Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[Jurriaan Bendien]

Well I think that substantiates your argument and my argument. I think David
Schanoes is entitled to his viewpoint, but surely if a pithy article is
written in the NYT explaining what is wrong with Greenspan's idea, then that
helps us much more than a bunch of abuse and character assasination ?

J.

Re: Answering Ted Glick

[Michael Hoover]

 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/28/04 10:15 AM 
But isn't that because Truman took a hard shift to the left to co-opt
Wallace supporters?

But presidential campaigns are where the most intense discussions about
war
and peace, the economy, race, etc. are held. People's attention are
riveted
on them in a way that does not occur in even Congressional campaigns. I
can't remember a thing about the last election involving my local rep
Carolyn Maloney. She ran against some Republican, but the race received
zero coverage or interest. I can understand why the Democrats would want
the Greens to focus on Municipal Judge campaigns, etc. But I for one am
looking forward to Nader participation in the debates, even if this is
an
unlikely event given the tight control exercised by the media, LWV and
all
other watchdogs of the 2-party system.

Allende had the support of a significant section of the Chilean
bourgeoisie. When Nader runs here, it is at the risk of cutting himself
from long-time allies who have connections to the ruling class--starting
with the Nation crowd.
Louis Proyect


re. truman's 'hard shift to left: some 'progressive' (example of
'personality' party, wallace electoral vehicle that disappeared
following campaign) planks were later enacted by dems - public housing
(as segregated program for years), civil rights legislation, food
stamps...some never enacted or ever proposed - national health
(truman did propose such program although some folks suggest that he
called for 'fair
deal' as electoral tactic knowing that most of it had no chance of
passing 'conservative coalition' - reps and dixiecrats congress,
republicans actually held majority at time in  at least one house for
one of few instances between 30s and 90s), public assistance for
cooperative middle-income housing, permanent public works employment...

wallace campaign peaked at his nomination in philly, speaking before
thousands,
he called for nationalization of big banks, energy and transportation
corporations,
negotiations with soviets to ban atomic weapons, transfer of 'marshall
plan' to
united nations...

liberal dems and reps joined forces to label wallace effort as commie
front, inside
dem party were likes of then-minneapolis mayor hubert humphrey and his
young
lieutenant walter mondale taking lead in purging left from minnesota
democratic
farmer-labor party...

little known aspect about '48 was that african-americans made difference
for truman,
black able to vote had been doing so for reps since reconstruction,
fdr's new deal
changed that a bit but he and dems made no effort to actually court such
votes...

truman had no record as civil rights supporter (from fomer slave state
missouri,
used racist slurs...gee, kinda prefigures lbj) but he recognized
political opportunity,
he proposed abolishing poll taxes, protecting black voting rights,
creation of fair
employment commission, ending segregation in military...

truman received 66% of increased african-american turnout, probably made
difference in 'large pivotal' states of ohio (which he won by 7000
votes), illinois (won by 13,000)
and california (won by 17,000), it's that electoral college thing
again...

re. greens running prez candidate, obstacles minor parties face - ballot
access, money for campaigning and advertising (major part of prez
elections nowadays), media coverage, name recognition - generally
require strategic interventions, effective national campaign is almost
out of question: do you decide to basically ignore certain states
because of likelihood of receiving so few votes, do you focus on states
where you may
(relatively speaking) do well which means you're preaching to a (not
that big) choir,
do you zero in on competitive states where you might get some attention
and could make a difference in outcome (and are you prepared for and
able to withstand post-election verbal bricks being thrown at you by
which ever major party and its supporters claim that you spoiled their
win...

nader ain't going to be in dabtes because federal debate commission (lwv
hasn't
been responsible for awhile) has set 15% in public opinions polls as
minimum
floor for entry (why nader was 'officially' denied in 2000), such rule
should be abolished
and replaced with one that includes any candidate on ballot in enough
states that if they were to win those states they could receive
sufficient electoral college - jesus, there it is again - votes to win
prez...

prez debates usually don't change many votes (and there may be even
fewer 'undecideds' this year as bush is such polarizing figure) but they
would be national audience opportunity for minor candidates/parties,
granting them
legitimacy in process by being 'on stage' with major candidates/parties
(which latter
doesn't want, of course)...

re. allende and nader, all analogies are suspect, some more than
others...   michael hoover

Facing South

[Michael Hoover]

F A C I N G   S O U T H
A progressive Southern news report
February 26, 2004 * Issue 73

INSTITUTE INDEX * Tax Cheats
Number of military contractors who have evaded paying taxes: 27,000
Value of taxes owed by these companies, in billions: $3
Amount of tax revenue U.S. loses to offshore tax havens annually, in billions: $70
Number of offshore tax havens Dick Cheney created for Halliburton while CEO: 35

Sources on file at the Institute for Southern Studies.
 _  

DATELINE: THE SOUTH * Top Stories Around the Region

SCHOOLS ARE RE-SEGREGATING AS U.S. CELEBRATES BROWN DECISION
As the country celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court Brown v. Board of 
Education decision outlawing segregation, schools in the United States are becoming 
increasingly segregated, a new study reveals. Compared to the rest of the country, the 
South is relatively integrated; the five most-segregated states are Michigan, 
Illinois, New York, Maryland and New Jersey. (NNPA, 2/24)
http://www.blackpressusa.com/News/Article.asp?SID=3Title=Hot+StoriesNewsID=3231

BUSH TO APPOINT THIRD CONSERVATIVE SOUTHERN JUDGE
President Bush is expected to nominate Keith Starrett, a well-connected Mississippi 
judge, to fill the District Court judgeship vacated by Charles Pickering, Bush's 
controversial recess appointment to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Black 
leaders in Mississippi say the nomination breaks a promise by Rep. Chip Pickering 
(R-Miss.)  Pickering's son  that Bush would nominate a black judge to replace 
Pickering. (The Hill, 2/24)
http://www.hillnews.com/news/022404/mississippi.aspx

TEXAS GOP FUNDRAISING SCANDAL PROBE WIDENS
A criminal investigation into whether corporate money illegally helped Republicans 
take control of the Texas House during the 2002 elections turned to Speaker Tom 
Craddick and six other Republican lawmakers last week as Travis County prosecutors 
subpoenaed records of the speaker's race. (Houston Chronicle, 2/19)
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2411680

STATE DEPARTMENT JOINS INVESTIGATION OF HALLIBURTON
The State Department's Inspector General has been asked to investigate officials at 
the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait regarding Halliburton Co.'s assignment to truck fuel into 
Iraq. In the ever-widening criminal probe into Halliburton's fuel purchases, the 
department's investigators have been asked to learn whether embassy staffers passed 
along incorrect information that may have cost taxpayers millions of dollars. (Houston 
Chronicle, 2/25)
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/2418794

CHANDLER VICTORY IN KENTUCKY HAS DEMOCRATS UPBEAT
Ben Chandler's convincing victory in Kentucky's contested 6th Congressional district 
has Democrats upbeat about their party's prospects in the Bluegrass State. (Associated 
Press, 2/18)
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KY_ELN_6TH_DISTRICT_KYOL-?SITE=KYLOUSECTION=HOMETEMPLATE=DEFAULT

ABSTINENCE EDUCATION BOON TO EVANGELICAL ORGANIZATIONS
Persident Bush's 2005 budget proposes spending over $270 million for abstinence 
education programs, double the amount spent last year. Critics say research shows the 
program to be ineffective at preventing sexual activity and pregnancy. But they 
definitely succeed at one goal: funding Christian evangelical groups. (Salon, 2/24) 
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/02/24/abstinence/index.html

SLAVERY ALIVE AND WELL IN FLORIDA, SAYS REPORT
Modern-day slavery is alive and well in Florida, according to a new report on people 
forced to work as prostitutes, farmworkers and maids across the state. Human 
traffickers bring thousands of people into the United States each year and Florida is 
believed to be one of the top three destinations, along with New York and Texas. 
(Associated Press, 2/25)
http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2004/02/25/slavery/index.html
 

Re: article on MR website

[Hari Kumar]

Michael Yates wrote:
What went wrong? Looking at the broad sweep of
history, we can perhaps identify some of the forces at
work and bad decisions taken. First, as Marx pointed
out, capitalism creates workers in its own image. It
is hard for workers to grasp the nature of their
circumstances, ..
Mike B) comments:
Here, I would more deeply develop observations on
reification and the fethishism of commodities ...
If workers don't consciously understand that their
skills and time are commodities in the marketplace,
they remain lost, suseptible to manipulation by others
as opposed to candidates for making change for
themselves.  When they see themselves as the producers
of the world, they can begin to accumulate the
integrity necessary to organize to reclaim the the
social product of their labour.  They can begin to see
that solidarity with other workers gives them more
power in the marketplace.  They can begin to see why
they feel helpless and powerless as atomised
individuals who define their freedom in negative terms
i.e. my freedom is directly related to your unfreedom
: women, blacks, other workers, other nationalities
and so on.
Question: Michael - I enjoyed your article.
In relation to the comment from Mike - could I ask both of you as to whether
there is a little too much emphasis on the 'concious' aspects of revolt? Perhaps 
inchoately, I am trying
to refer to the citation 'ruling class' being unable to rule any longer'  one of the 
strands in Lenins' What Is to be Done? -
that it is not propaganda that will change the attitude of the workers, but thier life 
experience.
Hari

Re: He does have a point

[Michael Hoover]

 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/27/04 6:13 PM 
I have it on good authority that Peter Camejo actually doesn't intend
to run for president -- he (probably along with several other
candidates currently running in the Green primaries) is a
placeholder for Ralph Nader.

The Green Party needs to run a presidential candidate, especially in
war times, since it is the executive branch of the federal government
that determines foreign policy, making life-and-death decisions on
matters of war and peace.  Running candidates in winnable local
elections alone doesn't allow the Green Party to publicize its
foreign policy.  Besides, on issues of local governance, there are
much fewer differences between the Green and Democratic Parties than
at higher levels anyway.
--
Yoshie

you previously mentioned above re. camejo, 'placeholding' for nader (or
any other
name/celeb) likely reduces green party to 'personality' party in general
public
arena, problem for greens re. 'name' candidate this year is that
liberal'left
celebs have adopted 'anybody but bush' line, so some folks are
apparently
willing to 'placehold' for guy who stiffed them in '96, was unable to
accomplish
goal of getting 5% of nationwide vote to quality for 2004 matching
funds, and
is essentially - and always has been - anti-party guy...   mchael hoover

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[dmschanoes]

Gee, I think it proves my point:  that Greenspan, rather than being an
erudite thinker with a misguided theory, is a scam artist, not unlike
Keating,Skilling, or Fastow, hired to justify whatever the bourgeoisie need
next in terms of cash flow.

What character assassination?  He did recommend Keating.  He did tell
Thailand to eat baht.  He did recommend increased SS taxes, and if you look
several years back at his Congressional testimony, you'll see him stating
that SS was not facing financial ruin due to the pre-collection scheme.

So what article were you reading?

dms


- Original Message -
From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 7:56 AM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime


 Well I think that substantiates your argument and my argument. I think
David
 Schanoes is entitled to his viewpoint, but surely if a pithy article is
 written in the NYT explaining what is wrong with Greenspan's idea, then
that
 helps us much more than a bunch of abuse and character assasination ?

 J.

Re: Economic question

[Jurriaan Bendien]

 I get the feeling that the international financial system is perhaps the
 weakest link in the whole world economy.

That is a very long story, and, apart from requiring further research, in
one mail I can only do a bit of justice to your important economic question.
The question I would ask, is why is the international financial system weak
?

The way I think about it is: the international financial system is based on
a very complex system of financial claims and entitlements which makes the
relationship between ownership and control of private assets and products
very complex and opaque. We are talking about an ownership of things far
removed from the person in space and time.

Since the the lynchpin of the capitalist order is the defense of specific
private ownership and consequently the urge to privatise and marketise, the
question then arises, how can you effectively defend something that you
cannot actually practically possess (i.e. you only have a legally sanctioned
entitlement or claim) ? The whole thing ultimately depends on engendering
societal trust and confidence, about which Fukuyama wrote a book.

That is the weak link (Marx in fact mentions, the vice I excuse most is
gullibility). Hence also a trend to invest in tangible assets when economic
insecurity increases. The future of capitalism depends on the trust and
confidence of the working class in their exploitation, that their
exploitation is beneficial and that they gain from it just as much as
capitalist who make money from the results of their work.

Yet the autonomisation of circulation processes from production processes,
together with deregulation of money markets and capital markets, actually
exascerbates Minskyan risk, uncertainty and instability. Capitalism is
developing increasingly on borrowed time, that is I think the essence of it,
as I indicated in a previous PEN-L post.

This means, that some people consume more than they produce, and others
produce more than they consume, and in aggregate, the value of financial
claims to output (through trade and credit) exceeds real output. That
creates a situation of excess capital from the point of view of private
accumulation: the contradiction of productive forces and production
relations is mediated by credit. All the financial resource is there, all
the productive capacity is there, but there's structural overcapacity, a
maldistribution of income, and profitability is higher in trading assets or
products than in tangible production of new products.

The real problem for the bourgeois classes is then: how do you expand the
market such that you get a cumulative, steady net increase in real output ?
The only way they can think about that, is by an enclosures movement, i.e.
privatising what was held in common: you separate something from a person,
and sell it back to him. But just have a look at what the result of that is
in the modern imperialist system - look at Russia, look at Iraq, look at
Liberia or Sierra Leone or Argentina.

The ultimate problem is that you cannot exchange something and transfer
private ownership rights for money-making purposes if you haven't got
something to exchange in the first place. To get that something, you must
(1)either produce it or (2) appropriate it from somewhere else.

(1) poor people, workers and peasants have to produce stuff, and then you
can exchange it, and make money out of that exchange. The problem then is
how you get poor people to produce stuff under conditions of extreme
socio-economic inequality to which Michael Yates refers, so that you can
privately appropriate the product of their work. How can you be an
entrepreneur if you have nothing to be an entrepreneur with, and if the
social framework for it is lacking ? This is the mystery of primitive
accumulation to which I referred in previous posts. The carrot option is
to foster new middle classes who show the way.

(2) The stick option is (a) militarisation, to force a change in social
relations such that new regions are subordinated to capitalist private
property relations. We can inject purple politics and christianity to
confuse the real issue, but that is what it is, and real socialists aren't
confused about that, (b) economic coercion through exercising sanctions
which force people to sell or buy.

Proudhon's critique was that capitalism is based on legalised theft. Marx
develops a more nuanced, dialectical critique, but the important thing to
understand I think is that Proudhon and Marx both agree capitalism is always
based on getting something for nothing, and because of the fact that we
must all appropriate something we haven't created, the real social relations
are mystified. Postmodernist discourse then focuses on the cultural modes
through which entitlement to ownership is established. The central question
of the bourgeois epoch in which we live is how can people get something for
nothing while maintaining the status quo ?

It is however completely false to think that 

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[Jurriaan Bendien]

 What character assassination?  He did recommend Keating.  He did tell
 Thailand to eat baht.  He did recommend increased SS taxes, and if you
look
 several years back at his Congressional testimony, you'll see him stating
 that SS was not facing financial ruin due to the pre-collection scheme.

