capitalist dismantlement of the state?
Joanna wrote a revealing phrase below, which chimed with a discussion I had on Tuesday night with my wise old marxist friend who also maintains his cooperative movement loyalties. We were discussing how working people under the surface are becoming increasingly restive while the state is being increasingly complex in its measures of social management. We therefore have the paradox in Britain that the Labour government continues to seem to be master of the agenda but at the same time it is vulnerable to sudden surges of popular opinion against it - as in the fuel tax revolt of 18 months ago and the march of over one million against the Iraq war in February. In both these situations there was considerable tactful restraint in the use of the overt bodies of armed men on whom state power rests as an instrument by which one class oppresses another. It almost felt revolutionary, but there was no clear idea of what could replace the regime, and the idea of calling an emergency general election would have merely seemed divisive. Meanwhile in a major strategic defence review the British government has announced it must shift priorities from major battlefield heavy weapons to lighter more flexible, higher tech equipment to enable it to play a role in world policing operations on behalf of finance capital. (Obviously the last part is not put that way.) So I would not quite express it the same way as Joanna, because the article she was commenting on is a signal of alarm ultimately reflecting the voice of UK finance capital that it will lose its(our) slim competitive advantage of the knowledge economy in relation to major developing countries like India and China and they will certainly do something about it. Even though not in a monolithic way, and probably by widening the gap between strata in the UK by letting the elite universities charge more in order to be competitive on a world scale. What is happening however, is also a process of greater transparency and in that sense democratisation. Resort to brute force is avoided if possible because of the bounce back. Every effort is made to appear accommodating and to be open. The massive British National Health Service is just about to be opened up to an even more radical complaints procedure to make it sensitive to customers' wishes. Because by tolerantly absorbing all discontent and adjusting the system to take it into account, the system becomes more, not less, stable. In marxist terms we considered that this is compatible with the massive organisational and chronological perspectives of finance capital, with which of course the UK and US governments have close relations. It is also the contradictory paradox that capitalism produces an ever more complex social framework which actually prepares the ground for a revolutionary take over of power, provided the class struggle is there. But where we have perhaps been confused was that during the cold war the polarisation of the socialist and the capitalist world disguised the fact that according to Marx's comments in the Gotha programme a socialist country, even with enterprises owned and run in the name of the state, but with commodity exchange and workers selling their labour power, has elements of capitalism in it. And the capitalist states to varying degrees also had elements of social organisation, with a few ideals on top. They both had certain similarities on the road to communism. Under communism human beings are not selling their labour power as a commodity and the state as a coercive power has withered away. It may therefore be better now to conceptualist the intensifying contradictions as being played out globally at a very high level of abstraction but manifested in very fine concrete detail. While the USA is scrambling to use its bodies of armed men to impose its hegemony on the whole world, we are also watching a countervailing process of the withering away of the state. Yes under capitalism, late capitalism. I am sorry if this is not very clearly expressed. That is partly my weaknesses but partly because we have to talk dialectically about contradictions and the process of movement and change of contradictions. Marx wrote words to the effect that capitalism is the eve of the socialist revolution did he not? (no time to check the reference.) Or was that Lenin's paraphrase? Among the other implications of what I am saying is that strangely even as we feel often in despair we should consider the possible scenario that the revolution will go straight from capitalism to communism, without having to go through a stage of state socialism. Chris Burford London - Original Message - From: joanna bujes [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2003 11:03 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] what knowledge economy? I am fascinated by the process of the capitalist dismantlement of the state. They do not seem to realize that they are dismantling those very institutions that
marxian vs. neoclassical categories
A week or so ago, Doug asked for an example where Marxian categories would be superior to neoclassical categories. What about the role of software introduction? The actual production costs of software bear no relationship whatsoever to the commercial costs of the software. Yet software as part of the capital stock. What is the depreciation of software? I still write using a DOS program, which I consider to be better for organizing information than any more advanced software. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Power Trip
