Re: human behavior
Well, the point of the pop sociobiological claim is to legitimate nasty behaviors and unjust social arrangements by reference to the principle "ought implies can": because we can't do anything about our propensity towards hierarchy and competitiveness (so it's said), we just have to live with it. Therefore there is no naturalistic fallacy in pointing out that "is" doesn't imply "ought" here; murder is bad even if we are programmed for it. In any case, my point was just that we can affect the incentives for bad behavior by legal sanctions, among other things; or redirect aggressive behavior into harmless channels, which is an "is" point. The consistency of hardwiring with various behaviors is not the same as multiple realizability of the mental unless you are a behaviorist who thinks all there is to mental states is behavior or propensities to behave.. --jks In a message dated Tue, 12 Dec 2000 1:58:32 PM Eastern Standard Time, Sam Pawlett [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Justin Schwartz wrote: Oh, Norm, stop the silly bad sociobiology. Competitive behavior is "programmed" into us, but it is triggered only in certain circumstances. Violent behavior is likewise "programmed: into us, but we don't say, well in that case, let's legalize assault and murder! But sociobiologists and its new and improved version, evolutionary psychology, would say you are committing the naturalistic fallacy here. SOB's are only trying to give causal explanations of behavior and pass no judgement on it morally. Because males are adapted for rape and murder doesn't make it morally right.Indeed, recent authors on the ev-psych of rape like Thornhill/Palmer explicitly say they are trying to explain violence in order to help eliminate it. Or so they say. Besides, suppose you are right that we are hard wired for dominance. Do we want to allow ourselves to indulge in this sort of behavior? We are probablya s hard wired for violence (in a wide variety of circumstances) as we are for anything: so we should indulge this bad propensity? If humans are hard wired for violence it is only among males. Sexual selection confers advantage on males who sire more offspring no matter how it is done. Better fighters have more opportunities for reproductive success. If I can beat the shit out of you then I get the girl, no matter what the girl thinks. That's the argument and I think it is wrong. I'll post on this stuff later. Saying that males should practice violence because we are hard wired for it, confuses "is" and "ought". It's the "is" claim I want to refute and not the normative claim (the latter being so absurd it doesn't merit comment.) Hard wiring doesn't mean "can't': it just means "harder". Yes, and hard wiring is consistent with any number of behaviors (multiple realizability of brain states.) Sam Pawlett
Re: Have You Read All These Books?
Okay, we agree in practice. _In practice_, AP's method involves discouragement of scholarship as Justin defines it here. [BTW, I like the typo, the spelling of "culkture," though maybe "kultur" would be more appropriate.] Of course we could drop the "method involves" and have a sentence that means almost the same thing, which undermines the point of talking about "method." However, there is no point in raking this over again. The _official_ or desired method of AP is logic? then what distinguished it from Aristotle? of from any other school of philosophy (except maybe post modernism)? haven't almost all philosophers since Aristotle thought that formal logic was extremely revealing if not absolutely necessary to clear thinking? Does AP add anything to logic that previous philosophers didn't know about? Analytical philosophy is the heir of logical positivism, which gave modern logical, as developed by Frege, Russell and Whitehead, et al. an absolutely central place in doin philosophy. Modern mathematical logic is a quantum jump over the Aristotlean logic that preceded it in power and flexibility; there's no comparison. Frege antedates analytical philosophy, but AP added much that was important--Russell is a founder of AP and a foundational figure in modern logic as well; Wittgenstein made important contributions in the Tractatus; Goedel was a member of the Vienna Circle; Church and Turching were in the loop; Frank Ramsey, the inventor of decision theory, was a logician at Cambridge, etc. So, yes, I think you can say that analytical philosophy has advanced the study of logic a bit--more than anyone had since Aristotle, truth be told. Russell's analutical philosophy, the early Wittgenstein, and logical positivism (the Vienna Circle) made the use of this logic basic to the doing of philosophy; problems were formulated in terms of it, and those that couldn't be were dismissed. The only previous philosophical movement that made logic so central was scholasticism, where philosophers were likewise expected to be fluent in formalism and able to think that way as part of professional competence. Of course the logic was much more primitive. Analytical philosophy has discarded most of the tents of logical positivism--the verification principle, etc.--but it has retained the emphasis on logic. At Michigan grad school in philosophy, you had to pass the math logic course with a high grade, and it also fulfilled the language requirement, on the grounds taht it was a "formal language." That shows the attitude AP takes towards scholarship better than anything else I know. Louis Loeb, Michigan's leading expert in early modern philosophy when I was there, did not know Latin, Greek, French, or Italian, i.e., he could not read the works he was writing about in the original, But he still got tenure. After I left, they hired E.M. Curley, who is a genuine scholar and knows the languages. --jks
Re: needs
I can't hear the difference between a clean vinyl recording and a good CD remaster. Some people talk about a "warmer" sound--it doesn't register with me. --jks The reason music used to sound like vinyl is that it was on vinyl, pops, scratches, and all. Only because the old LP's and SP's were mono and not stereo recordings. Analogue is superior to digital because the digitial coding process loses sound that doesn't fall into the 01-01-01 pattern.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Have You Read All These Books?
"Ken Hanly" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: There are different types of analytical philosophy. . . . Sure, but, I wasn't trying to give a history or a typology. I was just trying to explain why the culture of APis anti-intellectual and hostile to humanistic cultivation. Also, incidentally, to wave at the contributions of AP to logic. The hostility to culture ersal, of course: I did not say that every analytical philosopher is a narrow technician. By some accounts _I_ am an AP, and I hope I am not a narrow technician. I have also studied with some APs who are humanistically educated--Rorty, for one; when I studied with him, he was still an AP. It's rare, though: none of my other AP teachers strikes me as fitting the bill, on reflection. Maybe Nick Jardine. Nor did I say that humanistic cultivation is necessary or sufficient to be a good philosopher. (Wittgenstein, btw, certainly did have a humanistic education; he just didn't do much with that side.) What I said was that a humanistic education was a good thing and it's a shame that it's largely vanished and its values are not ! ! promoted among analytical philos ophers. Also, if Ken wants logical positivistic type contempt for postmodernism, there's a lot of it goinga roung among APs. Some would say, gain, that I manifest it. --jks
Re: Re: Have You Read All These Books?
Of course I think philosophers (of all people) ought to be cultured people of wide curiosity. However, it's a fact that in high-powered reserach institutions and places that aspire to be like those places, they are mostly not. I don't think philosophers are unique here: we see a general pattern of the effects of professionalization on higher ed. Didn't someone post a reference to a nice chapter of a book what happens to physics students? Jim asks whether the "method" of analytical philosophy is to blame. I am not sure there is a "method": but this goes back to Jim's and my disagreement about method in lots of contexts. AP emphasizes logic, but logic doesn't necessarily make you a narrow technician. Russell was a logician and a highly cultivated man. I do think the culture of AP is partly to blame. This discourages scholarship in the sense of knowing a lot of what Aquinas or Descartes or Hegel really said, their times and lives and contexts; it denigrates history, even intellectual history; it despises "soft" stuff like art and literature and looks to "hard" science as a paradigm of knowledge; it involves an internal and very macho professional culkture of intense competition. But you have to look at the problem in a wider context. Few academics are intellectuals. Moreover the kind of humanistic education all good scientists, philosophers, and scholars used to get is lost foreover, an artifact of a lost world. A dimly recalled story: von Neumann, a logician's logician and a founder of game theory, honored the nuclear physicist Fermi for something brilliant he'd done, maybe it was getting the first reactor to work at Chicago, at a Manhattan Project dinner, by standing up and announing in Latin, "We have a Pope," a reference to what the cardinals say when a new Pope is announced. He knew the expression, probably knew Latin; made a joke about Fermi's Italian background, and could safely assume that at least the Europeans present (which many Manhattan project scientists were) and Oppenheimer would get it, although it would be lost on the Americans, thus reinforcing the European exile sense of superiority over the barbarians like young Feynman. Today, they are all barbarians, European and American alike; and no one would be capable of making such a joke. Alas. --jks [EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/11/00 02:03PM Justin writes: My experience of academia is that philosophy professors are not . . . readers or people of wide culture, or even much curiosity. Jim: Maybe I'm naive, but I can't understand this. Shouldn't philosophers, of all people, be experts on a wide variety of philosophical thought CB: They should be, but I think Justin is telling us they are not the way they should be. Speak on , Justin. Jim: , going back to the ancient Greeks and nowadays stuff from non-"Western" cultures? After all, don't we build on the foundations created by Aristotle and all those old guys? Does this ignorance -- and non-intellectualism -- have anything to do with the method of "analytical philosophy"? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Time for agile leftists to shift and support Gore.
What made you think I think that big bourgeois judges are OK? Actually, elections are exactly where I think that liberal political values belong--not "liberal" in the sense of Democratic party, which isn't even liberal in the New Deal-Great Society sense anymore, but in the sense of acknowledging the diversity of conceptions of the good, the priority of justice over anyone's particular conception of the good, the centrality of democracy in public decisionmaking, and the importance of liberal rights to free speech, assembly, and the like. Judges who do not honor these values, like five I can think of right off, are decidedly not OK. --jks CB: What circumstances are those ? Ones in which you are pushing liberal political values in everyplace except the elections ? How is it the big bourgeois judges are ok, but the big bourgeois politicians are absolutely untouchable ?