I think it is better to say that in your opinion Greenspan is engaging in
scams, and then show what the scam is, rather than calling him a scam
artist. You last longer in politics that way.

 So what article were you reading?

I am no longer a student, hence I tell what I am reading only to my wife, my
supervisor or people actually living with me. As I haven't got a wife, that
option doesn't exit. As I don't have job, I don't have a supervisor. And my
flatmate is not really interested in my intellectual concerns. I'd be
interested to read a biography of Greenspan but I don't know if there is
one.

J.

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[dmschanoes]

I'm not IN politics.

Aint no opinion, it's a fact-- he's a scam artist, paid flack, not unlike
the consultants paid to hype and protect Enron, Tyco, Parmalat. Look at the
record of what he's done, his testimony.

Next thing you'll be telling us is that Jack Welch is a great leader of men
and women with a misquided theory, Kissinger is a great diplomat with a
mistaken world view, Oliver North is a real humanitarian who made a poor
career choice.

dms
- Original Message -
From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 10:10 AM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime


  What character assassination?  He did recommend Keating.  He did tell
  Thailand to eat baht.  He did recommend increased SS taxes, and if you
 look
  several years back at his Congressional testimony, you'll see him
stating
  that SS was not facing financial ruin due to the pre-collection scheme.

 I think it is better to say that in your opinion Greenspan is engaging in
 scams, and then show what the scam is, rather than calling him a scam
 artist. You last longer in politics that way.
 
  So what article were you reading?

 I am no longer a student, hence I tell what I am reading only to my wife,
my
 supervisor or people actually living with me. As I haven't got a wife,
that
 option doesn't exit. As I don't have job, I don't have a supervisor. And
my
 flatmate is not really interested in my intellectual concerns. I'd be
 interested to read a biography of Greenspan but I don't know if there is
 one.

 J.

Re: He does have a point

[Jurriaan Bendien]

Marx wrote: The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various
ways; the point is to change it (Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur
verschieden interpretiert; es kommt aber darauf an, sie zu verändern).

Alvin Gouldner then philosophises: Marxism is not attempting simply to
understand society; it does not only predict the rise of a revolutionary
proletariat that will overturn capitalism, but also actively mobilizes
persons to do this. It intervenes to change the world. The problem is that
if capitalism is indeed governed by lawful regularities that doom it to be
supplanted by a new socialist society (when the requisite infrastructures
have matured), why then stress that the point is to change it'? Why go to
great pains to arrange capitalism's funeral if its demise is guaranteed by
science? Why must persons be mobilized and exhorted to discipline themselves
to behave in conformity with necessary laws by which, it would seem, they
would in any event be bound. In his famous eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach Marx
had held that the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various
ways; the point is to change it. This surely reads as if Marx was calling
on people to put forth an effort to change their world in reality and not
only in thought. Yet, the question is, what obliges them to do so?.

Evidently, both push and pull factors, and not infrequently, as Goethe
says, you think you push, and you are pulled. Whereas the relationship
between them must be understood in their totality.

Music is an indirect force for change, because it provides an anchor against
human tragedy. In this sense, it works towards a reconciled world. It can
also be the direct experience of change...

- Operation Ivy

I'm so tired day after day,
I pretend I'm awake
I've been losing sleep
Balancing in between,
dream and this cold world

Helplessly trying to keep
Little bit of my sanity
sand's running out of my hourglass
Quietly I start to wait the burning hate
And now I hear it calling my name

Through the darkness and pouring rain
I fight my battles all alone
Descending blackness the source of my pain
Once again my fears start to rise

Walls of stone
Between shadows and my dark desiress

Walls of stone
Keep this pain inside my mind

Faceless friends of mine
In this space and time
Couldn't read my warning sign
Push me over the edge it's too late to beg
'cos now it's too far gone

Through the darkness and pouring rain
I fight my battles all alone
Descending blackness the source of my pain
Once again my fears start to rise

Walls of stone
Between shadows and my dark desiress

Walls of stone
Keep this pain inside my mind

No life to live
I always stayed alone...
Save Us...
It's judgement day
I don't have to wait anymore

I am the silent one.

- Burning point, I am the silent one.

http://progresy.tripod.com/bpoint.htm

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[Jurriaan Bendien]

 Next thing you'll be telling us is that Jack Welch is a great leader of
men
 and women with a misquided theory, Kissinger is a great diplomat with a
 mistaken world view, Oliver North is a real humanitarian who made a poor
 career choice.

That is why I associate with few Marxists, because they like to jibe and
jeer more than think.

J.

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[dmschanoes]

And one last thing:

Let's not forget to whom Mr. Greenspan is beholden:  and that's not von
Hayek, Ayn Rand, or Adam Smith, it's finance capital. And finance capital
wants SS privatized so it can get the rake off.  Ever since the collapse of
2000-01, Wall Street has been trying to re-establish support for this
privatization.

Greenspan's oh so erudite, rational, and even pained, advocacy of reduced
benefits is the overture to the next act of this dismal play.

It's not about theory.  It's NEVER about theory.  It's about cash.  Mean
Green.  Dead Presidents.  The Eagle. The Benjamins.  That bulge in my pants
that is my wallet and means I am happy to see you.

Follow the cash.  It's that simple.  If it were any more difficult,
Greenspan would be flipping burgers at McDonald's.


That's a fact.

Re: He does have a point

[Carrol Cox]

Michael Hoover wrote:

  [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02/27/04 6:13 PM 
 so some folks are apparently willing to 'placehold'
 for guy who stiffed them in '96, was unable to accomplish
 goal of getting 5% of nationwide vote to quality for
 2004 matching funds, and is essentially - and always has been
 - anti-party guy...   mchael hoover

I keep coming back in my own thinking to what will be the case in
(about) April 2005. All even mildly less imperialist candidates have
now been eliminated, and it is apt to take more than just a year or two
of DP outrages to begin having the effect that Doug, I think rightly to
some extent, claims a DP presidency has of focusing attention on system
rather than on bad guy in white house.

In other words we are in for a dry spell, I hope not too long a one, and
the essential in such periods is to keep organization (and activist
cadre) 'alive' until the next punctuation (metaphor from evolutionary
theory). The local Green organizer here is I think a fairly important
part of such an effort in my area. This may be the case in other
localities also. For me, relations with him are more important than who
gets sworn in next Jan 20 as president. I'm _not_ fighting with local
ABBs; I am, carefully and politely, keeping visible a non-ABB position.
I think that too will be important a year or two from now.

But at national level, _some_ ABBs are threatening to create conditions
which might make collective work difficult later on. In a letter to
Counterpunch, John Lacny has called people like me traitors, other bad
things. If this is going on in many local areas, there is trouble ahead.

Carrol

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[Jurriaan Bendien]

 Follow the cash.  It's that simple.  If it were any more difficult,
 Greenspan would be flipping burgers at McDonald's.

Okay.

J.

excessive posting

[Michael Perelman]

Only two people are overposting.  Both have been warned.  One has already temporarily
been unsubbed.  Both parties should hold themselves to 3 per day.
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Re: He does have a point

[Devine, James]

JB quotes:
Alvin Gouldner then philosophises: Marxism is not attempting simply to
understand society; it does not only predict the rise of a revolutionary
proletariat that will overturn capitalism, but also actively mobilizes
persons to do this. It intervenes to change the world. The problem is that
if capitalism is indeed governed by lawful regularities that doom it to be
supplanted by a new socialist society (when the requisite infrastructures
have matured), why then stress that the point is to change it'? Why go to
great pains to arrange capitalism's funeral if its demise is guaranteed by
science? Why must persons be mobilized and exhorted to discipline themselves
to behave in conformity with necessary laws by which, it would seem, they
would in any event be bound. In his famous eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach Marx
had held that the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various
ways; the point is to change it. This surely reads as if Marx was calling
on people to put forth an effort to change their world in reality and not
only in thought. Yet, the question is, what obliges them to do so?.

Marx's prediction that the working class would become more organized and 
class-conscious and then take over the system was not a prediction based on his 
theory. 

His theory (in CAPITAL) is about the laws of motion of capital, but not about the laws 
of motion of wage-labor. (Cf. Mike Lebowitz's book, BEYOND CAPITAL.) His theory 
predicted the concentration  centralization of capital, the (all-else-equal) fall in 
the rate of profit, the regular and widening occurence of economic crises, etc. (These 
predictions worked out remarkably well, BTW, considering the fact that they were made 
over 150 years ago.) 

But his prediction that the working class would grow in power is based instead on 
(optimistic) extrapolation of the socio-political trends of the time in Western Europe 
and North America -- and an unspecified theory of how people react to changing 
objective conditions (changing, due to the laws of motion of capital). Of course, Marx 
lacked a complete theory of imperialism, i.e., a theory of how the laws of motion of 
capital and their objective consequences are affected by the internationalization of 
capitalism in a world of power inequalities.

Marx must have realized the shaky nature of his extrapolation. Because his political 
practice aimed at making that growth of working-class power stronger. 

what obliges people to change the system? Marx took for granted the general antipathy 
of the socialist and communist movements of his day toward capitalism. (He was not a 
theorist who developed an ethics.) Given that, there's an obligation to do something 
about it. His point in the THESES ON FEUERBACH was that merely changing one's mind 
about the issue or setting up experimental utopian communities (a la Owen) wouldn't 
do. The socio-economic system as a whole had to be changed. This process involves the 
collective self-liberation of and by the proletariat. Marx argued that if you really 
want to change the system -- a major flaw of which involves the exploitation, 
domination, and alienation of the working class by the bourgeoisie -- you have to find 
the main contradiction (class antagonism) and back the side that's most likely to 
solve it (the working class). Of course, if one is working class oneself, this is 
pretty obvious: to attain liberation, it must be a collective struggle.

Jim D. 

 

 

Hobbes and Darwin in China

[jjlassen]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/29/weekinreview/29zhao.html

China's Wealthy Live by a Creed: Hobbes and Darwin, Meet Marx
By YILU ZHAO

BEIJING — The rich in China these days are moving into the villages of Napa
Valley, Palm Springs, Long Beach, Upper East Side and Park Avenue, all in the
suburbs of Beijing and Shanghai. When I grew up in Shanghai, places were called
New China Road, Workers' New Village and People's Square. Now China's real
estate tycoons have chosen American place names, and adorned what they build
with Spanish arches, Greek columns and faux Roman sculptures.

But the settings themselves are not bucolic. The vast majority of these new
single-family homes, which cost $800,000 on average, are huddled together in
walled compounds with 24-hour security guards. The few rich who dare to live on
their own in the countryside almost always become targets of burglars, who, in
desperate moments, are willing to kill.

This is the dark side to China's new wealth: Envy, insecurity and social
dislocation have come with the huge disparity between how the wealthy live and
how the vast numbers of poor do. Clear signs of class division have emerged
under a government that long claimed to have eliminated economic classes.

China still calls itself socialist, and in an odd sense it is. While the income
structure has changed, much that was intended to underpin social order has not.

The criminal justice system, for example, has remained draconian. When caught,
burglars invariably receive lengthy sentences. But there is no shortage of
burglars, and the reason is clear: 18 percent of Chinese live on less than $1 a
day, according to the United Nations. The poor are visible on the edges of any
metropolis, where slums of plywood apartments sometimes abut the Western-
looking mansions.

The most recent measure by which social scientists judge the inequality of a
country's income distribution indicates that China is more unequal, for
example, than the United States, Japan, South Korea and India. In fact,
inequality levels approach China's own level in the late 1940's, when the
Communists, with the help of the poor, toppled the Nationalist government.

In 1980, when the turn toward a market economy started, China had one of the
world's most even distributions of wealth. Certainly, China before 1980 was a
land of material shortage. When I was a child in the 1970's and 80's, I can
recall, every family, equally poor, collected ration coupons to get flour,
rice, sugar, meat, eggs, cloth, cookies and cigarettes. Without coupons, money
was largely useless. Today, huge Western-style supermarkets offer French wine
and New Zealand cheese.

But an odd change has come about in some shoppers' minds. As members of China's
business and political elite, they have come to believe that the world is a
huge jungle of Darwinian competition, where connections and smarts mean
everything, and quaint notions of fairness count for little.

I noticed this attitude on my most recent trip to China from the United States,
where I moved nine years ago. So I asked a relative who lives rather
comfortably to explain. Is it fair that the household maids make 65 cents an
hour while the well-connected real estate developers become millionaires or
billionaires in just a few years? I asked.

He was caught off guard. After a few seconds of silence, he settled on an
answer he had read in a popular magazine.

Look at England, look at America, he said. The Industrial Revolution was
very cruel. When the English capitalists needed land, sheep ate people.
(Chinese history books use the phrase sheep ate people to describe what
happened in the 19th century, when tenant farmers in Britain were thrown off
their land to starve so that sheep could graze and produce wool for new mills.)

Since England and America went through that pain, shouldn't we try to avoid
the same pain, now that we have history as our guide? I asked.

If we want to proceed to a full market economy, some people have to make
sacrifices, my relative said solemnly. To get to where we want to get, we
must go through the 'sheep eating people' stage too.

In other words, while most Chinese have privately dumped the economic
prescriptions of Marx, two pillars of the way he saw the world have remained.

First is the inexorable procession of history to a goal. The goal used to be
the Communist utopia; now the destination is a market economy of material
abundance.

Second, just as before, the welfare of some people must be sacrificed so the
community can march toward its destiny. Many well-to-do Chinese readily endorse
those views, so long as neither they nor their relatives are placed on the
altar of history. In the end, Marx is used to justify ignoring the pain of the
poor.

What the well-off have failed to read from history, however, is that extreme
inequality tends to breed revolutions. Many of China's dynasties fell in
peasant uprisings, and extreme inequality fed the Communist revolution.

While the 

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[Michael Perelman]

What does this add to the list.  Nobody here supports G. or his policy.  Merely
calling names is a waste of bandwidth.

On Sun, Feb 29, 2004 at 10:21:51AM -0500, dmschanoes wrote:
 I'm not IN politics.

 Aint no opinion, it's a fact-- he's a scam artist, paid flack, not unlike
 the consultants paid to hype and protect Enron, Tyco, Parmalat. Look at the
 record of what he's done, his testimony.

 Next thing you'll be telling us is that Jack Welch is a great leader of men
 and women with a misquided theory, Kissinger is a great diplomat with a
 mistaken world view, Oliver North is a real humanitarian who made a poor
 career choice.

 dms
 - Original Message -
 From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 10:10 AM
 Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime


   What character assassination?  He did recommend Keating.  He did tell
   Thailand to eat baht.  He did recommend increased SS taxes, and if you
  look
   several years back at his Congressional testimony, you'll see him
 stating
   that SS was not facing financial ruin due to the pre-collection scheme.
 
  I think it is better to say that in your opinion Greenspan is engaging in
  scams, and then show what the scam is, rather than calling him a scam
  artist. You last longer in politics that way.
  
   So what article were you reading?
 
