
cosequences of this provide incentives for inefficient behavior?  We 
don't want the discussion to  deteriorate to tis/tisn't - so when you 
say stuff like this, you need to explicate a bit.


 
 
 
 
 Iterative feedback--like Albert and Hahnel? I think the transactions 
 costs would be horrendous.
 


All iterative feedback? Because markets are a form of iterative feedback 
too.  So non-market iterative feedback automatically has  horrendous 
transaction costs compared to market iterative feedback.

RE: Planning, Market Unemployment

Title: RE: [PEN-L:27898] Planning, Market Unemployment

Michael Hoover writes:
Soviet central planning generally eliminated
long-term secular unemployment and short-term
cyclical unemployment associated with capitalist
business cycles from the 1920 onwards. While
elimination of mass unemployment was, in part,
the result of extensive industrial growth, Soviets
and other 'actually-existing' socialist states
provided job security that was perceived as
positive achievement and cannot be lightly
dismissed nor should it be sacrificed as a valued
goal. (my utopian self prefers a post-work society
but that's for another post). Doing away with
generalized unemployment gave working people
confidence and encouragment to develop abilities
and talents.

Of course, critics asserted that the type of security
existing in these economies, over time, undermined
work discipline and failed to provide incentives for
efficient and diligent work. And some people couldn't
find kind of employment for which they were trained
because of planning errors or geographical preferences
(Soviet's had hard time getting highly skilled folks to
go to frigid climare and barren landscape of Far North).
A bit of frictional unemployment (i.e., people changing
jobs and 'layabouts') also existed.

In the main, however, central planning eliminated
mass chronic unemployment as a social problem.
There was nothing comparable to working-class
districts in capitalist societies where jobless line
sidewalks, hanging out in summer and winter, in
good years and in bad, a constant feature of the
social landscape.

My understanding is that many Soviet workers didn't gain confidence or encouragment to develop abilities and talents. Rather, they spent a lot of time waiting in line to get scarce commodities, often when they were supposed to be working on the job. Also, morale and confidence in the system was very low. (I should mention that a lot of the hidden unemployment -- people pretending to work -- was not due to laziness as much as labor-hoarding by the managers who were responding to the incentives of the planning system.)

Job security was a major achievement (and in some places in Western Europe, too). But it doesn't seem to be sufficient. The economic system has to be built around job security (and the like) in order to produce what consumers want, etc.

I spent some time with Soviet sociologists engaged in this work back then and they were very clear: professional/managerial types were more supportve of 'reforms' than was working class.

this is my impression too (though my evidence is more indirect). There was also a sector of the ruling CP that wanted to convert political power (in a system that wasn't working as well as it had for them in the past) into individual economic power.

Repitition and Market Socialism

2002-07-11 Thread Michael Perelman


I've tried to put an end to the discussion because it seems to be Justin
repeating his arguments for the market socialism.  He tells me that he
believes that they are vital for the left.  I don't see much evidence
that many people here agree with him.

My problem is that I do not see anything new, Justin.  Repetition does
not constitute some sort of proof.  Justin suggests that markets produce
efficiency, novelty, variety, and human satisfaction.  I see markets as
producing waste, sameness, and a stifling of human content.  I have made
my case before.  Others have also.  So have you.

Here's my suggestion for Justin. Let's stipulate that everything you
said so far is true.  Do you have anything to add -- something that you
have not already said?  If not, the discussion is finished.  If you have
something new to add, let's hear it.

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901

RE: Market socialism as a form of utopianism

Title: RE: [PEN-L:27895] Market socialism as a form of utopianism

Utopianism will always play a role in the socialist movement, because people need to have some idea of what they're fighting _for_, not just what they're fighting against. If people don't have some vision of a rational and moral future (which doesn't exist and never has existed and is so ahistorical), they can't have hope. There are people who can embrace socialism without having any hope, but it doesn't seem there's enough of them to form a socialist movement. Sometimes this utopianism shows up as idealized models (as with Owen, Fourier, or Saint-Simon) while other times it shows up in the form of idealizing actually-existing societies (as with the CP's idolization of the USSR during the 1930s).

Despite Marx Engels' critiques of utopian socialism, they learned a lot from the utopians. They did not dismiss them the way latter-day Marxist often did (as a way of deflecting criticism of the USSR, etc.), perhaps because so many working people were utopian in their attitudes.

BTW, there are Marxist utopians, such as William Morris (see his NEWS FROM NOWHERE), who spend a lot of time on how the change came (how the workers fought for socialism and how it became communism).

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

-Original Message-
From: Louis Proyect [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2002 8:08 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:27895] Market socialism as a form of utopianism

Jutsin Shwartz:
Well, I've been arguing with folks hereabouts. Ia gree that
some anonmytity
is possible under planning. However there is little under,
for example, the
Albert-Hahnel and Devine models, both of which require the
consumer to
justify her choices to the world. Still, it's good to see someone
acknowledge that the democractization of choice is not an
unqualified good.
The best planning model on this dimension is Madel's cleaned
up version of
the Soviet system, where planning is basically matter of
projecting from
current demand. There are other problems with the model, such as
insensitivity to changes in demand and stifling of innovation, but
preserving anonymity isn't one of them.

Ernest Mandel never thought in terms of models. This, of
course, is as it
should be. He was a Marxist, not a utopian socialist.
Although most people
associate utopian socialism with the generally benign
experiments of the
19th century (one of which was dramatized in Nathaniel
Hawthorne's The
Blithedale Romance), it is less about concrete projects than
it is about a
way of thinking.

For Marx and Engels, the three main features of utopian thought were:

1) Ahistoricism: The utopian socialists did not see the class
struggle as
the locomotive of history. While they saw socialism as being
preferable to
capitalism, they neither understood the historical contradictions that
would undermine it in the long run, nor the historical agency that was
capable of resolving these contradictions: the working-class.

2) Moralism: What counts for the utopian socialists is the
moral example of
their program. If there is no historical agency such as the
working-class
to fulfill the role of abolishing class society, then it is
up to the moral
power of the utopian scheme to persuade humanity for the need
for change.

3) Rationalism: The utopian scheme must not only be morally
uplifting, it
must also make sense. The best utopian socialist projects
would be those
that stood up to relentless logical analysis.

As Engels said in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

To all these socialism is the expression of absolute truth,
reason and
justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the
world by virtue
of its own power. And as absolute truth is independent of
time, space, and
of the historical development of man, it is a mere accident
when and where
it is discovered.

All of these themes are present to one degree or another in
the projects of
market socialists like John Roemer or their new left rivals Albert and
Hahnel.

At first blush, John Roemer seems an unlikely utopian since
he couches his
schema in hard-headed microeconomics. In Market Socialism, a
Blueprint:
How Such an Economy Might Work, he says that it is possible to use
markets to allocate resources in an economy where firms are
not privately
owned by investors who trade stock in them with the purpose
of maximizing
their gain, and that the government can intervene in such an
economy to
influence the level and composition of investment should the
people wish to
do so.

This doesn't sound particularly 'visionary', does it? What is
particularly
utopian about the schemas of Schweickart, Roemer et al is not
that they
have the redemptive and egalitarian power of Saint-Simon or
Robert Owens,
but that it is based on an ahistorical

RE: Re: the state and democracy

Title: RE: [PEN-L:27890] Re: the state and democracy





SAN FRANCISCO (July 9, 2002 2:38 p.m. EDT) - According to a recent newspaper story, a person will soon be able to spend his whole life in the Rev. Jerry Falwell's planned Christian community in Lynchburg, Va. Think of it as eternity right here on earth. 

You'll never have to leave this place, Falwell told a reporter whom he gave a tour of the building site. You can come in at age 2, in our early learning center ... age 5, into our kindergarten, age 6-18 in our elementary and high school. Then on to Liberty University for four years. 

--


it will _seem_ like an eternity.
JD

Re: Re: the state and democracy




Justin Schwartz wrote:

 
 

 people should realize that Arrow's theory is a critique of _all_ 
 collective
 decision-making mechanisms, not just democracy. It also applies to 
 markets.
 Can you think of a method of collective choice that isn't subject to the
 theorem?
 
 
 Um, how so? The theorem says you can't have: nondictatorship, 
 independence of irrelevant alternatives, independence of order of 
 choice, and, dammit, one other thing I can't recall, all together. It's 
 a theorem in voting theory. These things are irrelevant to markets. Of 
 course a market with dictatorship (a monopoly) is distorted, but the 
 independence conditions simply don't matter to formulating a market model.




 * Universality. The voting method should provide a complete 
ranking of all alternatives from any set of individual preference ballots.
 * Monotonicity criterion. If one set of preference ballots 
preference ballots would lead to an an overall ranking of alternative X 
above alternative Y and if some preference ballots are changed in such a 
way that the only alternative that has a higher ranking on any 
preference ballots is X, then the method should still rank X above Y.
 * Criterion of independence of irrelevant alternatives. If one set 
of preference ballots would lead to an an overall ranking of alternative 
X above alternative Y and if some preference ballots are changed without 
changing the relative rank of X and Y, then the method should still rank 
X above Y.
 * Citizen Sovereignty. Every possible ranking of alternatives can 
be achieved from some set of individual preference ballots.
 * Non-dictatorship. There should not be one specific voter whose 
preference ballot is always adopted

Note that voting in this context is simply a means of aggreating 
individual preference into social choice. A market in which everyone 
has the same number of dollars would be a democratic vote by this 
criteria - one in which multiple choices are made by multiple voters.

Note also that uneven distribution of money , short of severe monopoly 
does not resove the paradox, any more than uneven distribution of voting 
powers (where some people were allowed to vote multiple times) would 
resolve the paradox in any other election - short of dictatorship.

markets profit maximization




 Still, it's good to see someone acknowledge that the democractization of
choice is not an unqualified good... 

Democratization of choice is not an unqualified good, as I've said again
and again: it's a necessity, given the interdependence of human life (or
what economists call externalities). As I said to Ian, subordination --
including democratic subordination -- may be a public bad, but it has its
potential benefits, such as protecting the natural environment. This is NOT
saying that democratization of choice is an unqualified good. Is there
anyone who thinks that it is? Justin, can you quote anyone who says that
democracy is an unqualified good? or is that just a strawdog?

So, is it your view that attaining these benefits require that we must 
justify all of our choices to everyone. That we abandon privacy? Surely that 
is not the choice.

Democracy has its place. It also has its limits. The major investment 
decsions and major decisions about workplace life should be democratic.



It's important to realize that democracy is a basic political principle,
that which says that rule by the dictators, the capitalists, the 
economists,
the lawyers, and other minorities do not have a legitimate claim to power
over the majority.

Well, authority has a legfitimate claim to power, if democratically 
constrained.

They can only rule with the consent of the governed,
while _real_ consent involves democracy (and not the kind of BS democracy 
we
see in most countries).