Now playing at the Film Forum in NYC and scheduled for national distribution over the next two months, Paul Devlin's Power Trip is an outstanding contribution to a growing body of films dealing with the globalization and neoliberalism onslaught. In contrast to Life and Debt, a documentary on Jamaica's suffering, Devlin makes little attempt to cast his narrative in didactically black-and-white terms. AES, the multinational energy company that is forcing the people of Georgia to pay electricity bills that amount to a month's salary, seems motivated by humanitarian goals rather than profit. Its principals, including a pony-tailed Piers Lewis, remind one more of volunteers with Jimmy Carter's Habitat for Humanity than a greedy utility company. It is, of course, this disjunction between ideal and reality that makes the film interesting as well as an accurate portrayal of the capitalist system, for in the final analysis profits and people tend to clash. In the opening scenes of the film we see angry crowds on the streets of Tbilisi reacting to the news that they will now have to pay for electricity for the first time ever. Under the Soviet Union, this was free. In the course of becoming liberated from totalitarian Communism, they would now have the freedom to earn as much money as the market would allow. By the same token, the market would dictate the price of electricity on a supply-and-demand basis. Since there is very little demand for Georgian products on the world market, it is no surprise that the average wage comes to less than $75 per month. In fact the director of the still state-owned power dispatch company makes about that. AES was also free to charge what the market will bear, which came to about $25 per month. Imagine paying 1/3 of your monthly wage for electricity and you get an idea of what kind of anger hit the streets. As the camera follows an articulate Georgian woman through a local bazaar, a middle-aged man bursts on the scene and tells the documentary crew that the Americans are responsible for their misery. They should take their dollars and their credits and go home. He, like many Georgians, is apparently still susceptible to the musty charms of socialism. If the marketplace is supposed to match buyer to seller, things have hardly gotten off the ground in Georgia. All around Tbilisi, apartment dwellers have strung cables from nearby transformers to their apartments with little regard for law or their own safety. We see the casualty of one such illegal tapping, a charred and bloodied corpse being dragged by his feet from a power shed. Piers Lewis is in Georgia because he enjoys being an outsider. He spent some years in Central America before hooking up with AES. With his blend of management improvement techniques seemingly borrowed from the self-help shelves at Barnes and Noble and a kind of new-age missionary zeal for bringing light and warmth to a beleaguered people, he is both attractive and repellent. His immediate goal is to reduce delinquent accounts. Bill-collecting in his eyes is tantamount to feeding a hungry Ethiopian child. In some ways, Piers Lewis reminds me of the sort of people who hooked up with Tecnica, a project I was involved with in the late 1980s. In 1989 the FBI visited the personnel offices of about a dozen of our returned volunteers and charged them with being involved with an espionage plot to run high-technology from Nicaragua into Cuba and then the USSR. It caused such an outcry that Nightline devoted a half-hour to Tecnica volunteers, including a young man about Lewis's age who was responsible for keeping the power lines in Managua going during the contra war. Although Ben Linder was not a Tecnica volunteer, our volunteers--including Jamie Lewontin, the son of Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin--completed it after he was slain by Nicaraguan contras. Ben was an electrical engineer who believed passionately in the importance of electricity. Although he could have made much more money in the USA, he went to Nicaragua and worked for a pittance in order to build a small-scale hydroelectric dam in northern Nicaragua that would provide warmth and light to peasant families. I am sure that Piers Lewis and Ben Linder would have got along famously. The CEO of AES was Dennis Bakke, who is shown in a photo shaking hands with Bill Clinton. He also keeps a photo of Mother Theresa on his office wall. After the AES board of directors grew impatient with red ink in Georgia, Bakke was let go. A 1999 Businessweek profile depicts him as a reluctant capitalist: Q: It sounds almost Marxist: empowering your workers and giving them the means of production. A: You're not the first person to say that. I was in Brazil at a press conference and was talking about the purpose of the company. It happened to be just about the time of Mother Teresa's death, so I brought with me a picture of Mother Teresa to illustrate what I meant by serving. I put that picture up there, and flashbulbs were
Power Trip correction
Power Trip website: http://www.powertripthemovie.com -- The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
the political economy of piracy
http://www.lrb.co.uk/ From the current issue Vol. 25 No. 24 :: 18 December 2003 The New Piracy Charles Glass: Terror on the High Seas Ninety-five per cent of the world's cargo travels by sea. Without the merchant marine, the free market would collapse and take Wall Street's dream of a global economy with it. Yet no one, apart from ship owners, their crews and insurers, appears to notice that pirates are assaulting ships at a rate unprecedented since the glorious days when pirates were 'privateers' protected by their national governments.