  I am no longer a student, hence I tell what I am reading only to my wife,
 my
  supervisor or people actually living with me. As I haven't got a wife,
 that
  option doesn't exit. As I don't have job, I don't have a supervisor. And
 my
  flatmate is not really interested in my intellectual concerns. I'd be
  interested to read a biography of Greenspan but I don't know if there is
  one.
 
  J.
 

--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[Devine, James]

dms writes:
Let's not forget to whom Mr. Greenspan is beholden:  and that's not von
Hayek, Ayn Rand, or Adam Smith, it's finance capital. And finance capital
wants SS privatized so it can get the rake off.  Ever since the collapse of
2000-01, Wall Street has been trying to re-establish support for this
privatization.
 
finance capital wants? How can a fraction of the capitalist class want something, 
as if a large number of people share identical consciousness? This formulation 
fetishizes socio-economic categories and (in addition) makes it hard to talk to 
non-Marxists. It veers toward conspiracy theory or Hegelianism.
 
Instead, I'd say that many or most people and institutions which are financiers (or 
finance capitalists) would benefit from the privatization of the SS system. Because of 
their disproportionate political and economic power, they can have a lot of influence. 
They are endorsed by some intellectual hacks (usually economists or ignorami) who 
piously invoke H*yek, Rand, and/or Smith. This represents one faction of the political 
fight, which is counter-acted by other political forces, including capitalist ones. 
(George Soros, Ted Kennedy, and John Kerry are also in the capitalist camp. Etc.) 
Unfortunately, labor doesn't have enough power these days to have much say.
 
I am sure that there's some internal debate about what exactly the long-term interests 
of the finance-capital fraction are. Privatization of SS might destabilize finance 
over-all and/or help delegitimize US capitalism. The truth of different factions' 
perspectives can only be determined after the fact. In addition, how does someone like 
AG reconcile (his faction's perception of) these long-term interests and the impatient 
greed of individual financiers? 
 
I agree that Greenspan is one of the anti-SS finance capital faction. A lot of our 
political work involves convincing people that the Fed and Greenspan aren't apolitical 
technocrats but are instead financier partisans, rather than taking this fact as 
Revealed Truth.
 
BTW, above fraction refers to an objective part of the capitalist class (a position 
in the class structure) while faction refers to an organized political grouping or 
alliance.
 
Jim D.

Re: He does have a point

[Marvin Gandall]

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote (02/27/04 6:13 PM)

 The Green Party needs to run a presidential candidate, especially in
 war times, since it is the executive branch of the federal government
 that determines foreign policy, making life-and-death decisions on
 matters of war and peace.  Running candidates in winnable local
 elections alone doesn't allow the Green Party to publicize its
 foreign policy.  Besides, on issues of local governance, there are
 much fewer differences between the Green and Democratic Parties than
 at higher levels anyway.

-
Yoshie suggests that the differences between the Greens and Democrats
are less pronounced at the local level, but wouldn't she agree that even
at the national level, were the Green Party ever to become a serious
contender for power, it would be under enormous pressure to moderate its
rhetoric and program and adapt to the norms of the two-party system - or
it wouldn't be allowed to govern?

This has certainly been the case in Germany, where the Green Party was
born and attained its greatest success. As it grew, so did the pressures
on it to conform, resulting in an inevitable internal split between the
Fundis and the Realos. The latter were led by Joshka Fischer, who of
course went on to become the country's Foreign Minister.

You can see the same phenomenon at work in the earlier history of labour
and social democratic parties, and subsequently of the European
Communist parties in the postwar period. Their adaptation in all cases
reflects the continuing success of capitalism in delivering a tolerable
standard of living, and the domination of the parties championing the
system with whom the (formerly) anticapitalist parties compete for power
in the political arena.

I think most of us understand this state of affairs will not change in
the absence of a social crisis and mass upheaval, but this understanding
seems to be obscured every four years by the exaggerated polemics on the
left surrounding the differences between the parties and the
personalities - in the current election, between the Republicans and
Bush vs. the Democrats and Kerry or Kerry vs. the Green's Nader or
Camejo. This seems inconsistent with an appreciation that Presidents
Bush, Kerry, Kucinich, Nader, or Camejo would all have to govern within
the framework of a bipartisan consensus in economic and foreign policy
responsible ultimately to the markets.

For example, I think it's equally likely that a second term Bush, the
adventure in Iraq having gone awry, will govern like a Democratic
multilateralist in foreign policy, and that a President Kerry, faced
with a soaring deficit, will attack spending programs with a
determination (though not an ideological zeal) which is
indistinguishable from the Republicans.

Notwithstanding the above, I wouldn't describe myself as a political
cynic counselling others not to vote. I regularly vote for the
social-democratic NDP in Canada. But I think it's worth pointing out,
for the purposes of your debate, that I don't do so because I think the
party, in the unlikely event it should take power at the national level,
will govern much differently than the Liberals or Conservatives. The NDP
's history of governing at the provincial level in the West and in
Ontario shows this to not be the case.

What attracts me to the party is its social composition. It's where the
trade union and social movement activists are to be found, and where
consequently the greatest potential for mobilizing resistance to
unpopular government policies exists. In my earlier days, I used to
frontally attack the program and leadership of the party - both at its
conventions and within the labour movement which supported the NDP -
until I concluded that the activists and the constituencies they
represent, so long as they retain confidence in their current leaders
and party policies, understand such criticisms as an attack on
themselves.

Applying the same logic to the US, I can understand why Democratic union
and social movement activists are so hostile to a Green party candidacy
which, despite all the disclaimers and however softly it is posed, they
presently see directed as themselves. I also think that deep spending
cuts will be at the top of the agenda of an incoming administration, and
that effective resistance to these will necessarily have to begin with
the union and social movement activists who are in and around the
Democratic party. In my view, they'll be much less inclined to accept
these from a Democratic president who has raised their expectations and
over whom they feel they have some control, than from a Republican
administration, dependent on a different social base, which they could
only hope to marginally influence through demonstrations, the
organization of which will be hampered by the certain demoralization
which will set in following a Bush victory.

These two factors alone would lead me to favour the 

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[dmschanoes]

Ok, since you ask me specifically, I suggest you reread JB's original and
follow up posts, where Greenspan is referred to positively as economic
thinker with an incorrect theory.

That is fetishization to the max.  I didn't merely call Greenspan names, I
pointed out why the labels fit--- scam artist, hack, equivocator in service
of declining living standards, economic drivel in the service of fraud...
etc.

If econom ics doesn't do what the economist claims it does, sustain and
expand the welfare of society, then it is apparent that we must ascertain
what it really does do, and that is to justify the depreciation of such
welfare.  And that is not a theoretical exercise.  That requires an analysis
of the real history of the real players.

Does anyone think the response to Friedman, and the neo-liberalist wave
attached to Friedman's coattails should be a critique of his history of
prices?  Or should it be an examination of what his theory justifies, and
the social reality required to institute his programs?

You make the call.

dms


- Original Message -
From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 12:11 PM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime


 What does this add to the list.  Nobody here supports G. or his policy.
Merely
 calling names is a waste of bandwidth.

 On Sun, Feb 29, 2004 at 10:21:51AM -0500, dmschanoes wrote:
  I'm not IN politics.
 
  Aint no opinion, it's a fact-- he's a scam artist, paid flack, not
unlike
  the consultants paid to hype and protect Enron, Tyco, Parmalat. Look at
the
  record of what he's done, his testimony.
 
  Next thing you'll be telling us is that Jack Welch is a great leader of
men
  and women with a misquided theory, Kissinger is a great diplomat with a
  mistaken world view, Oliver North is a real humanitarian who made a poor
  career choice.
 
  dms
  - Original Message -
  From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 10:10 AM
  Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal
crime
 
 
What character assassination?  He did recommend Keating.  He did
tell
Thailand to eat baht.  He did recommend increased SS taxes, and if
you
   look
several years back at his Congressional testimony, you'll see him
  stating
that SS was not facing financial ruin due to the pre-collection
scheme.
  
   I think it is better to say that in your opinion Greenspan is engaging
in
   scams, and then show what the scam is, rather than calling him a scam
   artist. You last longer in politics that way.
   
So what article were you reading?
  
   I am no longer a student, hence I tell what I am reading only to my
wife,
  my
   supervisor or people actually living with me. As I haven't got a wife,
  that
   option doesn't exit. As I don't have job, I don't have a supervisor.
And
  my
   flatmate is not really interested in my intellectual concerns. I'd be
   interested to read a biography of Greenspan but I don't know if there
is
   one.
  
   J.
  

 --
 Michael Perelman
 Economics Department
 California State University
 Chico, CA 95929

 Tel. 530-898-5321
 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[dmschanoes]

- Original Message -
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 12:16 PM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime
Well, since I'm being addressed specifically, let me violate the three and
out rule:



 dms writes:
 Let's not forget to whom Mr. Greenspan is beholden:  and that's not von
 Hayek, Ayn Rand, or Adam Smith, it's finance capital. And finance capital
 wants SS privatized so it can get the rake off.  Ever since the collapse
of
 2000-01, Wall Street has been trying to re-establish support for this

jd writes:
 finance capital wants? How can a fraction of the capitalist class want
something, as if a large number of people share identical consciousness?
This formulation fetishizes socio-economic categories and (in addition)
makes it hard to talk to non-Marxists. It veers toward conspiracy theory or
Hegelianism.

DMS:
That's like asking how can the steel producers, steel capitalists, want
tariffs and import restrictions.  How?  They, the fraction, form groups,
organizations and lobby for such things.  They,the fraction now organized as
a group, advocate it in their press, their internal and external
discussions, their contributions to political candidates who will carry the
water forward.  That's how.  It's how the airline industry did it with Bush
prior and since the election.  How the pharmaceutical indstry got its way
with Medicare prescription coverage, etc. etc.

JD:
 Instead, I'd say that many or most people and institutions which are
financiers (or finance capitalists) would benefit from the privatization of
the SS system. Because of their disproportionate political and economic
power, they can have a lot of influence. They are endorsed by some
intellectual hacks (usually economists or ignorami) who piously invoke
H*yek, Rand, and/or Smith. This represents one faction of the political
fight, which is counter-acted by other political forces, including
capitalist ones. (George Soros, Ted Kennedy, and John Kerry are also in the
capitalist camp. Etc.) Unfortunately, labor doesn't have enough power these
days to have much say.

DMS: And the practical difference is? OK, let's say a hard core of the
the financial capitalists... like we would say the hardest core of the
capitalists supported Bush, wanted Bush.  How could they, did they manifest
that?  By contributing more to the Repubs-- by a 2:1 margin.

JD:
 I am sure that there's some internal debate about what exactly the
long-term interests of the finance-capital fraction are. Privatization of SS
might destabilize finance over-all and/or help delegitimize US capitalism.
The truth of different factions' perspectives can only be determined after
the fact. In addition, how does someone like AG reconcile (his faction's
perception of) these long-term interests and the impatient greed of
individual financiers?

Dms:

That, the above, is voluntarism.  The issue is what are the historical
requirements, determinants that bring this issue to the fore, that make it
so high profile at this time and place.  Neo-liberalism is not a theory, it
is a social policy, an attack by capital, capitalism, capitalists, upon the
living standards of the workers and poor, which gained currency at a
specific time for a specific reason, having absoutely nothing to do with its
economic accuracy.  Reconciling different factions perspectives can be done
with any of the tools of capitalism-- guns, lawyers, money.  The specific
circumstances, and the desperation of the economic predicament determines
what combinations are used.

JD:

 I agree that Greenspan is one of the anti-SS finance capital faction. A
lot of our political work involves convincing people that the Fed and
Greenspan aren't apolitical technocrats but are instead financier partisans,
rather than taking this fact as Revealed Truth.

DMS:

That, the above, was/is the sole and whole reason I took issue with JB's
characterization of AG as a deep economic thinker with a wrong theory.

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[joanna bujes]

I didn't think that what David wrote was abuse and character
assassination. Impassioned critique perhaps. Pointing out some very
obvious and noxious facts abut Mr. G
Joanna

Jurriaan Bendien wrote:

Well I think that substantiates your argument and my argument. I think David
Schanoes is entitled to his viewpoint, but surely if a pithy article is
written in the NYT explaining what is wrong with Greenspan's idea, then that
helps us much more than a bunch of abuse and character assasination ?
J.

Estanblished Trade Unions Left Politics, was Re: He does have a point

[Carrol Cox]

Marvin Gandall wrote:

 I regularly vote for the
 social-democratic NDP in Canada. But I think it's worth pointing out,
 for the purposes of your debate, that I don't do so because I think the
 party, in the unlikely event it should take power at the national level,
 will govern much differently than the Liberals or Conservatives. The NDP
 's history of governing at the provincial level in the West and in
 Ontario shows this to not be the case.

 What attracts me to the party is its social composition. It's where the
 trade union and social movement activists are to be found,

Hypothesis: Trade Unions are actively left in their politics ONLY during
their early stages, when the chief issue is establishing the right to
exist. Once that right is established, they rapidly cease to be an
element in left politics. At the present time, with only scattered
exceptions, one will not, in the u.s., find social activists _and_ trade
union leadership in the same social/political locations. In most
instances of radical activists inside the trade-union movement you are
more apt to meet those activists in organizations separate from the
trade union itself.

And, of course, in the u.s. the membership in unions has shrunk to the
point where it makes up an extremely small proportion of non-public
employees. If we want to reach the working class our efforts for the
most part will have to be directed to non-union workers.

My wife was president of the APWU local for many years, and also served
on the County AFL-CIO Central Council. It doesn't take two hands to
count the number of activists she met in those years. Before being
employed in the Post Office she had led for a number of years an
organizing committee (variously attached to AFSCME, NEA,  SEIU) among
clerical employees at Illinois State U. I make these observations to
emphasize that I am _not_ talking from a vantage point outside the union
movement. I'm for unions, not against them, but leftists at the present
time simply should not fool themselves into thinking, again _at the
present time_, unions are a very important locus for leftist activity.

Carrol

Carrol

Re: He does have a point

[Jurriaan Bendien]

 what obliges people to change the system? Marx took for granted the
general antipathy of the socialist and communist movements of his day toward
capitalism.

Jim,

I agree with the substance of what you say. But in your last sentence, I am
inclined to think this ignores that it isn't pretty obvious for many
working class people. My own opinion is that what Marx did was perfectly
valid even if imperfect, the problem is not with marx but with Marxism, and
specifically the culture of Marxism. Male Marxists outnumber female Marxists
10 to 1, just as an indication. What I like about Louis Proyect and PEN-L is
an attempt to foster alternatives to a boring, alienating and stultifying
Marxist culture, where people just engage in bile and nasty polemics. In my
whole life, I befriended only one Marxist who really supported me at a
personal level when I needed it. Sectarian stupidity by Marxists wasted part
of my life.  Most Marxists I experienced might have been brilliant thinkers,
but were not significant as human beings. As a socialist, I support Marx but
reject Marxism, because Marxism seeks to impose an ideology on the working
class, and the end of that story is just a new elite and not a
universalising liberating process. That explains my heterodoxy.

