Re: The Road to Serfdom
this is a good post, because it's specific in its critique. This is something that might be answered, though I doubt anyone's interested in doing so. Jim -Original Message- From: Mike Ballard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sat 8/9/2003 10:52 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] The Road to Serfdom --- andie nachgeborenen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: JKS refers to the well worn territory of how markets are BAD actually, my understanding is that (except for Mike B), the main trend of the anti-market socialism side was not that markets are BAD. (Could you name someone who says that markets are evil?) Right here, right now, Mike Ballard. *** Hi Jim and Andie, Just to be clear and without religious overtone: I don't think that markets are evil. I think that we need to realize that we (who are not capitalists) are the market and the producers. I think that exchange-value needs to be stripped away from use-value and disgarded. I think that it has now been historically demonstrated that commodity production/consumption undermines any attempt to achieve socialism. I think that wage-labour has outlived its usefulness for humankind. I think that commodity production is inherently alienating, always leading away from social ownership of the means of production, self-management and towards the continuation of hierarchical-political power over the producers. Best, Mike B) = * Cognitive dissonance is the inner conflict produced when long-standing beliefs are contradicted by new evidence. http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
Re: The Road to Serfdom
The term export-led needs to be defined a bit more. I share some of Marty's concerns and Doug is right that small countries in an era of integration can't do much. But when speaking of China how much growth and development is export-led? I am thinking of the Chinese internal market. To take the IT example, it's domestic market is huge compared to what it exports. It is almost a mirror image of India in the software business, far more exports by Indian fims than domestic sales. So in the Indian case I have been arguing not to reduce exports but to increase domestic sales. Explicitly it calls for addresing the demand constraint problem. And within the export sphere diversify the markets away from the US to East Asia for both reducing vulnerabilities and inducing various learning opportunities. I suspect that China does not face this sort of problem because of its huge internal market. There are of course wrenching changes in the country-side, the state-sector, and the like. But I do think China has it far better than most developing countries. As for beggar thy neighbor policy, which Marty thinks is the problem with export-led strategy, I can't disagree, even Japan is shaking with China's growth. But then if Japan has to sink so be it! This is the nature of the game, shifting strategies per se is not going to alter the capitalist game. Cheers, anthony xxx Anthony P. D'Costa, Associate Professor Comparative International Development University of WashingtonCampus Box 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA Phone: (253) 692-4462 Fax : (253) 692-5718 xxx On Mon, 11 Aug 2003, Grant Lee wrote: Martin Hart-Landsberg wrote: The difficulty in export-led development certainly should be clear in the case of Mexico. It succeeded over the 1990s in attracting lots of fdi and export growth. But at the cost of hollowing out its domestic industry. Now a bit of wage growth and rising currency and that foreign industry is now deserting Mexico for China. And China's rise which is being celebrated is coming at the expense of export production in Malaysia and Singapore and leading to industrial capital moving from South Korea. So, embracing this strategy is not very helpful. Hi Marty, The question is: helpful to whom? The case of Mexico is often raised when this question comes up, but the overall trend in terms of the flight of capital is from more developed countries to less developed (which, by definition, does not include S.Korea, Malaysia or Singapore). It's bad news for wage earners in developed and semi-developed countries. This includes me, but I find it hard and --- I would say futile --- to begrudge those in China, Kenya, Vanuatau, wherever. Regards, Grant.