Boeing: corporate handouts update
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/153004_boeingfunds18.html $24 million more sweetened Boeing offer Thursday, December 18, 2003 By PAUL NYHAN AND PHUONG CAT LE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS As the battle for the 7E7 assembly plant heated up this year, Washington sweetened its offer by developing a $24 million plan to help train the next generation of Boeing Co. workers. State lawmakers initially wooed Boeing in June with a whopping $3.2 billion in tax breaks and millions of dollars in incentives, including some job training. Even after that package was offered, the two sides kept talking. By early fall the state refined its pitch, offering to help Boeing develop a direct pipeline to skilled workers who could assemble its superefficient airplane. Eventually, Washington offered to help build a 40,000-square-foot Employment Resource Center, complete with high-tech equipment, and spend an additional $14 million on work force development. We were looking at again how to be more responsive as we got more information about what would be needed, said Martha Choe, director of the state's Office of Trade and Economic Development. Training dollars were important. It was how we were going to partner to them. The offer helped, according to House Speaker Frank Chopp, D-Seattle. Chopp talked with Choe and Locke, who mentioned other states were actively offering worker training and that Washington needed to boost its training offer. They added a pretty modest amount of money. It's not a lot, but it helps. They thought the company was impressed about it, Chopp said. The state's initial bid contained training elements, but specifics of a Workforce Development Program and the employment center were hammered out in recent months, with Locke and Choe briefing lawmakers Tuesday, the same day Boeing made its announcement it will build the 7E7 in Everett. In fact, some union officials were unaware the new training package existed until it surfaced at a news conference Tuesday. Even lawmakers didn't know about it until they were briefed. Lawmakers must still approve $10 million in financing. In any site selection process there is always a refinement based on what the customer was looking for, Choe said yesterday. The plan calls for $10 million for the new training center, another $14 million for a Workforce Development Program, including $8.3 million in existing funds that the governor will redirect. That's on top of a $3.2 billion tax incentive package the state Legislature overwhelmingly passed in June. Still, many lawmakers yesterday said they were pleased with the training component and confident it would receive support in Olympia. The governor also didn't anticipate problems with getting legislative approval, Choe said. It seemed very reasonable to me, said Chopp. We really wanted to make the point that Washington is a great place to do business, and that we have the best workers in the world and in order to do that you have to provide training. The Legislature will be asked to approve several million dollars during the legislative session in January and appropriate the rest over time, Chopp said. You don't want to ever minimize $5 or $10 million, but given the other actions taken, I think the governor's proposal will be given strong consideration, said Rep. Skip Priest, R-Federal Way, who served on the legislative task force to land the 7E7. Choe said the exact details have yet to be hammered out, but the Employment Resource Center would specifically recruit workers and train them to work on the 7E7 final assembly. It was probably one of the most positive aspects of the proposal, said Sen. Margarita Prentice, D-Seattle, a 7E7 legislative task force member. The final decision was made by people who took a look at the entire community and what we had to offer. It is our workers who are doing the work. Aerospace workers will need new skills because Boeing will rely on a new manufacturing model to build its 7E7 jets. It will hire subcontractors to build many of the largest 7E7 parts and then assemble those parts in Everett. There will be some differences in skill sets that we are going to need in final assembly to put the airplane together, Mike Bair, senior vice president of the 7E7 program, said at a briefing Tuesday. The state and Boeing could begin constructing the 40,000-square-foot facility in 2005 near the Everett plant. Boeing and its suppliers would have exclusive use of it for the first five years. The State Board for Community and Technical Colleges also will work with Boeing to establish a manufacturing degree program. And a new Aerospace Futures Board will design a plan to train workers for the 7E7 assembly line. When it first came (out), I was like, 'Oh OK,' said Rep. Eric Pettigrew, D-Seattle, prime sponsor of the House bill giving Boeing $3.2 billion in tax credits. But Pettigrew said the training component made sense. I think it could be a
reprieved!