We change the system by changing the way we live and what we do, and
encouraging others to do it to, in a direction which makes us all stronger.
We invent new cultures and defend them against bourgeois parasitism.

Jurriaan

Protest US Intervention in Venezuela (Mon., March 1, 2004, DC)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

--- Washington DC, March 1, 2004 ---
Protest against US intervention in Venezuela
Bush's Administration Supports Fraud to Overthrow Chavez

Stop US Intervention!
Respect Democracy and Popular Will in Venezuela!
Monday, March 1st, 11:30 AM
at OAS Building
17th Street  Constitution Ave.
N.W., Washington, D.C.
Congreso Bolivariano de Los Pueblos

[The flyer is available at
http://www.globalwomenstrike.net/English2004/DCVenez.gif.]
Dear Sisters and Friends:

We write, in follow up to the very successful speaking tour of Nora
Castañeda, President of the Women's Development Bank of Venezuela, to
urge you to participate in a global protest against US and OAS
intervention in Venezuela that is happening on Monday March 1 at
11:30am in Washington DC outside the OAS, 17th and Constitution
Avenue, followed by a protest at US News and World Report against
biased reporting that feeds the flame for intervention. Information
below.
Audiences in the US learnt a lot from Nora Castañeda when she spoke
of what the peaceful and democratic revolution in Venezuela is
achieving, and how grassroots women who live in poverty, the majority
of whom are of African and Indigenous descent, are the most involved
in the process and have the most to lose if it is crushed. We heard
how women won Article 88 of the constitution which recognizes unwaged
work in the home as economically productive and entitles housewives
to social security, and Article 14 of the Land Law which prioritizes
single mothers for land distribution and guarantees food subsidies
for pregnant women before and after birth. What women all over the
world have been campaigning for over decades is becoming a reality in
Venezuela.
As we near March 8 International Women's Day, we ask you to come out
and protect and defend these and other hard-won achievements --
literacy, free healthcare in the poorest communities, etc. -- which
represent a real alternative for all of us who oppose US corporate
greed and military might.
We know time is tight, but people in Venezuela have asked their
supporters in the US to protest a potentially dangerous situation
that is presented by the imminent findings on the referendum. The
Global Women's Strike is supporting this protest and we urge you to
forward this message to your contacts, family and friends in the
Washington DC area, asking them to please come out. There are vans
going from NYC (call 718-510-5523) and Philadelphia (call
215-848-1120) to reserve a seat. Costs will be shared.
Global Women's Strike Bolivarian Circle
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
215-848-1120
This event will be followed by a protest in front of the US News and
World Report.
What is happening?

As the February 29th deadline approaches, the Venezuelan Electoral
National Council is under pressure from the US and political
opposition forces to president Hugo Chavez, threatening that if the
decision is not favorable to them, violence will ensue. That only a
referendum independently of the number of signatures can guarantee
peace. It is nothing more than a flagrant call to disrespect the law
and the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Both of
these instruments of law clearly state that at least 20% of valid
signatures are required for a recall referendum. No fake, no
duplicated signatures can be considered. People signing for others is
an illegal act and not a technicism, as the State Department is
calling it.
Since the April 2002 US-backed coup and January 2003 oil lock-out
which were reversed by a popular uprising, the US has been pressing
to get the democratically-elected President Chavez out of power.
President Chavez was overwhelmingly elected in 1998 and re-elected in
2000, to get the country's oil revenue back to tackle poverty and
corruption and to create a caring economy in Venezuela. Recently it
was uncovered that the National Endowment for Democracy has been
funneling money to forces trying to overthrow President Chavez,
including those participating in the April 2002 coup.
As the government reforms advance, 1.5 million new children obtained
access to school, 1 million adults learned to read and write, 1.5
million people obtained access to potable water, the economy is
recovering steadily in spite of the sabotage, and the PNUD recognized
in their last report of 2003 that poverty has declined 3 points in
Venezuela. A unique case in Latin America and the United States where
the number of people in poverty increased. Venezuela has a new form
of democracy that the US does not like, a democracy where people not
only participate in discussions about their process of development
(participation) but also have the legal instruments that allow them
to make the decisions. They do not have to depend on politicians or
political parties who make decisions for them, people make their own
decisions about their projects of development (articles 166 and 182
of the Bolivarian Constitution). This is called protagonism.
Venezuelan democracy is then called participatory and

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[Jurriaan Bendien]

 That, the above, was/is the sole and whole reason I took issue with JB's
 characterization of AG as a deep economic thinker with a wrong theory.

One thing David Schanoes is very good at is falsely presenting somebody
else's point of view. On previous occasions he has written to me or about me
all sorts of abusive mails showing that he neither understood the issue nor
what I was saying. Now he does it again. I did not say that AG is a deep
economic thinker, I said I respected his efforts to understand the empirical
economic facts rather than simply shooting off a formula like many
economists do because they think wisdom equates with mathematics. I cannot
assess the depth or profundity of AG's economic thinking, but the odds are
that the ruling classes do not permit a shallow thinker to become chairman.

J.

Re: He does have a point

[joanna bujes]

I agree with your critique of Marxism -- but as for the ratio of male
to female Marxists, I don't know that this is anything more than a
reflection of the general ratio of males to females in any
political/economic/historic discussion. For cultural reasons, women are
not encouraged or supported in their efforts to take part in these kinds
of discussions. You will notice that even in the lefty magz, like the
Nation, women are routinely asked to handle women's issues, (like birth
control, domestic violence, etc.) but seldom asked to comment on more
general topics.
Joanna

Jurriaan Bendien wrote:

what obliges people to change the system? Marx took for granted the


general antipathy of the socialist and communist movements of his day toward
capitalism.
Jim,

I agree with the substance of what you say. But in your last sentence, I am
inclined to think this ignores that it isn't pretty obvious for many
working class people. My own opinion is that what Marx did was perfectly
valid even if imperfect, the problem is not with marx but with Marxism, and
specifically the culture of Marxism. Male Marxists outnumber female Marxists
10 to 1, just as an indication. What I like about Louis Proyect and PEN-L is
an attempt to foster alternatives to a boring, alienating and stultifying
Marxist culture, where people just engage in bile and nasty polemics. In my
whole life, I befriended only one Marxist who really supported me at a
personal level when I needed it. Sectarian stupidity by Marxists wasted part
of my life.  Most Marxists I experienced might have been brilliant thinkers,
but were not significant as human beings. As a socialist, I support Marx but
reject Marxism, because Marxism seeks to impose an ideology on the working
class, and the end of that story is just a new elite and not a
universalising liberating process. That explains my heterodoxy.
We change the system by changing the way we live and what we do, and
encouraging others to do it to, in a direction which makes us all stronger.
We invent new cultures and defend them against bourgeois parasitism.
Jurriaan

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[Devine, James]

I generally agree with what DMS said in the stuff above the following quotes.

I wrote:
 I'd say that many or most people and institutions which are
financiers (or finance capitalists) would benefit from the privatization of
the SS system. Because of their disproportionate political and economic
power, they can have a lot of influence. They are endorsed by some
intellectual hacks (usually economists or ignorami) who piously invoke
H*yek, Rand, and/or Smith. This represents one faction of the political
fight, which is counter-acted by other political forces, including
capitalist ones. (George Soros, Ted Kennedy, and John Kerry are also in the
capitalist camp. Etc.) Unfortunately, labor doesn't have enough power these
days to have much say.

DMS: And the practical difference is? OK, let's say a hard core of the
the financial capitalists... like we would say the hardest core of the
capitalists supported Bush, wanted Bush.  How could they, did they manifest
that?  By contributing more to the Repubs-- by a 2:1 margin.

but my point was that hard-core finance capitalists disagree with that hardest 
core. Cf. Soros.

me: 
 I am sure that there's some internal debate about what exactly the
long-term interests of the finance-capital fraction are. Privatization of SS
might destabilize finance over-all and/or help delegitimize US capitalism.
The truth of different factions' perspectives can only be determined after
the fact. In addition, how does someone like AG reconcile (his faction's
perception of) these long-term interests and the impatient greed of
individual financiers?

Dms:
That, the above, is voluntarism.  The issue is what are the historical
requirements, determinants that bring this issue to the fore, that make it
so high profile at this time and place.

No, my perspective isn't voluntarism. My view is that people make history [the 
voluntarist or subjective 'moment'] but not exactly as they please [the objective 
'moment']. It's a dialectic (if I may use that word) between people voluntarily and 
subjectively trying to change the world, in terms of their self-interests, ideologies, 
etc., as part of formal and informal coalitions, organizations,  etc. on the one hand 
and objective conditions (social structures of class, gender, ethnic domination, etc.) 
on the other. These interests  ideologies are limited and shaped by the objective 
conditions under which they live, but they are not simple reflections of those 
conditions. People are heterogeneous, as are objective conditions. People's actions 
(practice) can also change objective conditions. For example, some individual 
capitalist behavior undermines the _status quo_ (producing crises, etc.) and sometimes 
can undermine their long-term class interest (undermining the system's legitimacy, 
etc.) Class-conscious working-class actions can do so, too. Of course, there are also 
capitalist actions that stabilize the _status quo_ and class-collaborationist actions 
by working people. The objective structure (and its dynamics) that we see is a 
result of the conflict between all these forces. 

 Neo-liberalism is not a theory, it
is a social policy, an attack by capital, capitalism, capitalists, upon the
living standards of the workers and poor, which gained currency at a
specific time for a specific reason, having absoutely nothing to do with its
economic accuracy.  Reconciling different factions perspectives can be done
with any of the tools of capitalism-- guns, lawyers, money.  The specific
circumstances, and the desperation of the economic predicament determines
what combinations are used.

Of course, neo-liberalism isn't just a theory. It's an expression of the dominant 
fractions of capital on a world-wide level. But it isn't the only capitalist trend. 
Soros, Krugman, etc., represent another capitalist trend. 

Jim D. 


 

BTW, what's your name, DMS?

The lover of the devil: obtaining knowledge and the nuance of feminism fatigue

[Jurriaan Bendien]

In Holland, when you are tired of pornography in its various forms, there is
a new magazine women can buy, called Strictly Magazine. The ethos of
Strictly Magazine is explained by the editor, Hermelijn van der Meijden, as
follows:

If you want to live long, you have to have sex often. Research has shown
that there exists a significant correlation between the number of orgasms
and life expectations. if you have sex more than once a week, you live two
years longer on average. Moreover, if you regularly make love, you also have
an effective weapon against viruses. This is also scientifically proven.
Lovers generate a higher amount of immunoglobine A during lovemaking, a
substance which forms a natural barrier against disease. Frequent sex is
therefore healthy, but there are obstacles. Smoking is not so good. Because
smokers often stop with sex, rather than to quit smoking. And no sex reduces
your lifespan significantly, as we have just learnt. And a high IQ is not
everything either. It is not true that intelligent youths begin with sex
later than dumb ones ! Again that costs you a few years of your life. The
smart person must therefore, as a compensation, think of sex a lot. That is
good, because then the testosterone level rises, and then you feel like it
again. What also isn't a bad idea: to seduce a physician, because he has one
of the most sexy professions on earth (this has been proved, really).
Reading about sex also stimulates significantly. Scientific research shows
that this sex publication by Strictly contributes to a long and healthy
life. So you've got to read this magazine ! (but not for too long - you have
more to do).

Editor Nynke van Spiegel has this story in no. 2 of the magazine about
modern feminism (onwards christian soldiers, the rest of us like to fuck):

ON THE BARRICADE

Feminists then,. and feminists now. Not just a difference of twenty years,
but also a difference between fighting for abortion and fighting against a
trendy junkie look. All the same, the second feminist wave writers keep
struggling as hard as they did then. Passe ? Or do we have a long way to go
?

The old guard of feminist writers is not yet relieved of the armpit-hair
syndrome. Germaine Greer - who became legendary with The Female Eunuch -
changed a lot of women's lives during the first feminist wave in the 1970s
and 1980s. Both re-entered publicity in 2003. For a while feminism was hot
again. Erica Jong wrote Sappho's Leap about the Greek poetess Sappho of
Lesbos, who vented her hunger for love, lust and indecency on men and women
on the surrounding islands. And Germaine Greer came with The Boy in which
she argued for the young boy as ideal beauty instead of the women who now
dominate aesthetics. It's a cultural-historical book, in which Greer looks
back to previous centuries in which painting and sculpture of naked boys was
acceptable, and where the link with pedophilia was not yet made so easily as
it is today. Greer still thinks it is wonderful to kick against everything,
and she stood once again on many podiums doing her feminist rap. In brief,
even now the dames get enough attention.

These days you can get a contraceptive pill from social insurance, abortion
clinics are cited in telephone books, women assume high positions, and there
is childcare for almost everybody, so there seems to be little left to fight
about for anymore. Yet, a new generation of feminists emerged in the 1990s:
the power feminists. These writers no longer engage in the fight with men
and their domination. They kick especially against the beauty ideal that
generally prevails: the junkie look, silicon tits or even contact lenses.
Be yourself, don't let anybody force you into anything.

A woman who was prominent in this current is Naomi Wolf. Her first book, The
Beauty Myth, made her famous. In this book, she condemns the compulsion
which women still feel towards more and more beautiful looks. According to
Wolf, they do this under male pressure and their ideal of beauty. Reason to
write about it ? I guess her own struggle against overeating and hungry
girlfriends who prefer size 36 instead of a good meal.
But then... the dictionary says that feminism is the striving for an equal
treatment for women. Is the fight against an imposed ideal of beauty not
after all a battle with ourselves ? With Anne Wintour as the antichrist of
this so-called feminism ?

Really you know, we are justabout through with women's emancipation, or if
you like, we've got feminism fatigue. But of course feminism is not dead by
any means. In the islamic culture and - to a lesser extent - the Chinese,
they are really just at the beginning of a long road. More and more writers
from this region are making their voices heard in - often fictional - books
and throw themselves into the battle for freedom. Writer Naima El Bazaz for
example, who with her book The Lover of the Devil invited the anger of the
Moroccan community. In the book she writes openly about matters like 

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[joanna bujes]

Juriaan wrote

..I cannot
assess the depth or profundity of AG's economic thinking, but the odds are
that the ruling classes do not permit a shallow thinker to become chairman.
unless he works hard to meet their needs. Frankly Juriaan, you surprise me. You, of all people, are perfectly aware of the mediocrity and shalowness that characterizes a lot of economic stars. It is no different in economics than in society at large. The shit rises to the top. I see this daily in the very large corporation for which I work. The high-level managers who make decisions know next to nothing about reality. They don't really need to. No matter what happens: success, bankruptcy, etc., they walk away with the loot.

Joanna

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[Jurriaan Bendien]

 I didn't think that what David wrote was abuse and character
 assassination. Impassioned critique perhaps. Pointing out some very
 obvious and noxious facts abut Mr. G

That shows more about what you are than about Al Greenspan and David
Schanoes.

J.

Re: He does have a point

[Jurriaan Bendien]

 I agree with your critique of Marxism

Feminism and Marxism are oppressive if they tell you what you should do or
think, rather than explain and exemplify why you should do it.

