generous offer from Ravi
G'day all, If it's any easier, I've a rightly unheralded blog dawdling fitfully along at http://blogorrhoea.blogspot.com/ and would be honoured to put up anything penpals might like to write for the common weal. Er, as long as no technical knowledge other than cutting and pasting is required on my part, anyway. technoretardedly yours, Rob.
God is not making any more water
Washington Post, Monday, August 12, 2002 Water's Flow From Private Hands Thirsty, Growing States Turn to New Sources to Meet Demand By William Booth CADIZ, Calif. -- This is one big, dry state, and Keith Brackpool wants to slake its thirst. The politically connected British wheeler-dealer is pressing ahead with an ingenious plan to sell billions of gallons of drinking water to Southern California from his company's aquifer, buried here beneath the broiling badlands of the Mojave Desert. Contentious? They don't call them water wars for nothing. Brackpool has both serious friends and committed opponents. He has steered $250,000 into the campaign coffers of Gov. Gray Davis (D) and secured the services of former interior secretary Bruce Babbitt as a consultant for dealings in Egypt. Former Democratic congressman Tony Coelho serves as a board member. But Brackpool is now battling with the Sierra Club and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who fears CEO Brackpool's Cadiz Inc. will suck the aquifer dry and damage the fragile ecosystem of her beloved Mojave. But the thirsty states are booming with growth, and, as one hydrologist put it, God is not making any more water. The challenges are not limited to California and the West. Water is increasingly seen as a limited commodity around the world, and now into the breach comes private enterprise -- to operate aging municipal water systems (in cities such as Atlanta and Indianapolis) and to sell water outright from farms to cities. Whether that means consumers will pay more for what comes out of the tap remains to be seen, but entrepreneurs are betting they'll make money. full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6603-2002Aug11.html
RE: War in Iraq
There is already a liberated Kurdistan. I saw a piece -- forgot where -- about the advisability of federalism for a reconstructed Iraq. That suggests the piecemeal approach that you allude to. Inside the U.S. as far as I can see there is zero meaningful opposition to an invasion. The main constraints are internal -- self-doubt within the Administration -- and external -- the negative views of U.S. allies. The Dems are willing to give Bush all the rope he needs. He either hangs himself, or he duplicates Poppy's feat and fails to reap much political credit. In the latter case, pacification of Iraq plus Afghanistan creates additional headaches for the Bushies for an indefinite period. I still think they are going in. They're not as smart as they look, which is none too smart in any case. max -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Michael Perelman Sent: Sunday, August 11, 2002 5:26 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:29341] War in Iraq Someone posted a report from debka to the Marxism list suggesting that the war has begun, but that the US is just taking away slices of Iraq, piece by piece. Does this story make any sense? http://www.debka.com -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
generous offer from Ravi
Justin accidentally sent an article to the list. Ravi sent this note to me: i see this problem crop up every now and then where someone wants to share a document with the list. in the future, if you wish, folks can just email me the doc and i can put it up for HTTP/FTP download on the web and give you a link to the download that you can post to the list. you can of course do that yourself using one of the free hosting web sites, so my offer may only help those who are really newbies to the internet. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---BeginMessage--- please forward to the list if you think it might be useful: Michael Perelman wrote: I don't think that it is a good idea to post articles to the list. Many people have limited space in their mail boxes, especially those from other countries. it also wastes bandwidth - say pen-l has 200 subscribers and the doc is 1mb - thats 200mb going out of csuchico. probably only 25% of the subscribers will really read it. i see this problem crop up every now and then where someone wants to share a document with the list. in the future, if you wish, folks can just email me the doc and i can put it up for HTTP/FTP download on the web and give you a link to the download that you can post to the list. you can of course do that yourself using one of the free hosting web sites, so my offer may only help those who are really newbies to the internet. --ravi ---End Message---
Re: Re: Max Elbaum To Speak In Sacramento On SocialMovement His...
Greetings Economists, Louis Proyect wrote, We have the same requirement today that existed in Russia in 1902 and in the USA in the 70s and 80s, namely to unite scattered Marxist circles and individuals. Understandably, there is a certain amount of gunshyness among Elbaum's generation. The idea of forming a new organization is probably the last thing on anybody's mind that has been through this experience. But there is no alternative. We are entering a stormy period that will require all of us to rise to the occasion. I strongly recommend "Revolution in the Air" as a case study in what should not be done. What is to be done, of course, is another matter altogether. Doyle, I feel the same way having gone through the 70 and 80's period that we need to learn from that period to consider building a movement now. LP writes, "...frightful experience in the Democratic Workers Party, which was sufficient to turn him against activism altogether. The DWP was one of the rarer birds in the New Communist Movement that did not fit into neat Maoist categories. Formed in 1974 in the Bay Area by a group of thirteen women, the DWP was essentially a cult around Marlene Dixon, a college professor with a checkered career. Not surprisingly, with a leader like this, the group dabbled in academic theory, Immanuel Wallerstein's world systems theory in particular. They also valued Harry Braverman's "Labor and Monopoly Capital"." Doyle, I liked the fact that when I was in the DWP that we had a lot of resources that I wasn't familiar with to understand the economy and the left. Of course there was not then much public debate about the meaning of things and various groups would condemn out of hand various persons, such as Braverman. I think now and then that one must draw from a wide range of understanding to make a strong political movement. In that sense in some ways Lou Proyect is an interesting writer for the degree of depth from a perspective not so different from my own, that is wanting revolutionary change. However, LP writes above, ..."the DWP was essentially a cult around Marlene Dixon" Doyle, and that is where political understanding falls apart in my view. What is a cult? I doubt seriously from having read about cults, and people who label the DWP a cult, or other groups sectarian, and dogmatic, that the labels explain anything. I've written in the past coming from my own experiences, that one runs into problems with the current way of understanding cults that is very problematic. For example, LP refers to Marlene Dixon becoming an addict. And for others writing in the genre of anti-cult writing that people are drawn into cults because they are one temporarily vulnerable to a cult by an emotional loss, or two that their family history prepares them for a cult organization. All of this being too vague to understand what it is one expects from a group that would not be sectarian. In other words LP who writes about participating in the non-sectarian movements has never convinced me he has developed a sense of what organizations that aren't cult, aren't sectarian would be like. And this is important (though unresolved issue) for the left, because the right attacks the left around dogmatism, and sectarianism. I have also pointed out the problems with attacks upon sectarianism. These attacks based upon an addiction theory where the cognitive disability an aspect of the dysfunctional behavior appears in social organizations has little or no scientific content. Attacks against the left that target mental disability ignores the implicit arguments arising from the disability rights movement of access to organizational resources as a means of liberation of disabled people. And this in turn means the left is not facing disability rights just as women's rights are often ignored or given lip service. Here on this list dedicated to economic analysis the way we would approach these issues is from a wholly different direction than I might otherwise. But the same sorts of areas are still apparent in economic analysis. In economic analysis we consider the current bursting of the "New Economy". The focus upon Information Technology emphasizes using electronic means of communication to facilitate first of all business organization for the U.S. economy. So we in some sense consider what it takes to use Information Technology to organize human behavior. Serious organization now in my view must take into account using computers and online communication to be the basis for organizing working class movements in the developed states. For example what is the role of the moderator in subscription lists. This leadership like role has some features like face-to-face organizations, and of course missing many features of what people use face to face. In that sense LP's remarks about the failures of Maoist (and the women centered DWP) movements don't take into account how we might look at what we might do differently than then. For this list
serious news
Title: serious news from Slate's summary of the front pages of major US newspapers, both on the subject of obesity: The NY [TIMES] briefly mentions the latest tensions in the Mideast: Israel lodged a protest with Egypt after the Israeli press reported that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said the following about Israel's (slightly wide-bodied) Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon: This fatso Sharon. I hear he eats an entire lamb for dinner. How can anyone fall asleep after that? Mubarak was apparently upset after one of his general's visited Sharon's house and was only served two sausages and a tomato. And:*Those ain't tears of joy*... The NYT's business section notes that in response to flagging interest in Barney, the puffy purple dinosaur, his creators have decided to launch a new TV ad campaign promoting the beast. Apparently, the problem with Barney isn't so much that kids don't like him; it's that parents can't stand him. So the big campaign will be aimed at subtly convincing adults that Barney can be their friend too. We're hoping people will say `Oh my God, I can't believe this is a spot for Barney,' explained one marketer. We're hoping a tear wells up in the eye. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
The Wonders of NeoLiberalism
Asked during a news conference in Argentina this week why Latin Americans were increasingly rejecting the magic recipe of privatization, lower tariffs and increased foreign investment, Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill replied, I have no idea. When it was suggested to him that such policies were not yielding the expected results, he said, I don't know of another plausible answer, do you? p.s. I stole this off pkt. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Max Elbaum To Speak In Sacramento On SocialMovement History
Louis wrote: We have the same requirement today that existed in Russia in 1902 and in the USA in the 70s and 80s, namely to unite scattered Marxist circles and individuals. If that is the case, I wonder why he isn't a member of the Fourth International, Solidarity and dozens of other groups who argue the same thing. The reason why those groups in the 1970s etc. failed politically was precisely because they thought that Marxism (whatever that is conceived to be - opinions differ strongly) had to be the basis of political unity. Most of the groups who stopped believing this and just concentrated on effective socialist political action have recorded strong growth, at least here in Europe. J.