I wouldn't preseume to guess what real consent is.a part from voting for 
candidates and initiatives in reasonably fair and free elections. I think 
theconsent that exists is real enough, it's just that the alternatives to 
which people consent are improper5ly constrained.

jks


_
Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com

Re: Cuba Elections for delegates to the island's Parliament

2002-07-11 Thread Joseph Green


 How to turn an election into an exercise in mindlessness 

  Let's look at the the upcoming Cuban elections. I am relying on the information 
about the elections given in a recent adoring post about them [PEN-L 27886], which in 
turn utilizes statements by other supporters of these elections.

   1. No one is allowed to campaign. As the post says:

 Observers point out that the Cuban electoral process has no problem
 with campaign financing, because candidates cannot spend money or
 campaign for a political office. Delegates to the Cuban Parliament
 receive no salary for service to their country.

2.  The only information you get about the candidates is a photo and a brief 
biography that they post, which may include whether they are single or married, how 
many children they have, and how much volunteer work they have done for the 
regime. 

 Candidates are nominated in their work places and neighborhoods, with
 their photos and short biographical sketches posted; under Cuban law,
 no other political campaigning or advertising is allowed.

  An example of such a biography is:

 The biography of Jesús Pastor Garcia Brigos tells the voters that he was
 born in Havana in 1961 from a working-class background, and that as a
 husband and father to two girls he works as a researcher with the Institute
 Of Philosophy at the CITMA (Ministry of Science, Technology and the
 Environment) after having completed his doctorate in Philosophy. He is a
 member of the Comité de Defensa de la Revolución, the Central de
 Trabajadores de Cuba, Civil Defense and the Territorial Militia. His
 biography reveals him as a person active since 1969, first in the youth
 movement in the late 1960s to later on being secretary of his union local
 at the place of work in the 1980s, as well as carrying out voluntary work
 such as contributing to build the Pan American Olympic site. In addition to
 being elected as delegate to the Municipal Assembly of Plaza de la
 Revolución since 1986, as well having been elected in the past to the
 Provincial Assembly of Ciudad de la Habana, most of his current work has
 been dedicated to writing and speaking nationally and internationally on
 the development and improvement of democracy in Cuba and especially the two
 distinct themes of governing and the electoral process.

 3. From all this, it is clear that not only can't a candidate campaign directly 
for a 
vote, but the candidate is not allowed to campaign on any issue whatsoever.

In short, these are elections without a choice, an exercise in mindlessness. If 
the 
elections are carried out as planned, one casts a ballot, but the election is fixed. 
Only 
insofar as the population violates the elections rules, do these elections have any 
meaning whatsoever.

But hey, the candidates do post photos.  What else could you possibly want to know 
about them? I presume that some aspiring candidates may even include big snapshots 
that show their spouses and children, thus presumably providing the electorate with a 
truly ample basis of choice. But the candidates aren't to discuss their views on 
either 
world problems or the situation in Cuba. Those matters are left to the people who 
really decide matters in Cuba.

This is not socialism, which requires that the working masses control the economy 
and politics of the country. The blockade of Cuba is a brutal act of U.S. imperialism 
which is justly condemned around the world, but it hurts the struggle against U.S. 
imperialism, and it hurts the struggle to encourage the development everywhere of 
independent working class action, to present the Castro regime as a model of 
democracy and socialism.

   --Joseph Green
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Repitition and Market Socialism

Sugn me off, Michael, I don't care to be part of your list under these 
conditions. jks

From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:27905] Repitition and Market Socialism
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 09:22:13 -0700

I've tried to put an end to the discussion because it seems to be Justin
repeating his arguments for the market socialism.  He tells me that he
believes that they are vital for the left.  I don't see much evidence
that many people here agree with him.

My problem is that I do not see anything new, Justin.  Repetition does
not constitute some sort of proof.  Justin suggests that markets produce
efficiency, novelty, variety, and human satisfaction.  I see markets as
producing waste, sameness, and a stifling of human content.  I have made
my case before.  Others have also.  So have you.

Here's my suggestion for Justin. Let's stipulate that everything you
said so far is true.  Do you have anything to add -- something that you
have not already said?  If not, the discussion is finished.  If you have
something new to add, let's hear it.

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901

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Re: RE: Market socialism as a form of utopianism


From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Utopianism will always play a role in the socialist movement, because 
people
need to have some idea of what they're fighting _for_, not just what 
they're
fighting against.

Absolutely.  And if the devil can quote scripture to suit his purpose, I too 
as a devotely irreligious person can cite the bible's memorable comment on 
this topic:  Where there is no vision, the people perish. (Proverbs 29:18) 
  Utopian visions can catalyze thought and action.  They are not to be 
sneered at.

Carl

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RE: markets profit maximization

Title: RE: [PEN-L:27910] markets profit maximization

Justin said:Still, it's good to see someone acknowledge that the democractization of choice is not an unqualified good...

I said: Democratization of choice is not an unqualified good, as I've said again and again: it's a necessity, given the interdependence of human life (or what economists call externalities). As I said to Ian, subordination -- including democratic subordination -- may be a public bad, but it has its potential benefits, such as protecting the natural environment. This is NOT saying that democratization of choice is an unqualified good. Is there anyone who thinks that it is? Justin, can you quote anyone who says that democracy is an unqualified good? or is that just a strawdog?

Justin writes: So, is it your view that attaining these benefits require that we must justify all of our choices to everyone. That we abandon privacy? Surely that is not the choice.

How can you interpret what I said above -- or have ever said -- as saying that we must justify our choices to everyone? Have you ever heard of secret ballots?

How can you interpret what I said above -- or have ever said -- that we should abandon privacy? Didn't you read what I said about democracy involving not only majority rule but minority rights? Minority rights clearly can and will involve a degree of privacy. (Note that absolute privacy is impossible.) In any event, it's wrong to talk about abandoning privacy, since a lot of our privacy has _already_ been violated by the government, the insurance companies, the credit bureau, the telemarketers, the banks, and a host of others.

Is your misinterpretation or misrepresentation of my opinions a matter of either/or thinking? either someone with you (and H*yek) in favor of truth, freedom, efficiency, innovation, etc., or is against you, in favor of Stalin, against privacy, choice, etc.?

Democracy has its place. It also has its limits. The major investment decsions and major decisions about workplace life should be democratic.

If that's what people decide to do as a collective and democratic polity. I can't impose my opinions on others.

Well, authority has a legfitimate claim to power, if democratically constrained.

isn't that what I said?

RE: Re: the state and democracy

Title: RE: [PEN-L:27889] Re: the state and democracy

Gar gave a good summary of Arrow's possibility theorem (which cannot be reduced to Condorcet's voter paradox and doesn't just apply to voting as defined narrowly). In addition, here's a short summary of its implications (from http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A520372):

Does this mean that democracy is doomed and we should resign ourselves to anarchy or government by a tyrant? Well, not necessarily. Many democratic theorists think that this result is not as important as it seems at first. They have criticised it on, amongst others, the grounds that the social welfare function doesn't have to give a result whatever the preference relations of the citizens are. They argue that it is very unlikely that any society would be so diverse that any conceivable set of preference relations was possible. [That is, the distribution of preferences may be single-peaked, so that the Condorcet voter paradox doesn't apply.] Moreover, it does not mean that we cannot do better than the current system, only that we can never get a perfect one. Many argue, for example, that the proportional representation method of voting (used in some countries in Europe) leads to a considerably more representative government than the first past the post system used in the US and the UK. Although a discussion of these is beyond the scope of this entry, the interested reader might enjoy The Proportional Representation Library which contains lots of discussion of this method of voting.

It is also useful to remember the contribution of Sen (from http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/sen.htm):

the problem Sen identified through his research is the common assumption in welfare economics of incomparable interpersonal utilities. His famous 1970 treatise, Collective Choice and Social Welfare, finds that this is indeed the keystone in the famous Arrow Impossibility Theorem. Without it, Sen argued, the theorem can fall; with it, the theorem is vacuous.

To my mind, not only are preferences interpersonally comparable, but they are also endogenous, reflecting the society individuals live in. A class society seems to encourage preference distributions to not be single-peaked. A democratic society without class divisions, on the other hand, encourages single-peaked preference distribution. (I'll leave that at the level of assertion for now.)

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

-Original Message-
From: Justin Schwartz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2002 7:28 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:27889] Re: the state and democracy

people should realize that Arrow's theory is a critique of
_all_ collective
decision-making mechanisms, not just democracy. It also
applies to markets.
Can you think of a method of collective choice that isn't
subject to the
theorem?

Um, how so? The theorem says you can't have: nondictatorship,
independence
of irrelevant alternatives, independence of order of choice,
and, dammit,
one other thing I can't recall, all together. It's a theorem
in voting
theory. These things are irrelevant to markets. Of course a
market with
dictatorship (a monopoly) is distorted, but the independence
conditions
simply don't matter to formulating a market model.

jks

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Goodbye (Was: the state and democracy)



I'm sorry Jim, Michael says I may not talk about this stuff any more.  He 
just wants to hear about the current crisis. At least from me, because 
unlike everyone else here I merely repeat myself and have nothing new to say 
about matrkets, planning, democracy, ethics, or most of things that I know 
something about (aside from law). So, having nothing new or old to say about 
the current crisis, I have asked him ro sign me off, but he hasn't done it 
yet.

From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:27915] RE: Re: the state and democracy
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 10:04:59 -0700
 




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Re: Re: RE: Market socialism as a form of utopianism


From: Carl Remick [EMAIL PROTECTED]

I too as a devotely irreligious person can cite the bible ...

Er, make that devoutly. Normally I don't follow up on spelling errors, but 
since Louis Proyect seems to be setting a new, higher standard on this 
score, I figured I should be punctilious in this instance :)

Carl


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Re: Re: RE: Market socialism as a form of utopianism


Absolutely.  And if the devil can quote scripture to suit his purpose, I too 
as a devotely irreligious person can cite the bible's memorable comment on 
this topic:  Where there is no vision, the people perish. (Proverbs 29:18) 
  Utopian visions can catalyze thought and action.  They are not to be 
sneered at.

Carl

This doesn't quite address my concerns. When William Morris wrote something
like this, he was using his literary imagination:

But on the Monday in question the Committee of Public Safety, on the one
hand afraid of general unorganised pillage, and on the other emboldened by
the wavering conduct of the authorities, sent a deputation provided with
carts and all necessary gear to clear out two or three big provision stores
in the centre of town, leaving papers with the shop managers promising to
pay the price of them: and also in the part of the town where they were
strongest they took possession of several bakers' shops and set men at work
in them for the benefit of the people; - all of which was done with little
or no disturbance, the police assisting in keeping order at the sack of the
stores, as they would have done at a big fire. 

With Hahnel-Albert's Looking Forward, you are not dealing with imaginary
political landscapes, you are dealing with blueprints for a future society:

One tool for eliminating workplace hierarchy is workers' councils of all
relevant workers. Small councils deal with immediate problems confronting
small work groups. Larger councils make decisions for work teams
encompassing a network of work groups, for example, in a wing or on a
floor. Still larger councils make decisions for a division, a complex of
divisions, or a plant, and federations of councils make decisions for an
industry. Every council and federation principally concerns itself with
affairs at its own level while contributing to decisions at higher levels
in proportion to how they are affected. Some decisions require a majority
of all members. Others, where the change has more drastic implications, may
require two-thirds. Nothing requires that every decision must await every
council's or worker's input. Personnel decisions are made only by people
directly concerned. Decisions about breaks that affect a whole floor would
be made by all involved on that floor. Plant decisions would be made by
plant councils.