Re: Question for the Lefties
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 12/11/00 08:19PM In reply to Jim and anybody else: Before I ask other questions, please provide me with a brief answer to the following very basic question. We all apparently agree that "markets" exist since the beginning of recorded history. But marxists distinguish "capitalism" as something historically unique. If the defining characteristic of "capitalism" is not markets, what is it? Marx defines the differentia of capitalism among modes of production by reference to three features: 1. Private property in productive assets 2. Production by means of wage labor (as opposed to slave, serf, individual, or cooperative labor), 3. Generalized commodity production, or meeting most needs by markers. Thus, markets antedate capitalism, but markers did not become the way most people met most of their needs until capitalism. Until recently, most people were subsistance farmers. Moreover, most producers until recently (the last 500 years, less in most places) were slaves or serfs, and did not work for wages. Productive property has only been partially private: in the idealized model of feudalism, for example, land was relatively inalienable. Obviously the existence of capitalsim is a matter of degree: the features Marx identified as peculiarly capiatlsist came together and developed raidly in the last few centuries, but had been present to some degree in earlier societies. --jks
Administrative Stuff
Michael: please sign me up on pen-l at [EMAIL PROTECTED] I am changing my ISP. This can also serve as notication to anyone who cares to have my new address. --Justin Schwartz
Re: Why Yugoslavia had to be destroyed
And thsi article on Slovakia tells us what about Yugoslavia? Personally, I'll go with Chomsky on this over you, Louis. --jks In a message dated Thu, 12 Oct 2000 10:48:33 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Wall Street Journal, October 12, 2000 U.S. Steel's Plunge Into Slovakia Reflects an Urgent Need to Grow By ROBERT GUY MATTHEWS Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL KOSICE, Slovakia --
Re: Re: Memory History: Herman Melville's _Benito Cereno_ (was Re: Yugoslavia to fSU and Chile)
I guess I am part of the stupid left that is blinkered by imperialist propaganda. I don't see see how the ratio of state ownership in the former Yugoslavia is deeply relevant to socialism or whether the regime was worth defending; I am aware that it was high, but it was as high or higher in the former Soviet Union. I myself do not buy the Trot line that public ownership is enough of a progressive achievement to warrant "critical support" for an otherwise appalling and debased regime. The former regime chopped up the country on ethnic lines, engaged in large scale ethnic cleansing, which is not genocide, but which is not admirable or socialist; supported murderers in Bosnia and drew the country into two wars--I don't hold NATO guiltless, but if Slobo hadn't been so keen on partition (in one case) and ethnic cleasing and repression (in the other), it would not have happened. The regime drove the worker control that was once the glory of Yugoslav socialism into the dust. It properly drew the hatred of the Serbian people--the Montenegrins too. I am sure that they will be in for an unpleasant surprise with the new order, but at this point they are going into it with open eyes. They can see what happened in the ex-Bloc states. The choice was theirs, and if you disagree, well, who asked you. Don't assume that everyone who disagree with you is an ignorant dupe and a tool or patsy of imperialism. Some us, who may know a thing or two about Yugoslavia, may just disagree with your political analysis. --jks In a message dated Wed, 11 Oct 2000 2:10:06 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Ian: Yoshie Furuhashi dijo: What has not changed, however, is the idea that it is Americans who should bring criminals of the world to justice. It goes without saying that this self-image makes Americans forget the fact that they are the biggest criminals: the only remaining superpower that acts with impunity, for there is no one in the world who can bring Americans to justice. * Yoshie, Do you really mean such a blanket statement or do you prefer to mean the American ruling class? There are lots of US citizens who'd love to haul persons of power and wealth in "our" country before some international tribunal, they're just too time poor and financially strapped to do it [I leave aside the mobilization of competencies necessary to make it so]. Exceptions exist (exceptions are _very_ few), but more and more American leftists are acting like Amasa Delano, for sure. Hence an inability to hold intelligent or even intelligible discussion on Rwanda, Yugoslavia, etc. After you post an analysis of material conditions, ideological conditions, political conditions, etc. of Rwanda, Yugoslavia, etc. that does not include caricatures of the Official Enemy of the moment, you always get an insidious response that _ignores everything that is said in the post_ and then asks, "But do you support Milosevic, Hussein, Putin, etc.?" "Do you condone genocide?" "Do you deny that mass murders were committed?" And so on. And so forth. You never get the same sort of insultingly stupid response, though, if you post an analysis with similar complexity on, say, American politics, American labor movement, American polls, American anything. Therefore, I conclude that the _dominant ideological reflex_ of American leftists is to appoint themselves as the police, prosecutor, judge, executioner of peoples who unfortunately live in countries under America's Official Enemies while excusing themselves from moral and political responsibilities for their own government's conduct, which has been worse than all its Official Enemies, past present, put together. They have forgotten what they learned through the reawakening of the Left during the anti-Vietnam War movement. When did they begin to forget? During the Gulf War? The invasion of Panama? After the end of the draft? When did this dumbing down of the Left begin? Yoshie
Memory History: Herman Melville's _Benito Cereno_ (was Re: Yugoslavia to fSU and Chile)
Louis: We just disagree about the importance of state ownership in the abstract. I support the welfare provisions you describe, of course, but they are possible under social democratic capitalism, and state ownership does not guarantee them either. However, this is a very deep philosophical difference, one that can't be hashed out in thsi context. As to the relevance of the Croatian arms shipments and Bosnian support from Muslim countries, I don't see how this makes for a new interpretation. I do not blame the destruction of Yugoslavia solely on the Milosovic regime, any more than I blame the destruction of the USSR on the Yeltsin regime. In both case,there was a conspiracy among nationalist demagogues (Slobo, Tujdman, etc.) who saw more for themselves in being big fish in small ponds than in preserving a federal socialist orderthey had no commitment to anyway. But in law, the fact that your crime involves a conspiracy so that others are guilty too does not let you off the hook, but in fact aggravates your guilt by creating a seperate crime. As to Muslim arms shipments for Bosnia, what the hell else were the Bosnians supposed to do when the Croatians and Slobo's pals the Bosnian serbs started the slaughter? Why shouldn't they have gottena rms where they could? --jks I appreciate the issue-orienteda nd civil tone of your contributions here. --jks In a message dated Wed, 11 Oct 2000 11:58:01 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: LP: The ratio of state ownership is deeply relevant. It helps to provide a job. Jobs are necessary for life. With privatization, you get unemployment. With unemployment you get begging, starvation, prostitution and despair. Very important questions to the working class, which is the only class that can build socialism. LP: This falsifies what took place in Bosnia. In addition to cash, overseas Croatians have sent arms. Croatian and Bosnian Croatians claim that Bosnian Serbs possess large amounts of modern weapons and munitions. While the charge is true, it must be remembered that the arms factories in Bosnia are still producing, and the Yugoslav army left behind large stocks of weapons which were grabbed up by all sides in the conflict. Furthermore, in addition to their own supplies, the breakaway states are covertly receiving large amounts of arms from the Western powers despite the U.N. arms embargo. Recently, overseas Croatians established an extensive network designed to evade the Untied States embargo on arms shipments to former Yugoslavia. Documents indicate that weapons were moving to Croatia from Austria and Slovenia or Hungary, and senior U.N. officials acknowledge that "the Croatians are armed to the teeth." . . . . The Bosnian government has also reportedly received arms and troops from abroad, notably from Islamic countries seeking to assist fellow Muslims. The London Guardian has reported major arms shipments from Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan. A Bosnian government adviser admitted in Zagreb at the the end of August that Bosnian officials had traveled to the Croatian coast to take delivery of arms shipments from the Middle East. I
R Memory History
I agree that welfare state capitalism was not on the agenda in the ex-bloc states, but that does not mean that state ownership that is basically welfdarist is socialist any more than social democracy is socialist. In a message dated Wed, 11 Oct 2000 12:33:40 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Justin: LP: Unfortunately social democratic capitalism was not on the agenda in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, . . .
Democommies
This is nothing new. They've been doing it since 1936. --jks In a message dated Wed, 11 Oct 2000 1:00:41 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Charles Brown wrote: CPUSA had a theory of American exceptionalism in the 1930's: Americanism is 20th Century Socialism ( or maybe the other way around). Speaking of the CPUSA, does anyone besides me read the People's Weekly World? For the last month or two, the paper's been little more than a propaganda sheet for the Democrats - though not phrased that bluntly, since it's always "unite and defeat the right!" or "labor's voice strong at Dem convention." Sure, they have the occasional column denouncing the evils of capitalism, but it's surrounded with endorsements for a ruling class party. What a weird political formation. Doug
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: unemployment corruption
In a message dated 10/11/00 6:08:25 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: It seems to me a clear case of bad socialism (though it shouldn't be used to say anything about socialism in general). I can't remember any details, but Michael Vickery had a discussion of this topic in a book on Cambodia in which I thought he did a good job of deflating the KR's pretensions to being socialists. I haven't read it in many years, though. --jks
Re: Re: Memory History: Herman Melville's _Benito Cereno_ (was...
In a message dated 10/11/00 10:19:13 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The problem is that "the choice" was not theirs. The bombings economic sanctions, even aside from lesser forms of attacks and propaganda, have shaped the nature of "the choice" made by a large minority of the Yugoslavs. (I have already told Nathan that I would have been happy to see the Socialist Party-the United Left overthrown _if_ the workers rural masses had overthrown it, without imperial domination, to replace it with a new government of their own for their own benefit.) So what makes their situation different from anyone elses? "Man makes his own history, but not just as he pleases . . . ," I learned somewhere. Under your theory, no historical choice by oppressed people is ever free. Of course that is true in a sense. We always choose, as the economists say, under constraints. But what's your point? If the population had rallied behing Slobo, as Louis seems to wish, they would have done so under the same constraints. Indeed, to the extent that Castro enjoys populat support on Cuba, is is under just such constraints. My real point here is that it's stupid to say, as Louis has done in some what I hopea re deliberate rhetorical overstatements, that the CIA and foreign intervention dragged hundreds of thousands of ordinary Serbs into the streets to denounce Slobo's attempt to defy the verdict of the election, an election which was intended to be fixed on his side, and in which the opposition had a certain level of foreign support that we would not tolerate _here_, but which, it seems reasonably clear, involved a genuine and overwhelming rejection of the Milosovic regime. Nors hould the left despie taht verdict, although we may view the likely future of what's left of Yugo with trepidation. --jks
Re: Re: Re: Re: Yugoslavia to fSU and Chile
It seems to be a constant with Anglo politics that they will always kill you or rob you on the basis of some "principle", as the Irishman George Bernard Shaw once pointed out... And this is worse than robbing or killing you on the basis of no principle? --jks
Re: Re: The storming of the parliament
The CIA most certainly master-minded the counter-revolution in Yugoslavia. It has their modus operandi stamped all over it. They killed Kennedy too, along with Mob and the Cubans, decided to cut their losses. And Elvis. And Marylin Monroe. And they have their eye on YOU, Louis! --jks
Re: Re: Re: Cops from Cacak play key role in Kostunica coup
Right, nothing could help. By Lou's reasoning, the involvement of units of the Czarist military in the Bolshevik revolution supports the idea that it was an imperialiast coup inspired by German military intelligence. Actuslly there is rather more support for that notion than the idea that Lou is pushing, not that I buy that hoary chestnut either. --jks In a message dated Tue, 10 Oct 2000 3:29:55 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Could you explain how this article supports your position? Doug I have long ago told you that I was not in the business of answering these kinds of questions, Doug. I have made my position clear in thousands of words posted to PEN-L. If they are not clear to you at this point, no further explanation could possibly help. Louis Proyect The Marxism mailing-list: http://www.marxmail.org
Slobo..