Re: Re: Max Elbaum To Speak In Sacramento On SocialMovement History
Jurriaan: If that is the case, I wonder why he isn't a member of the Fourth International, Solidarity and dozens of other groups who argue the same thing. The reason why those groups in the 1970s etc. failed politically was precisely because they thought that Marxism (whatever that is conceived to be - opinions differ strongly) had to be the basis of political unity. Most of the groups who stopped believing this and just concentrated on effective socialist political action have recorded strong growth, at least here in Europe. Since I regard the FI and Solidarity as Stalinophobic, especially around the question of Yugoslavia, I could not join, but I certainly believe that they are doing good work all in all.
Backlash in Saudi Arabia
Backlash in Saudi Arabia By Nawaf Obaid LONDON - As revealed in a recent front-page story in The Washington Post, Briefing Depicted Saudis as Enemies, neoconservatives in the US are gaining a wider audience for their attempts to demonize Saudi Arabia. Such jingoistic talk runs counter to the position of the Bush administration, which recognizes Saudi Arabia as a vital ally. Still, the talk is fanning resentment in the kingdom and making it more difficult for the royal family to cooperate with the US on a range of initiatives, such as regional peace, economic development, and maintaining stability in the oil markets. Saudis see a growing animosity in American government and media. A string of editorials and analyses in major US publications harshly criticize the kingdom for its perceived role in the 9/11 attacks - namely, that Saudi Arabia supports, finances, and politically backs terror groups around the world - claims that are unsubstantiated. Pundits such as Bill Kristol, editor of the influential Weekly Standard, have advocated the removal of the Saudi royal family. While Americans may realize that a free and independent media can give an outlet for extremist views, domestic Saudi critics such as Eid Al Qarni have argued on several Arab satellite networks that such remarks are part of an orchestrated US media campaign against Saudi Arabia. American determination to remove the Palestinian and Iraqi leaders, Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein, regardless of the kingdom's view, has strengthened the conclusion that Americans hold the Saudis in disdain. But what has especially enraged Saudis are rumors of an American plan to partition the kingdom. A few weeks ago, I received a phone call from Riyadh from an enraged domestic Saudi dissident recently released from house arrest. He wanted to know if the US had commissioned a plan to invade Saudi Arabia and set up a puppet regime in the oil-rich Eastern Province? This would supposedly guarantee US oil supplies and shift US troops away from the holy soil of Mecca and Medina. I had also heard that a senior Saudi security official hurried back from a trip abroad last month to discuss similar news with senior Saudi policymakers. It turns out there was something behind these rumors. As reported in the Post, a July 10 briefing to the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board argued for giving the Saudis an ultimatum: Stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its oil fields. I have procured another recent report, prepared for the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, which discusses the option of invading the kingdom to secure oil fields. Last month, the satellite TV station Al Jazeera dedicated its most popular talk show to a discussion of the supposed American plan to invade and dissect the kingdom. The main guest, Dr. Mohsen Al Awaji, a prominent liberal Islamic scholar once jailed for his criticisms of the Saudi government, denounced the plan on the show. Even the most senior Saudi Shiite cleric, Sheikh Hassan Al Saffar (who would ostensibly benefit from the plan if this mainly Shiite province were detached from majority Sunni Saudi Arabia), condemned the idea vociferously. In this climate, those leaders who have most distanced themselves from the United States - such as Minister of Defense Prince Sultan and Minister of Interior Prince Nayef - have seen their popularity skyrocket. That a prominent figure such as Prince Sultan has moved away from the pro-American camp is important: As minister of defense for the past several decades, he oversaw billions of dollars of defense contracts with American firms, making Saudi Arabia the largest importer of US arms. He was also, until recently, one of the most vocal proponents of the kingdom's strategic partnership with America. After Sept. 11, shortcomings in Saudi society and lapses in its government policies have become apparent, such as a failure to control and moderate extreme rhetoric in mosques and universities, massive unemployment, and the role of women. But more than 50 years of cooperation with the United States should provide impetus to work with, not alienate, this vital US ally. As the world's largest exporter of petroleum, Saudi Arabia has played a stabilizing role in global energy markets for decades, guaranteeing America reasonable oil prices. And while Saudi foreign policy will always be informed by the kingdom's responsibilities as guardian of Islam's holiest sites, the Saudi monarchy has more often been a force for cooperation with the non-Muslim world. This stance has been extremely valuable to America in economic, political, and military terms. America and Saudi Arabia are at the heart of two great but very different civilizations. It is natural that major disagreements should occur, but through 10 US administrations and five Saudi kingships these differences have been handled peacefully. If those who want an enemy in Saudi Arabia gain the upper hand, they will, unfortunately, find one. And the world
RE: Re: Re: Max Elbaum To Speak In Sacramento On SocialMovement History
Title: RE: [PEN-L:29353] Re: Re: Max Elbaum To Speak In Sacramento On SocialMovement History what is Stalinophobia? does its rejection mean that we should embrace Stalinophilia? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002 11:15 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:29353] Re: Re: Max Elbaum To Speak In Sacramento On SocialMovement History Jurriaan: If that is the case, I wonder why he isn't a member of the Fourth International, Solidarity and dozens of other groups who argue the same thing. The reason why those groups in the 1970s etc. failed politically was precisely because they thought that Marxism (whatever that is conceived to be - opinions differ strongly) had to be the basis of political unity. Most of the groups who stopped believing this and just concentrated on effective socialist political action have recorded strong growth, at least here in Europe. Since I regard the FI and Solidarity as Stalinophobic, especially around the question of Yugoslavia, I could not join, but I certainly believe that they are doing good work all in all.
Re: RE: Re: Re: Max Elbaum To Speak In Sacramento On So cialMovement History
what is Stalinophobia? does its rejection mean that we should embrace Stalinophilia? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevinehttp://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Stalinophobia? I would consider the following as signs of the problem in ATC, a publication that is put out by Solidarity and amounts to a house organ even though they say it is formally independent: 1. Giving prominence to Branka Magas, a Yugoslav intellectual who backed NATO bombing. 2. Slandered the FARC in Colombia as killers of indigenous people. 3. ATC editor Susie Weismann is a frothing-at-the-mouth Stalinophobe who frequently invites Stephen Schwartz on her radio show, even though he spied on the left during the 1980s on behalf of Edwin Meese.
Reform-ism
Michael, what do you mean when saying Marx began Capital with a stageist flourish - are you referring to the 1859 Preface ? I think Stedman Jones must be correct in stressing the importance of campaigning for reforms, but he is surely wrong in saying that the only alternative is reformism. It doesn't follow. If Marx didn't work out the premises for a feasible socialism/communism, then presumably that's a challenge for us to do today. Peculiar how somebody who liked to bash Friedrich Engels winds up arguing for reformism. J.
RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Max Elbaum To Speak In Sacramento On So cialMovement History
Title: RE: [PEN-L:29356] Re: RE: Re: Re: Max Elbaum To Speak In Sacramento On So cialMovement History I don't know about these specific cases, so I'd like to hear what the ATC people say about them. In any event, these points don't answer my question: is there a diffference between the Stalinophobia that Louis decries and (say) the view that Stalin was a bloody dictator who helped establish the rule by a new stratum or class that would fight like hell to preserve their power (as with the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 or the suppression of many strikes by unions) and (among other things) killed a lot of Bolsheviks, perhaps more than the Tsar did. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine I asked: what is Stalinophobia? does its rejection mean that we should embrace Stalinophilia? Louis responded: Stalinophobia? I would consider the following as signs of the problem in ATC, a publication that is put out by Solidarity and amounts to a house organ even though they say it is formally independent: 1. Giving prominence to Branka Magas, a Yugoslav intellectual who backed NATO bombing. 2. Slandered the FARC in Colombia as killers of indigenous people. 3. ATC editor Susie Weismann is a frothing-at-the-mouth Stalinophobe who frequently invites Stephen Schwartz on her radio show, even though he spied on the left during the 1980s on behalf of Edwin Meese.