Re: The Road to Serfdom
Quoting Anthony D'Costa [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I share some of Marty's concerns and Doug is right that small countries in an era of integration can't do much. But when speaking of China how much growth and development is export-led? My reply: As for Chinas export dependence, according to the World Bank, before 1978, Chinas foreign trade was negligible, but, since then, the ratio of trade to GDP has quadrupledfrom a mere 8.5 percent in 1978 to 36.5 percent in 1999. That is a pretty significant gain for export activity. Moreover, that activity is becoming more central to Chinas growth. According to Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley, exports now account for 74 percent of the growth in the Chinese economy in 2002. Thus domestic demand accounts for only 26 percent of the growth. And much of this demand has been driven by state infrastructure investment and foreign direct investment. And the share of foreign companies in exports has grown rapidly, from less then 2 percent of total Chinese exports in 1986 to 48 percent in 2000; their imports rose from less than 6 percent to almost 52 percent. As for some of the consequences of this rise in Chinese export orientation, according to the Bank of International Settlements: China is already a major producer of labour-intensive manufactures. Moreover, as a result of its accession to the WTO, it is expected to capture a large share of the liberalised global market in textiles and apparel when the WTO Agreement on Textiles and Clothing expires in 2005. China thus poses major challenges for current producers of textiles and other labour intensive manufactures in Southeast Asia. In addition, the country has moved steadily up the value added chain, and its exports of machinery and high-tech products have increased rapidly. Chinas share in Asias total electronics exports has more than doubled during the past five years to 30% in 2002. In contrast, the shares of Malaysia and Singapore have fallen off sharply. Anecdotal accounts also suggest that production facilities in high-tech sectors are being relocated to China from emerging East Asia as well as Japan. Looking at more high end electronics exports, a report by the Japan Electronic and Information Technology Industries Association notes that China will be the largest electronics exporter in the world in 2003 with the highest market share in 8 out of 12 major export items. These include mobile phones, color TV sets, laptop computers, desktop PCs, PDAs, DVD players, DVD drives, and car stereos. This represents a steady climb for china reflecting its growing importance as a platform for advanced transnational corporations. Thus it was number one in only two categories in 2000, three in 2001, five in 2002, and expected 8 in 2003. This rise comes at the expense of other countries, representing a shift in production. Korea did not have a single number one. And in four items, Korea suffered a decline in market share: color TVs, DVD players, VTRs, and car stereos. Among four items not dominated by China, Japan is expected to lead in digital cameras, and car navigators, Indonesia in VTRs, and Singapore in HDDs, respectively. However, according to the report, China is likely to catch up with Indonesia and Singapore within two years as production of VTRs and HDDs is showing rapid growth. Japan had the highest rank in four items until as late as 2000. This year China is expected to overtake Japan in DVDs and DVD drives. Looking just at Japan, according to the Far Eastern Economic Review: In the last decade, Japanese investment in China has doubled, to the point where more than half of China-Japan trade is conducted among Japanese companies. At the same time, Japans trade with China, including Hong Kong, more than tripled, to $115 billion last year... China is luring away billions of dollars worth of Japanese investment, the argument goes, contributing to a 20 percent drop in Japanese factory employment during the 1990s. The Japanese, justifiably or not, feel helpless against Chinese wage rates that are 5 percent of Japanese levels. Adding to Japans despair, China is quickly moving past bicycles and basic TV sets into the same high-technology, high-value products where Japan has long staked its claims. This year, for the first time, machinery displaced textiles as the leading sector of Chinese products imported by Japan. As for some of the ASEAN countries, Chinas rise is far more threatening. For one thing these countries tend to produce products similar to ones produced by China. And they are more dependent on FDI to sustain that production. So, as China develops its industries thanks to FDI, it becomes harder to imagine continuing economic progress in these countries. In terms of export similarity, according to the World Bank, The correlation of exports, even at the five-digit (SITC) level between China
Re: Martix for price discrimination
Price discrimination is an antitrust violation -- the statute is the Robinson-Patman Act -- that can expose the defendant to treble damages in a civil action, and even if you win you have to pay me, or someone like me, really godawful amounts of money to get you off. (This is in fact largely what I do for a living.) So, the citizen plaintiff is not without recourse! jks --- michael [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Anon. 2003. Is Price Discrimination The Next Big Trend In Commerce? San Jose Mercury News (7 August). The Internet also gives sellers more information about consumers than ever before -- how many products they buy and when, perhaps even how many each can afford. Eventually, two people might get the same pop-up ad for the same Zippo lighter, but one ad pitches them for $15 while another says they're $10. This vision of the Internet is the basis of a new analysis from Andrew Odlyzko, a former Bell Labs mathematician now at the University of Minnesota's Digital Technology Center. Odlyzko expects price discrimination to become more pervasive not only because so much personal data is being collected in online commerce but also as technology, in the name of protecting copyrights, limits what people can do with online content. a few years ago, Coca-Cola Co. experimented with a vending machine that automatically raised prices in hot weather. the economy could suffer if technology helps suppliers engage in price discrimination against producers of important goods and services. http://www.dtc.umn.edu/7/8odlyzko/doc/privacy.economics.pdf -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901 __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