Governor Couldn't Say Humbug to Handicapped [commentary, from the L.A. TIMES] George Skelton December 18, 2003 Sacramento Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was headed out his door to light the Capitol Christmas tree last week when Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson stopped him cold. Was it true that a toddler with cerebral palsy was going to help him flip the switch at the ceremony? Wesson asked. That's right, Schwarzenegger replied. Well, this may be the last extracurricular activity that kid does under your budget cuts. Wesson's point was that under Schwarzenegger's proposal to cut services for about 200,000 people with developmental disabilities such as autism, mental retardation and cerebral palsy this 2-year-old boy might not be able to participate in future fun events. Indeed, one service the governor proposed to eliminate for the developmentally disabled was recreation, such as camping, horseback riding and music therapy. Another was respite care, which provides trained relief for stressed parents so they can get away to grocery-shop or just relax, which for many are one and the same. He gave me that Terminator look, recalls Wesson, who had been negotiating a balanced budget-and-borrowing deal. But you could see the look of concern on his face. The blank stare. He was stunned. It's obvious to me in our discussions that he's very concerned about these cuts and they're starting to pull at his heartstrings. Late Wednesday, Schwarzenegger's heart won. He told his aides to go look for something else to cut. I did not feel this was consistent with my record as an advocate for the developmentally disabled, the governor said in a prepared statement. I have dedicated myself to improving their lives, particularly through my work with Special Olympics. So I asked to try to find a thoughtful way to bring efficiencies to these services without capping the programs and shutting out families in need. The governor's proposed cuts had shocked organizations that advocate for the disabled and also other groups that fight for the uninsured poor who rely on medical services still under the Schwarzenegger scalpel. After all, this is a governor who built his positive public image not as a cartoon-character killer, but as a caring man who has championed the causes of needy children. People have been wondering whether Schwarzenegger sponsored Proposition 49 the before-and-after-school initiative in 2002 to help children or to launch his political career. We thought he would have a special sensitivity that Gov. Davis did not have, says Marty Omoto, director of the California Disability Community Action Network. What's really sad is the panic that a lot of families have had. Total panic. He called Schwarzenegger's reversal a good sign. In all, the governor has proposed cutting $2.3 billion in state services this fiscal year $3.9 billion over the next 18 months not just in health care, but in transportation, natural resources and higher education. More cuts will come in January, when Schwarzenegger presents his first full budget proposal. No question, he's up against it. There's a big hole this fiscal year that compares roughly to the size of his car tax cut $3.6 billion. Another $14-billion shortfall is projected for the next fiscal year. And all this is assuming voters in March approve $15 billion in borrowing. But largely because of Schwarzenegger's background, the most striking hits are in the health area, especially for kids. The governor proposes to freeze future enrollments in the Healthy Families program and create a waiting list. He wants to cut back Med-Cal provider rates 10%. He'd create a waiting list to obtain AIDS drugs. There'd be lots of waiting lists for capped programs a concept Schwarzenegger's finance director, Donna Arduin, brought with her from Florida, where she carved up that state's health-care system. Here you are, a little girl and you have leukemia, says Wesson. And you know the only way you can get treatment is if some other little kid dies. These are hard cuts. Says Deena Lahn, director of the Children's Defense Fund in California: One thing that's disturbing in the governor's message is, 'We don't like to do this, but we need to do this. Fiscal times are tough.' He talks about families that 'have to live within their means.' Well, a lot of families go out and get another job. Enhance the means increase the tax revenue. Ah, but Schwarzenegger promised voters he wouldn't do that. I guarantee it. He promised too much. He promised not to cut schools. He promised to reimburse local governments for their car tax losses. And he promised not to hurt children. In fact, he pledged to market the Healthy Families program so everyone knows about it and everyone signs up. He didn't mention the waiting list. Senate President Pro Tem John Burton
Re: what knowledge economy?
extrapolation is almost always wrong (except in the short term). Jim -Original Message- From: Eubulides [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wed 12/17/2003 4:43 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] what knowledge economy? - Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] Who is Derek De Solla Price and what does he say in general? = He was the originator of what is known as scientometrics; a strategy for measuring the rate of growth of scientific knowledge. He wrote a very influential book called 'Little Science, Big Science' back in the optimistic part of the 1960's and later updated it. He asserted that if the growth trajectory of science continued at the rates observed since 1750 we would have two scientists for every man, woman, child and dog sometime this century. It was/is known as the scientific doomsday argument. F.M. Scherer has worked out some of the implications of D dS P's argument for productivity growth in his book New Perspectives on Economic Growth and Technological Innovation which Michael Perelman called F.M. Scherer lite. Ian
Re: what knowledge economy?
Devine, James wrote: extrapolation is almost always wrong (except in the short term). Jim Someone did it for the military budget back some years, and estimated that by some date (not too far in the future) the total budget would buy one fighter plane, or something like that. I must not be rememvering some crucial part of the quip; maybe someone else remembers it better. Carrol
Re: what knowledge economy?
- Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] extrapolation is almost always wrong (except in the short term). Jim === Duh.