RE: Reform-ism
Title: RE: [PEN-L:29357] Reform-ism what stageist flourish is that? Marx says that the British case represents the future of the rest of Europe (at the time), but that's hardly stageist. All it says is that he sees capitalism as spreading from the UK to the rest of Europe, as indeed it did. He also refers to iron necessity toward inevitable results, but I read that as referring to the inevitable conflict crises associated with the rise of capitalism, rather than to an inevitability of either capitalism or socialism. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Jurriaan Bendien [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002 9:28 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:29357] Reform-ism Michael, what do you mean when saying Marx began Capital with a stageist flourish - are you referring to the 1859 Preface ? I think Stedman Jones must be correct in stressing the importance of campaigning for reforms, but he is surely wrong in saying that the only alternative is reformism. It doesn't follow. If Marx didn't work out the premises for a feasible socialism/communism, then presumably that's a challenge for us to do today. Peculiar how somebody who liked to bash Friedrich Engels winds up arguing for reformism. J.
Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Max Elbaum To Speak In Sacramen to On So cialMovement History
Jim Devine: In any event, these points don't answer my question: is there a diffference between the Stalinophobia that Louis decries and (say) the view that Stalin was a bloody dictator who helped establish the rule by a new stratum or class that would fight like hell to preserve their power (as with the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 or the suppression of many strikes by unions) and (among other things) killed a lot of Bolsheviks, perhaps more than the Tsar did. Of course my points answered your question. Stalin's dreadful record as a dictator is no excuse to print lies about the FARC, especially when the USA is poised to engage in a Vietnam-type intervention. Reckless Charges Against the FARC In the current issue (May-June 2001) of Against the Current, there is an article by Dr. Joanne Rappaport titled Colombia: Options from the Grassroots. She is an anthro who has spent time working with Colombian Indians. Her article takes no position on class questions, but is written from a civil society and need for peace perspective found in NACLA, the Nation Magazine, etc. Although not mentioning these publications specifically, James Petras has an article in the May Monthly Review titled The Geopolitics of Plan Colombia which tries to cut through these middle-class pieties. In general the Colombian peace movement internationally has tried to use indigenous demands as a wedge against the FARC, less so against the ELN which tends to operate in territories less populated by Indians. The conflicts between the FARC and the Indians tends to be a side-effect of the civil war that is mainly a contest between the leftwing guerrilla movement and the army and paramilitaries. Official Indian organizations such as the CRIC have complained about incursions by both left and right into their territory, especially in Cauca. In one well-publicized incident, the FARC killed 3 indigenous activists from the USA who had been misidentified as CIA agents. In general, the FARC suffers from a heavy-handed paternalistic attitude toward Indians that is not much different than the one that led to clashes between the FSLN and Miskitos in Nicaragua. That being said, it is of crucial importance to hold the FARC accountable for any such misdeeds on a fair and impartial basis. Whatever their failings, they are in the gunsight of what might turn out to be the most perilous military intervention by the US since the Vietnam war. Unfortunately, left-liberal journalism has not adhered to the highest standards in the past. For example in the July/August 1999 NACLA Report, editorial board member Mario Murillo stated that Over the past year, FARC guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries have murdered, abducted, and threatened numerous members of the Embera Katío community, a tribe of about 500 families living along rivers in northern Córdoba However, a report filed in July 22, 1999 on the website of the Presbyterian Church of Colombia reported that the murders were committed not by the FARC, but by members of the rightwing paramilitary United Self Defense of Colombia (AUC) disguised as FARC combatants. When I emailed Murillo asking for an explanation of the discrepancy, he failed to reply. He also stuck to his story at a conference on Colombia held at Hunter College. When I asked one of the Indian panelists at the plenary session if she could substantiate the NACLA charges, she said she could not. Rappaport's article is written from the same exact perspective as Murillo's, which is troubling considering that we would expect Against the Current, purportedly some kind of Marxist publication, to have a more acute class analysis than that found in NACLA. Rappaport warns us that the FARC should not be confused with the FSLN or FMLN, since it is less popular and more brutal than the Central American revolutionary movements of the 1980s. Of course, one of the big problems facing those of us who would like to see imperialism defeated in Colombia is the lack of an organization like Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador in the USA which could counter lies about the FARC. This is a party function of the FARC's own insular nature, which can be explained by its nearly 40 year isolated struggle. Its leader Manuel Sure Shot Marulanda could never possibly be mistaken for Subcommandante Marcos, who consciously reaches out to a cosmopolitan audience through the Internet. Sure Shot seems more at home with crude peasants like himself, although he has met with American corporate leaders who seemed to be hedging their bets. The other problem is that legislation against terrorist groups, passed largely because of the success of CISPES, has made it more difficult to work with the FARC. In one instance, a US ISP was forced to close down a pro-FARC because of fears of prosecution. In any case, when reading through Rappaport's screed against the FARC, one sentence did not sit
stalinophobia
Title: stalinophobia [was: RE: [PEN-L:29360] Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Max Elbaum To Speak In Sacramen to On So cialMovement History] I don't see how inaccurate criticism (if that's what Rappaport did) of FARC has anything to do with Stalin or Stalinophobia. FARC isn't Stalinist or Stalinophilic, is it? BTW, your letter to ATC is fine (as far as I know) except it wanders about, bringing in irrelevant stuff about NACLA. More importantly, were there other articles in ATC besides the offending one by Rappaport? is it possible that ATC doesn't always publish stuff that fits the party line but instead publishes several viewpoints so that its readers can figure it out for themselves, while leaving the line for editorials? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002 12:01 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:29360] Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Max Elbaum To Speak In Sacramen to On So cialMovement History Jim Devine: In any event, these points don't answer my question: is there a diffference between the Stalinophobia that Louis decries and (say) the view that Stalin was a bloody dictator who helped establish the rule by a new stratum or class that would fight like hell to preserve their power (as with the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 or the suppression of many strikes by unions) and (among other things) killed a lot of Bolsheviks, perhaps more than the Tsar did. Of course my points answered your question. Stalin's dreadful record as a dictator is no excuse to print lies about the FARC, especially when the USA is poised to engage in a Vietnam-type intervention. Reckless Charges Against the FARC In the current issue (May-June 2001) of Against the Current, there is an article by Dr. Joanne Rappaport titled Colombia: Options from the Grassroots. She is an anthro who has spent time working with Colombian Indians. Her article takes no position on class questions, but is written from a civil society and need for peace perspective found in NACLA, the Nation Magazine, etc. Although not mentioning these publications specifically, James Petras has an article in the May Monthly Review titled The Geopolitics of Plan Colombia which tries to cut through these middle-class pieties. In general the Colombian peace movement internationally has tried to use indigenous demands as a wedge against the FARC, less so against the ELN which tends to operate in territories less populated by Indians. The conflicts between the FARC and the Indians tends to be a side-effect of the civil war that is mainly a contest between the leftwing guerrilla movement and the army and paramilitaries. Official Indian organizations such as the CRIC have complained about incursions by both left and right into their territory, especially in Cauca. In one well-publicized incident, the FARC killed 3 indigenous activists from the USA who had been misidentified as CIA agents. In general, the FARC suffers from a heavy-handed paternalistic attitude toward Indians that is not much different than the one that led to clashes between the FSLN and Miskitos in Nicaragua. That being said, it is of crucial importance to hold the FARC accountable for any such misdeeds on a fair and impartial basis. Whatever their failings, they are in the gunsight of what might turn out to be the most perilous military intervention by the US since the Vietnam war. Unfortunately, left-liberal journalism has not adhered to the highest standards in the past. For example in the July/August 1999 NACLA Report, editorial board member Mario Murillo stated that Over the past year, FARC guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries have murdered, abducted, and threatened numerous members of the Embera Katío community, a tribe of about 500 families living along rivers in northern Córdoba... However, a report filed in July 22, 1999 on the website of the Presbyterian Church of Colombia reported that the murders were committed not by the FARC, but by members of the rightwing paramilitary United Self Defense of Colombia (AUC) disguised as FARC combatants. When I emailed Murillo asking for an explanation of the discrepancy, he failed to reply. He also stuck to his story at a conference on Colombia held at Hunter College. When I asked one of the Indian panelists at the plenary session if she could substantiate the NACLA charges, she said she could not. Rappaport's article is written from the same exact perspective as Murillo's, which is troubling considering that we would expect Against the Current, purportedly some kind of Marxist publication, to have a more acute class analysis than that found in NACLA. Rappaport warns us that the FARC should not be confused with the
Re: Re: Max Elbaum To Speak In Sacramento On SocialMovementHistory
Jurriaan Bendien wrote: Louis wrote: We have the same requirement today that existed in Russia in 1902 and in the USA in the 70s and 80s, namely to unite scattered Marxist circles and individuals. We are still in the 1890s (Russia) 1950s (US). It is important to remember that WITBD was leading up to the SECOND, not the FIRST congress of the RSDLP. The problem was how to develop a shadow party into a real party. We don't have a shadow party. When someone with the politics of a Doug Henwood and someone with the politics of Lou Proyect (not necessarily the particular persons, but people with those sorts of politics) can debate each other within the same general political structure, _then_ we will be getting close to 1902. Actually, analogies don't help much. Learn from History is a capitalist not a marxist slogan. What one learns from history is best represented by what the French General Staff in the 1930s learned from World War 1. To put it another way, it is profoundly unhistorical to believe that one can learn from the mistakes of the past. Carrol