2001-2002 basic product and trade comparisons for the Chinese economy, or, getting it into proportion
- The total GDP (ppp) of China is supposed to be $6 trillion, as against a GDP (ppp) of about $10 trillion for the USA. - Per capita GDP in China is about $4,600, compared to a per capita GDP of about $36,300 for the USA, in other words, net output value per head of population, is about 8 times higher in the USA. - The total value of Chinese exports is $312.8 billion f.o.b., implying that Chinese exports amount to 5 percent of GDP, as against $723 billion f.o.b. for the USA, or 7 percent of GDP. The USA exports more than twice by value than China. - The total value of Chinese imports is $268.6 billion f.o.b., as against $1.148 billion f.o.b. imported by the USA, in other words the USA imports more than 4 times more by value than China. - The major import sources of China are from Japan 17.6%, Taiwan 11.2%, US 10.8%, South Korea 9.6%, Germany 5.7%, Hong Kong 3.9%, Russia 3.3%, Malaysia 2.5% (2001). - The major import sources of the USA are Canada 19%, Mexico 11.5%, Japan 11.1%, China 8.9%, Germany 5.2%, UK, Taiwan (2001) Source: ppp figures from CIA Factbook at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook (actually on that CIA site they don't know the difference between a million and a billion sometimes, which is confusing - for alternative data, see the OECD site at www.oecd.org)
Steve Martin on WMD
NY Times Op-Ed August 8, 2003 It All Depends on What You Mean by 'Have' By STEVE MARTIN So if you're asking me did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction, I'm saying, well, it all depends on what you mean by have. See, I can have something without actually having it. I can have a cold, but I don't own the cold, nor do I harbor it. Really, when you think about it, the cold has me, or even more precisely, the cold has passed through me. Plus, the word have has the complicated letter v in it. It seems that so many words with the letter v are words that are difficult to use and spell. Like verisimilitude. And envelope. Therefore, when you ask me, Did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction, I frankly don't know what you're talking about. Do you mean currently? Then why did you say did? Think about did. What the heck does that mean? Say it a few times out loud. Sounds silly. I'm beginning to think it's just the media's effort to use a fancy palindrome, rather than ask a pertinent question. And how do I know you're not saying halve? Did Iraq halve weapons of mass destruction? How should I know? What difference does it make? That's a stupid question. Let me try and clear it up for you. I think what you were trying to say was, At any time, did anyone in Iraq think about, wish for, dream of, or search the Internet for weapons of mass destruction? Of course they did have. Come on, Iraq is just one big salt flat and no dictator can look out on his vast desert and not imagine an A-test going on. And let's face it, it really doesn't matter if they had them or not, because they hate us like a lassoed shorthorn heifer hates bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Finally, all this fuss over 16 lousy words. Shoot, Honey, I'm home, already has three, with an extra one implied, and practically nothing has been said. It would take way more than 16 words to say something that could be considered a gaffe. I don't really take anything people say seriously until they've used at least 20, sometimes 25, words. When I was criticized for my comment, I was reluctant to point out it was only 16 words, and I was glad when someone else took the trouble to count them and point out that I wasn't even in paragraph territory. When people heard it was only 16 words, I'm sure most people threw their head back and laughed. And I never heard one negative comment from any of our coalition forces, and they all speak English, too. Steve Martin is author of Shopgirl and the forthcoming The Pleasure of My Company. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Paul de Rooij followup on Amnesty International
Paulo wrote: Hi I seek to contact Louis Proyect Louis recently wrote an open letter about AI's stance and quoted me. I agree with most of what was written in the letter except the interpretation of 'sitting on the fence' -- this would be the way AI would like to portray itself, i.e., pontificating from a pedestal. I concur with Louis, that their stance is anything but evenhanded. New article with ample further references to AI see: www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles6/DeRooij_Ambient-Death.htm (also on CounterPunch, but DV did a better formatting job). Keep up the good work Kind rgds Paul de Rooij London Thanks, Paul. I am forwarding this to the listservs where my piece first appeared. -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Martix for price discrimination
--- Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: there are two major differences that I can see in the US legal definition of price discrimination (below) and the economist's definition are 1) anti-trust law only applies to interstate commerce, right? thus, it wouldn't apply to a local business such as a movie theater. You dpo have to prove the interstate commerce element. But the definition of interstate commerce is quite broad. If what happens within a state affects interstate commerce even a teeny bit, then the jurisdictional requirement is satisfied. It's a low showing. 