In a message dated 10/8/00 4:52:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I have never said that Milosevic is a proponent of socialism I am relieved; I thought you were losing it. One could have got that impression. (he is thought of as such in the Western mass media by the Serbian oppositions, Can't speak for the former opposition there. It's nit my impressuion that is the picture in the western media. Socialism is rather off the map. He's just portrayed a "dictator," as the Chicago Tribune called him this morning, which is actually a bit strong compared to some real dictators. however, which explains their demonization of this figurehead), A figurehead he wasn't. He was the Boss. Milosevic as an individual politician is not the point for the West in any case. Milosevic could have been a reliable Western asset if he had been allowed to sell out; Like Saddam Hussein, and like S.H., it's still something of a puzzle why the West decided to make a target of him. No ever said S.H. was a "socialist." --jks
Re: RE: Re: Yugoslavia again
In a message dated 10/8/00 6:01:36 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Then we shouldn't be sorry to see the nationalist thugs at the CIA, DOD, NSA etc go too.Once we figure out how to get rid of them of course Surely we will not. Though they mostly aren't nationalist in the way that Slobo was and is. Maybe some at the DoD are. Btw, Ian, got that book you referred me to; it looks good, thanks. --jks
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: A Krugman Klassic
In a message dated 10/9/00 1:08:57 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: And so what do the two Pauls (PK PS) conclude about Adam Smith -- a minor pre- Ricardian? PS is remembered for this stupid crackn about Marx, but it was not his cionsidered view. He wrote several classic papers on Marxian value theory in the late 60s, so he must have thought it worth his while. --jks
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Media Democracy in Yugoslavia (was Re: Ec...
In a message dated 10/9/00 8:35:37 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The hell it is. The MiloMafia made a killing off of hastily-privatized state enterprises, dabbled in vicious wars in other countries, and went through a big song and dance complaining about how the NATO Ueber-mafia were doing to them what they did to Bosnia. No loss to see them go. -- Dennis Everything you ever wanted to know about Yugoslavia in less than 100 words contest winner. It _is_ a nice summary. --jks
Re: Yugoslavia
In a message dated 10/6/00 9:06:20 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: It seems to me unfortunate when North American leftists become spokespersons for CIA propaganda. And I think it unfotrtunate when any leftist becomes an apologist for nationalistic chauvinism and antidemocratic repressiveness. --jks
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Economic revolutions
In a message dated 10/7/00 9:07:41 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Inequality is higher now as well. Socialists are not interested in economic growth for the same of economic growth. We are interested in social justice. Not all socialists: "What is a 'fair distribution'? Do not the bourgeois assert that the present day distribution is 'fair'? And is it not, in fact, the only 'fair distribution on the basis of the present-day mode of production? . . . . HAve not also the socialist sectarians the most caried notions about 'fair' distribution?" --Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program
Re: Re: Economic revolutions
In a message dated 10/7/00 9:12:39 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: It's like Yeltsin's shelling of the Duma. I see, The present leaderships victory in a democratic election, despite Slobo's virtually total control of the media and ability to stuff ballot boxesa t will, and then defended by mass peaceful street demonstractions, is like Yeltsin's military attack on the old Russiab Parliament? What planet are you from? --jks
Re: Re: Economic revolutions
So the CIA brought out almost the entire population of Serbia against Slobo yesterday? Cheez, I bet they wish. We will see whether the dire predictions about the new leadership's policies turn out to be true; I actually think that the leadership is rather nationalistic, but time will tell. However, I am very disappointed that Lou can only see the sinister hand of outside agitators and imperialkist spies in the mass revulsion against the Milosovic regime. --jks In a message dated Fri, 6 Oct 2000 8:35:29 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Chris Burford wrote: However there are other features which point to the surprising volatility of modern states. Amplified by 24 hours news reporting, a revolutionary or near revolutionary mood can sweep over a country within a matter of days. A better analogy would be with the protests against Salvador Allende or Mossadegh. Such activities have less to do with CNN than they do with the power of the dollar and the CIA. .
Re: Re: Re: Re: Economic revolutions
Louis has joined the "Hail the Red Army in Afghanistan" brigade. It took 10 years for the CIA to bring out the population of Serbia against Slobo, but they did it, though good socialists should have offered the Milosovic regime critical support. I am amazed. --jks In a message dated Fri, 6 Oct 2000 10:51:10 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So the CIA brought out almost the entire population of Serbia against Slobo yesterday? Cheez, I bet they wish. We will see whether the dire predictions about the new leadership's policies turn out to be true; I actually think that the leadership is rather nationalistic, but time will tell. However, I am very disappointed that Lou can only see the sinister hand of outside agitators and imperialkist spies in the mass revulsion against the Milosovic regime. --jks --- The revolt against Milosevic was the culmination of ten years of subversion, both political and economic, that included the following elements: 1. CIA and George Soros (same thing basically) sponsorship of NGO's, B92, etc. 2. Economic sanctions 3. Nato inspired wars or direct military intervention 4. Failure of the western left to show solidarity to a country under siege, because the powers organizing the siege were perceived as "one of us", like the German Greens, Blair's Labor Party or the Clinton White House. 5. Failure of the former Soviet Union to show even a modicum of solidarity, even on the "Slavic" basis put forward by the boneheads at stratfor.com. That's it folks. Those who embrace the downfall of Milosevic are embracing counter-revolution. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: Economic revolutions/tortured election results
I think Charles is a bit fuzzy about whom the Mafia candidate in Serbia was. We will see about the new guys. But we _know_ about Slobo, a thug and murderer. --jks In a message dated Fri, 6 Oct 2000 3:10:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time, "Charles Brown" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: In support of Lou's argument, and again analogizing to Nicaragua, where U.S. imperialist mass murder and terror was also visited on the population, the Yugoslavian people's vote was , by this U.S. mass terror, under extreme duress. Probably for many Yugoslavs the main issue was not to get bombed again, as many Nicaraguans wanted to get rid of the U.S. sponsored terrorist contras. So, in both cases , many voted for U.S. candidates over annihilation, a true lesser of two evils ( U.S. candidates vs U.S. bombs/murderers). In other words, some voted not so much anti-Slobo or anti-Sandanista , but were crying Uncle ( Sam). This dynamic of coercion by mass murder is general to post-WWII U.S. imperial success against socialism and national liberations. Many peoples hailed the incredibly heroic sacrifice of the Viet Namese or Koreans for freedom , for example. But many peoples also think twice about making the same sacrifices. The Yugoslav election result is something like the Mafia candidate winning in a Teamster election. Clinton made the Yugoslavs an offer they couldn't refuse. CB [EMAIL PROTECTED] 10/06/00 10:44AM --- The revolt against Milosevic was the culmination of ten years of subversion, both political and economic, that included the following elements: 1. CIA and George Soros (same thing basically) sponsorship of NGO's, B92, etc. 2. Economic sanctions 3. Nato inspired wars or direct military intervention 4. Failure of the western left to show solidarity to a country under siege, because the powers organizing the siege were perceived as "one of us", like the German Greens, Blair's Labor Party or the Clinton White House. 5. Failure of the former Soviet Union to show even a modicum of solidarity, even on the "Slavic" basis put forward by the boneheads at stratfor.com. That's it folks. Those who embrace the downfall of Milosevic are embracing counter-revolution. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Economic revolutions
The US and the USSR are indeed both intolerant of dissident views, but the Yugoslav model--which I, as market socialist defend and Louis has savaged for years as antisocialist, essentially capitalist, a betrayal, etc, ad nauseum--as been dead in the Yugoslav rump republic for almosta decade. Louis ought to have defended it against Milosovic eight or so years back. Now defending what he made of the model he ruined in its name, given his murders and brutalities, is an obscenity--very much like defending the Red Army in Afghanistan. I am not only amazed, as a partisan of the Titoist _economic_ model (though not its antidemocratic politics), I am insulted. Louis, with his anti-market socialsit attitudes, hasa lot of nerve to come out as a defender of the Yugoslav model. That goes for Charles and the rest of you who have attacked _this same model_ as no better than capitalism when _I_ advocated it. --jks In a message dated Fri, 6 Oct 2000 4:58:54 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Louis has joined the "Hail the Red Army in Afghanistan" brigade. It took 10 years for the CIA to bring out the population of Serbia against Slobo, but they did it, though good socialists should have offered the Milosovic regime critical support. I am amazed. --jks --- Actually I have made my objection to the Afghan attempt to shove "socialism" down the throats of traditional village society many, many times. If you go to my website, you will see a defense of Miskito rights that makes many of the same points. In Yugoslavia, however, the people democratically opted for a continuation of Titoist type economics and politics. The United States could not tolerate this and tortured them into submission. The US and the USSR both were intolerant of dissident views. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Economic revolutions
This was a Spartacus League slogan in the 1970s. Anyway, do you defend Slobo against the new regime? I don't think so. --jks In a message dated Fri, 6 Oct 2000 5:04:46 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Brad DeLong [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Louis has joined the "Hail the Red Army in Afghanistan" brigade. Well I'm of the "Hail the Red Army in Afghanistan" brigade: compared to the Taliban "Really Existing Socialism" is the lesser evil, and worth supporting... Brad DeLong
Re: Re: Brad speaks
Well, it is a theory, because it purports to explain the phenomena. Of course, demonic possession is a theory too. That and $3.75 wil buy you a cuppa cappucino. --jks In a message dated Sun, 1 Oct 2000 12:48:49 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Jim Devine wrote: a former colleague of mine who objected because I referred to "the theory of comparative advantage" because "it's not a theory, it's simply true" (to paraphrase). (By the way, it _is_ a theory, since among other things it assumes zero mobility of labor and capital, it assumes away money, etc.) I have always assumed that a "theory" is an *explanation* of facts rather than an assertion of facts. Creationists, for example, base much of their case on this confusion between a theory and the facts which the theory is created to explain. So as Jim describes it, it hardly seems that the theory of comparative advantage deserves to be called a theory even, since a theory ought to have minimally straight (and complete) the facts it pretends to explain. That is, I would think that any theory of trade would take as its point of departure the necessity to explain the vast inequalities that exist in the world today rather than deny those inequalities. Or is this naive? Carrol
Re: Re: Was Eurocentrism (but might have been West Asian)