Query
A friend passed along this query from a European correspondent: Do you know anybody criticalof the US system of tuition fees who argues from an economic point of view: i.e. who refers to higher education as public good? We need to be backed up by critics from abroad. Otherwise benchmark with the US will lead to adopting your system. Any thoughts? Gene Coyle
Re: Query
I have made the point. I think lots of people have. Now you have students working 20+ hours and trying to get an education. I see high numbers dropping out due to stress -- They try to rush through to get it over with and cannot maintain the pace. The quality of education suffers as our neoclassical friends would say, human capital deteriorates. On Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 01:36:07PM -0800, Eugene Coyle wrote: A friend passed along this query from a European correspondent: Do you know anybody critical of the US system of tuition fees who argues from an economic point of view: i.e. who refers to higher education as public good? We need to be backed up by critics from abroad. Otherwise benchmark with the US will lead to adopting your system. Any thoughts? Gene Coyle -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Query
I'd try Barbara Miner in Milwaukee. If she doesn't know herself, she will surely know someone who does. Joel Blau Eugene Coyle wrote: A friend passed along this query from a European correspondent: Do you know anybody criticalof the US system of tuition fees who argues from an economic point of view: i.e. who refers to higher education as public good? We need to be backed up by critics from abroad. Otherwise benchmark with the US will lead to adopting your system. Any thoughts? Gene Coyle
Re: Query
Also, didn't someone in Freeman and Card, "Small Differences that Matter" make the point that the higher tuition in the US relative to in Canada was one of the factors explaining the greater increase in income differentials in the US and also a reason for the lower percentage of the young getting post-secondary education in the US? The other large body of evidence comes from the growth literature of the 1960s and 1970s and the social rate of return to education in some cases as high as 15% (in addition to a private rate of return of around 10% if my memory serves me correctly) thus making it a very good investment for government If the private rate of return is 10%, with a marginal rate of income tax of 35%, the rate of return to the government on private expenditure is already 3.5% independent of sales and indirect taxes or of social return. Also, Denison's (or was it Fabricant's) studies showed that productivity growth largely due to increases in 'human capital' was the major source of economic growth in the US. Dorethy Walters studies for the Economic Council of Canada reported similar results. Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba Michael Perelman wrote: I have made the point. I think lots of people have. Now you have students working 20+ hours and trying to get an education. I see high numbers dropping out due to stress -- They try to rush through to get it over with and cannot maintain the pace. The quality of education suffers as our neoclassical friends would say, human capital deteriorates. On Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 01:36:07PM -0800, Eugene Coyle wrote: A friend passed along this query from a European correspondent: Do you know anybody critical of the US system of tuition fees who argues from an economic point of view: i.e. who refers to higher education as public good? We need to be backed up by critics from abroad. Otherwise benchmark with the US will lead to adopting your system. Any thoughts? Gene Coyle -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: reprieved!
I think that what balancing the budget illustrates very nicely is that economics is not just a technical problem of economics, but a moral and political problem, which must inescapably refer to an ethics which isn't objective but partisan. When you have to cut costs and expenditures, and increase revenues, that means ceteris paribus taking income away from some, and giving it to others. However, market forces by themselves provide no moral and political criteria for doing so, since, as I have argued, markets have no morality of their own, beyond what's necessary to conclude transactions successfully. A lot depends on the relative strengths or clout which participants in the marketplace already have. But the question that is really important is that of how you could increase total net income, apart from cutting costs. In recent days, I was looking at the large financial and population aggregates for the US economy to get some understanding of the proportions of incomes, debts, labour-allocations and the distribution of revenues - I had this idea of writing an article about production and circulation to show how, as I have argued before, a narrow focus on GDP or gross output blinds us to the real dynamics that spur the capitalist accumulation of wealth along these days (if I remember correctly, Anwar Shaikh called his Phd thesis theories of production and theories of distribution which wasn't a bad title really - but I think for my purposes I could make a really good case just by looking at the actual financial data, rather than engaging in very subtle disputes about theoretical categories that most people find difficult to follow). I discovered among other things that the US Bureau of the Census recently published a Defence Department statistical table which aims to show the domestic revenue and employment generated by Defence contracts. It's a weird world we live in when the justification of propping up a debt-ridden economy with military spending becomes an acceptable economic argument... I hope to post some findings soon. Interestingly, California got a large share of the defence contracts (but then I guess California also has a very large population, compared to most other states in the union). It's incredible from a Dutch point of view to think how an economy so wealthy as the USA could go so far into debt, and spend so little on the strategic areas that would boost economic growth. My hunch is that many American economists will live to regret the substitution of a let the market pick the winners mania for a positively formulated economic strategy. In retrospect, Reaganomics and its follow-up has been devastating in its economic implications. But that is just to say that in the real world, economic strategies are not so much determined by the rationality of economic arguments, but rather by the competition between social classes for wealth and income. And him that hath is in a stronger position to claim wealth now, and displace the consequences of that claim into the future and to other areas, other people. J.