learning from history
Title: learning from history RE: [PEN-L:29362] Re: Re: Max Elbaum To Speak In Sacramento On SocialMovementHistory Carrol: Actually, analogies don't help much. Learn from History is a capitalist not a marxist slogan. What one learns from history is best represented by what the French General Staff in the 1930s learned from World War 1. To put it another way, it is profoundly unhistorical to believe that one can learn from the mistakes of the past. Just because the future can never be exactly the same as the past doesn't mean that we can learn _nothing_ from the past. Among other things, you are telling us that we can learn from the mistakes of the French General Staff during the 1930s. The problem was that they learned in the _wrong way_. It's okay to learn from the past as long as the fallacy of argument by analogy is remembered: that is, the future is like the past in some ways -- but it's also different. The say applies to learning from a theory. Concrete reality can be understood by using theory, but no theory corresponds to reality completely. The main point of learning from the past or learning from theory is not as a substitute for concrete analysis of concrete conditions but in order to gain perspective that is lost if one gets mired in the details of concrete analysis. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: stalinophobia
I don't see how inaccurate criticism (if that's what Rappaport did) of FARC has anything to do with Stalin or Stalinophobia. FARC isn't Stalinist or Stalinophilic, is it? Of course it has something to do with hatred of Stalin. The FARC leaders are all veteran Stalinists, but they never set up gulags nor forced artists to paint pictures. But if you have a knee-jerk reaction to anything remotely connected to Stalinism, naturally you will be lax when it comes to the kind of slander that Rappaport wrote. Any editor who was not on quaaludes would have looked at her article and asked, Where is the documentation? BTW, your letter to ATC is fine (as far as I know) except it wanders about, bringing in irrelevant stuff about NACLA. More importantly, were there other articles in ATC besides the offending one by Rappaport? is it possible that ATC doesn't always publish stuff that fits the party line but instead publishes several viewpoints so that its readers can figure it out for themselves, while leaving the line for editorials? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevinehttp://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine Yes, ATC has published other articles about Colombia which are uniformly dreadful. For example, in an article titled Colombia From Peace to War Again by Forrest Hylton in the May/June 2002 issue, we learn: But in the end the social movements were given short shrift in the peace process between the FARC and Pastrana. And some reports even suggest that FARC commanders such as Alfonso Cano, Iván Márquez, and `el Mono Jojoy' believe that, insofar as it polarizes public opinion, the indiscriminate and escalating repression and chaos in Colombia favors the revolution. Having used the demilitarized zone to prepare for war, they are not sorry to see the end of peace. When I see a phrase like some reports even suggest, I remind myself why I stopped subscribing to this shitty magazine long ago. When you put the government and the revolutionary movement on the same plane based on some unattributed report, you wonder what a John Reed would make of this miserable rag that postures as revolutionary socialist.
Re: Reform-ism
The stageism I had in mind was the De te fabula narratur. [I can type in Latin] Marx, as we have discussed numerous times, also supported reforms without reformism. On Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 06:28:06PM +0200, Jurriaan Bendien wrote: Michael, what do you mean when saying Marx began Capital with a stageist flourish - are you referring to the 1859 Preface ? I think Stedman Jones must be correct in stressing the importance of campaigning for reforms, but he is surely wrong in saying that the only alternative is reformism. It doesn't follow. If Marx didn't work out the premises for a feasible socialism/communism, then presumably that's a challenge for us to do today. Peculiar how somebody who liked to bash Friedrich Engels winds up arguing for reformism. J. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Stalinophobia
I think Stalinophobia means an unreasonable refusal to support Milosovic and an incorrect refusal to recognize that the Yugoslav regime from 1990-98 represented a last bastion of socialism. What this has to do with anything that is relevant today, I don't know. I personally regard Stalin as a butcher and a tyrant, and Stalinism, as a social system, as wicked and contemptible, but the struggle against Stalinism, understood as support for regimes like the fSU before Gorby, China, and the ex-bloc nations, is not exactly front and cxenter in today's politics. jks what is Stalinophobia? does its rejection mean that we should embrace Stalinophilia? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Since I regard the FI and Solidarity as Stalinophobic, especially around the question of Yugoslavia, I could not join, but I certainly believe that they are doing good work all in all. _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
RE: Re: Reform-ism
Title: RE: [PEN-L:29365] Re: Reform-ism Despite working indirectly for the Roman Catholic Church, I don't read (or speak!) Latin. The Penguin edition translates this as The tale is told of you. What it says to me in context is that Germans of Marx's day can learn a lot about their future from what was happening in England at the time. This isn't saying that Germany would be exactly like England. But a lot of it turned out to be the same. As I understand it, stageism says that there's only one road (from pre-capitalism to capitalism to socialism) and that all we can do is speed things up or slow things down or go backward on that road. It seems to me that Marx wasn't saying that here: instead, he saw Germany as going in that direction, so that it could learn from English experience. That's different from saying there is no alternative. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002 1:39 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:29365] Re: Reform-ism The stageism I had in mind was the De te fabula narratur. [I can type in Latin] Marx, as we have discussed numerous times, also supported reforms without reformism. On Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 06:28:06PM +0200, Jurriaan Bendien wrote: Michael, what do you mean when saying Marx began Capital with a stageist flourish - are you referring to the 1859 Preface ? I think Stedman Jones must be correct in stressing the importance of campaigning for reforms, but he is surely wrong in saying that the only alternative is reformism. It doesn't follow. If Marx didn't work out the premises for a feasible socialism/communism, then presumably that's a challenge for us to do today. Peculiar how somebody who liked to bash Friedrich Engels winds up arguing for reformism. J. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RE: Reform-ism
Jim, at the time he saw the spread as inevitable, but later he recognized that countries, such as Russia could follow a different course. On Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 11:53:34AM -0700, Devine, James wrote: what stageist flourish is that? Marx says that the British case represents the future of the rest of Europe (at the time), but that's hardly stageist. All it says is that he sees capitalism as spreading from the UK to the rest of Europe, as indeed it did. He also refers to iron necessity toward inevitable results, but I read that as referring to the inevitable conflict crises associated with the rise of capitalism, rather than to an inevitability of either capitalism or socialism. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Jurriaan Bendien [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002 9:28 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:29357] Reform-ism Michael, what do you mean when saying Marx began Capital with a stageist flourish - are you referring to the 1859 Preface ? I think Stedman Jones must be correct in stressing the importance of campaigning for reforms, but he is surely wrong in saying that the only alternative is reformism. It doesn't follow. If Marx didn't work out the premises for a feasible socialism/communism, then presumably that's a challenge for us to do today. Peculiar how somebody who liked to bash Friedrich Engels winds up arguing for reformism. J. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Stalinophobia
guaranteed flame bait??? On Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 08:45:09PM +, Justin Schwartz wrote: I think Stalinophobia means an unreasonable refusal to support Milosovic and an incorrect refusal to recognize that the Yugoslav regime from 1990-98 represented a last bastion of socialism. What this has to do with anything that is relevant today, I don't know. I personally regard Stalin as a butcher and a tyrant, and Stalinism, as a social system, as wicked and contemptible, but the struggle against Stalinism, understood as support for regimes like the fSU before Gorby, China, and the ex-bloc nations, is not exactly front and cxenter in today's politics. jks what is Stalinophobia? does its rejection mean that we should embrace Stalinophilia? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Since I regard the FI and Solidarity as Stalinophobic, especially around the question of Yugoslavia, I could not join, but I certainly believe that they are doing good work all in all. _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Stalinophobia
It seems to me that attacking something called Stalinphobia is more the flame bait. Michael Perelman wrote: guaranteed flame bait??? On Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 08:45:09PM +, Justin Schwartz wrote: I think Stalinophobia means an unreasonable refusal to support Milosovic and an incorrect refusal to recognize that the Yugoslav regime from 1990-98 represented a last bastion of socialism. What this has to do with anything that is relevant today, I don't know. I personally regard Stalin as a butcher and a tyrant, and Stalinism, as a social system, as wicked and contemptible, but the struggle against Stalinism, understood as support for regimes like the fSU before Gorby, China, and the ex-bloc nations, is not exactly front and cxenter in today's politics. jks what is Stalinophobia? does its rejection mean that we should embrace Stalinophilia? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Since I regard the FI and Solidarity as Stalinophobic, especially around the question of Yugoslavia, I could not join, but I certainly believe that they are doing good work all in all. _ Join the world's largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
Reform-ism
Michael is quite right. I just don't see any real evidence of Marx arguing for stage-ism, in the sense of a necessary sequence of stages of development. He just says that the more developed capitalist country shows the less developed capitalist country an image of its own future. That is a developmental trajectory, not a stage (although it could be interpreted in a stagist way, I suppose). But Trotsky argues no different, he makes the same argument but then in terms of unequal and combined development. I've just been rereading some chapters of his history of the Russian revolution. Boy, was that guy bright or what. Must introduce some of his ideas in my own theory of imperialism, if I ever get to work it out properly and write it down. J.