In a message dated 9/30/00 12:02:57 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If Martin Luther had come along a century and a half later, there would have been no one in western Europe to develop Copernican physics after the trial of Galileo. It's certainly possible that inventive activity would have stagnated. Coperniacnism is astronomy, not physics. Mechanics was Galileo's discovery. Aside from that, Descartes, Gassendi, and other advocates of the New Philosophy operated in Catholic countries. And even if Protestantism weas needed, we have more to thank Henry VIII than Martin Luther. It was in England that gave us Newton. Ken Pomeranz's _The Great Divergence_ makes the strongest argument I have seen that Europe's breakthrough to industrial capitalism and technology was a near-run thing... Brenner argues this too. --jks
Wernher von Braun
In a message dated 9/28/00 12:24:18 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: But it is clear to me who the true heirs of the Nazis are. The folks who recruited them for the CIA? Gather round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun A man whose allegience Is ruled by expedience Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown Nazi, Schmatzi, says Wernher von Braun Don't say that he's hypocritical Say rather that he's apolitical Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department, says Wernher von Braun Some have harsh words for this man of renoun But some think our attitude should be one of gratitude Liked the widows and orphans of old London town Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun You too may be a big hero if you learn to count backwards to zero In German oder Englisch I know how to count down And I'm learning Chinese, says Wernher von Braun --Tom Lehrer
Re: Was Eurocentrism
In a message dated 9/28/00 12:52:10 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So in effect the two sides of this debate is that Brenner's explanation for the rise of Europe has great merit but so does the argument made by other marxists from the "periphery" (see also David Washbrook). Where Brenner and others seem to differ is on the explanation for the rise of Europe. I do not think Brenner's analysis suggests a "provincial" view (as being Eurocentric suggests). Right. Brenner talks about why capitaliksm arose when and where it did in Europe. The Brenner thesis does not address what forms it may have taken later and elewhere. Brenner does not dispute that imperialism exists and tends to be bad for its victims. --jks
Re: Re: Wernher von Braun
In a message dated 9/29/00 12:43:27 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Ah. Tom Lehrer... Where oh where is his equal today? Nowhere, then or now. "in German oder Englisch I know how to count down And I'm learning Chinese, says Wernher von Braun." There is a true story that an admissions officer at a major university,. I think Stanford, was interviewing a young woman some years back, and remarked, your last name is von Braun, are you related to THE Wernher von Braun? Oh yes, he's my grandfather. Well, how is your grandfather? Oh, just fine. He's learning Chinese. The admissions officer nearly fell off his chair with laughter. He knew the song; she, apparently, didn't. Lehrer says he quit writing satirical songs because reality surpassed him. Apparently in more ways than one. --jks
Re: Re: Re: 8 Eurocentric Historians
How to determine whether someone is one the major historians: There is a book called The Brenner Debate, with articles and responses discussing B's thesis about the rise of capitalism. If the people in your field name a major debate after you, such that it can be referred to by just your name, and publish many papers on your work, you are a major scholar. That is how it is determined. I was a professor, I know the gig. Louis may regard this sort of thing as meaningless, but that's how it is done. It'[s not subjective, just "my opinion," although it is my opibion that Brenner's work is deeply original, profoundly argued, and carefully researched. I don't question Blaut's activist credentials--although Brenner is an activist too. I have read a couple of Blaut's books. I sort of liked the one of nationalism (if there is only one), but thought it nothing really remarkable, just pretty good. What I have seen of this Eurocentric stuff does not impress me in the least. I don't mean to take a position on the underdevelopment thesis stuff: Blaut might be right. But Brenner's a major scholar. Blaut is just a professor who is a good activist. --jks In a message dated Wed, 27 Sep 2000 10:31:20 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Justin: You're kidding right? There is no question who has the higher level of schilarship. Brenner is one of the major historians of our time. Blaut is just another professor. He might be right, but he can't touch Brenner for scholarship. Actually, Jim Blaut is not just another professor. For the past 3 decades he has been an activist in the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, upon whose central committee his wife serves. As far as being one of the major historians of our time, I am not sure how one determines that. If it was Heineken beer, you can look at the label and see all the awards it has won. Or if it was country music, you can go by the awards people like Tim McGraw have accumulated. Do they have something like this for historians? Louis Proyect The Marxism mailing-list: http://www.marxmail.org
Eurocentric Historians
Louis, this is unworthy. Brenner like Faurisson? If I didn't know you better, I'd say you were a fool. As it is, the remark approaches legal defamation. Need I point out that being refuted by being taken seriously is indeed the sign og major scholarship, while being refuted by being trashed as a creep, a liar, and a dangerous idiot is not. This is too obvious to have to say. You know it as well as I do. It's only your desire to represent everything I say as stupid and evil that leads you to misrepresent everything i say, and indeed to say things that are really really dumb. --jks --jks In a message dated Wed, 27 Sep 2000 11:25:11 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Justin wrote: "How to determine whether someone is one the major historians: There is a book called The Brenner Debate, with articles and responses discussing B's thesis about the rise of capitalism. If the people in your field name a major debate after you, such that it can be referred to by just your name, and publish many papers on your work, you are a major scholar. That is how it is determined. I was a professor, I know the gig. Louis may regard this sort of thing as meaningless, but that's how it is done. It'[s not subjective, just "my opinion," although it is my opibion that Brenner's work is deeply original, profoundly argued, and carefully researched." LP: Yeah, there's a new Brenner debate goin' on as well. Mostly people refuting his NLR article on the imminent collapse of capitalism, just as they refuted his earlier articles claiming some kind of privileged status for the rise of capitalism in Great Britain. I guess if being refuted far and wide makes you a "major" scholar, then Holocaust Revisionist Robert Faurisson is the most majorest of all. Here's a reply to Brenner's capitalism was invented in Great Britain thesis that appeared in the Spring 1994 Journal of Hydophonics and Society, published by Big Toe Press (Rattlesnake State College in East Jesus, Nebraska): For my money, the most succinct statement of the Brenner thesis can be found in the initial article of "The Brenner Debate," edited by T.H. Aston and C.H.E. Philpin. Written by Robert Brenner originally for publication in the February 1976 "Past and Present," and titled "Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe", it states that England was the site of an exceptional economic transformation in the late 15th century. Elsewhere successful peasant revolts, especially in France, consolidated their control over small and medium sized farms. These plump and happy self-sustaining freeholders, relieved from the pressure to compete, produced food for their own needs, and a surplus for the local market. They were the hippies of their day. But in England they were defeated. With this defeat, English landlords gained control over 70-75 percent of the land, leased large parcels to capitalist tenants who then employed newly landless peasants as wage laborers. Under marketplace pressure, these capitalist farmers--the Monsantos of their day--introduced new technologies to make profits, including convertible husbandry systems (don't ask me what this is, but I suspect it has something to do with farm animals rather than marriage.) The key for Brenner, however, was the existence of exploitative class relations. The English countryside was, as we used to say at Goldman-Sachs in the 1980s, lean and mean. Once agriculture was transformed, leanness and meanness diffused out into the rest of English society, which then became a highly productive economic machine firing on all 8 cylinders, just like Reaganite America. Once you could put food on the table in sufficient quantities, the English ants could get busy and race ahead of all the European grasshoppers, especially the fun-loving French. Brenner writes: "It seems, moreover, that agricultural improvement was at the root of those developmental processes which, according to E. L. Jones, had allowed some 40 per cent of the English population to move out of agricultural employment by the end of the seventeenth century, much of it into industrial pursuits. Obviously, English industrial growth, predominantly in cloth, was in the first instance based on exports, spurred by overseas demand Yet such export-based spurts were common in Europe throughout the middle ages and the early modern period; but previously none had been able to sustain itself." Once this powerful growth engine is in place, colonial trade can be used to make it go even faster. But you have to have the proper engine first. By analogy, if you use hydrogen fuel in a dragster, you can easily go a quarter-mile in under 6 seconds. But if you put that same fuel into a Volkswagen beetle, you won't get there much faster than if you were using plain old gasoline. So gold and silver from Peru and Mexico was the fuel and England was the dragster. Portugal would have been a Yugo. In "Agrarian Class Structure and
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 8 Eurocentric Historians
OK, maybe there is something wrong with the Big Name structure of academia: I wouldn't dispute that. Part of my point is that Brenner is a Big Name. Not all Big Names are any good: I know lots who aren't. But Brenner is a Big Name who is first rate. part of the way you can tell this is that he is debated as a person with views that are not merely important artifacts but might be true and are deep and valuable. How the hell else you can determine who is any good other than by reference to the views of the people who know best, I don't know. I mean, you can try to do it for yourself, but if your standards deviate from the experts' views, either you are a crank or you have to create new standards (as Marx did) that gathers new group of experts. The point that people disagree about who the experts are does not vitiate the standard: disagreement does not mean nobody's right, just that not everybody's right. Thus if certain right wingers take racial eugenics seriously, we differ because we think that they are rwong and by even thinking that they expose themselves to be pseudoscientists and cranks. Nuff said: I'll still take Brenner over Blaut as a scholar any old day. On the underdevelopment issue, I say nothing. --jks In a message dated Wed, 27 Sep 2000 12:31:56 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I wrote: Brenner clearly went out on a limb to attack the D-of-U school. And Blaut attacks back, also going out on a limb. I won't say which of these two has higher levels of scholarship. It seems to me that both "bend the stick" a little too far in an effort to make it straight (i.e., the exaggerate their positions, the way lawyers do in court). Justin writes: You're kidding right? There is no question who has the higher level of schilarship. Brenner is one of the major historians of our time. Blaut is just another professor. He might be right, but he can't touch Brenner for scholarship. One reason I don't say who has higher levels of scholarship is because pen-l already hashed this issue to death. Another reason is that I really don't like academic pecking orders (unlike my friend Paul K). In economics, as in most fields, there are "Big Names" who run "Big Name Departments" and get published in the "Big Name Journals" and get Big Grants. Of course, these folks (mostly male and white, BTW) are the ones who call the ideological tune of the profession. They are the ones who define which of the younger generation of economists become the new "Big Names," so that there's a vicious circle. (Part of the Big Name phenomenon is that works by previous generations are ignored, too, so that the Big Names can reproduce some of their results without attribution. In this perspective, Mankiw seems original.) But the "minor" names of the minor researchers can often be much more profound, especially once they get tenure and don't have to prove their political correctness to the Big Name crowd. Some of the best research gets done by the professors who are forced to teach undergraduates for a living and thus have to make their research relevant. Anyway, isn't _my_ research the best? No! it's all very subjective, especially in a non-science like economics. (In a real science, the new classical economists would have been laughed off the stage.) Today the LA TIMES dubbed Heberto Padilla (who just died) the "leading poet of Cuba." Aside from the political agenda of such a labelling (he was anti-Castro), how could anyone say that anybody is the "best poet"? Since economics is a form of poetry (relying heavily on metaphors, called "models") and history also involves a lot of subjectivity, I sneer at this kind of academic elitism. Btw, good lawyers do not exaggerate their positions. Okay, I'll restate it. A lawyer states his or her client's case (where the client might be the "people") as clearly as possible, leaving out or downplaying or reinterpreting as much information or reasoning as possible that could undermine that case. A lawyer uses rhetorical tricks, too. (In the case where I was on the jury, the defense lawyer, slipped in the phrase "of course" right before the sentence "the issue is whether or not the defendant was driving the car.") If that's not exaggeration, you're using a different dictionary. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Workers' Entitlements