In the first instance, with Morris, you are dealing with a genre of
literature, namely the utopian novel. There are other examples, from More's
Utopian to Samuel Butler's Erewhon. In the case of Hahnel-Albert, you
are confronted with *utopianism*, a form of political advocacy that seeks
ideal solutions to problems that had historical origins. In all of the
various writings of Hahnel and Albert, you find almost no understanding of
why the Soviet economy failed. Without such an understanding, nostrums like
Looking Forward are useless. If the entire Bolshevik Party had voted in
favor of Looking Forward in 1921, that would have had zero impact on the
subsequent evolution of Soviet society. It imploded because of civil war
and the failure of socialist revolutions in the west.

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org

FW: Who Wants This War?

Title: FW: Who Wants This War?

on the issue of war and peace, the United States is no longer a democracy.

from SLATE, by Michael Kinsley:

It was amazing to read the Pentagon's detailed plans for an invasion of Iraq in the New York Times last week. The general reaction of Americans to this news was even more amazing: Basically, there was no reaction. We seem to be distant observers of our own nation's preparation for war, watching with horror or approval or indifference a process we have nothing to do with and cannot affect. Which is just about the case.

Who really wants this war? Polls show that a modest and shrinking majority of Americans will choose military action to remove Saddam Hussein when someone holding a clipboard confronts them with a list of options. But does anything like a majority of the citizenry hold this view with the informed intensity that a decision for war deserves? I doubt it. And how many of that pro-military action majority imagine that it will be nearly blood-free on our side, based on the experience of the Gulf War, which turned out that way precisely because President Bush's father decided not to try to topple Saddam?

Abroad, nearly all of America's major allies are against it. The Arab states surely dream about being rid of Saddam Hussein. But they won't give public support or permission to use their land and airspace, which is not too much to ask if we're going to save them from a threat as great as Saddam is said to be. Even the Kurdish opposition within Iraq apparently thinks that being liberated by Superpower America, while nice, would be more trouble than it's worth. That's trouble to them, not to us!

Ask around at work, or among your family: Is anyone truly gung-ho? It seems as if true enthusiasm for all-out war against Iraq is limited to the Bush administration and a subset of the Washington policy establishment. The Democratic leadership in Congress feigns enthusiasm, which amounts to the same thing in terms of responsibility for the consequences. You are what you pretend to be. The Democrats feign out of fear of seeming weak-kneed. Bush's enthusiasm seems genuine and is therefore more mysterious. Crude Oedipal theories (triumphing where Dad failed) are tempting, but not as plausible as the simple possibility that he sincerely believes Saddam poses a danger big enough to justify risking massive bloodshed and his own political ruin. And maybe he's right.

Or Bush may be bluffing. At his press conference Tuesday, he blamed the leak of those war plans on somebody down there at level five flexing some 'know-how' muscle. He may be right about that, too-depending on what on earth he means. Or he may be lying, and the leak may be part of an official strategy of threatening all-out war in the hope of avoiding it, by encouraging a coup or persuading Saddam to take early retirement or in some other way getting him gone without a massive invasion.

Trouble is, it is-or ought to be-very hard for a democracy to make a credible threat that it isn't prepared to carry out. You can't have a vigorous public debate over whether it's worth going to war that reaches the conclusion: Let's pretend we're willing to go to war if necessary and see what happens. But on the issue of war and peace, the United States is no longer a democracy.

The eerie non-debate we're having as vast preparations for battle are made before our eyes is a consequence of a long-running constitutional scandal: the withering away of the requirement of a congressional Declaration of War. Oh, the words are still there, of course, but presidents of both parties flagrantly ignore them-sometimes with fancy arguments that are remarkably unpersuasive, but mainly by now with shrugging indifference. The result is not just a power shift between the branches of government but a general smothering of debate about, or even interest in, the decision to go to war among citizens in general.

It's often said that modern warfare has no place for an 18th century conceit like the declaration of war. (This is said, in fact, by people who usually insist quite strongly that the original intent of the constitution's framers requires no concessions to modernity.) But despite the modern issues of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, there is an old-fashioned quality to our confrontation with Iraq. It is about an imperial power demanding acquiescence from a rogue state. That doesn't make the United States the bad guy. It does mean that events are proceeding in a deliberate, slow-motion way that leaves plenty of time for citizens to debate and decide-if that's the way we want to do it.

Re: Repitition and Market Socialism

2002-07-11 Thread christian11


Here's my suggestion for Justin. Let's stipulate that everything you said so
far is true.  Do you have anything to add -- something that you
have not already said?  If not, the discussion is finished.  If you have
something new to add, let's hear it.

This is pathetic, Michael. Having been on this list for a few years, I can
only think of a few instances in which people have really moved conversations
along, on this standard. Besides, so what if debates don't generate anything
new for you? Isn't possible that people _learn_ through repetition? The
members of this list have talked almost incessantly about the current crisis
or whatever for at least the last 4 years, and yet you can never seem to get
enough of that. My point is not that this isn't worthwhile--just the opposite.
But it's true for Justin, too. If people weren't really interested, they just
wouldn't bother. Give the list some credit.

Christian

RE: Re: Repitition and Market Socialism

Title: RE: [PEN-L:27920] Re: Repitition and Market Socialism

I agree with Christian. I do not see any reason to restrict Justin's contributions, except to encourage him to be more accurate in representing the opinions of others. I think the main job of the moderator is not to restrict the content of discussion but the tone (avoiding flame-wars and the like).

[BTW, I'm off pen-l until Saturday. I have posted too much for not only the patience of the list, but for my own good.]

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2002 10:52 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:27920] Re: Repitition and Market Socialism

Here's my suggestion for Justin. Let's stipulate that
everything you said so
far is true. Do you have anything to add -- something that you
have not already said? If not, the discussion is finished.
If you have
something new to add, let's hear it.

This is pathetic, Michael. Having been on this list for a few
years, I can
only think of a few instances in which people have really
moved conversations
along, on this standard. Besides, so what if debates don't
generate anything
new for you? Isn't possible that people _learn_ through
repetition? The
members of this list have talked almost incessantly about
the current crisis
or whatever for at least the last 4 years, and yet you can
never seem to get
enough of that. My point is not that this isn't
worthwhile--just the opposite.
But it's true for Justin, too. If people weren't really
interested, they just
wouldn't bother. Give the list some credit.

Christian

Re: Re: RE: Re: potlatches


At 11:51 AM 07/11/2002 +1000, Thiago wrote:
The idea is that whilst the commodity form alienates the worker from the his/
her labour  - his/her labour confronts him/her as something non-human,
objective - precisely the opposite happens with a gift. In a gift economy
objects are anthropomorphized. So, for instance, in a the Trobriand 
Islanders'
Kula, the gifts are given names, and each is treated as a personality, with a
history and disposition which has to be taken into consideration in 
exchanges.
The shells in a sense retain the person who gave them. Thus, in gift 
exchanges,
unlike commodity exchanges, strong social bonds are created - the gift is not
alienated from the giver, rather it binds the recipient into a social 
relation.
If I buy an apple at the store, I don't eat part of my shopkeeper, but 
that is
precisely the sort of metaphor which occurs in Papua New Guinean feasts.

The notion of gifts transmitting the soul of their giver is not an abstract 
extrapolation of social theory, but for me, a lived reality. For example, 
my best friend and I have routinely exchanged gifts of hand-made clothes, 
sweaters, jam, etc. for the last twenty-five years. What I notice about the 
gift giving is that 1) nobody cares if we're even (there's the underlying 
sense that as there is mutual good will...all will even out in the end. 2) 
The clothing/sweaters tend to last forever because they are part of the 
friendship and so they are never deemed interchangeable with anything else 
nor dispensable 3) wearing them furnishes not only the material warmth of 
the wool/cotton/etc of which they are made, but also the emotional warmth 
of being held in your friend's arms...of being cared for and protected. 
Obviously, a gift-based economy, creating a sense of objects as nodes in a 
nexus of mutual caretaking, would be much more stable than a 
commodity-based economy whose main character is to destroy/conceal the 
social/human relations between commodity producers.

Before everyone scoffs at the obvious impracticality of extending domestic 
exchanges to the larger arena of economic lifehow do you exchange a 
carburator?...a septic system...etc.,  consider the possibility of a 
culture that reinforces the idea of the creation and use of objects as an 
ongoing exchange with nature and with organized/productive society -- as 
mutual gift giving. Consider how much more stable and environmentally 
supportive the gift exchange metaphor might prove to be compared to the 
blighted and blighting commodity.

Joanna

Re: Re: market socialism. finis.


At 03:35 AM 07/11/2002 +, Justin wrote:
I have not participated in this discussion. But I violently object to 
Michael shutting down a discussion of a topic that a great many people on 
the list are interested in, but that he, for some reason, has an allergy 
too. There are a zillion topics that we beat to death. This one gets 
Michael's goat. I don't know why. I think the usual rule should apply: if 
you aren't interested, Michael, don't participate. If there are fair 
number of people on the list who want to talk about something,a re are 
doing so in a reasonbaly civil manner, let them do it. You don't see it 
getting anywhere new? That's because you have made up your mind. You just 
want various shades of denunciations of the evils of markets. That's find, 
denounce away if you like. But lets others defend.


Well, yeah, if everyone is interested in continuing this discussion, fine. 
I have not gotten much from it myself. The problem for me is that the 
discussion has remained extremely abstract and has not done much other than 
reinforce the prejudices people had when they started the discussion.

People have simply taken the nebulous concept of market -- like a 
Platonic form; they have not distinguished what the differences might be 
between a market under capitalism vs what how it might function under 
democractic socialism; they have not talked about whether the market should 
be the locus of exchange for all labor and the products of labor, or 
whether it needs to be limited,  nor have they explained (to my 
satisfaction) how they invisible hand of the market is an agent 
preferrable to human intelligence and the process of consensus building.

So, if we're going to have a discussion, it would be really nice if people 
addressed some of these issues.

Joanna

Re: Re: Re: RE: Market socialism as a form of utopianism


From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED]

In the first instance, with Morris, you are dealing with a genre of
literature, namely the utopian novel. ... In the case of Hahnel-Albert, you
are confronted with *utopianism*, a form of political advocacy that seeks
ideal solutions to problems that had historical origins.

Ralph Waldo Emerson much agreed with you.  In criticizing the utopianism of 
Charles Fourier, he said in part:  Our feeling was, that Fourier had 
skipped no fact but one, namely, Life. He treats man as a plastic thing, 
something that may be put up or down, ripened or retarded, moulded, 
polished, made into solid, or fluid, or gas, at the will of the leader; or, 
perhaps, as a vegetable, from which, though now a poor crab, a very good 
peach can by manure and exposure be in time produced, but skips the faculty 
of life, which spawns and scorns system and system-makers, which eludes all 
conditions, which makes or supplants a thousand phalanxes and New-Harmonies 
with each pulsation.