The twilight of Dutch tolerance
Amsterdam has an image of tolerance, built up over the centuries, as refugees from religious strife and ethnic persecution found a haven here, and sailors brought the latest trends to the city from their travels across the seven seas. We don't have a statue of liberty to prove it, but there's a war monument, a big pole, on Dam Square. Libertarians are supposed to be able to do all the things here that you couldn't do elsewhere, in a reasonably permissive, chilled-out atmosphere which emphasises good sense, individualism, compassion and pleasure. However... the awful news is that knifing and shooting incidents in the Red Light District and the old Jewish quarter caused two deaths yesterday. On the Oudezijds Voorburgwal, a man was knifed in his neck - he walked bleeding into a shop and died leter in hospital. In coffeeshop Real Thing V in the Goudsbloemstraat, the 41-year old proprietor was shot dead by a group of men who presumably wanted to rob him. In two separate knifing incidents in the South-East and North of the city, another two victims of knifings were seriously wounded. The two murders bring the total number of deaths in the city this year to 44, as against 25 deaths in the whole of last year. We are not just talking about wounding here, but killing. When faced with these Wild West incidents, Dutch people often refer to American conditions (Amerikaanse toestanden) but actually, New York City experienced a 10% drop in homicides last year (only 82 murders in Manhattan, which never went below 100 murders a year for most of the 20th century, and only 575 murders in the five districts of NYC). By contrast, there were some 262 murders in Washington DC last year. We were the murder capital runner-up in 2001, we won the title in 2002, and 2003 is already being heralded as a record year for death in the District, commented John Aravosis, a cofounder of SafeStreetsDC.com. All of this proves that this year's 21% jump in homicides is hardly a temporary fluke. DC has a total population of 570,898, as against 733,600 in Amsterdam, so, proportionally Amsterdam is still doing vastly better, one might argue. Even so, the statistics cannot never capture the disenchantment and disgust which many Amsterdam citizens, including myself, feel about the increasing number of murders. Of course Dutch apprehensions about Amerikaanse toestanden are to some extent justified: the overall murder rate in the USA - is higher than in most other places in the world, and you are also more likely to be killed by almost any other method in the USA. The risk of murder in Washington is about 170 times greater than in Brussels. Perhaps before trying to solve the world's problems, we ought to take a better look in our own backyard ? Note: the US overall murder rate was 7.3 per 100,000 in 1969, at the zenith of the long post-war economic boom. Dare I say it, could it be that the incidence of murder is directly related to wealth and poverty levels ? J.
stephen j. gould thought of the day
Stephen Jay Gould: I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain, than in the near certainty that men and women of equal talent have live and died in cottonfields and sweatshops. I just read this off the history of economics list. I wonder where he said it. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: stephen j. gould thought of the day
Michael Perelman wrote: Stephen Jay Gould: I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain, than in the near certainty that men and women of equal talent have live and died in cottonfields and sweatshops. I just read this off the history of economics list. I wonder where he said it. It would fit in well with the argument of _Mismeasure of Man_. Carrol
Re: capitalist dismantlement of the state?
Because by tolerantly absorbing all discontent and adjusting the system to take it into account, the system becomes more, not less, stable. Does it really? Or does it just give you another form to fill out? It is also the contradictory paradox that capitalism produces an ever more complex social framework which actually prepares the ground for a revolutionary take over of power, provided the class struggle is there. I don't understand this. Example? It may therefore be better now to conceptualist the intensifying contradictions as being played out globally at a very high level of abstraction but manifested in very fine concrete detail. While the USA is scrambling to use its bodies of armed men to impose its hegemony on the whole world, we are also watching a countervailing process of the withering away of the state. Yes under capitalism, late capitalism. If you mean by this that the privatization of social services (health, education, art, hospices, etc) is a countervailing process, ok, but I don't quite see how this privatization amounts to a frictionless transition to communism. On the contrary, the privatization of state functions would work to help people forget about the social nature of these tasks and it would fragment people and organize them to do this work, not for the benefit of people, but for the production of profit. So how is this laying the ground for communism? Among the other implications of what I am saying is that strangely even as we feel often in despair we should consider the possible scenario that the revolution will go straight from capitalism to communism, without having to go through a stage of state socialism. Actually I see us going into an age of warlordism, with the devil taking the hindmost, but I tend toward melancholia and gloom. I'm open to being convinced otherwise though. Joanna