J.

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[Jurriaan Bendien]

 unless he works hard to meet their needs. Frankly Juriaan, you
surprise me. You, of all people, are perfectly aware of the mediocrity and
shalowness that characterizes a lot of economic stars. It is no different in
economics than in society at large. The shit rises to the top. I see this
daily in the very large corporation for which I work. The high-level
managers who make decisions know next to nothing about reality. They don't
really need to. No matter what happens: success, bankruptcy, etc., they walk
away with the loot.

Rather than sitting in on moral judgement about me, why don't you explain
then how it is that the shit is able to rise to the top. What do you know
about Greenspan ?

J.

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[joanna bujes]

Jurriaan Bendien wrote:
Rather than sitting in on moral judgement about me, why don't you
explainthen how it is that the shit is able to rise to the top. What do
you know about Greenspan ?
The shit rises to the top because the game is not about innovation or
creativity or productivity...but about collaboration. Those who
collaborate in the class war that occurs on every social level rise to
the top. Those who by virtue of class membership are already at the top,
stay at the top.
I make no moral judgments. I make the observation that you take badly to
disagreement. I am also tired of posts where you call people pricks
and then conclude with lyrics advocating the power of love.
Joanna

Re: Estanblished Trade Unions Left Politics, was Re: He does have a point

[Marvin Gandall]

I agree with you, Carrol, when you associate radical trade unionism
activity with the historic labour struggles for recognition and
collective bargaining rights. And also your points concerning the
decline in trade union density within the society, and the scarcity of
politically-conscious activists in the locals. No different up here or
in any of the developed capitalist economies in this period.

But I'm not referring to the left-wing militancy we associate with the
old IWW- and CP-led unions -- but something much more elementary, when
people initially have bread and butter trade union and political
consciousness forced on them by the circumstances they find themselves
in. In this context, I do think if the coming cuts to retirement,
medical, and other core government programs are deep enough and
perceptible enough, people will react -- in varying degrees -- even if
they're deep into watching sports, sex, and survivors on TV today.

And people invariably turn first to what it closest at hand when their
living standards are threatened -- their unions and, in the US case, the
Democratic party -- which is why I think these are the venues where any
opposition to serious cutbacks would first manifest itself.

Of course, this isn't certain; the cuts, when they come, will almost
certainly be downplayed, disguised, sold as reforms, and phased in. So
they may well be, by and large, passively accepted because they won't be
experienced directly as an immediate assault on jobs or income. But if
there is a potential to organize opposition, as I think there will be,
it will be easier and more effective to do so from within the unions and
the DP rather than from the outside. I include in this the development
of opposition within the environmental, lesbian and gay, Latino/a,
black, and other social movements -- all of whose demands to stop the
cutbacks will be necessarily channeled into the Democratic party and
directed at the party's legislative representatives at all levels of the
political system.

Marv Gandall


- Original Message -
From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 1:04 PM
Subject: [PEN-L] Estanblished Trade Unions  Left Politics, was Re: He
does have a point


 Marvin Gandall wrote:
 
  I regularly vote for the
  social-democratic NDP in Canada. But I think it's worth pointing
out,
  for the purposes of your debate, that I don't do so because I think
the
  party, in the unlikely event it should take power at the national
level,
  will govern much differently than the Liberals or Conservatives. The
NDP
  's history of governing at the provincial level in the West and in
  Ontario shows this to not be the case.
 
  What attracts me to the party is its social composition. It's where
the
  trade union and social movement activists are to be found,

 Hypothesis: Trade Unions are actively left in their politics ONLY
during
 their early stages, when the chief issue is establishing the right to
 exist. Once that right is established, they rapidly cease to be an
 element in left politics. At the present time, with only scattered
 exceptions, one will not, in the u.s., find social activists _and_
trade
 union leadership in the same social/political locations. In most
 instances of radical activists inside the trade-union movement you are
 more apt to meet those activists in organizations separate from the
 trade union itself.

 And, of course, in the u.s. the membership in unions has shrunk to the
 point where it makes up an extremely small proportion of non-public
 employees. If we want to reach the working class our efforts for
the
 most part will have to be directed to non-union workers.

 My wife was president of the APWU local for many years, and also
served
 on the County AFL-CIO Central Council. It doesn't take two hands to
 count the number of activists she met in those years. Before being
 employed in the Post Office she had led for a number of years an
 organizing committee (variously attached to AFSCME, NEA,  SEIU) among
 clerical employees at Illinois State U. I make these observations to
 emphasize that I am _not_ talking from a vantage point outside the
union
 movement. I'm for unions, not against them, but leftists at the
present
 time simply should not fool themselves into thinking, again _at the
 present time_, unions are a very important locus for leftist activity.

 Carrol

 Carrol

Paul Marlor Sweezy (1910-2004)

[ertugrul ahmet tonak]

Just came back from a conference in Turkey and heard the sad news (two
weeks before my short course on reading the TCD, Sweezy's classic). I
had great memories of him both here in the US and also in Turkey, when I
invited him to give a talk in 1994 --he was extremely touched by the
standing ovation of more than 700 people as he entered the hall.
Here are the text of the 1986-interview I (and my friend Sungur Savran)
did with Paul and a photo of Paul and myself editing the interview in
the MR office in NYC:
http://www.simons-rock.edu/~eatonak/sweezyinterview.html

He was a beautiful human being. I mourn his death.



E. Ahmet Tonak
Simons Rock College of Bard
Great Barrington, MA 01230
Phone: 413-528 7488

Homepage: www.simons-rock.edu/~eatonak

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[dmschanoes]

In summation let me say a couple of things:

1. I am gratified to see a thread sustained that actually considers purpose
and cause re economists  and social struggle.  I think far too often the
lack of exchange is not a desire to save bandwidth, but simply the result of
short attention span Marxism.

2. I wear the label of jeering Marxist proudly.  The icons of bourgeois
science and culture-- the officials and officialdom of  intellectual and
social poverty deserve nothing better than jeering, and a whole lot worse.

3. Re JB's notion on AG being dedicated to empirical examination, and the
bourgeoisie not allowing a shallow thinker.

From, The Greatest-Ever Bank Robbery,  by Martin Mayer, 1990, 1992 (IMO the
best analysis of the SL collapse of the 80s).

P. 140: Keating hired lawyers, including four of the largest firms in New
York.  Arthur Limanrecommended that Keating reinforce Bentson with Alan
Greenspan, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for Gerald
Ford, at the height of his reputation because he had been chairman of the
committee that crafted the compromise on Social Security taxation.
Greenspan was then a private consultant heading a not very successful firm
[my note: Greenspan  Associates] that dissolved in 1987 on his departure to
become chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.  His specialty was what he
once called 'statistical espionage,' and the book on him in that capacity
was that you could order the opinion you needed.  . Greenspan was paid
$40,000 for writing a couple of letters and testifying for Keating.

he [Greenspan] hailed his client as representative of the group of new
SL venturers who were going to save the industry.  Later, in a fawning and
false letter to the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco supporting
Keating's application for an exemption from the rule on direct investments,
Greenspan expressed confidence that Keating's operation of his SL could not
pose a risk of loss to the FSLIC 'for the forseeable future.

Neither Greenspan nor Benston referred to-- or, pehaps, understood--the
peculiar accounting conventions that permitted SLs to book a stream of
profits on unsold land and construction profits.

End of quote.

There's much more but I don't want to take up too much bandwidth.

Did I say scam-artist? flack? hack?  a la Arthur Andersen?  Fastow?  Enron.

Mike, there's a difference between name-calling, and calling things by their
right name.  Shit is shit.  And that's Greenspan in 4 letters.

The struggle against the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois order requires
demystification of their representatives claims to insight, wisdom,
integrity.

4. Whatever personal problems JB has with me are purely of his own
construction and not important to anyone, least of all me.

5. To JD:  Yes people make their own history, but not as people but as
members, agents, representatives of their class.  So Greenspan leans to
whatever side with the most power or money wants him to lean.  And he
espouses that view.  He's paid to do that.  He reconciles the current
interest and economic need.

My name is David Schanoes.  I live in NYC.  More information available
offlist if so desired.

dms

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[Jurriaan Bendien]

 The shit rises to the top because the game is not about innovation or
 creativity or productivity...but about collaboration.

That's like saying, it all depends on who you want to work with. As a
technical writer, you should know that shit is produced through digesting
food. Food enters the mouth. For the food to enter the mouth, you must open
your mouth, so the food can get in. I distinguish between shit and food, but
I'll just say not more than that I won't be eating at your place ever again.

 I make no moral judgments. I make the observation that you take badly to
 disagreement. I am also tired of posts where you call people pricks
 and then conclude with lyrics advocating the power of love.

Yeah, it's just innuendo, insinuation and allusion that you do, maybe
well-intentioned, maybe not. Well, there's little point these days in
disagreeing with people, generally. That's not where it is at.  It is not a
negative dialectic, but a constructive dialectic we are doing. I do not take
badly to disagreement, I take badly to disagreement from which nothing is
learnt, and that is quite a different story.

For 2003 as a whole, new money flowing into the hedging industry in the US
is estimated at $72.2 billion, a more than fourfold increase over $16.3
billion in 2002 and more than double the previous annual record of $32
billion in 2001. In his latest Congressional testimony, Alan Greenspan notes
that firms have increasingly hedged their currency exposures, which means
the dollar might fall further. Do you understand what this means ? No. Does
David Schanoes know this ? He doesn't. Why not ? Because Greenspan checked
it out, and few other people did. Schanoes is just talking about steel and
oil but it's not very significant. Do you understand the epistemic problem
of intellectual property rights in free markets ? No you don't. Do you know
about the time factor in financial transactions ? No.

I did not call any specific person a prick, I was referring to categories of
people and behaviours I personally don't like, so you are lying and being
dishonest. I was saying, if you are an arrogant female prick, then leave
me alone. I am not saying, that you are not allowed to be an arrogant female
prick, that's okay with me, but just leave me alone in that case.

When you say that I conclude with with lyrics advocating the power of love,
you are lying again, because the lyric says nothing about the power of love,
that is your interpretation. It is rather a conclusion: to get love (take
love) you have to make love, create it, however you do it, and that means
more than Joanna making love with her ego. It's a Karmic-type principle
about human destiny, you get what you give out, although it may take a while
to understand the balance and how the equation is arrived at, it's a very
complex argument. Now get off my case, Ms. FBI. You don't know anything
about what I went through, and you didn't even understand the meaning of my
visit to Oakland. You just leave me alone, best thing. When I think of you I
just want to go to the toilet.

Kicks against the pricks are one of the UK's fastest rising metal acts. Here
is a lyric for you though, from the band Bittersweet:

Seven sin of wantonness and
Everything that's good is gone
Sell it all for glory from the peers
Silicone priestess scratch the back and
Twist the knife to bone
Kick against the pricks and scrape the shins
I'm the enemy in the enemies now
Swallowed the pill
And drank to the fill
All these things I carry now
In this bittersweet now
Try to hold the world there sinking
Swimming in a paper cup
Try to own the one beneath the skin
Held up to the flames still singeing
Skin begins to draw and tuck
Never told theres not a chance to win
What couldn't be, wouldn't be now
Swallowed the pill
And drank to the fill
All these things I carry now
In this bittersweet now
Hold your hand up to the sky and try
So hard to rise above
But everything is beating down
Swallowed the pill
And drank to the fill
All these things I carry now
In this bittersweet now

Jurriaan

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[dmschanoes]

- Original Message -
From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 3:35 PM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

For 2003 as a whole, new money flowing into the hedging industry in the US
 is estimated at $72.2 billion, a more than fourfold increase over $16.3
 billion in 2002 and more than double the previous annual record of $32
 billion in 2001. In his latest Congressional testimony, Alan Greenspan
notes
 that firms have increasingly hedged their currency exposures, which means
 the dollar might fall further. Do you understand what this means ? No.
Does
 David Schanoes know this ? He doesn't.


Talk about insignificant.  Get with the program JB.  Six years ago average
daily trading of currencies was 1.5 trillion.  That's each day.  In
financial derivatives alone 18 trillion dollars were traded for 1998.

You're at 2003 and you are way way behind the times.  Currency hedges were
initially developed so corporations could protect their exposure to currency
fluctuations and their impact on earnings.  The mechanism then became
directly its opposite-- a mechanism for aggrandizing earnings based on
increased volatility.

The decline of the dollar is 1. overstated.  remember when the Euro was
introduced it was at the official rate of 1.15 to the dollar.  2.
symptomatic of trade difficulties, and a beggar thy neighbor attitude,
itself symptomatic of the reduced rate of growth of profits. 3. very
beneficial to the US as it can redeem its securities with depreciated
dollars.

So what's Greenspan's point?  The Dept. of Commerce through any number of
vectors, BEA, Census Bureau, Office of Trade, etc.and the FRB make these
statistics available in real time and for free to anyone with an ISP.

One more point-- your remarks to Joanna Bujes are completely out of line and
have no place in public communications.

dms


dms

Wasting bandwidth. Was Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[Michael Perelman]

David asked me to make the call.  Here it is: just about everybody on
the list knows about Alan Greenspan and the savings-and-loan scandal.
Just about everybody on the list knows about Alan Greenspan and Ayn
Rand.

The argument about whether we should support anyone but Bush or reject
both parties also covers familiar territory.  Everybody on the list
knows that John Kerry and the Democrats are beholden to big-money.
Everybody on the list knows the dangers that George Bush represents.

To go over and over such matters turns people off, causing them to leave
the list.

There are people here with valuable information that could benefit
others on the list.  I would like to hear from them rather than rehash
well-known topics.



On Sun, Feb 29, 2004 at 12:23:14PM -0500, dmschanoes wrote:
 Ok, since you ask me specifically, I suggest you reread JB's original and
 follow up posts, where Greenspan is referred to positively as economic
 thinker with an incorrect theory.

 That is fetishization to the max.  I didn't merely call Greenspan names, I
 pointed out why the labels fit--- scam artist, hack, equivocator in service
 of declining living standards, economic drivel in the service of fraud...
 etc.

 If econom ics doesn't do what the economist claims it does, sustain and
 expand the welfare of society, then it is apparent that we must ascertain
 what it really does do, and that is to justify the depreciation of such
 welfare.  And that is not a theoretical exercise.  That requires an analysis
 of the real history of the real players.

 Does anyone think the response to Friedman, and the neo-liberalist wave
 attached to Friedman's coattails should be a critique of his history of
 prices?  Or should it be an examination of what his theory justifies, and
 the social reality required to institute his programs?

 You make the call.

 dms


 - Original Message -
 From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 12:11 PM
 Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime


  What does this add to the list.  Nobody here supports G. or his policy.
 Merely
  calling names is a waste of bandwidth.
 
  On Sun, Feb 29, 2004 at 10:21:51AM -0500, dmschanoes wrote:
   I'm not IN politics.
  
   Aint no opinion, it's a fact-- he's a scam artist, paid flack, not
 unlike
   the consultants paid to hype and protect Enron, Tyco, Parmalat. Look at
 the
   record of what he's done, his testimony.
  