Re: Re: Stalinophobia
My comment is flamebait, and Jim's isn't. Care to explain? jks From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:29369] Re: Stalinophobia Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 14:35:41 -0700 guaranteed flame bait??? On Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 08:45:09PM +, Justin Schwartz wrote: I think Stalinophobia means an unreasonable refusal to support Milosovic and an incorrect refusal to recognize that the Yugoslav regime from 1990-98 represented a last bastion of socialism. What this has to do with anything that is relevant today, I don't know. I personally regard Stalin as a butcher and a tyrant, and Stalinism, as a social system, as wicked and contemptible, but the struggle against Stalinism, understood as support for regimes like the fSU before Gorby, China, and the ex-bloc nations, is not exactly front and cxenter in today's politics. jks what is Stalinophobia? does its rejection mean that we should embrace Stalinophilia? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Louis Proyect [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Since I regard the FI and Solidarity as Stalinophobic, especially around the question of Yugoslavia, I could not join, but I certainly believe that they are doing good work all in all. _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
Re: Reform-ism
Jurriaan Bendien wrote: stagist way, I suppose). But Trotsky argues no different, he makes the same argument but then in terms of unequal and combined development. I've just been rereading some chapters of his history of the Russian revolution. Boy, was that guy bright or what. Must introduce some of his ideas in my own theory of imperialism, if I ever get to work it out properly and write it down. This is correct. Trotsky said the following: In contrast to the economic systems which preceded it, capitalism inherently and constantly aims at economic expansion, at the penetration of new territories, the surmounting of economic differences, the conversion of self-sufficient provincial and national economies into a system of financial interrelationships. Thereby it brings about their rapprochment and equalizes the economic and cultural levels of the most progressive and the most backward countries. Without this main process, it would be impossible to conceive of the levelling out, first, of Europe with Great Britain, and then, of America with Europe; the industrialization of the colonies, the diminishing gap between India and Great Britain. (Third International After Lenin, p. 38-39) I would say that among this generation, the one who was clearest about the conflict between capitalism and development was Rosa Luxemburg. -- Louis Proyect www.marxmail.org
Re: Re: Stalinophobia
Michael, I am not sure I agree with you. Appended is an article about the attempt (by the US) to 'Stalinize' Milosevic. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba Date sent: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 14:35:41 -0700 From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:29369] Re: Stalinophobia Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > guaranteed flame bait??? > > On Mon, Aug 12, 2002 at 08:45:09PM +, Justin Schwartz wrote: > > I think "Stalinophobia" means an unreasonable refusal to support Milosovic > > and an incorrect refusal to recognize that the Yugoslav regime from 1990-98 > > represented a last bastion of socialism. What this has to do with anything > > that is relevant today, I don't know. Subject: This is not justice (The Hague) - The Guardian http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,651187,00.html The Guardian Saturday February 16, 2002 This is not justice The Hague has replaced Nuremberg's jurisprudence of peace with a licence to the west to kill By John Laughland Because its legal basis is so dubious, the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia seeks to present itself as the successor to the international military tribunal which tried the Nazi leaders at Nuremberg in 1946. As with many bodies in search of legitimacy - the Hague tribunal was created in 1993 by the UN security council, a body which has as little right to set up a court as it does to raise taxes - its defenders probably think that a quick reference to Hitler can settle the matter. However, the Hague does not embody the legal principles established and consolidated at Nuremberg. It embodies instead their complete destruction. It might seem tactless to dwell on the most obvious ways in which the Hague differs from Nuremberg: an obscure judge from the Midlands circuit and an unremarkable barrister who has prosecuted for HM customs excise are hardly worthy successors of the legal giants at Nuremberg such as US supreme court Justice Robert H Jackson, or the British attorney general Sir Hartley Shawcross. But the mediocre quality of what passes for legal reasoning at the Hague has caused the truly remarkable elements in Nuremberg's noble jurisprudence to be perverted and destroyed. We now think of Nuremberg mainly as the trial of the Holocaust. This is not how the architects of Nuremberg saw matters. Exhausted by up to six years of all-engulfing war, the allies were mainly preoccupied with the fact that Nazi Germany had plunged the whole world into conflict. When Justice Jackson rose to address the tribunal, his very first words were not about crimes against humanity but instead about his "privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world". For the judges at Nuremberg, the primordial war crime was to start a war in the first place. All other war crimes flowed from this. Although naked aggression has always been illegal under customary international law - as is attested by the numerous and no doubt spurious legal justifications made throughout history by belligerent states for their actions - Nuremberg was innovatory in its clear legal formulation that the planning and execution of a war of aggression constituted a criminal act in international law. It was for this crime, and not for crimes against humanity, that all the Nazis at Nuremberg were judged. In the minds of the architects of Nuremberg, moreover, the best way to preserve peace was to raise the profile of the concept of state sovereignty. The rigorous sovereignist logic of the Nuremberg tribunal was clearly spelled out in its charter. Indeed, the Nuremberg tribunal, unlike the Hague tribunal, was not really an international tribunal at all. The judges quite specifically stated that the act of promulgating the Nuremberg charter was "the exercise of the sovereign legislative power of the countries to which the German Reich unconditionally surrendered". There was no pretence that the "international community" was prosecuting the Germans. Indeed, when other countries asked to be allowed to participate in the Nuremberg trial, the allies told them to mind their own business. People today who argue that heads of state must answer for their crimes forget that the prosecution and punishment of criminal acts is a key attribute of state sovereignty - in the sense that you cannot punish criminals unless you have the police and judicial power to catch and imprison them. Even if the creation of a world state were possible for the purposes of the administration of universal justice, the question would then be how to subject that new world state power to appropriate democratic and legal controls. In other words, "Who guards the guardians themselves?" The Nuremberg jurists knew that any such talk of universal jurisdic tion would only lead to the creation of a new sovereign power at world level. Consequently, they stuck rigorously
Turkey through the eyes of a Blogorrhoea patient - I
Dear All, I refer those of you who don't know about this recently discovered psychic condition called Blogorrhoea to the web page of Rob Schaap. The address of his page is below: http://blogorrhoea.blogspot.com/ I had been in Turkey until yesterday and before I left for Turkey in early July, I promised Michael Perelman a summary of my observations there. Below is not only the first part of the summary I promised but, being a long-time Blogorrhoea patient, also an attempt of autotherapy as prescribed by Rob (see the above web page). To start with good news, the Turkish food is still wonderful and the raki, white cheese and mellon sessions in the company of good friends is still the best psychotherapy one can get around the world. Unfortunatelly, this is the only goods news I can convey. The rest varies from bad to worst. The first bad news is that Turkey is on its way to default, unless she can find foreign credit. As argued by Gungor Uras, a respected (at least by me) neoclassical economist, in his daily column in the Turkish daily Milliyet on August 8, 2002, in the absence of foreign credit, Turkey will have to choose between defaulting on its internal debt (given that defaulting on foreign debt is unacceptable for obvious reasons) and not paying the salaries of public employees. To see why, let us look at the below table, miserably translated by me and hopefully correctly converted into US dollars using an exchange rate of 1,650,000 Turkish liras to the dollar, from his article. January-July 2002 Treasury Cash Flow (in billions) Revenue (R) $23.28 Payment (P) $33.39 Interest Payments (IP) $15.73 Other Payments(OP) $17.67 Primary Balance (R - OP) $5.60 Cash Balance (P - R) -$10.12 Deficit Financing (DF) $10.12 _ Total Net Borrowing(TB) $11.67 Foreign Net Borrowing $8.34 Borrowing $11.68 Payment $3.34 Domestic Net Borrowing $3.33 Borrowing $31.78 Payment $28.45 Balance (DF - TB) -$1.55 Sadly, 71% of the above deficit financing comes from foreign borrowing and as a scrutiny of the above table, together with the already scarce domestic credit (note the sizes of the domestic borrowing and payment)and Turkey's drying income from other sources, indicates, if the foreign credit dries up, then Turkey will soon default. Unfortunatelly, with the increasing risk aversion towards emerging markets arising from the ongoing Latin American troubles and the fact that we had already been bailed out by the IMF very recently, not to mention the coming economic earthquake which will most likely emanate