Carl


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Re: Re: Re: market socialism. finis.


 
 
 
 Well, yeah, if everyone is interested in continuing this discussion, 
 fine. I have not gotten much from it myself. The problem for me is that 
 the discussion has remained extremely abstract and has not done much 
 other than reinforce the prejudices people had when they started the 
 discussion.
 
 People have simply taken the nebulous concept of market -- like a 
 Platonic form; they have not distinguished what the differences might be 
 between a market under capitalism vs what how it might function under 
 democractic socialism; they have not talked about whether the market 
 should be the locus of exchange for all labor and the products of labor, 
 or whether it needs to be limited,  nor have they explained (to my 
 satisfaction) how they invisible hand of the market is an agent 
 preferrable to human intelligence and the process of consensus building.
 
 So, if we're going to have a discussion, it would be really nice if 
 people addressed some of these issues.
 
 Joanna
 
 

grin I just joined the discussion. If it continues we will.

Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Market socialism as a form of utopianism


I don't think it is ahistorical to deal with the limits of the 
possible. Most utopian socialists today are activists. And in fact, I 
doubt that in the immediate issues, what we are fighting for today 
Albert and Hahel, Justin, and Michael Perlman would find much to 
disagree about. But if you want to win m ore than immediate reform, 
knowing where you want to go is part of knowing what to do.

Besides, regardless on what you blame the failures on , actually 
existing socialisms have been pretty miserable places to live - not 
only in material  goods but in terms of freedom. Workers are not stupid. 
If you ever want workers to support socialism in the future, you are 
going to have to give examples of how it can work better than it has in 
the past.

Carl Remick wrote:

 From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 In the first instance, with Morris, you are dealing with a genre of
 literature, namely the utopian novel. ... In the case of 
 Hahnel-Albert, you
 are confronted with *utopianism*, a form of political advocacy that seeks
 ideal solutions to problems that had historical origins.
 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson much agreed with you.  In criticizing the utopianism 
 of Charles Fourier, he said in part:  Our feeling was, that Fourier had 
 skipped no fact but one, namely, Life. He treats man as a plastic thing, 
 something that may be put up or down, ripened or retarded, moulded, 
 polished, made into solid, or fluid, or gas, at the will of the leader; 
 or, perhaps, as a vegetable, from which, though now a poor crab, a very 
 good peach can by manure and exposure be in time produced, but skips the 
 faculty of life, which spawns and scorns system and system-makers, which 
 eludes all conditions, which makes or supplants a thousand phalanxes and 
 New-Harmonies with each pulsation.
 
 Carl
 
 
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exogeneous/endogenous accumulation

2002-07-11 Thread Nancybrumback

Re: the imperialism discussion of a few days ago, i was wondering if the list had any comments about my question about the lenin-luxemburg disagreement about the nature of imperialism. I recently studied up on this disagreement. as far as i could make out, while lenin believes that imperialism is the "highest stage" of capitalism," luxemburg believes that imperialism is innate in capitalism because accumulation of capital is impossible without inputs from non-capitalist sources.

She did point out that Marx considered his political economy to be taking place in a "closed system," and i looked up her reference which i can't put my fingers on just this instant but will look it up if anyone wants it. i thought it made a lot of sense from just considering the definition of capitalist exploitation -- being paid less than your labor is worth. She did point out that Marx considered his political economy to be taking place in a "closed system," and i looked up her reference which i can't put my fingers on just this instant but will look it up if anyone wants it.

In a closed system, the same people who work for the capitalists also buy the wares of the capitalists in order to live. If the workers are consistently paid less than their labor is worth, doesn't it follow that over time, their buying power will consistently decrease? Until the capitalists must break out of the closed system to keep from being killed by the shrinkage of their markets?

thanks a lot,

nancy brumback
professor of integrated ecological studies
new college of ca
766 valencia st
san francisco, ca 94110

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Market socialism as a form of utopianism


Gar wrote:
I don't think it is ahistorical to deal with the limits of the 
possible. Most utopian socialists today are activists. 

I am sorry, Gar. This is not a question of activist credibility. This is
not why I object to Looking Forward. It is about how socialism can be
achieved. I believe that it miseducates people to write elaborate models.
Marxists focus on strategies for revolution, not how future
post-revolutionary societies will function.

Besides, regardless on what you blame the failures on , actually 
existing socialisms have been pretty miserable places to live - not 
only in material  goods but in terms of freedom. Workers are not stupid. 
If you ever want workers to support socialism in the future, you are 
going to have to give examples of how it can work better than it has in 
the past.

I disagree. There will never be a revolution in a country like the USA
until the material conditions have worsened to an extent not experienced in
our lifetime. When that time arrives--as I am sure it will--people will
care less about what took place in the USSR. We are looking at corporate
malfeasance and declining stock markets, a combination that even Bush says
might lead to questioning of the capitalist system. We are also faced with
the prospects of a cataclysmic war with Iraq. In face of objective
conditions that are only likely to worsen in the next ten years or so, it
would be a diversion from our tasks as socialists to concoct castles in the
air. People will not want assurances how the system of the future will
work, they will want leadership to get the boot of capital off their necks.
Hate to sound apocalyptic, but that's the way I see it.

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org

Re: Re: Market socialism as a form of utopianism



 
 I am sorry, Gar. This is not a question of activist credibility. This is
 not why I object to Looking Forward. It is about how socialism can be
 achieved. I believe that it miseducates people to write elaborate models.
 Marxists focus on strategies for revolution, not how future
 post-revolutionary societies will function.


If it is the only thing maybe. But as part of a broader program of 
activism, how does it miseducate?


 
 
Besides, regardless on what you blame the failures on , actually 
existing socialisms have been pretty miserable places to live - not 
only in material  goods but in terms of freedom. Workers are not stupid. 
If you ever want workers to support socialism in the future, you are 
going to have to give examples of how it can work better than it has in 
the past.

 
 I disagree. There will never be a revolution in a country like the USA
 until the material conditions have worsened to an extent not experienced in
 our lifetime. When that time arrives--as I am sure it will--people will
 care less about what took place in the USSR. We are looking at corporate
 malfeasance and declining stock markets, a combination that even Bush says
 might lead to questioning of the capitalist system. We are also faced with
 the prospects of a cataclysmic war with Iraq. In face of objective
 conditions that are only likely to worsen in the next ten years or so, it
 would be a diversion from our tasks as socialists to concoct castles in the
 air. People will not want assurances how the system of the future will
 work, they will want leadership to get the boot of capital off their necks.
 Hate to sound apocalyptic, but that's the way I see it.
 



The worse the better eh? Both from personal experience, and from my 
reading of history people are mostly likely to engage in either radical 
or revolutionary activity when they have hope - when they believe things 
can be better. I think you can find more examples of revolution during 
times of hope than during times of despair...

Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Market socialism as a form of utopianism


From: Carl Remick [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Ralph Waldo Emerson, ... criticizing the utopianism of Charles Fourier, 
said in part ...

Michael Perelman asked offlist about the source of that quote.  It's from 
Emerson's essay Fourierism and the Socialists -- text at 
http://www.xmission.com/~seldom74/emerson/fourier.html

Carl



_
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com

Re: Re: Re: Market socialism as a form of utopianism


Gar:
If it is the only thing maybe. But as part of a broader program of 
activism, how does it miseducate?

It tries to makes a connection between our ideas and what happened in
history. Against the managerialism of Lenin, Albert-Hahnel propose
participatory economics. Russia did not end up with a bureaucratic
monstrosity because of things in Lenin's brain, but because the civil war
of 1918-1920 led to death of most of the people who actually made the
revolution. Their place was taken by pie-cards and time-servers. This was
not a function of ideology, but history.

The worse the better eh? Both from personal experience, and from my 
reading of history people are mostly likely to engage in either radical 
or revolutionary activity when they have hope - when they believe things 
can be better. 

Well, our experience must be different. During the most explosive growth of
the revolutionary movement in this country, from the Debs era, to the
building of the CIO in the 1930s, to the 1960s antiwar, black and student
movement, there was very little model building. I expect this will be the
case during the next radicalization.

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org

The market as a preference aggregator?

2002-07-11 Thread Gil Skillman


I agree with Justin that it's a bit of a stretch to think of the market 
as a mechanism for aggregating individual preferences into a social 
preference ordering.  It's more appropriate to think of the market as a 
mechanism of social *choice*, i.e. as something that selects *particular* 
outcomes given particular initial conditions (including individual 
preferences), rather than something that yields a social preference 
ranking based on individual preferences.  The difference, plainly put, is 
that social preference orderings have to be combined with social constraint 
sets--the set of what's socially feasible at any given historical 
moment--in order to yield actual outcomes. To treat the market as a social 
preference ordering, for example, you'd have to read social preference 
from a given pairwise comparison as society prefers the allocation that 
constitutes a market equilibrium over the one that doesn't, and if they 
both constitute market equilibria, society is indifferent.  Not clear that 
that makes any sense.

But supposing that the market is understood as a social preference 
aggregator, then I agree with Gar that Arrow's theorem would apply.  I 
understand Arrow's impossibility theorem a little differently, though--as I 
read it, it states that there is no coherent (i.e., complete and 
transitive) social preference ordering over choice sets with at least three 
alternatives that simultaneously satisfies

(U)  Universal domain:  any possible array of (coherent) individual 
preference orderings is permissible;

(P)  Pareto principle:  if all individuals (weakly) prefer any some 
allocation A over some other allocation B, then the social ordering will 
also reflect this (weak) preference;

(I)  Independence of irrelevant alternatives:  the social ranking of any 
two feasible allocations does not depend on what other allocations are 
included in the choice set;

(N)  Nondictatorship:  the social ordering will not simply reflect the 
preferences of any single individual.

The most obvious way in which the market mechanism, understood in the above 
sense, would fail as a social welfare function is with respect to (U) , 
since it will not generally be true that for any two allocations, at least 
one will constitute a market equilibrium (however that might be 
defined--perfectly competitive or otherwise, e.g.).  Fulfillment of 
condition (I) is also problematic given the possibility of income effects 
on individual choices.

On the whole, it's probably more accurate and less confusing to say that 
markets don't aggregate preferences, but rather translate given arrays of 
individual preferences into social outcomes.

Gil






people should realize that Arrow's theory is a critique of _all_ collective
decision-making mechanisms, not just democracy. It also applies to markets.
Can you think of a method of collective choice that isn't subject to the
theorem?

Um, how so? The theorem says you can't have: nondictatorship, 
independence of irrelevant alternatives, independence of order of choice, 
and, dammit, one other thing I can't recall, all together. It's a theorem 
in voting theory. These things are irrelevant to markets. Of course a 
market with dictatorship (a monopoly) is distorted, but the independence 
conditions simply don't matter to formulating a market model.