   Next thing you'll be telling us is that Jack Welch is a great leader of
 men
   and women with a misquided theory, Kissinger is a great diplomat with a
   mistaken world view, Oliver North is a real humanitarian who made a poor
   career choice.
  
   dms
   - Original Message -
   From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED]
   To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
   Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 10:10 AM
   Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal
 crime
  
  
 What character assassination?  He did recommend Keating.  He did
 tell
 Thailand to eat baht.  He did recommend increased SS taxes, and if
 you
look
 several years back at his Congressional testimony, you'll see him
   stating
 that SS was not facing financial ruin due to the pre-collection
 scheme.
   
I think it is better to say that in your opinion Greenspan is engaging
 in
scams, and then show what the scam is, rather than calling him a scam
artist. You last longer in politics that way.

 So what article were you reading?
   
I am no longer a student, hence I tell what I am reading only to my
 wife,
   my
supervisor or people actually living with me. As I haven't got a wife,
   that
option doesn't exit. As I don't have job, I don't have a supervisor.
 And
   my
flatmate is not really interested in my intellectual concerns. I'd be
interested to read a biography of Greenspan but I don't know if there
 is
one.
   
J.
   
 
  --
  Michael Perelman
  Economics Department
  California State University
  Chico, CA 95929
 
  Tel. 530-898-5321
  E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
 

--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[Jurriaan Bendien]

Your remarks are irrelevant, because it ignores what currency hedging
expresses.

  One more point-- your remarks to Joanna Bujes are completely out of line
and
 have no place in public communications.

Okay Mr FBI, perhaps you ought to get it on with Joanna. You just try to
show how smart you are, like Joanna, so you belong together. Perhaps you two
could set up a rating bureau. I am not participating in this discussion any
more.

J.

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[Michael Perelman]

Joanna is correct here.  One problem with list communication is that
people challenge one another by name and then the challenged party
responds ad infinitum boring everybody but the people involved.  No
useful purpose is served by such exchanges.


On Sun, Feb 29, 2004 at 10:46:55AM -0800, joanna bujes wrote:
 Jurriaan Bendien wrote:
 Rather than sitting in on moral judgement about me, why don't you
 explainthen how it is that the shit is able to rise to the top. What do
 you know about Greenspan ?

 The shit rises to the top because the game is not about innovation or
 creativity or productivity...but about collaboration. Those who
 collaborate in the class war that occurs on every social level rise to
 the top. Those who by virtue of class membership are already at the top,
 stay at the top.

 I make no moral judgments. I make the observation that you take badly to
 disagreement. I am also tired of posts where you call people pricks
 and then conclude with lyrics advocating the power of love.

 Joanna

--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

note from a grocery strike solidarity group leader

[MICHAEL YATES]

This might serve as a comment on my article, responses to it, 
andabout workers and also recent posts on unions. It was written by 
a young leader of a group in solidarity with the grocery strikers:


Now that the 
strike is over I actually get a chance to write more than once a week =). 

Look, one 
thing I learned over the past five months is that there is no monolithic working 
class, union, worker-militant etc... I met people in the beginning who I thought 
would be strong until the end who cracked half-way through. I met a picket 
captain (the leader of the picket lines) whowas so bad in December that he 
actually told people just to make it through the new year and then just to do 
whatever they want who ended up being one of the strongest militants I ever 
met.I met a union "bureaucrat" who put in 16hours a day and did 
everything he could to help our group any way he could. I met "leaders" who 
should have been strung up by the workers andfed to the lions. I saw that 
the "union" was actually seven different locals with extremely different 
politics. I saw that left groups who actually took the time to meet the workers 
and listen to them were given the chance to speak at rallies and earned the 
admiration of the workers 
involved.
Did some of 
these workers have messed up attitudes? Yes. But I witnessed a striekr defend a 
gay scab who was attacked on the basis of his sexuality. Ican also tell 
you without exaggeration thatthe picket line has a way of breaking down 
racism, sexism, and homophobia more than many of us realize. The grocery workers 
were a very diverse workforce. It was 60 percent women, and a large number of 
people of color and immigrants andthere were also many white workers. It's 
hard to explain what it was like on the line but I promise you I've never seen 
anything else like it in my life. People were a team out 
there.
When the 
strike started they felt more alligence to their particular companies then each 
other. Many didn'tVons workers didn't know Ralphs and Albertsons workers 
and vice versa. But they had to learn how to work together. They had to learn 
how to trust each other and fight together. They realized that no matter 
hownice the manager was acting the managers aren't really their friends. 
They learned how to stand up to the police. It meant something to them when they 
sand the song "we are the union, the mighty, mighty, 
union".
When we heard 
comments that weren't cool we talked to the workers about it. But I know I've 
heard a lot more racism and sexism coming out of the students of ucla then I did 
on these picket lines. Thesestrikers put their lives on the line and their 
trust in each other. I don't knowwhat will happen in the future but for 
five months their world wasn't about color or sex. In many ways their world was 
broken down to striker, scab, and company.It was just a material fact that 
they had to learn how to get along with each other.We saw friendships form 
that yo wouldn't have thought were possible and in many ways identity polictics 
were washed away. White Gay workers saw white gay customers cross the line and 
spit in theirfaces while black co-workers backed them up. Latino striekrs 
just their face smashed in by Latino scabds while white workers backed them up. 
You get the point... Did racism and sexism disappear? Of course not. But these 
past few months renewed my faith in the world that is possible not because I 
read about it in a book but because I saw what is possible with my own eyes. 
People lost their homes, went bankrupt, lost their cars, and 14 workers died way 
before their time due to heart-attacks and weather related illnesses. Yet after 
140 days very few people crossed the lines to scab. They woke up every single 
day and dealt with the insults, thepsysical attacks, the crazy weather, 
fires, and police intimidaion to walk the picket lines. They inspired me more 
than I could every describe with 
words.
Just showing 
up with hot coffee on a cold winter night meant the world to them. Most never 
dreamed they would have been on strike. It was 25 years since southern 
California saw a grocery strike but they walked those lines with 
pride.
We were 
welcomed into their lives. I spent new years eve with a strikers familiy. We 
were present at birthday parties and trusted with their truthful opinions about 
the strike. I promise all of you I will write more about this. The vote on the 
contract will be tallied by tomorrow night. As it stads it seems the union has 
mortgaged their futurefor the present,a two-tier system is a 
betrayal of future workers, but before 

DeLong on Paul Sweezy

[Eubulides]

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/Index.html/


Have fun

Re: DeLong on Paul Sweezy

[MICHAEL YATES]

The day that fool DeLong returns to this list is the day I picket Michael 
Perelman's house. He is a disgusting red-baiter. If he were in front 
of me now I would smack him in the mouth. 

Michael Yates

  - Original Message - 
  From: Eubulides 
  To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
  Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 3:00 
  PM
  Subject: [PEN-L] DeLong on Paul 
  Sweezy
  http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/Index.html/Have 
  fun

Re: DeLong on Paul Sweezy

[Devine, James]

quoth deLong: Fill in the blank: Paul Sweezy was a .
 
fill in the blank: Brad deLong is an ___hole. 

-Original Message- 
From: MICHAEL YATES [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Sun 2/29/2004 3:03 PM 
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Cc: 
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] DeLong on Paul Sweezy


The day that fool DeLong returns to this list is the day I picket Michael 
Perelman's house.  He is a disgusting red-baiter.  If he were in front of me now I 
would smack him in the mouth.  
 
Michael Yates

- Original Message - 
From: Eubulides mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]  
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Sunday, February 29, 2004 3:00 PM
Subject: [PEN-L] DeLong on Paul Sweezy

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/Index.html/


Have fun

Re: note from a grocery strike solidarity group leader

[michael]

Thank you.  I am glad that something positive may have come out of the
strike.

MICHAEL YATES wrote:

 ?xml:namespace prefix=v /?xml:namespace prefix=o /This might
 serve as a comment on my article, responses to it, and about workers
 and also recent posts on unions.  It was written by a young leader of
 a group in solidarity with the grocery strikers: Now that the strike
 is over I actually get a chance to write more than once a week =).

 Look, one thing I learned over the past five months is that there is
 no monolithic working class, union, worker-militant etc... I met
 people in the beginning who I thought would be strong until the end
 who cracked half-way through. I met a picket captain (the leader of
 the picket lines) who was so bad in December that he actually told
 people just to make it through the new year and then just to do
 whatever they want who ended up being one of the strongest militants I
 ever met. I met a union bureaucrat who put in 16 hours a day and did
 everything he could to help our group any way he could. I met
 leaders who should have been strung up by the workers and fed to the
 lions. I saw that the union was actually seven different locals with
 extremely different politics. I saw that left groups who actually took
 the time to meet the workers and listen to them were given the chance
 to speak at rallies and earned the admiration of the workers
 involved.

 Did some of these workers have messed up attitudes? Yes. But I
 witnessed a striekr defend a gay scab who was attacked on the basis of
 his sexuality. I can also tell you without exaggeration that the
 picket line has a way of breaking down racism, sexism, and homophobia
 more than many of us realize. The grocery workers were a very diverse
 workforce. It was 60 percent women, and a large number of people of
 color and immigrants and there were also many white workers. It's hard
 to explain what it was like on the line but I promise you I've never
 seen anything else like it in my life. People were a team out there.

 When the strike started they felt more alligence to their particular
 companies then each other. Many didn't Vons workers didn't know Ralphs
 and Albertsons workers and vice versa. But they had to learn how to
 work together. They had to learn how to trust each other and fight
 together. They realized that no matter how nice the manager was acting
 the managers aren't really their friends. They learned how to stand up
 to the police. It meant something to them when they sand the song we
 are the union, the mighty, mighty, union.

 When we heard comments that weren't cool we talked to the workers
 about it. But I know I've heard a lot more racism and sexism coming
 out of the students of ucla then I did on these picket lines. These
 strikers put their lives on the line and their trust in each other. I
 don't know what will happen in the future but for five months their
 world wasn't about color or sex. In many ways their world was broken
 down to striker, scab, and company. It was just a material fact that
 they had to learn how to get along with each other. We saw friendships
 form that yo wouldn't have thought were possible and in many ways
 identity polictics were washed away. White Gay workers saw white gay
 customers cross the line and spit in their faces while black
 co-workers backed them up. Latino striekrs just their face smashed in
 by Latino scabds while white workers backed them up. You get the
 point... Did racism and sexism disappear? Of course not. But these
 past few months renewed my faith in the world that is possible not
 because I read about it in a book but because I saw what is possible
 with my own eyes. People lost their homes, went bankrupt, lost their
 cars, and 14 workers died way before their time due to heart-attacks
 and weather related illnesses. Yet after 140 days very few people
 crossed the lines to scab. They woke up every single day and dealt
 with the insults, the psysical attacks, the crazy weather, fires, and
 police intimidaion to walk the picket lines. They inspired me more
 than I could every describe with words.

 Just showing up with hot coffee on a cold winter night meant the world
 to them. Most never dreamed they would have been on strike. It was 25
 years since southern California saw a grocery strike but they walked
 those lines with pride.

 We were welcomed into their lives. I spent new years eve with a
 strikers familiy. We were present at birthday parties and trusted with
 their truthful opinions about the strike. I promise all of you I will
 write more about this. The vote on the contract will be tallied by
 tomorrow night. As it stads it seems the union has mortgaged their
 future for the present, a two-tier system is a betrayal of future
 workers, but before we analyze the contract we still have to see it.

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[Devine, James]

David Schanoes writes: To JD:  Yes people make their own history, but not as people 
but as
members, agents, representatives of their class. 

this kind of statement exemplifies what's wrong with the self-style orthodoxy among 
Marxists. People aren't people. Instead, they are mere representatives of their class. 
If so, how can one talk to them? how can they make their own history except as 
dependent variables in some automatic process? 

Jim D. 

Re: note from a grocery strike solidarity group leader

[Devine, James]

officially, the grocery strike/lockout isn't over yet.
Jim D.

-Original Message- 
From: michael [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Sun 2/29/2004 3:11 PM 
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Cc: 
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] note from a grocery strike solidarity group leader



Thank you.  I am glad that something positive may have come out of the
strike.

MICHAEL YATES wrote:

 ?xml:namespace prefix=v /?xml:namespace prefix=o /This might
 serve as a comment on my article, responses to it, and about workers
 and also recent posts on unions.  It was written by a young leader of
 a group in solidarity with the grocery strikers: Now that the strike
 is over I actually get a chance to write more than once a week =).

 Look, one thing I learned over the past five months is that there is
 no monolithic working class, union, worker-militant etc... I met
 people in the beginning who I thought would be strong until the end
 who cracked half-way through. I met a picket captain (the leader of
 the picket lines) who was so bad in December that he actually told
 people just to make it through the new year and then just to do
 whatever they want who ended up being one of the strongest militants I
 ever met. I met a union bureaucrat who put in 16 hours a day and did
 everything he could to help our group any way he could. I met
 leaders who should have been strung up by the workers and fed to the
 lions. I saw that the union was actually seven different locals with
 extremely different politics. I saw that left groups who actually took
 the time to meet the workers and listen to them were given the chance
 to speak at rallies and earned the admiration of the workers
 involved.

 Did some of these workers have messed up attitudes? Yes. But I
 witnessed a striekr defend a gay scab who was attacked on the basis of
 his sexuality. I can also tell you without exaggeration that the
 picket line has a way of breaking down racism, sexism, and homophobia
 more than many of us realize. The grocery workers were a very diverse
 workforce. It was 60 percent women, and a large number of people of
 color and immigrants and there were also many white workers. It's hard
 to explain what it was like on the line but I promise you I've never
 seen anything else like it in my life. People were a team out there.

 When the strike started they felt more alligence to their particular
 companies then each other. Many didn't Vons workers didn't know Ralphs
 and Albertsons workers and vice versa. But they had to learn how to
 work together. They had to learn how to trust each other and fight
 together. They realized that no matter how nice the manager was acting
 the managers aren't really their friends. They learned how to stand up
 to the police. It meant something to them when they sand the song we
 are the union, the mighty, mighty, union.

 When we heard comments that weren't cool we talked to the workers
 about it. But I know I've heard a lot more racism and sexism coming
 out of the students of ucla then I did on these picket lines. These
 strikers put their lives on the line and their trust in each other. I
 don't know what will happen in the future but for five months their
 world wasn't about color or sex. In many ways their world was broken
 down to striker, scab, and company. It was just a material fact that
 they had to learn how to get along with each other. We saw friendships
 form that yo wouldn't have thought were possible and in many ways
 identity polictics were washed away. White Gay workers saw white gay
 customers cross the line and spit in their faces while black
 co-workers backed them up. Latino striekrs just their face smashed in
 by Latino scabds while white workers backed them up. You get the
 point... Did racism and sexism disappear? Of course not. But these
 past few months renewed my faith in the world that is possible not
 because I read about it in a book but because I saw what is possible
 with my own eyes. People lost their homes, went bankrupt, lost their
 cars, and 14 workers died way before their time due to heart-attacks
 and weather related illnesses. Yet after 140 days very few people
 crossed the lines to scab. They woke up every single day and dealt
 with the insults, the psysical attacks, the crazy weather, fires, and
 police intimidaion to walk the picket lines. They inspired me more
 than I could every describe 

Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime

[Michael Perelman]

Hopefully, we can move on to more useful communications.