from the US, the likelihood of foreign credit dry-up is very high. A worse news is that none of the political parties entering into the election coming on November 3, 2002 has any idea of how to deal with the coming default, nor do they show any interest in concerning themselves with the problem. They are busy with other important problems such as defining social liberalism, mild islamic fundamentalism, adjectiveless democracy and the like. In the mean time, the consensus is continuing with the ongoing IMF program, presented to the public as going very well both by the IMF and their domestic clowns including almost all of the government officials as well as several economists such as Deniz Gokce, Asaf Savas Akat and the like, who regularly lie to the public with the talkshows and interviews on TV and in their daily columns in the newspapers, all of which are owned by several members of the Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen Association (TIBA). In passing I should mention that TIBA is the most powerful civil society organization in the country and it should not come as surprise that TIBA and the Turkish Military has historically been closely linked. After all, it was the generals of the Ottaman era who, obviously not so successfully, engineered our national bourgeoise out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. Also worth noting is that the so-called Armed Forces Pension Fund (OYAK), whose supposed primary function is to provide social assistance to the retired members of the Turkish Military, is one of the largest and growing holding companies in the country. It is incorporated as a private entity under a special law and has equity investments in 25 companies, concentrated in the automotive, cement, financial and service sectors. Its financial arm consists of a commercial bank, an investment management company, an insurance company (joint venture of
Japanese firms cutting pension benefits report
The Economic Times Sunday, August 11, 2002 Japanese firms cutting pension benefits: report REUTERS TOKYO: Declining investment returns are forcing a growing number of Japanese companies to cut pension benefits, according to a government survey reported in the financial daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun. As of the end of March 2002, 366 companies, or more than 20 per cent of those surveyed by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, had cut pension benefits, the newspaper said. Some had cut payments by almost a quarter. Most were targeting future pension payments promised to employees, but seven firms had cut benefits for people who had already retired. Another 100 or so companies are expected to cut pension benefits in the current financial year, the paper quoted the government report as saying. Japanese employee pension funds are divided into two portions, one of which is managed by the public pension system, under which benefits are fixed. The other portion is the responsibility of the firms, which had calculated pension levels on the assumption that their investments would return between three and five per cent annually. But with interest rates hovering near all-time lows and Japan's Nikkei stock average at little more than a quarter of its peak levels, many companies have found it impossible to squeeze returns from pension capital. Copyright © 2002 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.
the l e of cloning
Monday, Aug. 12, 2002 Lawyers Group May Endorse Cloning By ANNE GEARAN Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - The nation's largest lawyers' group will decide this week whether to endorse cloning to advance human health, while condemning government intervention that would make criminals of scientists who pursue medical cloning research. A proposal before the American Bar Association would put the 408,000-lawyer organization on record for the first time about cloning and at odds with the Bush administration. The ABA's governing body is to vote Monday or Tuesday on what scientists call therapeutic cloning, or the engineering of human embryos for the medically precious stem cells they contain. Stem cells might then develop into replacement tissue and organs for patients with incurable diseases. Cloning one's own cells could overcome the body's tendency to reject transplanted tissue, researchers hope. Therapeutic cloning, not yet tried in humans, assumes that the created embryo will be destroyed. It is not intended to make a baby, and the proposed ABA position implicitly opposes cloning for reproductive purposes, supporters said. President Bush wants a permanent ban on cloning for biomedical research, and the House took the same position last year. Cloning bills are stalled in the Senate, where Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., proposed a permanent ban and criminal penalties for scientists who violate it. Lacking votes for that position, he proposed a two-year moratorium on cloning research. The ABA long has advocated academic and scientific freedom, and for legal and ethical reasons should not stand by if the government tries to wall off scientific inquiry, said Robyn Shapiro, director of the Center for the Study of Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and an author of the proposed policy. The course upon which the law embarks regarding this field of research will be critical to helping either protect or diminish the freedom of scientific inquiry in the future, wrote lawyers who drafted the proposed policy. It would not give unqualified support to any medicinal cloning. It does endorse cloning research intended to improve human health so long as the research is conducted ethically and safely, lawyers said. Lawyers predicted the question will provoke strong opposition among some ABA members, and the proposed position could be amended or defeated by the policy-making House of Delegates. For Bush and other opponents of any human cloning, the technique is fraught with religious and ethical problems. Opponents say a cloned embryo that will never be implanted in a woman's uterus is still a life and should not be created simply to be destroyed. The recommended ABA policy was born of fear that the Brownback bill might become law, Shapiro said. Coming out in favor of therapeutic cloning now would allow the ABA to lobby Congress, testify on Capitol Hill or publish its position if the legislation is revived when Congress returns from a summer break, lawyers said. Brownback's spokesman, Erik Hotmire, declined comment on the proposed ABA position. Cloning advocates welcomed an alliance with the ABA, which has an annual lobbying budget of $1.5 million. An organization with the weight of ABA could be very influential with senators on the fence, said Michael Manganiello, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research. As a practical matter, the best that cloning advocates may be able to hope for is a continued stalemate in Congress. Bush presumably would veto any legislation that endorsed therapeutic cloning, but for now there is no law against it. Bush's own bioethics advisers recommended against a permanent cloning ban last month. The divided panel took a middle path, favoring a four-year moratorium on research cloning to allow for further public debate. A member of the panel, Washington University law professor Rebecca Dresser, said the proposed ABA position is premature. Scientists and others cannot yet agree on what standards should govern biomedical cloning research, let alone whether cloning should ever be done in humans, Dresser said. There is too much we don't really have enough agreement on in this country about this. I know we'll never get full agreement, but I think we need to talk a lot more, before taking firm positions, she said. --- On the Net: American Bar Association: http://www.abanet.org
Metropolis
Despite the permanent loss of 25 percent of the original footage, movie-goers can now see a version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis that is faithful to the 1927 version. This dystopian tale of downtrodden workers living deep beneath an ultra-modern city built through their labor includes many images that have become part of film iconography. The most famous depicts men operating vast clock-like machines. Their desperate efforts to keep pace with the frenetic revolutions of the dial constitute a macabre version of Charlie Chaplin on the assembly line in Modern Times. When Joh Fredersen (Alfred Abel), the corporate mogul who runs Metropolis, discovers that workers are organizing for better conditions, he recruits a mad inventor to build a robot that looks like their cherished leader in order to provoke them into a self-defeating rebellion. The inventor's workshop clearly inspired Frankenstein and many other films. These images can be found at: (http://www.filmforum.com/metroshow.html) Restorationist Martin Koerber told the Village Voice, What you've seen before of Metropolis is usually some kind of Frankenstein story. Nutty professor invents robot, robot wreaks havoc, and everything goes kaput. While this certainly is part of the narrative, there is much more. By discovering a first-generation camera negative in Berlin, Koerber was able to construct a new version using pristine images. For those passages that could not be restored, Koerber supplies a brief précis of the action. All in all, the film moves along without any jarring discontinuities. Metropolis was last presented to modern-day audiences in 1984 when Europop impresario Giorgio Moroder put together a colorized version of the film with his own cheesy film-score. Based on the 87 minute version previously available, this version was *37 minutes* shorter than Koerber's. Moroder calculated that color and his score, which included artist Freddy Mercury, would attract a younger generation to the classic film, a strategy that might be likened to putting silver tinsel on Bauhaus furniture. Fortunately Kroeber makes use the original score by Gottfried Huppertz, who also wrote chamber music and orchestral scores in the same lush quasi-Wagnerian style that works so well for this rather grandiose film. Although the film was made during the turbulent 1920s, it would be a mistake