 * Universality. The voting method should provide a complete ranking 
 of all alternatives from any set of individual preference ballots.
 * Monotonicity criterion. If one set of preference ballots 
 preference ballots would lead to an an overall ranking of alternative X 
 above alternative Y and if some preference ballots are changed in such a 
 way that the only alternative that has a higher ranking on any preference 
 ballots is X, then the method should still rank X above Y.
 * Criterion of independence of irrelevant alternatives. If one set 
 of preference ballots would lead to an an overall ranking of alternative 
 X above alternative Y and if some preference ballots are changed without 
 changing the relative rank of X and Y, then the method should still rank 
 X above Y.
 * Citizen Sovereignty. Every possible ranking of alternatives can be 
 achieved from some set of individual preference ballots.
 * Non-dictatorship. There should not be one specific voter whose 
 preference ballot is always adopted

Note that voting in this context is simply a means of aggreating 
individual preference into social choice. A market in which everyone has 
the same number of dollars would be a democratic vote by this criteria - 
one in which multiple choices are made by multiple voters.

Note also that uneven distribution of money , short of severe monopoly 
does not resove the paradox, any more than uneven distribution of voting 
powers (where some people were allowed to vote multiple times) would 
resolve the paradox in any other election - short of dictatorship.

On median voters and minority rights

2002-07-11 Thread Gil Skillman


Was: variety of something or other...

Consumer advisory:  no repetitions of earlier arguments are advanced in the 
following post.

Where I wrote:

  They do?  So if Joanna were the median voter on the Pepsi vs. Coke 
 question, that would be all right with you?  
Jim responds

democracy is more than this kind of silly model of voting (the median 
voter rule). I highly recommend Lars Udehn's book (1996. The Limits of 
Public Choice: A Sociological Critique of the Economic Theory of Politics. 
London: Routledge), for a great (logical and empirical) critique of the 
whole neoclassical theory of politics.

This is way off the mark.  I'm not referring to any model of voting, 
silly, neoclassical, or otherwise, other than to note that if a  majority 
rule choice obtains, then the preferences of the voter with median 
preferences among the available options will generally be satisfied.  This 
is obvious in the case of a vote between two choices (e.g., Pepsi vs. Coke, 
the case we were talking about), since in any majority vote the median 
voter *must* be on the winning side.  Of course, with more extensive sets 
of alternatives a majority choice may not exist in the first place.

In any event, democracy does not mean simply majority rule. It also 
involves minority rights. People value rights for themselves as 
individuals, so they are willing to grant rights to others... In fact, 
they might decide to allow markets under certain circumstances.

Sure, but to the extent that minority rights are guaranteed, there is 
correspondingly less assurance that what you've called fake variety will 
be excluded, since there is no way to ensure that minorities wouldn't 
exercise their rights by demanding alternatives that the majority would 
consider trivially different.   To use one of your examples, suppose a 
minority insists that, for them, Dodges are strictly better than Plymouths; 
what then?

Also, my point was (and is) that _all_ societies put limits on what kind 
of products are available to consumers. The question is how this decision 
should be made: should it be made by a self-perpetuating state 
bureaucracy? by a class of hereditary nobles? by a self-perpetuating class 
of rich people? or should it be made democratically?

As stated in this general and abstract form, of course the latter.  But 
things get more difficult when the meaning of democracy is tested in 
concrete cases.  For example, suppose that, under the socialist regime of 
your choice, a super-majority votes to return to a capitalist 
system.  Would you regard this as an adequate warrant for re-establishing 
capitalism?

Gil

Re: Commodity hunger


Melving Wrote:

 The configuration of this commodity hunger was shaped and
accelerated as an aspect of the proletarianization of the world masses
(in history) and in particular after World War I with the mechanization
of agriculture - that is the destruction of the private producer or small
scale production. 

Can we really speak of commodity hunger without
speaking of the endless brainwashing called marketing and
advertising?


Choice is also a class concept: the right to have access to
the abundance made possible by an advanced state of development of the
productive forces.

Choice is the freedom to customize consumption; what is neatly
obscured is that choice is not freedom; it does not include the freedom
not to consume.

Joanna

I can't resist...

Title: I can't resist...





I wrote: There are people who can embrace socialism without having any hope,...


and most of them are on pen-l!


Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Stock Collapse

2002-07-11 Thread Karl Carlile


There has been much coverage of the stock exchange crisis. Much of it has 
had little to offer by  way of highlighting both the nature of the stock 
exchange and capitalist relations itself.

The bourgeois media have been at pains in holding what they call  reckless 
and dishonest company directors  responsible for much of this crisis. It is 
said that if directors  did not engage in irresponsible and dishonest 
conduct the credibility of the equity market and corporate activity would 
have remained largely intact. Share prices. it is claimed, would not have 
consequently fallen so steeply. The very corporate figures that were held 
in such high regard, the bourgeois media tells the working class,  are now 
the disgraced buccaneers of today.

This is a subjectivist perspective of events. Falling share prices are not, 
in any sense, the result of  corporate swindling. Swindling, in one form or 
another, has been a  perennial feature of capitalist exploitation. Boom and 
speculation  increase encourage swindling. Legislation and regulation can 
never change this. It is these very problems that justify the fight for an 
end to capitalism. If sharp practice was not a feature of modern capitalism 
then communism cannot be a historical necessity. Communists fight for the 
abolition of capitalism precisely because of the many problems it throws 
up: wars, starvation, attacks on the working and living conditions of the 
working class.

Share prices have been falling because of the global capitalist crisis. 
There is economic crisis in Asia, South America, Europe and North America. 
This crisis was caused by  over-accumulation of capital with respect to the 
existing rate of profit. The crisis, then, has its source in the 
valorisation process. Falling profits means that total surplus value has 
been diminishing. Diminishing surplus value has been increasingly 
insufficient  to sustain the accelerated capital expansion. Within the 
context of capitalism the only solution to the problem is an increase in 
the productivity of labour sufficient to yield rising profitability. To 
raise productivity to such levels  the means of production, technology, has 
to be revolutionized. This was the principal basis for the last sustained 
boom. The technological revolution itself involves enormous investment of 
capital. This promotes economic expansion by leading to significant 
increases in productivity. But recovery is promoted by the enormous 
increase in demand caused by the very capital investment itself. Because 
of  difficulty in achieving this capital must push the price of labour 
power below its value, increase the intensity of labour, increase labour 
discipline and cut back on social welfare expenditure. This strategy will 
lead to increasing tension between the capitalists and workers. It is a 
risky strategy since it may lead to the increased radicalisation of the 
working class culminating in the revolutionary reconstitution of society.

Falling  corporate profits have led to the demise of corporations, scaling 
down of operations, shorter working hours, unemployment, inventory 
increases and price falls. Investors grow increasingly nervous  only to 
eventually  shed shares. This tends to bring share prices down which in 
turn causes further sell offs. The underlying contraction in the 
accumulation of capital forms the basis for the progressive decline in 
stock prices. Falling markets render it  increasingly  difficult for many 
corporations to raise funds. Corporations that have been cooking the books 
in order to increase or maintain their share price are increasingly 
exposed. It gets increasingly difficult to sustain their artificial 
position. The result is exposure of the corporation's real position. 
Insider trading by the corporate directors results in the mass sell off of 
the corporation's shares in anticipation of a share collapse. This action 
by the directors precipitates the very problem that was anticipated. 
Revelations lead to further falls on the stock market. The scandals 
surrounding these corporations further increase investor 
nervousness  leading to further price falls. Governments and other 
interested parties attempt to steady the market by making statements about 
cracking down on irresponsible and dishonest corporate directors. Its 
principal aim is to steady the market in the interests of the very elements 
that it ostensibly reviles.

Karl Carlile

As share prices tumble  the volume of foreign capital into the US begins to 
diminish while many foreign investors are sell and then withdraw capital. 
Net capital inflow correspondingly falls leading to a fall in the value of 
the dollar. The falling dollar encourages further sell offs which causes a 
further slide of the dollar. The cheap credit policy that the Fed 
introduced looses its effectiveness. It becomes meaningless credit that 
--anti-credit. Nobody wants to avail of cheap credit since the state of the 
financial markets are

Re: I can't resist...


At 01:54 PM 07/11/2002 -0700, Jim wrote:

I wrote: There are people who
can embrace socialism without having any hope,... 

and most of them are on pen-l! 

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Nec spes; nec metu! (Neither hope nor fear!motto of the house of Malatesta!)

Joanna (Latinists will correct me; quoting from memory.)

Re: Re: Re: Market socialism as a form of utopianism


At 11:54 AM 07/11/2002 -0700, Gar wrote:
The worse the better eh? Both from personal experience, and from my 
reading of history people are mostly likely to engage in either radical or 
revolutionary activity when they have hope - when they believe things can 
be better. I think you can find more examples of revolution during times 
of hope than during times of despair...

Yeah. Even that old weirdo, Eric Hoffer, noticed this.

Joanna

Re: Re: Utopia/Vision


At 04:55 PM 07/11/2002 +, Carl wrote:
Absolutely.  And if the devil can quote scripture to suit his purpose, I 
too as a devotely irreligious person can cite the bible's memorable 
comment on this topic:  Where there is no vision, the people perish. 
(Proverbs 29:18)  Utopian visions can catalyze thought and action.  They 
are not to be sneered at.

I don't know; I don't know. I've read a fair share of utopian literature, 
and the thing is, I find that it has the persuasive power of a Venn 
diagram. Too mental, too neat, too middle class. Poetry/drama/arts have 
great, great power -- I think I prefer that form of vision.

To take an example, I think Pete Seeger's songs had much greater influence 
on working class consciousness...than any utopian novel.

Joanna

woops: correction


To take an example, I think Pete Seeger's songs had much greater influence 
on working class consciousness...than any utopian novel.

I'm spacing...I meant Woodie Guthrie.

Joanna

re materials of the Physicians Health Care Programme in USA.

2002-07-11 Thread Hari Kumar

Message: 3
   Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2002 15:34:33 -
   From: portsidemod [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: We Pay for National Health Insurance but Don't Get It

We Pay for National Health Insurance but Don't Get It

Press Release

July 8, 2002

Contacts:  David Himmelstein, M.D. Steffie
Woolhandler, M.D. (617) 665-1032

Government Funds 60% of U.S. Healthcare Costs - Far
Higher than Previously Believed

Harvard Study Finds Government Health Spending in U.S.
Higher than in Any Other Nation We Pay for National
Health Insurance but Don't Get It

Government expenditures accounted for 59.8% of total
U.S. health care costs in 1999, according to a Harvard
Medical School study published today in the journal
Health Affairs.  At $2,604 per capita, government
spending was the highest of any nation - including
those with national health insurance.   Indeed,
government health spending in the U.S. exceeded total
health spending (government plus private) in every
other country except Switzerland.  (Estimated total
U.S. health spending for 2002 is $5,427 per capita,
with government's share being $3,245.)