On Sun, Feb 29, 2004 at 03:12:32PM -0800, Devine, James wrote:
 David Schanoes writes: To JD:  Yes people make their own history, but not as people 
 but as
 members, agents, representatives of their class. 

 this kind of statement exemplifies what's wrong with the self-style orthodoxy 
 among Marxists. People aren't people. Instead, they are mere representatives of 
 their class. If so, how can one talk to them? how can they make their own history 
 except as dependent variables in some automatic process?

 Jim D.


--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Re: DeLong on Paul Sweezy

[Michael Perelman]

Brad is very bright.  Within the community of academic economists, he is far to the
left.  I never understood how he could get so fixated about S*, whose name I dare not
mention.

I think he is quite like Krugman, who has a very narrow band of acceptable political
values.  During the Clinton years, he aimed left with his volleys; today, the target
is the right.

Michael Yates is welcome to picket my house any time.  It would be an excellent
opportunity to get to meet a long-standing e-mail friend.

On Sun, Feb 29, 2004 at 03:00:41PM -0800, Eubulides wrote:
 http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/Index.html/


 Have fun

--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Defense Department climate study URL

[Michael Perelman]

I just saw the URL for the study.

www.ems.org/climate/pentagon-climate-change.pdf
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Re: DeLong on Paul Sweezy

[Carrol Cox]

Michael Yates wrote: The day that fool DeLong . . . .

Michael, I think it worthwhile (under the slogan of Know Your Enemy) to
distinguish between fools and scoundrels. Does not Brad belong to the
latter category? :-)

Carrol

Re: DeLong on Paul Sweezy

[Stephen E Philion]

my comment on the delong blog:

It's hard to imagine Brad Delong accumulating a resume like this one

http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/sweezy.htm

People still discuss Sweezy's work, even those who disagree with him (I
mean, just think of the huge debates on the Sweezy-Dobb debate--Paul
Sweezy unknown??? wow!). It's odd that someone whose work really does
not receive much serious discussion, and most certainly won't receive
much attention after his passing, would take this occasion to attack a
fellow scholar.

Posted by steve philion at February 29, 2004 04:32 PM

RRPE review

[David Barkin]

Hello Pen-Lers!

Michael Perelman asked me to come back on the last to talk a little about
Mexico, something I will do shortly, since the economy here merits some
thought by our progressive partnes from the north!
In the meanwhile, however, I would like to ask you to think about a priority
for the Review of Radical Political Economics -- getting reviews out of
books written by URPE members and closely associated fellow travelers. Among
the recent books that I know about that are available for review are the
following (If you have suggestions for others let me know):
Albelda, Randy, Robert W. Drago, and Steven Shulman. Unlevel Playing Fields:
Understanding wage inequality and discrimination, (Cambridge, MA: Economic
Affairs Bureau, 2001)
Amsden, Alice, The Rise of “The Rest”: Challenges to the west from
late-industrializing economies, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
Applebaum, Eileen, Annette Barhnarft, Richard Murnane (eds.), Low Wage
America: How employers are reshaping opportunity in the workplace, (NY:
Russell Sage Foundation, 2003).
Argyrous, George, Mathew Forstater, Gary Mongiovi (eds.), Growth,
Distribution, and Effective Demand: Alternatives to economic orthodoxy
(Essays in honor of Edward J. Nell), (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2004).
Aronowitz, Stanley, The Last Good Job in America: Work and education in the
new global technostructure, (Lanham: Rowman  Littlefield, 2001.)
Beneria, Lourdes and Savitri Bisnath (eds.), Global Tensions: Challenges and
opportunities in the world economy, (NY: Routledge, 2003).
Boyce, James K. and Barry G. Shelly (eds.) Natural Assets: Democratizing
Environmental Ownership, (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003).
Bowles, Samuel, Microeconomics:  Behavior, Institutions, and Evolution,
(Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 2004).
Broad, Robin (ed.) Global Backlash: Citizen initiatives for a just world
economy, (Lanham, MD: Roman  Littlefield, 2002).
Cornwall, John and Wendy Cornwall, Capitalist Development in the Twentieth
Century: An evolutionary-Keynesian approach, (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2001).
Dymski, Gary and Dorene Isenberg (eds.), Seeking Shelter on the Pacific Rim:
Financial globalization, social change, and the housing market, (Armonk, NY:
M.E. Sharpe, 2002).
Gibson-Graham, J.K., Stephen Resnick, and Richard Wolff (eds.),
Re/Presenting Class: Essays in postmodern Marxism, (Durham NC: Duke
University Press, 2001).
Gunn, Christopher, Third Sector Development:  Making Up For the Market
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004).
Howes, Candace and Ajit Singh (eds.), Competitiveness Matters: Industry and
economic performance in the US, (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan
Press, 2000).
Hunt, E.K., Property and Prophets: The evolution of economic institutions
and ideologies, (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2003).
Hunt, E.K., History of Economic Thought: A critical perspective (Updated 2nd
Edition), (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2002).
Mutari, Ellen and Deborah Figart (eds.), Women and the Economy: A reader,
(Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2001).
Nell, Edward J. and Forstater, Mathew (eds.), Reinvesting Functional
Finance: Transformational growth and full employment, (Cheltenham: Edward
Elgar, 2003).
Perelman, Michael, The Pathology of the U.S. economy revisited: The
intractable contradictions of economic policy, (London: Palgrave 2002).
Perelman, Michael, The Perverse Economy:The impact of markets on people and
the environment, (New York: Palgrave 2003).
Sklar, Holly, Laryssa Mykyta, and Susan Wefald, Raise the Floor: Wages and
policies that work for all of us, (Cambridge, MA: South End Press 2002).
David Barkin
MEXICO
_
Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail

Haiti Coup

[Shane Mage]

Eyewitnesses  reported on Pacifica reveal that Aristide DID NOT RESIGN!
He was kidnapped at about 5:30 AM by US Marines directly supervised
by the US Ambassador.  At the moment he is on a US plane somewhere,
incommunicado.  The State Department refuses to give any
information whatsoever to Representatives Rangel and Walters.
Meanwhile  the US installed death squads have begun massacring
Aristide's supporters.  The homes of the mayors of Port Au Prince
and P´etionville have been burned down. Refugees are being
kidnapped on the high seas and returned to the death squads.
All, as usual, in total violation of US and International law.
After this, how can anyone still be so foolish as to expect
that Ubu and the Bushits will permit a mere election to effect
a regime change in God's Country?
Shane Mage

Thunderbolt steers all things.

Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64

Re: Haiti Coup

[Mike Ballard]

 For those of you at your computer, or SF-local, tune
into KPFA
 (www.kpfa.org) and listen to blow by blow coverage
of the coup in Haiti.
 Armed US/CIA-affiliated terrorists (Guy Philippe,
FRAPH), that US
media have
 portrayed as nonviolent, are engaged in a bloody
purge of Aristide
 supporters, including the mayor of Port-au-Prince.
US helicopters are
 circling Haiti, watching the bloodbath.

 According to a report from Australian media just
forwarded to
listeners via
 KPFA, Aristide did not flee. The popular and
elected president of
Haiti
 was KIDNAPPED at 2am by US Marines AT GUNPOINT. This
hours after Bush
 declared Aristide unfit to lead, and after days of
Bush administration
 officials intentionally doing nothing.

 I must give Dennis Bernstein major kudos for his
Haiti coverage. Too
bad he
 does not devote the same energy to other issues.

 L

--- Shane Mage [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Eyewitnesses  reported on Pacifica reveal that
 Aristide DID NOT RESIGN!
 He was kidnapped at about 5:30 AM by US Marines
 directly supervised
 by the US Ambassador.  At the moment he is on a US
 plane somewhere,
 incommunicado.  The State Department refuses to give
 any
 information whatsoever to Representatives Rangel and
 Walters.
 Meanwhile  the US installed death squads have begun
 massacring
 Aristide's supporters.  The homes of the mayors of
 Port Au Prince
 and P´etionville have been burned down. Refugees are
 being
 kidnapped on the high seas and returned to the death
 squads.
 All, as usual, in total violation of US and
 International law.

 After this, how can anyone still be so foolish as to
 expect
 that Ubu and the Bushits will permit a mere election
 to effect
 a regime change in God's Country?

 Shane Mage

 Thunderbolt steers all things.

 Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64


=

You can't depend on your eyes when
your imagination is out of focus.
--Mark Twain

http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal

__
Do you Yahoo!?
Get better spam protection with Yahoo! Mail.
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Swans March 1, 2004

[Louis Proyect]

http://www.swans.com/http://www.swans.com/

March 1, 2004 -- In this issue:

Note from the Editor:RALPH NADER FOR PRESIDENT... and best wishes to
all the ABB lib-labs! There is only one exception we take with Mr. Nader:
His reference to the liberal intelligentsia. This is an improper and much
too generous characterization. He should call them by their true
appellation, liberal philistines, who after criticizing Mr. Bush for
demonizing the entire world turn around and demonize him with the same
ardor, who hold their nose, throw their ideals out the window, and feel no
compunction about voting for a Skull  Bones of lesser-evilism, all the
while trashing anyone who dares refuse to line up, in sheep-like fashion,
behind the democratic Johns. The Democratic Party? Oh, come on! Read Howie
Hawkins's review of its nauseating malfeasance -- a century and a half
legacy of racism, wars, corporate exploitation and reactionary politics.
When will the right time for change be, ABBers? When? Who ever said that a
part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances, in
order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society...? By the
way, Californians, vote NO on Propositions 56, 57 and 58, which not
surprisingly are supported in typical bipartisan custom by the Dems and the
Reps -- always in cahoots when pushing down little people's throats
regressive policies made to further transfer wealth from the many to the few.
If facts don't sway you, maybe humor will. The longer Phil Rockstroh has
been contributing to Swans the looser, more unhinged his irony has become.
Mark Morford of The San Francisco Chronicle should take heed. Rockstroh has
a formidable talent! In this issue, he runs with Jackson's tit (Janet, that
is), Ken and Barbie's divorce, and gay marriage to make his point. Do not
misconstrue his hilarity for mere entertainment -- Phil can be deadly
serious! We are also reposting his take on it is as it was Mel Gibson. In
light of the recent brouhaha, it is worth reading or re-reading. Milo
Clark, thanks to his temperament and the cool Hawaiian breeze, gives his
level-headed analysis of the patterns which connect in Central Asia. He
also revised a commentary on the Work of Robert Heinlein. Phil Greenspan
has his own take on Saddam and Bush, with an eye on November 2004; and we
present the second part of Scott Orlovsky's essay on Shamanism and the
Evolution of Humanity.
Then, we are back to the debunking of the neo-liberal system as a force of
progress, able to deliver the goods, thanks to the excellent review of
Michael Yates's latest book, Naming the System, by Louis Proyect; and we
close with a poem by Gerard Donnelly Smith that pretty much recapitulates
the entire issue. A letter from a friendly reader, John Blunt, while not in
response to today's rendition, enhances Howie Hawkins's article and our
editorial, reflecting much of our sentiments.
As always, please form your OWN opinion, and let your friends (and foes)
know about Swans.
 *

http://www.swans.com/library/art10/xxx106.htmlhttp://www.swans.com/library/art10/xxx106.html

Ralph Nader: If Not Now, When? Editorial by Gilles d'Aymery  Jan Baughman

http://www.swans.com/library/art10/hhawk01.htmlhttp://www.swans.com/library/art10/hhawk01.html

There Never Were Any Good Old Days In The Democratic Party by Howie Hawkins

http://www.swans.com/library/art10/procks20.htmlhttp://www.swans.com/library/art10/procks20.html

Wayward Breasts And The Ever-Vigilant Reign Of Empress Barbie by Phil Rockstroh

http://www.swans.com/library/art10/mgc121.htmlhttp://www.swans.com/library/art10/mgc121.html

Pakistan: Buddy Or Pariah? by Milo Clark

http://www.swans.com/library/art10/pgreen36.htmlhttp://www.swans.com/library/art10/pgreen36.html

It Wasn't Saddam, And It Ain't Bush! by Philip Greenspan

http://www.swans.com/library/art10/sorlov19.htmlhttp://www.swans.com/library/art10/sorlov19.html
Shamanism And The Evolution Of Humanity, Part II by Scott Orlovsky
http://www.swans.com/library/art10/lproy12.htmlhttp://www.swans.com/library/art10/lproy12.html

Michael Yates's Naming the System Book Review by Louis Proyect

http://www.swans.com/library/art10/mgc120.htmlhttp://www.swans.com/library/art10/mgc120.html

Future History:The Work of Robert A. Heinlein by Milo Clark

http://www.swans.com/library/art10/gsmith15.htmlhttp://www.swans.com/library/art10/gsmith15.html

Killing Socrates Poem by Gerard Donnelly Smith

http://www.swans.com/library/art10/letter37.htmlhttp://www.swans.com/library/art10/letter37.html

Letters to the Editor

#

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Thank you for reading Swans.

Gilles d'Aymery -- Swans

Re: DeLong on Paul Sweezy

[Mike Ballard]

--- Eubulides [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/Index.html/


 Have fun


***
I would like Brad De Long to be remembered for the
following passage:

How Strong a Supporter of International Capital
Mobility Can I Still Be?

How Strong a Supporter of International Capital
Mobility Can I Still Be? J. Bradford DeLong U.C.
BerkeleyFebruary 27, 2004; draft 2.0; 1843
wordsFifteen years ago, I at least found that was easy
to be in favor of international capital mobility. It
was easy to preach for an end to the systems of
controls on capital that hindered the flow of
investment financing from one country to another.
Capital controls created large-scale opportunities for
corruption. Whoever got the scarce permissions to
borrow abroad had a good chance of becoming rich, and
somehow those who got the scarce permissions to borrow
abroad often turned out to be married to the niece of
the vice-minister of finance. A highly corrupt society
is one in which tax rates are idiosyncratically and
randomly high, and cannot be a productive society.
Eliminating capital controls seemed likely to be a
great help in the general anti-corruption
drive.Capital controls kept the level of investment in
peripheral developing countries down. This seemed to
be a very bad thing. Higher investment boosts the
capital stock and so directly raises labor
productivity and wages. It also acts as a carrier for
those important parts of technological advance that
are embodied in...

Brad De Long called himself an intellectual. Brad De
Long publicly revised his opinion on an analytical
issue in order to agree with the position taken by the
ruling class of a genocidal system. Fill in the blank:
Brad De Long is a .



Best,
Mike B)

P.S. re: Haiti.. That wasn't my view of Dennis
Bernstein.  I was just reporting what someone else
from Berkeley said.  I don't even live in the USA.  My
radio is basically glued to ABC Classics.