to assume that it was socialist propaganda. To the contrary, the main message of the film is class collaboration. When Joh Fredersen's young son Freder (Gustav Fröhlich) goes into the subterranean bowels of Metropolis in search of Maria (Brigitte Helm), the workers' leader whom he has fallen in love with at first sight, he is devastated by the sight of workers practically chained to their machines. No longer willing to live a life of privilege, he dons coveralls and takes the place of a suffering worker at the clock-machine. When he finally meets Maria, who returns his love, he agrees to be the mediator between the workers and his father. Between the head (managers) and the hand (assembly line workers), Maria preaches the need for the heart. Young Freder will be that heart. It would take a PhD dissertation to sort out all the clashing ideas in Metropolis. While on one hand sympathetic to a kind of neo-Luddism, it also expresses Fritz Lang and screenwriter Thea Von Harbau's (Mrs. Lang) infatuation with the United States that they had visited for the first time in 1924. Lang recalls from that visit: The buildings seemed like a vertical curtain, shimmering and very light, a lavish backdrop hanging against a murky sky, dazzling, distracting, and hypnotizing. It was only at night that the city gave the impression that it was alive: alive in the way that illusions are alive. I knew that I had to make a film about all these impressions. Even the most anti-capitalist moments of the film are shrouded in a kind of apocalyptic iconography. In a feverish state, Freder sees Metropolis being avenged by statues of the Seven Deadly Sins that have come to life. In one giddy scene that stands out among many, we see the building of the Tower of Babel by vast throngs of bare-chested slaves. With some 37,633 actors and extras at Lang's disposal, this scene and others achieve epic proportions. With a budget of 5 million marks, it was the most expensive film ever made in Germany. In 1927, it was unlikely that the socialist movement, which was fighting for its life, would take such a film seriously. Gestalt psychologist and cultural critic Rudolf Arnheim wrote in Stachelschwein: It's an old story: a heart looks pretty good in a film - not as a symbol of pulsing life, of vivid reality, but because hearts are sweet, as in 'sweetheart', and because the sun shines in your heart... At one extreme we have an engineer's idea of America. Of course, it is derived less from institutes of technology than from science fiction for boys: the smooth face
Re: Reform-ism
Jurriaan Bendien wrote: Michael is quite right. I just don't see any real evidence of Marx arguing for stage-ism, in the sense of a necessary sequence of stages of development. He just says that the more developed capitalist country shows the less developed capitalist country an image of its own future. That is a developmental trajectory, not a stage (although it could be interpreted in a stagist way, I suppose). But Trotsky argues no different, he makes the same argument but then in terms of unequal and combined development. There is also a tendency to bend the stick excessively in the other (anti-stagist) direction. Anti-stagism frequently becomes a unversally formula, just like stagism. Ulhas
Re: Re: Re: Stalinophobia
I think one can offer a definition of stalinophobia (and though I've never heard the term used, of stalinophilia also). Both consist of the assumption that labelling a political position Stalinist eliminates the need for further thought. To avoid both it is also important not even to accept someone's self-designation as stalinist (or anti-stalinist) as very relevant to the understanding of that person's politics. I'm not sure whether having an opinion on Stalin's USSR _necessarily_ effects one's politics in 2002. Carrol
Re: Re: Re: Re: Stalinophobia
Someone once proposed -- I think they pronounce it a law -- that once the word Hitler appears in the debate all dialogue is finished. If that idea is a law, a Stalin corollary is warranted. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Stalinophobia
- Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002 7:24 PM Subject: [PEN-L:29381] Re: Re: Re: Re: Stalinophobia Someone once proposed -- I think they pronounce it a law -- that once the word Hitler appears in the debate all dialogue is finished. If that idea is a law, a Stalin corollary is warranted. == Reflexively, does that mean all debate on this thread is finished? Ian An indefinite boundary is not really a boundary at all. (Wittgenstein)
Re: Re: Max Elbaum To Speak In Sacramento On SocialMovement His...
Greetings Economists, Melvin P replies to my thoughts, Melvin, Welcome to the heat tank. Doyle, Sounds like the hot pot for fresh email posters. ;-) Melvin, His use of the words sectarianism and cult are in my estimate justifiable historically. And also Melvin writes, Suffice it to state that addiction involves ingesting a substance that has a biological impact on the human organism - molecular alteration, while obsession is not necessarily driven on the basis of the biological impact of injection. There is more than meets the eye to this proposition because human beings must ingest to live. What we ingest to live, emerged as a separate and distinct field of scientific inquiry in the early 20th century. Obsession appears in its mode of expression as addictive behavior, but they are not identical. My point is that sectarianism and cultism versus addiction may converge but are very distinct social processes. Adulation of the individual or the cult movement in society - from movie and rock stars to social leaders (Kings, Queens, Pope, Presidents, Militants and even Marilyn Monroe) is a somewhat different matter. As interesting as these subjects are, I have chosen to write about the economic structure of society in which this social intercourse plays itself out. (I of course have undying loyalty to Marilyn Monroe and am aware that everyone does not universally share this archetype. So much for that.) Doyle I think that an economic view of what makes sects work is called for. When I talk about managing emotions I am thinking about how using the internet one could reveal the structure of social groups in new ways. When for example I work in another place and work with you on some document on-line that concerns the working class movement it is important to know how you feel when we collaborate. Here on Pen-L we usually work individually, and reply to each other as individuals, but I could see working with people on the same document on-line (via content management software systems) for various reasons. Knowing how you feel might be as simple as a phone call, or it might be elaborated through some sort of emotion sensing device (lie detectors are the common example of some way to measure emotions). If we measure how I feel about something we have something to economically analyze in relation to the documents we produce together collaboratively. I have an on-line paper from MIT which discusses the concept of the economy of emotions in Information Technology. Analytical Models of Emotions, Learning and Relationships: Towards an Affect-sensitive Cognitive Machine, Barry Kort, Rob Reilly, MIT Media Laboratory, That paper proposes to analyze an Emotion-Learning-Spiritual Economy. In that sense (where we are discussing sectarianism from the 1970's and 1980's) and have a written text we also could produce some sort of record of the feelings that went with the text. I think it then possible to rationalize the structure of feelings that social networks create online, and from there reveal what sectarianism really is. A sect or group when it produces a dogma (literally) has such and such feeling structure to it, and when another group which is not dogmatic produces a text it has such and such feeling structure to it. Therapies promise psychological help for social problems. We still don't know what exactly to do about groups with sectarian tendencies. I.e. we can't definitively say an organizational structure is not going to be sectarian. There are many people I think who would defend sects and what they do, or who might contrarily organize non-sectarian groups. So we don't know if there is a social value to sects rather than a need for a blanket banning. We could ask how to manage the emotional structures that under lie how these human groups are formed if we could see the actual structure of emotions linked to communications (written text). We usually instead take a lot of time getting to know people and that personal experience is how we usually guess at the emotional structure in a social group. This guessing game works, but I think has very definite limits which having records of emotions and the ability to shape and direct the emotional system of a group would offer powerful new tools for building socialist groups. thanks, Doyle
Stalinophobia
Title: Stalinophobia Michael Perelman writes:Someone once proposed -- I think they pronounce it a law -- that once the word Hitler appears in the debate all dialogue is finished. If that idea is a law, a Stalin corollary is warranted. I don't think so. One reason why Hitler the Nazis show up is that they are an important exception to a lot of rules, such as the advantages of civilization and the inevitability of progress. In 1929, Germany had both civilization and progress, but ... Also, they represent a perfect counter-example to the the worse the better theory. I agree that Hitler analogies are to be avoided (I don't think it makes sense, for example, to compare George Dubya to Hitler), but sometimes they do make sense. As for Stalin, I think that his tendency -- and there are people who apologize for it, even on pen-l -- represents a failure not of capitalism (as with Hitler) but of the socialist movement. I don't think either of the links in the chain Marx -- Lenin -- Stalin follow like night follows day (or vice-versa). But Stalin and his ism represents a trap that socialists have fallen into, the idea that socialism can be imposed from above with bayonets. (This includes not just Maoists but also Fabians, such as the Webbs.) Jim Devine
But the work of reconstructing corporate America has barely begun.