The study analyzed data on spending for government
health programs like Medicare, Medicaid and the
Veterans Administration ($548.7 billion in 1999), as
well as two categories that have previously been
overlooked in calculating government health costs.
(1) Expenditures to buy private insurance for
government employees - e.g. members of Congress,
firemen and school teachers - at a cost of $65.6
billion in 1999.  And (2) tax subsidies for private
coverage - which totaled $109.6 billion in 1999.  Most
of these tax subsidies go to the wealthiest Americans.
The study found that government's share of expenditures
has nearly doubled since 1965, with tax subsidies and
public employee benefit costs increasing fastest.

The hidden government health spending has a major
impact on family budgets.  In 1999, a family of four
with average health costs spent $7,016 for their own
health expenses and premiums (including what their
employer paid).  In addition, they paid $10,416 in
health care taxes; $1,578 for tax subsidies, $943 for
government workers' coverage, and $7,895 for government
health programs like Medicare and Medicaid.   Even many
uninsured families pay thousands of dollars in taxes
for the health care of others.

Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a study author and an
Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard, noted: We
pay the world's highest health care taxes. But much of
the money is squandered.  The wealthy get tax breaks.
And HMOs and drug companies pocket billions in profits
at the taxpayers' expense. But politicians claim we
can't afford universal coverage.  Every other developed
nation has national health insurance.  We already pay
for it, but we don't get it.

Dr. David Himmelstein, study co-author and a co-founder
of Physicians for a National Health Program, commented:
Our study shows that universal coverage is affordable
- without a big tax increase.  Government already
spends nearly enough, but it's spending it wrong.
National health insurance doesn't mean spending more;
it means spending wisely.  We spend over $309 billion
each year on paperwork in insurance companies,
hospitals and doctors' office - at least half of which
could be saved through national health insurance.   We
spend $150 billion on medications, at prices 50% higher
than Canadians pay for the same drugs.  By slashing
bureaucracy and drug prices we could save enough to
cover all of the uninsured and improve coverage for the
rest of us.

It's an outrage that the American people pay sky high
health care taxes - but 40 million of them are
uninsured, said Dr. Quentin Young, Past President of
the American Public Health Association.  Health care
should be every American's right, just like schools,
roads, defense, police and fire protection.

Physicians for a National Health Program is an
organization of over 9,500 physicians that supports
non-profit national health insurance. PNHP is based in
Chicago with chapters across the US (see below). For
additional local contact information, call (312)
782-6006. www.pnhp.org

California  Vermont
Don McCanne, M.D.   Deb Richter, M.D.
President, PNHP President Vermont Health Care
for All
(949) 493-3714  (802) 224-9037

IllinoisIdaho
Quentin Young, M.D. Bob LeBow, M.D.
National Coordinator, PNHP  Past President, PNHP
(312) 782-6006  (208) 466-7869
(773) 493-8212

OhioNew York
Jonathan Ross, M.D. Oliver Fein, M.D.
Past President, PNHPPresident, New York Chapter, PNHP
(419) 251-2360  (212) 746-4030

Re: Re: Re: Utopia/Vision

2002-07-11 Thread Doug Henwood


joanna bujes wrote:

To take an example, I think Pete Seeger's songs had much greater 
influence on working class consciousness...than any utopian novel.

Really? I thought it was middle-class beatniks, hippies, and Commies 
who listen to that stuff, while the working class was/is listening to 
rock 'n' roll, easy listening, and hip-hop.

Doug

Re: exogeneous/endogenous accumulation

2002-07-11 Thread Romain Kroes


nancy brumback wrote:

 Re: the imperialism discussion of a few days ago, i was wondering if the
list had any comments about my question about the lenin-luxemburg
disagreement about the nature of imperialism. I recently studied up on this
disagreement. as far as i could make out, while lenin believes that
imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, luxemburg believes that
imperialism is innate in capitalism because accumulation of capital is
impossible without inputs from non-capitalist sources.

She did point out that Marx considered his political economy to be taking
place in a closed system, and i looked up her reference which i can't put
my fingers on just this instant but will look it up if anyone wants it. i
thought it made a lot of sense from just considering the definition of
capitalist exploitation -- being paid less than your labor is worth. She did
point out that Marx considered his political economy to be taking place in a
closed system, and i looked up her reference which i can't put my fingers
on just this instant but will look it up if anyone wants it. 


- Of course, Nancy, endogenous or exogenous accumulation is the crucial
point of Marxism. I tried to point it out on this list, and refering to a
recent dispute on it  about market's supposed virtues, I apologize to be
forced to repeat myself, but nobody pertinently answered my arguments.

For Lenin, imperialism is motivated by the race to a superprofit. For Rosa
Luxemburg, it is motivated by the accumulation process which needs
relentless expansion. For the former, imperialism is the product of the
behaviour of capitalists looking for ever more profit. For the latter, it is
the product of an organic necessity.
This contradiction has its origin in the problem of realizing the
surplus-value. Trying to explain the extended reproduction of capital by
the addition of an endogenous profit, Marx did not succeed. Rosa Luxemburg
discovered this failure and resolved the problem by the exogenous
surplus-value realization, that is by an expansion into geographical and
sociological spaces. There is no doubt that current Globalization's events
agree with Rosa Luxemburg's theory.
Lenin's theory is reducible to the human-nature metaphysics, while Rosa
Luxemburg's continues the scientific Marxism that have been ignored, even
censored by both reformists and Leninists for almost ninety years. It is
besides noticeable that the belief in an endogenous realizing surplus value
gathers, on the same side, the persisting social-democracts and the
Marxist-Leninists (including Trotskysts). If surplus value realization is
endogenous, capitalism does not need any expansion and it has no limit in
accumulating within a closed area. So that two solutions are possible:
either to build socialism within capitalism, or to subvert this latter. Such
is the difference, but basically these two streams continue the same
theoretical deadlock.
On the other hand, the exogenous realizing surplus value allows a
theoretical approach of both imperialism history and today's
Globalization, by taking together Luxemburg's and Wallerstein's works.

 In a closed system, the same people who work for the capitalists also buy
the wares of the capitalists in order to live. If the workers are
consistently paid less than their labor is worth, doesn't it follow that
over time, their buying power will consistently decrease? Until the
capitalists must break out of the closed system to keep from being killed by
the shrinkage of their markets? 

I wish that your objection help some Marxists still steeped in piety
begining to think by themselves. What I can add, refering to my own works,
is that the problem is solved by separating the profit of capital from the
profit of capitalists. The former is exogenous, as Rosa Luxemburg discovered
it, and the latter is a simple tribute to support capitalists' lives, not at
all a surplus value. Besides, when He was evolving in the falling profit
rate theory, Marx treated his surplus-value rate as an external given, not
at all as an explanatory variable. What Leninists never recognized.

Regards,
Romain Kroês

Vietnam's campaign against drug trafficking

2002-07-11 Thread Ulhas Joglekar


The Times of India

SUNDAY, JULY 07, 2002

More effort needed to combat drug trade in Vietnam

AFP

HANOI: A senior Vietnamese anti-narcotics official has admitted that much
remains to be done to combat the growth in drug trafficking and substance
abuse in the country.

Colonel Vu Hung Vuong, head of the Public Security Ministry's anti-drug
force, said that although progress has been made towards stamping out the
illicit trade, greater international cooperation and public awareness were
needed.

The country has achieved remarkable results, but drug abuse remains a
serious and complicated problem and the work is arduous, Vuong said in an
interview carried by Friday's state-run Vietnam News.

We know that the fight will be fierce and protracted, as our country is
located not far from the Golden Triangle, he said, referring to Southeast
Asia's notorious drug-growing area which cuts across Myanmar, Thailand and
Laos.

Drug rings have left no stone unturned in their efforts to smuggle heroin
and opium into the country.

Most of the drugs that find their way into Vietnam are produced in the
Golden Triangle from where they are smuggled overland across the country's
long and porous borders with Cambodia and Laos.

To win this fight, we have to mobilise the strength of our political regime
and broaden regional and international cooperation, he said.

Border patrols and coast guards, customs and other relevant bodies must
coordinate their actions and encourage people of different walks of life to
join the anti-drug campaign.

Vuong said that despite the threat of stiff penalties, drug-related crimes
were on the up because traffickers continued to be lured by the huge profits
generated from the industry.

Under Vietnam's tough drug laws, anyone found in possession of 300 grammes
(10 ounces) or more of heroin, or 10 kilogrammes (22 pounds) or more of
opium, may be given the death penalty.

Last year, 55 people were executed for drug trafficking, compared with 85 in
2000, while on Wednesday state media reported that 14,200 drug traffickers
were arrested in the first six months of this year.

The taskforce chief said a lack of public awareness about the dangers of
drug abuse among people in remote and mountainous areas of the country was
hindering the campaign.

But he also admitted that anti-drug efforts have not been firmly linked
with the settlement of soci-economic issues, while more progress needed to
be made with drug detoxification to help addicts kick their habit.

Further reform of the legal system to lay the groundwork for the fight
against drug-related crimes was also needed, he said.

Since its inception in 1997, the taskforce has uncovered 258 major drug
trafficking syndicates operating along 296 routes, with some 50,400 people
being punished for drug related crimes, Vuong said.

Over the past five years, around 220 kilograms of heroin, 2,750 kilograms of
opium and 11,870 kilograms of marijuana have been seized, he added.

Copyright © 2002 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.

Iraq and Oil

2002-07-11 Thread ken hanly


From Times on Line

July 11, 2002

West sees glittering prizes ahead in giant oilfields
By Michael Theodoulou in Nicosia and Roland Watson



THE removal of President Saddam Hussein would open Iraqs rich new oilfields
to Western bidders and bring the prospect of lessening dependence on Saudi
oil.

No other country offers such untapped oilfields whose exploitation could
lessen tensions over the Western presence in Saudi Arabia.

After Kuwait's liberation by US-led forces in 1991, America monopolised the
postwar deals, but the need to win international support for an invasion is
unlikely to see a repeat.

Russia, in particular, and France and China all permanent members of the
United Nations Security Council have high hopes of prising promises of
contracts in a liberated Iraq from a United States that may need their
political support.

President Bush has used the War on Terror to press his case for drilling in
a protected Arctic refuge, but predicted reserves in Alaska are dwarfed by
the oilwells of the Gulf. Anthony Cordesman, of the Centre for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington, said that the issue for the US was as
much the security of the Gulf as access to particular oilfields.

You are looking down the line to a world in 2020 when reliance on Gulf oil
will have more than doubled. The security of the Gulf is an absolutely
critical issue.

 Gerald Butt, Gulf editor of the Middle East Economic Survey, said: The
removal of Saddam is, in effect, the removal of the last threat to the free
flow of oil from the Gulf as a whole.

Iraq has oil reserves of 112billion barrels, second only to Saudi Arabia,
which has some 265billion barrels. Iraqi reserves are seven times those of
the combined UK and Norwegian sectors of the North Sea. But the prize for
oil companies could be even greater. Iraq estimates that its eventual
reserves could be as high as 220billion barrels.