Many people have complained about my typos. they are no doubt due to my bkindfolding by imperialist propaganda. The argument that the ethical basis of Marxism is worker's is respectable, but, I believe, a mistaken reading of Marx. there is an extensive debate on this. A main figure on the pro-entitlement side is Norman Geras, who has several papers on the debate on Marx and Justice. Allan Wood is a main critic of that view. My own contribution, "What's Wong with Exploitation?" (Nous 1995), sides with Wood as a matter of interpretation, at least as far as the question of entitlements goes. I think it is pretty clear that Marx thought that the notion of fairness or just distribution was (a) merely relative to a mode of production, so not suitable for a critique of a mode of production, and (b) internally incoherent. For references, see the sneers at "die alte dreck" (the old shit) as a characterization of fairness in the Critique of the Gotha Program, and the letter to Engels where he apologizes for having to lard up the Inagural Statement of the 1st international with fairness talk becau! ! se the workers' movement is so backwards. I think that Marx's own ethical basis for communism is freedom, as I said before, not justice or entitlement. However, I also think that his critiques of justice are not cogent,a nd that he should not have rejected justice. --jks In a message dated Tue, 26 Sep 2000 1:30:43 AM Eastern Daylight Time, "Ken Hanly" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Ignoring the typos, it seems to me that you claim both that Marx is not interested in notions of entitlement and that insofar as Marxism has an ethical basis it is that communism will give workers that to which they are entitled. So even though Marx has no interest in entitlement the ethical basis of Marxism is worker's entitlements. CHeers, Ken Hanly Cohen observes that the vulgar LTV is often used to providea kind of ethical basis for Marxism--the idea being that workers are entitled to the value becausde they created it. He makes a lot of this, but Marx was not interested in notions of entitlement. The strict LTV is basically what occupies his attention in his critique of PE. Insofara s he had an ethical basis for Marxism, it was the notion that communism will promode freedom, nit give thew orkers what they are entitled to. --jks In a message dated 9/25/00 5:42:04 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
Re: Dissolving history (was Re: Re: Re: The US buys democracy for Yugoslavia.)
I am not an academic or an economist. You will have to decide for yourself whether I am a faithful servant of the IMF. --jks In a message dated Tue, 26 Sep 2000 7:45:24 AM Eastern Daylight Time, "Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: En relación a [PEN-L:2302] Re: Re: The US buys democracy for Yu, el 25 Sep 00, a las 23:03, [EMAIL PROTECTED] dijo: I disn't say that the historical facts are unimportant--although sometimes I think it's advisable to forget them for pragmatic purposes when trying to frame a solution to a current problem. This is exactly the way by which "progressive" students of economics in Argentina became faithful servants to the IMF. Is it a general set of mind in academic economists? Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: RE: the labor theory of value
In a message dated 9/26/00 6:09:15 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Locke's labor theory is a theory of property, BTW. That is, it's a (poor) theory of why some people have property and some people have more than others in society. Every few years I try to convince people to change the name of Marx's "labor theory of value" to his "labor theory of property." His theory is much better than Locke's. In fact, I think Marx's is more of a critique of Locke's theory (which was accepted implicitly by the political economists of his day) than it is of Ricardo's labor theory of price. However, a heck of a lot of people assume that Marx simply presented a gloss on Ricardo... Locke is mainly interesting in justifying private property than in explaining inequality. Insofar as he offers an explanation of inequality, it is that some people are rational and industrious and others are not. That's about it as far as his explanatory theory goes. His labor theory of property is about something totally different from Marx's, which is an explanation of the laws of commodity society, and certainly not a justification of private property. Some have argued--G.A. Cohen, notably--that Marx is implicitly commited to a Lockean labor theory of property by way of critiquing capitalist distributions of wealth. I disagree with this. But the main thin is that the two theories are not even on the same suvject matter. --jks
Re: Re: Re: Re: 8 Eurocentric Historians
In a message dated 9/26/00 6:12:13 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Brenner clearly went out on a limb to attack the D-of-U school. And Blaut attacks back, also going out on a limb. I won't say which of these two has higher levels of scholarship. It seems to me that both "bend the stick" a little too far in an effort to make it straight (i.e., the exaggerate their positions, the way lawyers do in court). You're kidding right? There is no question who has the higher level of schilarship. Brenner is one of the major historians of our time. Blaut is just another professor. He might be right, but he can't touch Brenner for scholarship. Btw, good lawyers do not exaggerate their positions. Bad lawyers do it all the time, but a plain understated theory of the case is always the best approach. The best lawyers I have seen all employ this approach. --jks (a lawyer)
Re: Re: Re: Re: Dissolving history (was Re: Re: Re: The US buys ...
Fair enough. Actually I think being an academic is more of a vice and being an economist is a venial sin. As for stepping further in that direction, I really to think sometimes it is best to say, Look, I don't care who hit whom first: we have a Situation here, and what are we going to do about it now? --jks In a message dated 9/26/00 7:27:19 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I don't think that Nestor was accusing you of either crime. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am not an academic or an economist. You will have to decide for yourself whether I am a faithful servant of the IMF. --jks Thank you, Michael. I actually wasn't, which I expressed on a previous mail. If there was anything personal, it was a warning like "Don't step further in that direction, thin ice ahead!"
Re: The US buys democracy for Yugoslavia.
The hypocrisy of US foreign policy requires no comment, although no dount it demands outrage. But no one outside his thuggish clique could mourn the defeat of Milosovic. --jks In a message dated Mon, 25 Sep 2000 12:06:24 AM Eastern Daylight Time, "Ken Hanly" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Interesting that democracy should involve: a) direct interference in the internal affairs of another country b) a foreign country buying influence by providing funds for opposition groups and organisations c) no doubt also engaging in covert operations to destabilise the government. Strange that there is no attempt to give democracy to Saudi Arabia, or Afghanistan, or even Kuwait. Democracy is windowdressing. The important feature of any government for the US is whether it supports US interests or perceived interests. Cheers, Ken Hanly The New York Times September 23, 2000 U.S. Anti-Milosevic Plan Faces Major Test at Polls By Jane Perlez WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 After more than seven years opposing President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia on the battlefield and in the negotiating room, the Clinton administration is making one last stand against him among the voters. In a high-profile strategy that began a year ago, the administration has helped finance an opposition movement that is backing Vojislav Kostunica in his campaign to unseat Mr. Milosevic from the Yugoslav presidency in voting on Sunday. Even if, as almost everyone expects, Mr. Milosevic simply declares himself the victor, Washington is hoping that angry voters will take to the streets in a way that eventually drives him from office, much as Ferdinand E. Marcos was ousted in the Philippines in 1986. The strategy largely reflects the thinking of Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, who has made democracy a centerpiece of her tenure and has cast Mr. Milosevic as her most bitter enemy. But the plan, which has ranged from bringing fractious opposition leaders here to meet Dr. Albright in her seventh-floor suite at the State Department to pumping million of dollars into voter education groups and the independent media, has its risks. For one thing, Mr. Kostunica is a Serbian nationalist who does not necessarily support the NATO presence in Kosovo. Without an official American presence in Serbia, it is difficult to gauge how much of the $25 million spent on the opposition over the last year has been fruitfully used. In fact, the blatant American campaign against Mr. Milosevic has given him a powerful theme for his campaign. The administration officials who devised the strategy said they believed that Mr. Milosevic, regardless of the vote tallies, would manipulate the results and declare victory. In the best case, the officials said, they hoped that opposition protests would eventually lead Mr. Milosevic's all- important army and security forces to turn against him. "The people of Yugoslavia are standing up," said James C. O'Brien, special adviser to President Clinton and Dr. Albright on democracy in the Balkans. "They believe it's time for change. There is the potential for seismic change in Yugoslavia." The administration, Mr. O'Brien suggested, hopes that the elections will provide a "crucial moment, like the Berlin Wall falling." But he said Washington would settle for a "tide turning." The national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, noted recently that "people power" spelled the end in Manila in 1986 and that the same movement could occur now in Belgrade. Other officials acknowledged, however, that it was unclear how motivated the opposition would be to protest, whether it could rouse a weary population to rally in great numbers and whether the security forces would turn against Mr. Milosevic. To encourage opposition activities in Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia, the United States has spent $25 million in the last year, according to Donald L. Pressley, the assistant administrator at the United States Agency for International Development. Nearly half of the money, $11 million, was spent on helping unions, media organizations and civic associations, Mr. Pressley said. Two groups here, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, were allocated $4 million to help groups in Serbia campaign door to door and to develop other get-out-the-vote techniques, Mr. Pressley said. Much of the remaining money went to Serbian cities like Nis and Novi Sad, which are run by independent mayors. Because American officials are barred from Serbia, a satellite embassy, under the direction of Ambassador William Montgomery, was established in Budapest in the summer to be the fulcrum for the effort to build democracy in Serbia. From Budapest, conferences have been organized in southern Hungary to bring Serbians together with turnout experts from Central Europe. The Agency for International Development has given contracts to establish nongovernmental organizations like Freedom House and the German Marshall Fund,
Re: Re: Re: The US buys democracy for Yugoslavia.