[Jim Devine is PK gettin' that old time progessive law and economics gestalt going, what's with the multiple turns of phrase? When will we he go after the tax code as a tool for deconstructing corporate america?] August 13, 2002 Clueless in Crawford By PAUL KRUGMAN Today, in its Waco economic forum, the Bush administration will try to convince the country that everything is under control - that the economy is mending, that shady business practices are no longer a problem. To that end a carefully chosen audience will listen to speeches by administration officials and selected models of corporate probity. Among the speakers announced last week was John T. Chambers, C.E.O. of Cisco Systems. They really don't get it, do they? One could hardly have picked a better example of what's wrong with the administration's whole approach. Two years ago Cisco was the world's most valuable company, with a market capitalization of more than $500 billion. Mr. Chambers was among the world's best-paid executives, receiving $157 million in 2000. Cisco was perceived as a company that combined new-economy glitz with old-fashioned solidity, that was on the cutting edge but made real products and earned real profits. In short, people thought about Cisco the same way they thought about Enron. That's not a strained comparison. Even when Cisco was riding high, an analysis in Barron's dubbed it the New Economy Creative Accounting Exemplar. The company's specialty was using its own overvalued stock as currency - paying its employees with stock options, acquiring other companies by issuing more stock. Thanks to loopholes in the accounting rules - loopholes defended with intense lobbying - these transactions allowed executives to progressively dilute the stake of their original shareholders, without ever declaring this dilution as a business cost. The resulting illusion of profitability sustained the stock price, making more questionable deals possible. Some analysts flatly called Cisco a pyramid scheme. When Enron's financial house of cards collapsed, $80 billion of market value vanished. Cisco hasn't collapsed, but its market capitalization has fallen by more than $400 billion. Nobody from Cisco management - ranked No. 13 in Fortune's greedy bunch - has been arrested. But then neither has anyone from Enron. Some cynics attribute the continuing absence of Enron indictments to the Bush family's loyalty code. But the alternative explanation is both innocent and chilling: Enron executives may have deluded and defrauded their shareholders without actually breaking the law. What Cisco did was definitely legal. Since Enron collapsed, administration officials have insisted that no new laws are needed to reform corporate America, only enforcement of existing laws. The administration endorsed a bill imposing modest reforms in accounting only after doing everything it could to block it. And as soon as the bill was passed, the administration began issuing guidance to federal prosecutors that will undermine the law's intent on whistle-blower protection, document shredding and more. Officials clearly still think the old law was good enough. But the Cisco story, like the absence of Enron indictments, demonstrates just how much self-enrichment corporate insiders can get away with while staying within the letter of the law. The handful of executives who have been arrested aren't masterminds - on the contrary, given the legal ways other executives got rich while their stockholders lost billions, the perp-walkers should be featured on a special corporate edition of America's Dumbest Criminals. Now the administration is sounding the all clear - we've passed a bill, we've arrested five people, it's all over. But the work of reconstructing corporate America has barely begun. The next step, surely, is dealing with stock options. It's not just that companies overstate their profits by failing to count options as an expense. Huge grants of options also give executives an incentive to do whatever it takes to produce a short-term bump in the stock price - if one year of illusory success can net you $157 million, who cares what happens later? Byron Wien of Morgan Stanley recently told a group of security analysts that stock options malevolence is at the root of corporate scandal, and that anyone who says that stock options aren't an expense destroys his credibility on all other issues. Well, Mr. Chambers's company still refuses to count stock options as an expense. The administration has said that it opposes rules that would require Cisco to change its accounting, and the choice of Mr. Chambers as a speaker seems to be a reaffirmation of that position. As I said, they just don't get it. An indefinite boundary is not really a boundary at all. (Wittgenstein)
Re: New Zealand election
An update on the final New Zealand election result. Labour has formed a coalition with the PCP (foregone conclusion) with the support in confidence and supply of the economic right/moral conservative United Future Party outside the government. The Greens are signing some kind of agreement with Labour, but it is not yet known just what. Clearly though, this is a move to the right, though hopefully small. The final election result gave the Greens an extra seat (9 instead of 8) at the expense of UF (8 instead of 9, losing a candidate who in 1993 called for all AIDs victims to be quarantined). It was an historically low poll for New Zealand: 77% voted. It is likely the left lost more due to the low vote than to the loopy centre parties. In the meantime, the deputy leader of New Zealand First has made a speech echoing Enoch Powell (the English racist anti-immigration politician of the 1960's) and expressing his admiration for him. Fortunately New Zealand First does not hold the balance of power, despite being the third largest party. Bill Bill Rosenberg wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Bill, Could you give us the lowdown on the recent election results. From the paltry news we get here I understand Labour was just short of a majority and was expected to form a coalition with the Greens and one other party which I had not heard of. It is interesting. When NZ was doing its neoliberal dance, the media here gave it almost daily coverage of the triumph of the right. Now that Labour is back (more or less) in the saddle, we get one inch of copy in the national press, nothing in the local press, and complete silence on the electronic media. So what's up, Bill? It's messy (hence my time to reply). New Zealand-watchers may recall that in 1999 fifteen years of purist but increasingly moribund neo-liberal governments (starting with a Labour government in 1984) were voted out in favour of a Labour-Alliance coalition government. The new government relied on the Green Party (which has progressive social policies as well as its environmental core) for a majority in votes of confidence and supply. Labour, led by Helen Clark, had reinvented itself during the 90's a little to the left of Tony Blair. The Alliance had been formed by left social democrat deserters from Labour led by former Labour Party president and Member of Parliament (MP), Jim Anderton. They formed a left grouping of several parties, including initially the Greens, but also the Democrats (former Social Credit) and Mana Motuhake (a Maori party). The coalition government was dominated by the Labour party (49 seats in the 120 seat Parliament), the Alliance having 10 and Greens 7 in a proportional representation system. It continued fiscal policies which differed very little from the previous 15 years - an independent Reserve Bank, budget surpluses, reducing government expenditure as a proportion of GDP, no new taxes (other than a small rise on the top tax rates). It did some good things - some planned (re-nationalisation of the accident compensation system, paid parental leave, repeal of the anti-union and anti-collectivist Employment Contracts Act, increased investment in state-owned housing and income-related rents, elected district health boards, creation of people's bank, economic development programmes), some unplanned (for example renationalising the national airline when it was on the point of bankruptcy). However the Alliance membership, and some of its MPs became increasingly frustrated at the slow progress and the unwillingness of Anderton to publicly claim responsibility for some of the gains forced by the Alliance (such as more generous parental leave and a higher minimum wage) and to publicly put pressure on Labour to move further. The Alliance was losing support electorally (down from 8% in 1999 to around 4% in opinion polls, losing votes to Labour and the Greens. Note that 5% is a crucial benchmark; below that a party does not get representation in the New Zealand Parliament unless they win an electorate MP). They felt imprisoned by Labour's unwillingness to raise taxes to finance new social programmes, and increasingly aghast at its enthusiastic pursuit of free trade agreements with Singapore (signed), Hong Kong (in negotiation), the US (dreamed of) and others. Finally, the war against Afghanistan was the breaking point. Anderton pressured the caucus at short notice to support Labour in sending New Zealand SAS (commando) troops. That brought a furious reaction from rank and file members, many of whom are long standing members of New Zealand's strong peace movement. The result was a split in the Alliance with six MPs following Anderton into a new Jim Anderton's Progressive Coalition Party, whose membership comes largely from the Democrats, and three continuing the Alliance led by the very able Laila Harre with a
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Stalinophobia
The actual law was that the first person to bring up Hitler was automatically the loser of the debate. Since no one mentioned Stalin until LP brought it up, does that mean this applies to him? Michael Perelman wrote: Someone once proposed -- I think they pronounce it a law -- that once the word Hitler appears in the debate all dialogue is finished. If that idea is a law, a Stalin corollary is warranted.