 Three giant southern fields - Majnoon, West Qurna and Nahr Umar have the
capacity to produce as much as Kuwait. The first two could each equal
Qatar's production of 700,000 barrels a day. There is nothing like it
anywhere else in the world. Its the big prize, Mr Butt said.

Extraction costs in these giant onshore fields, where development has been
held up by more than two decades of war and sanctions, would also be among
the lowest in the world. Provided that the US can ensure stability in a
post-Saddam Iraq, it would take five years, at most, to develop the
oilfields and Iraqs prewar capacity of three million barrels a day could
reach seven or eight million, industry experts said.

However, regime change in Baghdad will be of little value to international
oil companies unless it is followed by a stable Iraq with a strong central
government. Companies cant go in unless there is peace. To develop Majnoon,
you need two to three billion dollars and you dont invest that kind of money
without stability, one industry analyst said.

Luxemburg Re: exogeneous/endogenous accumulation

2002-07-11 Thread Chris Burford


At 11/07/02 14:32 -0400, Nancy Brumback wrote:
Re: the imperialism
discussion of a few days ago, i was wondering if the list had any
comments about my question about the lenin-luxemburg disagreement about
the nature of imperialism. I recently studied up on this disagreement. as
far as i could make out, while lenin believes that imperialism is the
highest stage of capitalism, luxemburg believes that
imperialism is innate in capitalism because accumulation of capital is
impossible without inputs from non-capitalist sources.


Yes, interesting question. The way the Dictionary of Marxist Thought (ed.
Tom Bottomore) puts it:

Another of her preoccupations was imperialism, with its threat
of war, and in 1913 in her major theoretical work, The Accumulation of
Capital, she set out to explain its underlying cause. A closed capitalist
economy, she argued, without access to non-capitalist social formations,
must break down through inability to absorb all the surplus value
produced by it. Imperialism was a competitive struggle between capitalist
nations for what remained of the non-capitalist environment but, by
eroding the latter, it led towards the universal sway of capitalist
relations and inevitable coallapes of the system.

I think we can assume that the editorial process means that this
statement does not greatly distort her argument, although it may omit
subtleties about her associated assumptions. 

She did point out
that Marx considered his political economy to be taking place in a
closed system, and i looked up her reference which i can't
put my fingers on just this instant but will look it up if anyone wants
it. i thought it made a lot of sense from just considering the definition
of capitalist exploitation -- being paid less than your labor is worth.

She did point out that Marx considered his
political economy to be taking place in a closed system, and
i looked up her reference which i can't put my fingers on just this
instant but will look it up if anyone wants it. 

In a closed system, the same people who work for the capitalists also buy
the wares of the capitalists in order to live. If the workers are
consistently paid less than their labor is worth, doesn't it follow that
over time, their buying power will consistently
decrease?

Korrekt.

Until the
capitalists must break out of the closed system to keep from being killed
by the shrinkage of their markets? 
Not quite korrekt. They can expand their closed system by absorbing more
labour power into it, but they cannot break out of it being a closed
system IMHO - see below.



While Luxemburg's theory as stated in 1913 was obviously soon vindicated
by the outbreak of the impending great war. and while it anticipates a
revolutionary uprising in consequence, it is not quite correct IMHO in
muddling up use value and exchange value, and in forgetting that periodic
blood lettings of old capital are also a means for the capitalist system
to readjust and to resume accumulation.

I periodically and boringly quote on these lists the argument laid out by
Marx in the Communist Manfesto which no one has ever pointed out to me is
incompatible with any subsequent development of Marx's thought:

And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand
by the enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other,
by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of
the old ones.

So the periodic destruction of old capital is a purging system to allow
accumulation to resume again. It is happening at this very moment as the
world exchanges fall to levels that can be sustained by a renewed cycle
of expanding capitalist accumulation. 

Indeed the net result of the great imperialist war was also a great
destruction of old capital both in the form of the demobilisation of
millions of workers and in the destruction of fixed means of production,
before the system could start gathering pace by employing workers again
at a lower value for their labour power than before the crisis.

I interpret the phrase about the conquest of new markets and the more
thorough exploitation of the old ones to imply probably an expansion in
the total number of wage labourers in the economic closed system, and by
creating new capitalist forms of commodity exchange, in the course of
supplying which, surplus value can again be accumulated. 

eg drawing small producers off the land in South America or South East
Asia to produce rubber, coffee, or ethnically quaint decorations, 

or manufacturing washing machines for women in the west who have reduced
the portion of their week serving the household economy to work as
wage labourers producing commodities under capitalist conditions.

The formulation of Luxemburg's theory as stated above seems to me to
muddle up the ability of imperialism to extract use values from the earth
in all parts of the world with less labour - in the sense of discovering
and exploiting say, new rich tin deposits - with the crucial

LOV and Schweickart

2002-07-11 Thread Chris Burford


Within the camp of those who admire Against Capitalism I had  really 
wanted to argue for the possibility of looking at it again from the 
perspective of the Marxian Law of Value, which he does not do but which I 
think is possible. However I found myself in the camp of those who support 
the LOV.

As the executive committees of finance capital desperately try to adjust 
the rules, I think this might be an instructive exercise for us, even if 
you think that Schweickart is impossibly reformist or impossibly utopian, 
or both.

Chris Burford

London

Re: LOV and Schweickart






Within the camp of those who admire Against Capitalism I had  really
wanted to argue for the possibility of looking at it again from the
perspective of the Marxian Law of Value, which he does not do

Actually he does. He has written a defense of the LTV in the WAre and 
Nielsen collection Analysing Marxism, and I have spoken to him about his 
inexplicable attachment to this discredited theory many times.

jks


but
which I
think is possible. However I found myself in the camp of those who support
the LOV.

As the executive committees of finance capital desperately try to adjust
the rules, I think this might be an instructive exercise for us, even if
you think that Schweickart is impossibly reformist or impossibly utopian,
or both.

Chris Burford

London





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Re: Luxemburg Re: exogeneous/endogenous accumulation

2002-07-11 Thread Ulhas Joglekar


Chris Burford :

The Leninist position is arguably that imperialism must be actively
defeated politically and that may involve various class alliances,
compromises, and stages on the way. Luxemburg anticipated in her own words
the rebellion of the international proletariat against the domination of
the capitalists . The choice she posed of socialism or barbarism also
seems to me to smack of fatalism.

Luxemburg's thought had limitations, no doubt. But what remains of
Leninism? Leninism is a spent force today (in Asia, if not elsewhere).

Ulhas

Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: potlatches

2002-07-11 Thread topp8564


On 12/7/2002 3:43 AM, joanna bujes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

1) nobody cares if we're even (there's the underlying 
 sense that as there is mutual good will...all will even out in the end.

Gift exchanging people are often very, very, very, very keen to know if they 
are even or not. Probably the most famous PNG case is the Melpa, who are 
dealt with by Andrew Strathern in The Rope of Moka. Essentially, Moka is a 
network of exchanges where at each presentation has to be bigger than the last. 
So I give you fifteen pigs and a bunch of low quality shells, you out-gift me 
with twenty pigs and a beautiful gold-lip shell. Then I have to out-gift you, 
to make moka -  fulfill social expectations, raise to the occasion. Very 
proficient moka co-ordinators , who are usually astonishingly good orators, 
become Big Men.  There is a particularly good ethnographic film about one such 
Big Man, named Ongka, which follows him as he goes about making moka. It is 
called Ongka's Big Moka. The gifts included thousands of Kina (the PNG 
currency, at the time it was on partiy with the Australian dollar), a four-
wheel-drive, hundreds of very large pigs, etc...

Early observers of such exchanges called the increase in the gift  interest.  
But there is a key difference between Moka and interest: whereas someone who 
loans money to receive more money does so with the intention of maximizing  
income, the gift-giver wants to maximise outflows. The important thing is not 
to end up with tons of shells and a four-wheel-drive, but to forge the right 
sort of social relationships, acquire lots of wives, etc...

Nevertheless, this still requires careful accounting. This can be tricky if 
your number system only has words halfway up to a dozen, but there is some very 
clever ways of getting around this (eg. J. Mimica, Intimations of Infinity on 
Angan number systems.) If you see pictures of Melpa Big Men, you will  notice a 
series of three-inch rods woven into a pendant which they wear around their 
necks. The longer the pendant, the more Moka one has made. Don't want to loose 
track of that.

Interestingly, Highlanders  - the area where competitive exchanges are most 
prevalent - have adapted relatively well to the capitalist economy. This has 
had some interesting effects. For one thing, it has not eliminated Moka, on the 
contrary, Strathern uses the term efflorescence to describe how Moka has 
thrived upon the new opportunities for exchanges. Chris Gregory makes much of 
this interface in his book Gifts and Commodities. Did the competitive 
exchanges prepare the Highlanders for the capitalist economy? That is one 
explanation which is popular, but there were crucial differences in the way the 
Highlands were colonized. But that's a long story

Sorry to switch from the pacific northwest to PNG, but that's where most of my 
reading on this has been.

Thiago Oppermann




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Re: Re: Re: Utopia/Vision


From: joanna bujes [EMAIL PROTECTED]

At 04:55 PM 07/11/2002 +, Carl wrote:
Absolutely.  And if the devil can quote scripture to suit his purpose, I
too as a devotely irreligious person can cite the bible's memorable
comment on this topic:  Where there is no vision, the people perish.
(Proverbs 29:18)  Utopian visions can catalyze thought and action.  They
are not to be sneered at.

I don't know; I don't know. I've read a fair share of utopian literature,
and the thing is, I find that it has the persuasive power of a Venn
diagram. Too mental, too neat, too middle class. Poetry/drama/arts have
great, great power -- I think I prefer that form of vision.

As I have said before on this or a neighboring list, I find Emerson an 
inspiring, progressive thinker, and there's no question he was basically a 
poet in sensibility.  As such, it's not surprising that Emerson saw 
Fourier's utopianism as too mechanistic.  Nevertheless, he saw value in what 
utopians had to profess.  In that piece I quoted before, Emerson also said 
of Fourier's utopian vision:

Yet in a day of small, sour, and fierce schemes, one is admonished and 
cheered by a project of such friendly aims, and of such bold and generous 
proportion; there is an intellectual courage and strength in it, which is 
superior and commanding: it certifies the presence of so much truth in the 
theory, and in so far is destined to be fact.

Utopian schemes may indeed be too mechanistic, but the intricate logic that 
holds them together is a wonder to behold.  And it starts you thinking that 
if people really put their minds and wills to the task, a society could 
emerge whose economy wasn't fueled exclusively by the primitive forces of 
fear and greed.

Carl





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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Market socialism as a form ofutopianism

2002-07-11 Thread Michael Pollak



On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Carl Remick wrote:

Ralph Waldo Emerson, ... criticizing the utopianism of Charles Fourier,
said in part ...

While we're putting down Utopians, this reminds me of one of my favorite
Keynes quotes, about Bertrand Russell:

   Bertie in particular sustained simultaneously a pair of opinions
   ludicrously incompatible. He held that in fact human affairs were
   carried on after a most irrational fashion, but that the remedy was
   quite simple and easy, since all we had to do was to carry them on
   rationally.  Discussion beyond this point was really very boring.