I am not surprised, but I am disappointed, to find Louis falling in with the defense of the Milosovic regime, even to comparing it with the Sandinistas, whose mistakes were at least part of a policy of promoting a government policy intendedto promote the welfare of ordinary Nicaraguans, rather than, as with Milosovic and his cronies, a nationalist and chauvinist Greater Serbia. Louis hangs his defense on the idea that M has preserved state property, but this degenerated version of the Trotskyist degenerated worker state argument won't wash, if it ever did. Whatever was socialist in the Yugoslav economy is gone, except for some ideological window dressing that no one even pretends to believe any more. Moreover, the M regime that participated in the partition by force of Yugoslavia, supported the Bosnian serbs in the Bosnian war, and engaged in ethnic cleansing on a grand scale (though not, it now appears, systemaic mass murder) in Kosovo, cannot be characterized as other than thuggish at best. It's true it hasn't been as awful to the domestic opposition as it might have been, but that is hardly a reason to support it. In slamming M, the undertaker of what some of us thought was socialism's best hope, I do not of course support NATO or other foreign intervention in the former Yugoslavia. M is for the Sebian and Montenegran people to deal with. --jks In a message dated Mon, 25 Sep 2000 10:56:48 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The hypocrisy of US foreign policy requires no comment, although no dount it demands outrage. But no one outside his thuggish clique could mourn the defeat of Milosovic. --jks === This accusation of "thuggish" reflects imperialist propaganda. Given the pressures on it, the Milosevic government has been one of the mildest in recent history. It is no more repressive than the FSLN in Nicaragua which was always being stigmatized for its "thuggish" behavior toward the Catholic Church and La Prensa. The stakes are identical, even though pwogressive opinion in the USA and Great Britain tends to march in step with the State Department in this more recent demonization campaign. The crusade against Yugoslavia is motivated by a need to destroy one of the few exceptions to "neoliberalism" in Eastern Europe. With the need to create maquilas all through the zone, state owned industry was an incovenience as was an army not under the control of NATO. Louis Proyect The Marxism mailing-list: http://www.marxmail.org
Re: debating yugoslavia
I agree with Michael that this discussion is unlikely to be productive, and will not debate apologists for Milosovic. If he is no worse that our own misleaders, he is also no better. I remain an ignorant victim of NATO propaganda and blinkered by imperialist hoodwinking . . . . --jks In a message dated Mon, 25 Sep 2000 11:57:15 AM Eastern Daylight Time, "Perelman, Michael" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The subject of Yugoslavia is so contentious, that I suspect that we will not get very far here. Whatever Milosovic's economic achievements might be, I abhor the nationalism that he represented. The US has succeeded in demonizing M., even though his nationalism was no different from that of our allies in the region. Whatever M's deficiencies, he seems no worse than our "leaders" in Washington. Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: the labor theory of value
No, you are thinking about the passage at the start of the Critique of the Gotha Program where Marx attacks the idea that labor creates all wealth, not value. For MArx, value is by definition embodied labor. --jks In a message dated Mon, 25 Sep 2000 2:57:38 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In a message dated 9/23/00 8:44:06 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The only other relevant question is whether labor creates value. For those who think not, they do not belong on PEN-L, but that's just my opinion. Louis Proyect Lou loves to draw demarcation lines and push people over the other side of them. What about people who think that labor creates some value, but not all of it? Is there a percentage of value that you have to believe that labor creates before you should be admitted to Pen-L? --jks Wasn't Marx himself critical of the notion that only labor creates value? I recall something about nature being a partner in the enterprise. Doug
Re: Re: The US buys democracy for Yugoslavia.
I am seriously uninterested in who did what to whom first in Kosovo or elsewhere. That always leads to the argument that it is OK for the first victim to do the same thing back, a notion that I, geneally unsuccessfully, continually try to disabuse my kids of. Kosovars are not innocent helpful victims. Serbs are not monsters of quasi-Nazi brutality. I grant you. That is a very primitive level of discussion. None of it affects the character of the Milosovic regime, which cannot evade the judgment of hsitory for its crimes against human rights and the working class merely because many of its enemies are no less contemptible and awful. --jks In a message dated Mon, 25 Sep 2000 3:48:16 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Justin: "Whatever was socialist in the Yugoslav economy is gone, except for some ideological window dressing that no one even pretends to believe any more. Moreover, the M regime that participated in the partition by force of Yugoslavia, supported the Bosnian serbs in the Bosnian war, and engaged in ethnic cleansing on a grand scale (though not, it now appears, systemaic mass murder) in Kosovo, cannot be characterized as other than thuggish at best. It's true it hasn't been as awful to the domestic opposition as it might have been, but that is hardly a reason to support it." LP: Actually there is more socialism in Yugoslavia today than there ever was in Nicaragua. All the rest of what Justin writes is unfounded assertions that are hardly worth answering. I will however remind Justin that, according to the liberal watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Media, the first instance of the term "ethnic cleansing" in Yugoslavia occurred (according to a Lexis-Nexis search) was in the context of Albanians driving Serbs out of Kosovo. * Extra! May/June 1999 Rescued from the Memory Hole The Forgotten Background of the Serb/Albanian Conflict By Jim Naureckas In times of war, there is always intense pressure for media outlets to serve as propagandists rather than journalists. While the role of the journalist is to present the world in all its complexity, giving the public as much information as possible so as to facilitate a democratic debate, the propagandist simplifies the world in order to mobilize the populace behind a common goal. One of propaganda's most basic simplifications is to divide participants in a conflict into neat categories of victim and villain, with no qualification allowed for either role. In the real world, of course, responsibility cannot always be assigned so neatly. Both sides often have legitimate grievances and plausible claims, and too often genuine atrocities are used to justify a new round of abuses against the other side In order to eliminate any moral ambiguity from the NATO intervention, media attempts to provide "context" to Kosovo generally start the modern history of the conflict in 1987, when Slobodan Milosevic began using Serb/Albanian tensions for his own political ends. A New York Times backgrounder (4/4/99) by Michael Kaufman basically skips from World War II until "1987, when Slobodan Milosevic, now the Yugoslav president, first began exploiting and inflaming the historical rivalries of Albanians and Serbs." In Kaufman's account, "the conflict was relatively dormant until Mr. Milosevic stirred up hostilities in 1989 by revoking the autonomous status that Kosovo had enjoyed in Serbia."... But the decision to end Kosovo's autonomous status did not come out of nowhere, or out of a simple Serbian desire to oppress Albanians. To get a more complicated picture of the situation in Kosovo in the '80s, Kaufman would only have had to look up his own paper's coverage from the era. Origins of "ethnic cleansing"? New York Times correspondent David Binder filed a report in 1982 (11/28/82): "In violence growing out of the Pristina University riots of March 1981, a score of people have been killed and hundreds injured. There have been almost weekly incidents of rape, arson, pillage and industrial sabotage, most seemingly designed to drive Kosovo's remaining indigenous Slavs--Serbs and Montenegrins--out of the province." Describing an attempt to set fire to a 12-year-old Serbian boy, Binder reported (11/9/82): "Such incidents have prompted many of Kosovo's Slavic inhabitants to flee the province, thereby helping to fulfill a nationalist demand for an ethnically 'pure' Albanian Kosovo. The latest Belgrade estimate is that 20,000 Serbs and Montenegrins have left Kosovo for good since the 1981 riots." "Ethnically pure," of course, is another way to translate the phrase "ethnically clean"--as in "ethnic cleansing." The first use of this concept to appear in Nexis was in relation to the Albanian nationalists' program for Kosovo: "The nationalists have a two-point platform," the Times' Marvine Howe quotes a Communist (and ethnically Albanian) official in Kosovo (7/12/82), "first
Re: the labor theory of value
In a message dated 9/25/00 4:11:17 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: CB: But "value" and "exchange-value" are not quite exactly the same thing ? This has probably been answered, but no. Value is socially necessay abstract labor time embodied in the commodity. Exchange value is the ratio at which things exchange in the market, determined ultimarely by value unqualified. You cvan read this off the first fewe pages of CI. --jks
Re: Marx and Nature
In an otherwise disgraceful, though widely cited, essay on the LTV, G.A, Cohen distinsguishes usefully between the strict and vulgar LTVs. The vulgar LTV is that labor is the source of all value. For Marx this is true by definition; he makes a few sideswipes at subjective value theories, which existed but were undeveloped as far as he knew (he never read Walras), but eather operates within the framework of classical political economy, where the identity of value and labor was a postulate. The strict LTV is the claim that the magnitude of value is proportional to the quantitu of socially necessary labor time embodied in the commodity, plus the claim that prixces correspond in some sense of values. Note that these claims are logically independent. Value could have sources other than labor, and still the magnitude of value might be determined as explained and prices likewise; value might have no other source than labor, and the magnitude of value might be determined ina nother way, say purely by supply and demand. Cohen observes that the vulgar LTV is often used to providea kind of ethical basis for Marxism--the idea being that workers are entitled to the value becausde they created it. He makes a lot of this, but Marx was not interested in notions of entitlement. The strict LTV is basically what occupies his attention in his critique of PE. Insofara s he had an ethical basis for Marxism, it was the notion that communism will promode freedom, nit give thew orkers what they are entitled to. --jks In a message dated 9/25/00 5:42:04 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I often hear opponents of Marxist economics demanding some sort of proof that labor is the source of all value. There is no proof. Marx was trying to understand the way a particular form of social labor was organized. Natural forces as well as natural resources suddenly affected the way labor worked. For Marx, these natural forces amplified the productivity of labor and thereby reduced the value of an individual product. This theory is neither right nor wrong, in the sense that it can either be proven nor disproven. Instead, it is a very powerful way of analyzing capitalist society.