__
Do you Yahoo!?
Get better spam protection with Yahoo! Mail.
http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools

Sheep eating people

[Louis Proyect]

NY Times, February 29, 2004
CORRESPONDENCE | CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS
China's Wealthy Live by a Creed: Hobbes and Darwin, Meet Marx
By YILU ZHAO
BEIJING — The rich in China these days are moving into the villages of Napa 
Valley, Palm Springs, Long Beach, Upper East Side and Park Avenue, all in 
the suburbs of Beijing and Shanghai. When I grew up in Shanghai, places 
were called New China Road, Workers' New Village and People's Square. Now 
China's real estate tycoons have chosen American place names, and adorned 
what they build with Spanish arches, Greek columns and faux Roman sculptures.

But the settings themselves are not bucolic. The vast majority of these new 
single-family homes, which cost $800,000 on average, are huddled together 
in walled compounds with 24-hour security guards. The few rich who dare to 
live on their own in the countryside almost always become targets of 
burglars, who, in desperate moments, are willing to kill.

This is the dark side to China's new wealth: Envy, insecurity and social 
dislocation have come with the huge disparity between how the wealthy live 
and how the vast numbers of poor do. Clear signs of class division have 
emerged under a government that long claimed to have eliminated economic 
classes.

China still calls itself socialist, and in an odd sense it is. While the 
income structure has changed, much that was intended to underpin social 
order has not.

The criminal justice system, for example, has remained draconian. When 
caught, burglars invariably receive lengthy sentences. But there is no 
shortage of burglars, and the reason is clear: 18 percent of Chinese live 
on less than $1 a day, according to the United Nations. The poor are 
visible on the edges of any metropolis, where slums of plywood apartments 
sometimes abut the Western-looking mansions.

The most recent measure by which social scientists judge the inequality of 
a country's income distribution indicates that China is more unequal, for 
example, than the United States, Japan, South Korea and India. In fact, 
inequality levels approach China's own level in the late 1940's, when the 
Communists, with the help of the poor, toppled the Nationalist government.

In 1980, when the turn toward a market economy started, China had one of 
the world's most even distributions of wealth. Certainly, China before 1980 
was a land of material shortage. When I was a child in the 1970's and 80's, 
I can recall, every family, equally poor, collected ration coupons to get 
flour, rice, sugar, meat, eggs, cloth, cookies and cigarettes. Without 
coupons, money was largely useless. Today, huge Western-style supermarkets 
offer French wine and New Zealand cheese.

But an odd change has come about in some shoppers' minds. As members of 
China's business and political elite, they have come to believe that the 
world is a huge jungle of Darwinian competition, where connections and 
smarts mean everything, and quaint notions of fairness count for little.

I noticed this attitude on my most recent trip to China from the United 
States, where I moved nine years ago. So I asked a relative who lives 
rather comfortably to explain. Is it fair that the household maids make 65 
cents an hour while the well-connected real estate developers become 
millionaires or billionaires in just a few years? I asked.

He was caught off guard. After a few seconds of silence, he settled on an 
answer he had read in a popular magazine.

Look at England, look at America, he said. The Industrial Revolution was 
very cruel. When the English capitalists needed land, sheep ate people. 
(Chinese history books use the phrase sheep ate people to describe what 
happened in the 19th century, when tenant farmers in Britain were thrown 
off their land to starve so that sheep could graze and produce wool for new 
mills.)

Since England and America went through that pain, shouldn't we try to 
avoid the same pain, now that we have history as our guide? I asked.

If we want to proceed to a full market economy, some people have to make 
sacrifices, my relative said solemnly. To get to where we want to get, we 
must go through the 'sheep eating people' stage too.

In other words, while most Chinese have privately dumped the economic 
prescriptions of Marx, two pillars of the way he saw the world have remained.

First is the inexorable procession of history to a goal. The goal used to 
be the Communist utopia; now the destination is a market economy of 
material abundance.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/29/weekinreview/29zhao.html

Louis Proyect
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org 

pass the bubble

[Eubulides]

Unsustainable debt

Leader
Monday March 1, 2004
The Guardian

The world economic revival seems to be picking up speed practically
everywhere - except, of course, on the continent of Europe, which is still
stagnating. The trouble is that recovery is disconcertingly dependent on
America's pre-electoral boom. Nothing else seems to matter over there.
Forget the unprecedented trade and budget deficits, ignore the free-fall
in the dollar and turn a blind eye to growing protectionism. They can all
be cleared up after the next election, as long as it is President Bush and
not one of those resurgent Democrats that is doing the cleaning up. Unlike
previous US booms, this one is not being oiled by rises in take-home pay.
Wages, after allowing for inflation, are hardly expanding at all. The
long-running spending boom is being sustained by consumers taking on extra
debt (financed by what may turn out to be only a temporary increase in
assets, like shares and houses), plus tax cuts. Consumers, particularly
richer ones, will be drip-fed with more tax refunds in the coming months
in one of the most carefully orchestrated pre-election booms on record.

Even the normally cautious chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan
Greenspan, is being caught up in this dangerous game of pass the bubble.
He sees hardly any problems in the short-term thanks, he says, to what he
regards as amazing US productivity growth, spare capacity and low
inflation. But he sees mega problems in 10 to 15 years' time when the
rocketing US federal deficit reaches the stratosphere as the baby boom
generation becomes eligible for increased entitlements. If his short-term
solution is complacent, his long-term one is downright irresponsible. He
urges the administration to maintain the tax cuts - which
disproportionately benefit the rich - while cutting benefits; a move that
inevitably will hit the poor. Robin Hood has gone into reverse thrust.

The US administration should act now to bring the deficit down in order to
avoid the danger of a meltdown in later years that would inevitably send
shockwaves across the rest of the world. It could easily do several
things: rescind the worst of the recent regressive tax cuts; allow people
who want to work after their normal retirement date (like the 78-year-old
Alan Greenspan) to do so; rescind the $180bn of extra agricultural
subsidies (mainly credits) that President Bush unexpectedly introduced
soon after gaining office; and start looking at how fiscal policy in the
form of tax increases can be used to reduce America's dependence on Middle
East oil reserves.

An election year is not a good time to be deciding long-term economic
policy. But it is sad to watch how the main political parties find it
difficult to call for tax increases - or even for an end to reductions
that have not yet come into effect - and it is very depressing to see
Democratic candidates lurching towards protectionism, even if only as a
temporary political manoeuvre. On the brighter side, there are encouraging
signs that the US, as well as Europe, wants to re-start the international
trade talks which stalled in Cancun over the demands of developing
countries to end agricultural subsidies. This is probably because the US
negotiators presume nothing of any consequence will happen this side of an
election.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world, including Britain, will profit from the
burgeoning US trade deficit. And for the rest of this year at least,
everything is likely to be all right. But something will have to be done
when the US election is out of the way. This gives European countries a
breathing space to rediscover the lost art of generating economic growth
on their own. Recent forecasts for the eurozone economy suggest growth of
barely 0.5% this year, even with the benefit of a US recovery. Goodness
knows what it would like be without it.

Re: Estanblished Trade Unions Left Politics, was Re: He does have a point

[paul phillips]

I think it is perhaps a little dangerous to generalize from US
experience as it it were the standard of what goes on elsewhere.  Though
many Canadian unions have become established defenders of the status quo
(mostly Canadian branches of so-called 'international' --  i.e. US
dominated and controlled unions) many Canadian unions have been bulwarks
of the left.  In the past we can look to such unions as the west coast
fishermen,  woodworkers and longshoremen, at the EU, the MMSWU and, more
recently at the CAW which has supported the new socialist initiative.
Also, historically, the public sector unions in Canada have strongly
supported progressive causes -- for instance the postal workers who
pioneered maternity leave, etc. etc.
What I find on this list is that we have a membership that is
obsessively concerned with 'naval gazing', looking only at what goes on
on the US without much concern either with historical  analysis or with
comparative analysis.  I would suggest many would be well rewarded by
reading, and digesting, Geoff Hodgson's engaging book How Economics
Forgot History -- or how I might phrase it, how Economics forgot
institutions.
Paul Phillips,
Senior Scholar, Department of Economics,
University of Manitoba.
Hypothesis: Trade Unions are actively left in their politics ONLY during
their early stages, when the chief issue is establishing the right to
exist. Once that right is established, they rapidly cease to be an
element in left politics. At the present time, with only scattered
exceptions, one will not, in the u.s., find social activists _and_ trade
union leadership in the same social/political locations. In most
instances of radical activists inside the trade-union movement you are
more apt to meet those activists in organizations separate from the
trade union itself.

Re: Estanblished Trade Unions Left Politics, was Re: He does have a point

[Michael Perelman]

Excellent observation.  We have many people who are either from or have expertise in
other parts of the world.  I wish we could hear more from them.  I'm assuming that
David Barkin will keep his promise to report on Mexico.

I think we need to keep in mind that the grocery strike was not lost on the picket
line.  A large number of defeats proceeded this one -- especially institutional
defeats.  The current US government attack on federal unions will prove especially
costly.


On Sun, Feb 22, 2004 at 11:07:20AM -0600, paul phillips wrote:

 What I find on this list is that we have a membership that is
 obsessively concerned with 'naval gazing', looking only at what goes on
 on the US without much concern either with historical  analysis or with
 comparative analysis.  I would suggest many would be well rewarded by
 reading, and digesting, Geoff Hodgson's engaging book How Economics
 Forgot History -- or how I might phrase it, how Economics forgot
 institutions.

--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Re: He does have a point

[paul phillips]

Frankly, I don't think this is the case. I have quit the NDP on several
occasions and stopped  supporting them materially when they voted for
world crimes against Yugoslavia.  I just could not be associated with a
party that supported killing and bombing my friends that I had worked
with for years.  That they were misinformed and mislead by the media and
the government of the day is no excuse.  The NDP fell victim to the same
misinformation as the Democrats in the US fell to Bush's lies about WMD
and the New Labour Party did to Blair's lies (may the decent labour
party veterens rest in peace).  They were stupid, but not duplicit.
The NDP at the provincial level, however, despite their hesitation and
capitulation to 'neo-liberal' doctrines, have been enormously
progressive relative to so called liberal and conservative (democratic
and republican) regimes.  I lived in Manitoba for 34 some odd years, the
majority of which (thank goodness) were under NDP governments.  I have
since moved to B.C. which has a liberal/conservative government.  The
quality of life is definitely inferior.  Hell, the quality of life for
us relatively well-off retirees, is also declining as the government
makes cutbacks to medicare in favour of the 'for profit'  medicare
providers. The most interesting (?) example is the Premier of Alberta
who has declared that medicare is unestainable at the same time as he
declared a 3 billion surplus from oil revenues. The Manitoba NDP
government, despite all the  criticistm, mine included, was clearly
superior to its predecessor
The question I have for pen-l-ers is, when and if, public revulsion for
capitalist exess will result in any political resonse?
I would recommend that anyone interested in such things take in the
movie The Corporation
Marvin Gandall wrote:

Notwithstanding the above, I wouldn't describe myself as a political
cynic counselling others not to vote. I regularly vote for the
social-democratic NDP in Canada. But I think it's worth pointing out,
for the purposes of your debate, that I don't do so because I think the
party, in the unlikely event it should take power at the national level,
will govern much differently than the Liberals or Conservatives. The NDP
's history of governing at the provincial level in the West and in
Ontario shows this to not be the case.

Re: Paul Marlor Sweezy (1910-2004)

[Ralph Johansen]

- Original Message -
From: ertugrul ahmet tonak [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, January 01, 1970 6:18 AM
Subject: Paul Marlor Sweezy (1910-2004)

snip

Here are the text of the 1986-interview I (and my friend Sungur Savran)
did with Paul and a photo of Paul and myself editing the interview in
the MR office in NYC:

http://www.simons-rock.edu/~eatonak/sweezyinterview.html

snip

-

Sweezy in this interview asks some questions about theory that, as I said
here a few months ago, I would be curious to know have been responded to.
Especially this passage: This whole business of finance which I was talking
about
last night. The present financial explosion which is unprecedented can't be
handled
in terms of the hints in Volume III about finance. Although, they are not
unuseful,
not without considerable value. The whole notion of an abbreviated
accumulation
formula, M-M', without any production element M-C, is a very fruitful way of
thinking about finance, how it is possible for M' to relate only to M
without the
system of production in the middle. But that's what's happening all the time
now.
If we don't think about this, if we assume that finance is only an aspect of
the circulation of commodities, we're not going to understand a lot of what
goes on in the world today. I must say, my own feeling is that this is an
area where nobody has done really very well. This whole business of finance
which I was
talking about last night. The present financial explosion which is
unprecedented can't be handled in terms of the hints in Volume III about
finance. Although, they are not unuseful, not without considerable value.
The whole notion of an abbreviated accumulation formula, M-M', without any
production element M-C, is a very fruitful way of thinking about finance,
how it is possible for M' to relate only to M without the system of
production in the middle. But that's what's happening all the time now. If
we don't think about this, if we assume that finance is only an aspect of
the circulation of commodities, we're not going to understand a lot of what
goes on in the world today. I must say, my own feeling is that this is an
area where nobody has done really very well.

snip


And more generally, the context:
PMS...I think that Marxists have a certain defensiveness about Keynes: we
mustn't
take seriously a bourgeois thinker because it may infect us and we may turn
out to be revisionists without wanting to be, you know. I don't think that's
such a danger as long as you internalize the basic structure of Marxism,
which is, of course, embodied in and summed up in the value theory and the
accumulation theory, surplus value theory, all of that. That's absolutely
crucial. There is no need to lose these basic insights which are based on a
very intimate knowledge of the real business world - which of course, Marx
also had in his day. But which Marxists taking their stuff out of
Capital, can't have in our day. This whole business of finance which I was
talking about last night. The present financial explosion which is
unprecedented can't be handled in terms of the hints in Volume III about
finance. Although, they are not unuseful, not without considerable value.
The whole notion of an abbreviated accumulation formula, M-M', without any
production element M-C, is a very fruitful way of thinking about finance,
how it is possible for M' to relate only to M without the system of
production in the middle. But that's what's happening all the time now. If
we don't think about this, if we assume that finance is only an aspect of
the circulation of commodities, we're not going to understand a lot of what
goes on in the world today. I must say, my own feeling is that this is an
area where nobody has done really very well. I sometimes have the feeling
that economics is now in need of a general theory, in the sense that physics
seems to be in need of a general theory, i.e., that there are a lot of
things going on that don't fit into the standard physical theories. And they
are looking for a general field theory which would unify all of it. They
don't have it yet. In economics we need a theory which integrates finance
and production, the circuits of capital of a financial and a real productive
character much more effectively than our traditional theories do. I don't
see that anyone is actually producing it, but it's terribly complicated. And
I'm sure that I'm too old to be able to think of those things. I can get
snatches, insights here and there, but I can't put it together into a
comprehensive theoretical framework. I think it will take somebody who
starts differently and isn't so totally dominated by M-C-M', the industrial
circuit, with the financial circuits always being treated as epiphenomenal,
not part of the essential reality. I don't know if you are familiar with the
book The Faltering Economy edited by Foster and