Michael

Re: the state and democracy

2002-07-11 Thread Ian Murray


the state and democracy
- Original Message -
From: Devine, James


I think that democracy (majority rule with minority rights) is the
best way to deal with heterogeneity. Can you think of a better
way, since we can't figure out how to allow each individual and
group to be totally autonomous?



Sounds great in theory, but history of US democracy shows, in
effect, the tyranny of organized minorities on an enormous number
of issues that have significantly shaped our political economy. I
suspect that if one did an in depth analysis of other democracies
using collective action analyses, we'd see pretty much the same
thing as democracies suffer from free rider problems.


Ian And neither should anyone else if you follow the induction
you've
started.


that's right. Power must come from below, rather than from some
condescending saviors.

==

Except that very language of above and below, with it's
connotations of hierarchy is exactly the problem. Power is too
multidimensional/overdetermined/capillary/fractal to be reduced to
hierarchy. Our very modes of describing contribute to the
perpetuation of the idea that we need the myth of hierarchy to be
performed in order to have social orders.




people should realize that Arrow's theory is a critique of _all_
collective decision-making mechanisms, not just democracy. It also
applies to markets. Can you think of a method of collective choice
that isn't subject to the theorem?

==

The Catholic church' ability to sustain it's flock of the
faithful.



we need some sort of state to prevent the kind of opportunistic
behavior I sketch. A democratic state is the best kind. The
current democratic states are pretty good at being states
without being very democratic. In any event, for even a truly
democratic state to fight environmental devastation, people have
to actively want the state to do so.

=

The state itself creates opportunities for all sorts of horrible
opportunistic behaviors. Why call current states democratic just
because they have the institutional shell of liberal ideas? It
would seem that large majorities in contemporary democracies don't
seem to be demanding that their governments be democratic. The
cynical quietism is still very rampant. Yeah, yeah we can blather
on about the class character within contemporary democracies but
it seems to me that quietism can't be reduced to class analysis.








As for the Keynesian-Darwinian long run
well


I don't understand the reference, or rather its meaning in this
context.



Haven't you been watching what's going on in biotechnology or
reading about what's happening to ecosystems all across our planet
or do you see Darwinism first and foremost as about speciation and
the like? You said a while back that the short run was Keynesian
and the long run was Marxian, I'm just using Darwinian as a
genuine marker for the contemporary political
ecology-technology-cognition matrix of life





Given the need for some kind of state, I prefer a democratically
controlled one. To attain such a state, we may have to get rid of
the actually-existing one -- or at least conquer it.

The actually existing one in the US is probably unconquerable
without a bunch of nukes going off and it doesn't appear to be
desirous of listening to it's citizens given its cynical
acceptance and exploitation of the problems posed by Condorcet and
Arrow so why should we even attempt to subordinate it to
democratic will?

so you're against democracy and you think that the
currently-existing state will oppress us forever?
Jim




No to the first question. I just think large sections of the
institutional ecologies we associate with contemporary democracies
are in fact barriers to the kind of democracy we need for the 21st
century, esp.including the primary institutions. With regards to
the second question, it's contestable that the state is oppressing
people as a matter of deliberate policy. Oppressions are
intersubjectively arrived at social orders *and* modes of
perception of those social orders [collective self-reference].
It's not some objective condition and if people don't see it
they're suffering from false consciousness kind of notion. That's
not to say a multiplicity of oppressions do not exist and should
be swept aside for clearly they do and need to be dismantled as
quickly and peacefully as possible. The real question is whether
the very elimination of some oppressions will facilitate the
creation of others.

Ian

Re: RE: Re: Repitition and Market Socialism

2002-07-11 Thread phillp2


I would agree with Jim.  While Michael may feel that the issue has 
been debated sufficiently, I am somewhat disturbed by the 
superficial analysis of market socialism that passes for critical 
thought on this list.  As someone who has worked for the past 15 
years in Jugoslavia and, most intensively, in Slovenia, I am 
dismayed by the level of discourse on workers' self-management, 
labour based economies, Jugoslav economic history, the theory 
and practice of market socialism etc.  Quite frankly, I would not 
accept what is presented on this list at a second year level.  I think 
Justin may well be encouraged to drop the subject , but not 
because he is going over old ground, but because it appears that 
everyone's mind is made up and they have no intention of being 
influenced by fact or argument.If anyone seriously wants to debate 
the theory of market socialism I think they should look at the basic 
literature.  At risk of appearing arrogant on this, one place they 
might begin is my and Jim Stoddard's contribution on market 
socialism to the Encyclopedia of Political Economy.  But please, 
the level of debate so far is hardly complimentary to the list.

Paul Phillips,
Economics,
University of Manitoba

 I agree with Christian. I do not see any reason to restrict Justin's
 contributions,  I think the main job of the moderator is not to
 restrict the content of discussion but the tone (avoiding flame-wars and the
 like). 
 
 
 Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]   http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
 
  -Original Message-
  From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
  Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2002 10:52 AM
  To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  Subject: [PEN-L:27920] Re: Repitition and Market Socialism
  
  
  Here's my suggestion for Justin. Let's stipulate that 
  everything you said so
  far is true.  Do you have anything to add -- something that you
  have not already said?  If not, the discussion is finished.  
  If you have
  something new to add, let's hear it.
  
  This is pathetic, Michael. Having been on this list for a few 
  years, I can
  only think of a few instances in which people have really 
  moved conversations
  along, on this standard. Besides, so what if debates don't 
  generate anything
  new for you? Isn't possible that people _learn_ through 
  repetition? The
  members of this list have talked almost incessantly about 
  the current crisis
  or whatever for at least the last 4 years, and yet you can 
  never seem to get
  enough of that. My point is not that this isn't 
  worthwhile--just the opposite.
  But it's true for Justin, too. If people weren't really 
  interested, they just
  wouldn't bother. Give the list some credit.
  
  Christian

Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: potlatches

2002-07-11 Thread phillp2


Just a couple of thoughts.

Akerlof and Yellen have a gift-exchange model of efficiency wages 
(Was this one of the ideas he got the pseudo Nobel for?) which is 
very useful in the institutional analysis of labour markets.

What interests me more is the idea (from Polanyi) of 'generalized 
reciprocity', the idea that people give 'gifts', not in the expectation 
that they will get something 'equal' in return from any specific 
individual, but rather, when they need help or something else, they 
will have it offered to them as a gift.  Perhaps the best example is 
the Canadian blood service.  Most people give blood freely not in 
the expectation that they will need blood in exchange some time in 
the future, but rather because (a) they know others need it and (b) 
they know at some time in the future they may need blood and 
they trust that free blood will be available if and when they need it.  
But there is no sense of equality or exchange.
Such generalized reciprocity is a feature of western Canadian 
(rural) society.  When I was building my house and barn in the rural 
area I put out a general call for anyone interested to come join a 
'house/barn raising bee.'  We had  douzens of volunteers, not in the 
expectation that I would help them build a house or whatever, but 
when the flood came in the city, I volunteered to lift sandbags -- not 
for their houses specifically, but for the urban people most affected. 
There was no sence of specific obligation or debt, or any concept 
individual reciprocity -- just the general concept that if people help 
me, I have an obligation to reciprocate.  But there is no sense of 
equal exchange but rather -- do I dare say it -- from each according 
to their ability, to each according to their need.  I do think this 
concept of general reciprocity is far more important in the 
contemporary economy than most would recognize. At least that is 
my Canadian experience.

Paul Phillips,
Economics,
University of Manitoba 

Date sent:  Fri, 12 Jul 2002 12:09:39 +1000
From:   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Pen-L [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:[PEN-L:27950] Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: potlatches
Send reply to:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 On 12/7/2002 3:43 AM, joanna bujes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 1) nobody cares if we're even (there's the underlying 
  sense that as there is mutual good will...all will even out in the end.
 
 Gift exchanging people are often very, very, very, very keen to know if they 
 are even or not. Probably the most famous PNG case is the Melpa, who are 
 dealt with by Andrew Strathern in The Rope of Moka. Essentially, Moka is a 
 network of exchanges where at each presentation has to be bigger than the last. 
 So I give you fifteen pigs and a bunch of low quality shells, you out-gift me 
 with twenty pigs and a beautiful gold-lip shell. Then I have to out-gift you, 
 to make moka -  fulfill social expectations, raise to the occasion. Very 
 proficient moka co-ordinators , who are usually astonishingly good orators, 
 become Big Men.  There is a particularly good ethnographic film about one such 
 Big Man, named Ongka, which follows him as he goes about making moka. It is 
 called Ongka's Big Moka. The gifts included thousands of Kina (the PNG 
 currency, at the time it was on partiy with the Australian dollar), a four-
 wheel-drive, hundreds of very large pigs, etc...
 
 Early observers of such exchanges called the increase in the gift  interest.  
 But there is a key difference between Moka and interest: whereas someone who 
 loans money to receive more money does so with the intention of maximizing  
 income, the gift-giver wants to maximise outflows. The important thing is not 
 to end up with tons of shells and a four-wheel-drive, but to forge the right 
 sort of social relationships, acquire lots of wives, etc...
 
 Nevertheless, this still requires careful accounting. This can be tricky if 
 your number system only has words halfway up to a dozen, but there is some very 
 clever ways of getting around this (eg. J. Mimica, Intimations of Infinity on 
 Angan number systems.) If you see pictures of Melpa Big Men, you will  notice a 
 series of three-inch rods woven into a pendant which they wear around their 
 necks. The longer the pendant, the more Moka one has made. Don't want to loose 
 track of that.
 
 Interestingly, Highlanders  - the area where competitive exchanges are most 
 prevalent - have adapted relatively well to the capitalist economy. This has 
 had some interesting effects. For one thing, it has not eliminated Moka, on the 
 contrary, Strathern uses the term efflorescence to describe how Moka has 
 thrived upon the new opportunities for exchanges. Chris Gregory makes much of 
 this interface in his book Gifts and Commodities. Did the competitive 
 exchanges prepare the Highlanders for the capitalist economy? That is one 
 explanation which is popular, but there were crucial

Re: woops: correction




joanna bujes wrote:

 To take an example, I think Pete Seeger's songs had much greater 
 influence on working class consciousness...than any utopian novel.
 
 I'm spacing...I meant Woodie Guthrie.
 
 Joanna
 
 


Nmm, well regardless of what folk music represents today, there was a 
time lasting until the early sixties when folk music was a genuinely 
popular music - including Pete Seegar and Joan Baez. And I will note 
that the songs of those time were not above articulationg a concrete vision:


 If each little kid could have fresh milk each day
 If each working person had more time to play
 If each homeless soul had a good place to stay
 It could be a wonderful world

Pretty concrete detail, no?


That is how cold utopian vision make it into popular culture; someone 
conceives a utopian vision; if it is compelling enough artists and 
writers pick it up.

Re: Re: RE: Re: Repitition and Market Socialism