Re: Re: The US buys democracy for Yugoslavia.
In a message dated 9/25/00 5:57:37 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Surely historical facts are not unimportant, when one discusses the "judgment of history," no? In any case, what FAIR is trying to do, of course, is not to fuel disputes over "who did what to whom first" but to recommend skepticism over the mass media's framing of Yugoslav issues, I disn't say that the historical facts are unimportant--although sometimes I think it's advisable to forget them for pragmatic purposes when trying to frame a solution to a current problem. Of course FAIR is trying to do the right thing, but the who hit whom first squabble almost anways turns into flipping the poles of who has a right to do what to whom. --jks
Re: neo-Ricardian economics
Yeah, we post-Sraffans always get this from believers in the LTV: "It's too deep you someone with your analytical equipment to understand." No doubt. but HK have a sympathetic thoughvery critical treatment of what is living and dead in the TLV in their The Political Economy of Marx, 2d ed. They argue taht it fails as a quantitative theory of price or an account of crisis, but is valuable as qualitative way of indicating that capiatlism is exploitative. However, that way of accepting the LTV means giving up talk of "value magnitudes" and that sort of thing. In fact, one might almost just as well say that capitalism is exploitative and leave it at that. I have argued why you might want to say a bit more in a paper on What's Wrong with Exploitation? Nous 1995. --jks In a message dated Fri, 22 Sep 2000 11:51:40 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [Re: [PEN-L:2154] Re: Re: Re: a profound comment on the "transformation problem"] I wrote: His main point seems to be a relatively common-sense explanation of the "solution" to the "transformation problem" that Fred Moseley advocates. See the latter's article in the current _Review of Radical Political Economics_ or in the book he edited, _Marx's Method in Capital_. It's a very simple solution, basically saying that there's no problem at all, since prices and values normally differ, but total prices = total value, while total property income = total surplus-value. Justin responds: For a crisp demolition of this "solution," see M.C. Howard and J.E. King, A History of Marxian Economics, vol II., pp. 276-80. --jks I don't want to get into a debate on this issue, but my impression from reading (and writing book reviews of ) both volumes of that book is that Howard and King do not understand the "labor theory of value" at all. They implicitly assume that Marx was simply presenting a gloss on Ricardo (as Paul Samuelson, Ian Steedman, Jon Elster, and many others do). That is, they assume that the bear that Marx was hunting for was some sort of theory of prices, as with Ricardo's 98 percent labor theory of prices. They don't even ask what the purpose of Marx's work was here! (This is partly due to the way that many of Marx's followers often use the phrases "labor theory of value" or "law of value" without defining what they mean.) Since I reject their assumption that Marx was a minor post-Ricardian on these issues, I find their analysis to be basically irrelevant (though they're entitled to their point of view). However, their survey of the literature is valuable. (It's a dirty job and someone's got to do it. I especially liked their stuff on little-known Marxian political economists.) However2, heir summary of the rational core of Marxian political economy at the end of volume II is a little sad (p. 394). It's dealing with: (1) the inescapable class nature of capitalist society; (2) the problems of reproducing that society over time; (3) the contradictions of the system (which seems to be a restatement of #2); and (4) the concept of uneven development. To their credit, though they don't say so, this list excludes Ricardo-Sraffa (neo-Ricardian) economics from Marxian political economy, since R-S economics simply assumes away problems of reproduction and issues of uneven development while allowing others to plumb the depths of the class nature of society. (R-S takes the latter for granted.) Often, Sraffians such as Steedman simply assume away Marx's post-Ricardian innovations, like the distinction between labor and labor-power, to assume that "labor values" are technically-fixed coefficients. The problem, of course, is that there's much more to Marxian political economy than this list. (I think that others can think of additions to the list.) Some of these elements overlap with Keynesian economics, R-S economics, institutionalism, and even neoclassical economics, but what characterizes Marxian economics is that these elements are unified as part of a mutually-interacting totality. (As Lukacs pointed out, the concept of the totality is central to Marxian method.) It's true that Marx never finished the job of showing how this totality fits together in a coherent way, but that's one of the main jobs of Marxian political economy. (Might not it be boring if Marx had finished the job?) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: a profound comment on the transformation problem
In a message dated 9/21/00 4:58:37 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: His main point seems to be a relatively common-sense explanation of the "solution" to the "transformation problem" that Fred Moseley advocates. See the latter's article in the current _Review of Radical Political Economics_ or in the book he edited, _Marx's Method in Capital_. It's a very simple solution, basically saying that there's no problem at all, since prices and values normally differ, but total prices = total value, while total property income = total surplus-value. For a crisp demolition of this "solution," see M.C. Howard and J.E. King, A History of Marxian Economics, vol II., pp. 276-80. --jks
Re: RE: A real rip off
In a message dated 9/19/00 4:52:09 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Does California have decent co-op/worker ownership laws like Oregon's so a health services for seniors co-op could be set up. Tell me more about the Oregon laws. --jks
Re: Query on teminology, was Re: . . .labor/gender issues/corpor...
In a message dated 9/14/00 6:45:48 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Could someone explain for non-economists the terms Micro- and Macro-economics. When did they arise? Are they tied to any particular theory/theories of economics or of the purpose of economics? Etc? Micro economics, basically price theory, is so called because it deals with market equilibriations based on small scale interactions--sales, purchases--that are aggregated. Macro economics concerns government economic activities designed to regulate unhappy effects of otherwise unchecked markets--it was due to Keynes in the main. I don't know where the specific terms came from or when they came into use--sometime in 50's, I should think. I can't recall reading them earlier. --jks
Re: Gas prices
In a message dated 9/15/00 12:17:43 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: why gas prices are high. Do you have any inputs that I should pass on? Isn't the FTC looking into possible antritrust violations? Tell him to ask over there. --jks
Re: dulce decorum
Dulce ET Decorum est pro patria mori.
Re: Re: Re: dulce decorum
In a message dated 9/13/00 11:51:05 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I know: I was trying to say "sweet decorum," though perhaps Justin will want to reenact the scene from "Monty Python's Life of Brian," in which the Roman guard lectures Brian on the poor Latin grammar of his anti-Roman graffiti and then makes him write the correct version 100 times on the wall. It's a great scene. Remember the scene in Canadian Bacon where the American "invaders" are cited by a Canadian traffic cop for not having their F*ck Canada graffiti on their truck in French as well as English? --jks
Re: Re: Thatcher and nationalism
In a message dated 9/13/00 4:27:13 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Well this might be nice if nations intervened in other countries when bad things are done and were able to stop the bad things happenings. When socialist nations did intervene, imperialist nations did not appreciate such interventions at all. Many intellectuals -- including many leftists -- in the West condemned the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, though the Soviets were backing the side of modernizers -- whatever faults you may find in them -- against the forces of feudal reaction supported by the CIA. It is not just military interventions by socialist nations that courted the wrath of imperialists. The presence of Cuban engineers construction workers in Grenada was used as an excuse for the U.S. invasion of Grenada. The list is endless. Yoshie's point is that what you count as "bad thing" depends on where you stand. Imperialist nations will (and do) intervene when things like popular resistance threaten their domination, because that's what they see as bad. --jks
Re: Re: Re: Re: Economics and Literature
They are difficult, although there is some nice stuff in them. Hard as it is, there is some pretty language in the cahpter on commodity fetishism. The standard English translations are not great--Moore 7 Aveling is very Victorian and not all that accurate, and the new MECW slightly cleaned up version is not a great improvement; the Penguin is more accurate but misses the literary qualities. --jks In a message dated Mon, 11 Sep 2000 1:37:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Brad DeLong [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: At 01:54 PM 09/09/2000 -0400, you wrote: Marx is a medium rank master of the German language, not as great as Heine or Lessing, but in the neighborhood of Nietzsche. The canard that he is turgid and unreadable is just that, a duck. Marx's reputations as a turgid writer seems to arise from... The first few chapters of _Capital_. They *are* turgid and nearly unreadable, in the standard English translations at least... Brad DeLong P.S.: Dierdre McCloskey was claiming this morning that Marx had never visited either a farm or a factory. Does anyone know of documented counterexamples?
Re: Re: Imperialist progressivism (was Re: Thatcher and nationalism)
What does geography suggest that Alsace-Lorraine is part of, France or Germany? Or more to the point today, East Jerusalem? --jks In a message dated Mon, 11 Sep 2000 1:43:36 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Brad DeLong [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: For what they are worth, my views on the Malvinas are very simple. Geography alone would suggest that they are a part of Argentina, and I would recognise Argentinian sovereignty. Michael K. On the one hand, trees and hills. On the other hand, people. On what theory of political justice can the first ever trump the second? Brad DeLong
Re: Re: Re: Re: Economics and Literature
Well, this confuses plainness and accessibility with literary mastery, which is the question I raised. Lenin' stuff is plain and accessible, but not beautiful. Marx's is often difficult, but generally beautiful. It has what he said in his early letter to his dad was true of Hegel, a "grotesque craggy melody." --jks The Yale Humanities Major speaks: §4 may be dazzling to you literati but 'tain't hardly accessible to the toiling masses... Brad DeLong
Re: Re: Hume the Postmodern Grin without a...