2) more importantly, the only kind of price discrimination that's illegal has the effect of such discrimination may be substantially to lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in any line of commerce, or to injure, destroy, or prevent competition with any person who either grants or knowingly receives the benefit of such discrimination, or with customers of either of them. Not all economic price discrimination has this effect. Right, so you can mount a defense that your price discrimination is not harmful to competition. This is not actually an affirmative defense. The harm to competition is part of plaintiff's prima facie case, meaning it's something the P has to show by a preponderance. In antitrust law, outside of a small class of per se violations like price fixing, where harm to competition is presumed, you have to show that the practice is in fact harmful to competition. jks Jim Here is the conduct prohibited in the statute, 15 USC sec 13(a). (a) Price; selection of customers It shall be unlawful for any person engaged in commerce, in the course of such commerce, either directly or indirectly, to discriminate in price between different purchasers of commodities of like grade and quality, where either or any of the purchases involved in such discrimination are in commerce, where such commodities are sold for use, consumption, or resale within the United States or any Territory thereof or the District of Columbia or any insular possession or other place under the jurisdiction of the United States, and where the effect of such discrimination may be substantially to lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in any line of commerce, or to injure, destroy, or prevent competition with any person who either grants or knowingly receives the benefit of such discrimination, or with customers of either of them: Provided, That nothing herein contained shall prevent differentials which make only due allowance for differences in the cost of manufacture, sale, or delivery resulting from the differing methods or quantities in which such commodities are to such purchasers sold or delivered: Provided, however, That the Federal Trade Commission may, after due investigation and hearing to all interested parties, fix and establish quantity limits, and revise the same as it finds necessary, as to particular commodities or classes of commodities, where it finds that available purchasers in greater quantities are so few as to render differentials on account thereof unjustly discriminatory or promotive of monopoly in any line of commerce; and the foregoing shall then not be construed to permit differentials based on differences in quantities greater than those so fixed and established: And provided further, That nothing herein contained shall prevent persons engaged in selling goods, wares, or merchandise in commerce from selecting their own customers in bona fide transactions and not in restraint of trade: And provided further, That nothing herein contained shall prevent price changes from time to time where in response to changing conditions affecting the market for or the marketability of the goods concerned, such as but not limited to actual or imminent deterioration of perishable goods, obsolescence of seasonal goods, distress sales under court process, or sales in good faith in discontinuance of business in the goods concerned. __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
the day the Earth caught fire
My wife figured out what's happening with Europe's weather: Saddam's WMD's went off, causing the Earth to change its normal rotation and to spin into the sun... http://www.allwatchers.com/MovieRView.asp?BRID=35341 Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: The Road to Serfdom
Hi all, Here's what James Petras has said about an alternative for China: The renewal of socialist development requires courage, new ideas and recognition of the specificities of the Chinese society and economy. The key is the courage to systematically reject the premises, language and concepts of globalization and neo-liberal ideology. The key to renewal is based on starting from the basic idea that the new strategy must be based on development from below and directed to the domestic economy. This involves a period of transition which must take drastic socialist shock policies to undermine the current elite structure and reverse the regressive allocation of income, investment and ownership. Shocks must include fixed prices on basic commodities, freezing bank accounts and investment of the wealthy classes, appropriation of profits, seizure of the commanding heights of the economy. These policies will likely provoke crises and panic among the elite, investment boycotts and protests form abroad. But they are essential to avoid de-capitalization and to provide the key instruments for socialist development. Socialist shock policies should be followed by a worker designed structural adjustment policy (SAP) where property is re-socialized, rural cooperatives are reintroduced, income and credit is redistributed, illicit wealth is confiscated and the State withdraws public guarantees from private sector borrowers. Adjustments in income form above to below, from private to public, from overseas creditors to low income debtors should create the fundamental foundations for the socialization of the economy based on decentralized democratic planning. Planned economy form below requires open debates and the formation of independent social organizations based on the popular classes, including women, ecologists, minorities, as well as peasants, workers, young people and academics. Once the fundamental structures are in place and the regime is consolidated, selective openings of the economy in spheres of competitive advantages should be encouraged. National defense based on internal preparedness and international solidarity linking anti-imperialist, socialist and democratic movements becomes part of the new foreign policy. Future integration via international solidarity with popular movements replaces today's integration via subordination to the imperial dominated world market. from: China in the Context of Globalization http://www.chinastudygroup.org/articleshow.php?id=9 Cheers, Jonathan At 14:41 2003-8-11, you wrote: Maybe I'm not reading carefully enough, but did you answered Doug's question about what your alternative would be? You say what you would not advise them to do, but that's really not an answer. I'm sure they could come up all by themselves lots of reasons why what their approach has serious problems, but if you can't tell them what they might do instead, they aren't any better off. Thanks, Anders
Re: The Road to Serfdom
Anders wrote (in reply to many thoughts): Maybe I'm not reading carefully enough, but did you answered Doug's question about what your alternative would be? You say what you would not advise them to do, but that's really not an answer. I'm sure they could come up all by themselves lots of reasons why what their approach has serious problems, but if you can't tell them what they might do instead, they aren't any better off. Better off is at the heart of it. While one can claim pedigree by citing Marxist reason for not offering alternative... if there is no alternative, there is no hope for improvement. Aldo M. touched upon this early in my involvement in this list. It remains true. What is the replacement? Ken.
Re: Reply to an Observer article by the Italian Refounded CP
Devine, James wrote: In my view, there are two levels or elements to imperialism as we currently know it: 1) the hegemony of the US; and 2) imperialism as a world system of structured inequality, domination, dependency, and exploitation. The excessive emphasis on the first seems to be what Doug is criticizing (using the Empire thesis). It's associated with a wide variety of populists and Marxists. The emphasis on the second is associated with Lenin and a wide variety of Marxists. The Empire Thesis (as Doug explains it) seems a variation on this, since it can involve dispersed and polycentric power within the core. After all, Lenin's original thesis (and that of Bukharin) involved competing imperial powers. But the point is that the system isn't one of competition among major powers anymore - it's one in which the major powers have (or had, until 1/20/01) mostly harmonious interests. That was Kautsky's heresy, no? Doug
Re: What is to be done in Argentina
Devine, James wrote: do you think that writing a book can have that big an effect? When I interviewed Naomi Klein, who spent most of the past year in Argentina, she said that there were so many sectarian Trot parties trying to tell the spontaneous mass assemblies what to do that they turned lots of people off from politics. Instead of following the vanguard into revolution, the masses went home. Doug
Re: China
I wanted to change the subject/thread from markets to China. As far as I can tell China is increasingly gaining attention as the one major economic development success story, and from the right and from the left. And I wanted to get Pen thoughts about how best to understand what is happening there and how we should respond. First to provide some setting from my own perspective: In the early 1990s, largely because of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the shift of Russia and other Eastern/Central European countries to capitalism, China became the country that many looked towards to uphold the banner of socialist economic possibilities. At the time, it was moving towards some proclaimed form of market socialism, having taken a position that the state sector would remain strong but that growth would be encouraged through non-state enterprises. A leading growth sector was township and village enterprises, that were considered collective enterprises, and which were based on the dissolved communes. And according to state objectives more and more of the direction of economic activity was being handled by market forces and encouraged by the profit motive. Many on the left at the time hoped that China had pioneered some new path towards a more democratic, decentralized, and efficient form of non-capitalist production. Even Cuba began to look closely at the Chinese experience. In fact, I was at a conference in May in Havana where it was clear that a number of Cuban economists still look towards China as a model, now because of its ability to export increasing advanced manufactures. After the east asian crisis of 1997-98, a whole new group of progressives began to embrace China. This was because many progressives had previously endorsed the East Asian state capitalist model as an alternative to neoliberalism and were devastated by the crisis and the movement of many of the crisis impacted countries, such as South Korea, to adopt neoliberalism. China became the hero in that it had not liberalized as much as the other east asian countries and had survived the crisis and then accelerated its growth. So, the progressive competitiveness crowd began shifting its attention to China. Significantly, China has moved increasingly to a capitalist based economy that is more and more dominated by foreign directed production for export. The government no longer even speaks of promoting a market socialist system but now a market system. And it increasingly is celebrated for its ability to attract foreign investment and export. This is why the right has also come to celebrate China. So, some questions: in what sense does the post-1978 Chinese move from planning to market, from state to private, from domestic enterprise to foreign, and from domestic production to export, represent a failure for market socialism as a theory and alternative from of social organization. In other words does the Chinese experience prove that it is an unstable set of relations? And what does it mean that those on the left who celebrate China are celebrating an export led growth model. I would think that an export- led growth model, as opposed to exporting, would be the last framework that progressives would want to encourage. It seems to me that when progressives celebrate Chinas recent growth it blinds them, among other things, to the notion of combined and uneven development, which more concretely means that that its success cannot be understood separately from the growing tensions and deindustrialization in Mexico and in East Asia in countries like South Korea and Malaysia and Singapore. Does this political blindness highlight the decline in our theoretical understandings of capitalism as a system? Then of course there is the growing tendency for the governments and workers in the U.S. and Japan to argue that it is China that is undermining their respective economies when it is largely transnational corporations from their countries that are organizing the export production from China. Are these governments just playing a game to divide workers or is more at work? Any thoughts on these or related questions would be greatly appreciated. Marty Hart-Landsberg