Hume reports it to be a fact that we will not give up on induction or (another target of his skeptical attacks) personal identity over time. Does he have an a priori argument that we could not? No. Is it inconstistent for him to say, We have always used these concepts, so we always will? Well, it's inconsistent with his argument taht these concepts are unjustified, but that's part of his point. We can't or won't give them up even though we see they are unjustified. Hume's attack on induction is that it's not a justification to say, We've always used them, so they will remain valid forever. Is his analysis of causatrion as constant conjunction based on an inductive argument? No--it's not a prediction. It's an analysis. He says, If you look at the content of what we call causal relations, there's nothing there but two things always happening together. Is your point that something more might turn up in the future? Like what? Suppose a bell went off whenever you had constant conjunction, starting today. Would that help? You know what Hume would say. Look, I am not defending Hume's view--just explaining it. Personally, I am a propensity theorist who believes in natural necessity and singular causation, i.e., causal relations that are not governed by law nor involve constant conjunction. I don't think induction needs a justification. But I don't think you nailed Hume with some sort of obvious and stupid pragmatic self contradiction of the sort involved in naive relativism. --jks In a message dated 9/10/00 8:26:04 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: By means of what argument could he show that you "could not, in any practical sense, believe or act on" the proposition? Hume thought that we could be led by argument to accept (that the "sceptic" "justly insists") "that nothing leads us to [inductive] inference but custom or a certain instinct of our nature" - "that after a repetition of similar instances, the mind is carried by habit, upon the appearance of one event, to expect its usual attendance, and to believe, that it will exist." But on his premises this must be an inductive inference for which "we have no arguments to convince us".
Re: Re: Re: Re: Hume the Postmodern Grin without a...
In a message dated 9/10/00 11:33:44 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So the claim that "we always will" - i.e. that "in other instances" the repetition, the expectation and the belief will be conjoined - cannot be justified Of coutrse it can't. If it could, then there would be an answer to the problem of induction. So what's your point? --jks
Re: Re: Re: Re: Hume the Postmodern Grin without a...
Hume would say, more constant conjunction is what you have--here, the CC of the bell with the CC of the two other things. --jks In a message dated 9/10/00 12:13:21 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I give up. What would Hume say? The bell is warning you that constant conjunction is bad for your constitution? Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] turn up in the future? Like what? Suppose a bell went off whenever you had constant conjunction, starting today. Would that help? You know what Hume would say.
anti-Pomo babble
Ditto. --jks In a message dated 9/10/00 12:16:28 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: From: Stephen Cullenberg Doug People might be interested to know that Jack Amariglio, David Ruccio and I have a forthcoming edited volume from Routledge on the topic Doug mentions. . . . Steve let me say I appreciate your persistence, in the face of all the abuse to which I have made my own modest contribution. max
Re: Re: Hume the Postmodern Grin without a Cat (was Re: pomois...
This misreads Hume. Hume is not a radical individualist--quite unlike Hobbes, who really does give us a world of atomic of atomic individuals bound together only by contract. Hume's metaphysics is a mosaic of events that merely happen together, but his social philosophy is genuinely social. Look at his account of justice, where he makes fun of the very idea of a social contract, and explains justice instead as a functional convention arising from the needs of people for mutual accommodation given their interdependence. The implications Hume drew from this were cionservative rather than radical--Hume is a Burkean liberal who thinks we oughtn't go around radically disturbing the conventions that have arisen, but he favors English liberty as it existed, more less, in his day, as a successful set of conventions. There's no particular reason to expect one's ontology and one's social philosophy to mirror one another--only a premodern "great chain of being" metaphysics would lead you to think that the structure of events as such would be in any way like the structure of human relationships. So a "mosaic" metaphysics doesn't imply an individualist social philosophy--or indeed, vice versa. Hobbes was a strong believe in natural necessity and opposed the corpuscularian new philosophy of Boyle and Newton. --jks In a message dated 9/10/00 12:19:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: (or a Robinson Crusoe, an abstract individual absolutely free from autonomous of social relations) the future is radically uncertain -- is a sign of the times: . . . .. In the Humean universe, personal identities in particular identities in general are fiction, . . . . Hume himself, however, backed off from the most radical implications of his own philosophy: "We can form no wish which has not a reference to society" (_Treatise of Human Nature_). And yet his pragmatic acceptance of what he thought of as dictates of nature customs is at odds with the rest of his philosophy in which nothing is logically dependent for existence on anything else
Re: Re: Hume the Postmodern Grin without a Cat (was Re: pomois...
In a message dated 9/10/00 3:57:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: One can be a radical skeptic anarchist, to be sure (e.g. Paul Feyerabend), instead of a conservative, for instance. For example. F thought he was a realist, btw. My contention is, though, that abstract individualism, as an effect of commodity fetishism, underwrites nearly the whole of Western Philosophy (epistemologically, that is, individual philosophers' various political preferences notwithstanding). Sociologically this is certainly true. Leibniz's monads, the corpuscluarianism of the new philosophy, etc.--can it be an accident that this ideas catch on with the development of bourgeois individualism? But theree isn no logical connection. It's just taht social relatoons give people new tools and stand points to think new thoughts. After all, corpuscularianism had always been true. It's just taht before capitalism, it wouldn';t have occurred to anyone, much, except for Democritus and Epictitus, botha lso living in society with strong centrifugal forces. There is a common ground between many dialectical twins of Western Philosophy (e.g. Descartes Hume, Kant Bentham, logical positivism postmodernism, Gaaak. What's the common ground between lucid,s ystematic, scientifically informed, high modernist LP, which is basically Bauhaus in philosophy, and pomo? etc.). Hegel later (the very early) Marx sought to solve these antinomies dialectically. Marx, however, eventually came to think that one couldn't "exorcise Descartes's evil demon" philosophically (at least not from the philosophical point of departure of Cogito) besides to find the problem to be rather beside the point (of the political project of communism) "scholastic." The second thesis on Feuerbach: "The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth -- i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question." I thought that's what you suggested in "The Paradox of Ideology" _Canadian Journal of Philosophy_ 23.4 (December 1993): Well, yes. I am glad the piece made such a impression on you too. --jks
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hume the Postmodern Grin without a...
In a message dated 9/10/00 4:10:24 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: ustin wrote: In a message dated 9/10/00 11:33:44 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So the claim that "we always will" - i.e. that "in other instances" the repetition, the expectation and the belief will be conjoined - cannot be justified Of coutrse it can't. If it could, then there would be an answer to the problem of induction. So what's your point? --jks The point is in the sentence following the one you quote. OK, then we are on the same page, but I don't see that this is an objection to Hume. It's his point. --jks
Re: Re: Hume the Postmodern Grin without a...
In a message dated 9/10/00 4:48:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: What justifies Hume's belief that nature or customs _cause_ our habits of inductive inference? Hume might shrug say, "yes, there is contradiction, but you see, I can't help it, neither can you." Not a satisfactory answer, but Hume can't do better than this, I think. Not quite. If we analyse causation, H says, we find nothing but constant conjuction, If A then B, no natural necessity. But if we analyse our bel;ief in caustion, we find an irresistable habit of inferring B from A, given the past constant conjunction. If youi ask Hume, will we always manifest such a habit? He will say: we have no rational reason to think so. But given the past, the inference of B is constantly conjoined with the presence of A. Thgis is an analysis, it's not a justification of causal reasoning, so not an instance of the self-reference paradox. He doesn't help himself to a solution he denies is possible. The "necessity" he moves inside us, to our habits, and any generalizationm about these is subject to to the problem of induction. --jks
Re: Hume, Marx, Rousseau
In a message dated 9/10/00 7:20:46 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Hume was anti-egalitarian Yes and would be at home in the Mises-Hayek-Nozickian world, I believe. No. He's an old-timey Burkean conservative, not a market fanatic. He'd be a "wet" Tory or a noblesse-oblige sort of Republican of the Rockerfeller sort in our lexicon. --jks
Re: Re: Re: Hume the Postmodern Grin without a Cat (was Re: po...
In a message dated 9/9/00 10:46:42 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: How could Hume reach this conclusion without employing induction? Oh, he admits--he insists!--that we cannot but employ it. He just thinks we cannot justify that employment in the face of his skeptical arguments. --jks
Re: Economics and Literature
In a message dated 9/9/00 12:53:40 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Marx, for instance, often points to Shakespeare as a source of insight into capitalist motives in general and into the money-making and money-loving motives in particular. There is an excellent book by S.S. Prawer called Karl Marx and World Literature, discussing Marx's use of litrary sources, and Robert Paul Wolff, in addition to a fine technical study of Capital, Understanding Capitalism has a literary analysis, short and sweet, called Moneybags Should Be So Lucky. Incidentally I will say that for my money Marx is one of the finest writers in the Marxist tradition, equalled in sheer literary skill, if by anyone, only by Trotsky; and Marx is a medium rank master of the German language, not as great as Heine or Lessing, but in the neighborhood of Nietzsche. The canard that he is turgid and unreadable is just that, a duck. --jks
Re: Re: Re: Economics and Literature
In a message dated 9/9/00 2:28:49 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: One of the German professors here -- not a radical at all -- uses Marx as an example of the best in German writing -- not of medium grade. The _best_ in German writing in Goethe, the only writer in German who can touch Shakespeare in English, Dante in Italian, Cervantes in Spanish, Homer in Greek. Marx would not dispute this: even Nietzsche, no modest figure, acknowledged Goethe's uniqueness. --jks
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hume the Postmodern Grin without a Cat(was...
In a message dated 9/9/00 3:15:11 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Ken Hanly wrote: Reason is not capable of really questioning induction since reason is powerless against such a natural instinct. How then is Hume able to question induction? Ken misspeaks, Reason can question, but the questioning does not disturb the deeply rooted force of habit that makes us accept induction. Reason is pretty weak, according to Hume, in the face of passion or habit. And was he wrong to think so? --jks
Postmodern Grin without a...
In a message dated 9/9/00 5:05:33 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Can't we dismiss all these questions about induction and epistemology and ontology in a pragmatic way, i.e., say that our doubts and skepticism are really irrelevant if they don't act as a guide to practice? Thus Rorty. Sure, I said as much to Nicole. I was, after all, a student of Rorty's. But the questions keep coming back. Rorty himself cannot just escape them, or won't. If we were really staisfaied with this sort of pragmatic answer, we wouldn't care about the issues. But we do, or many of us do, including, whatever he says, good ol' Dick Rorty. --jks
Re: anti-Pomo babble
I have read and indeed taught the major pomos poststructuralists--Derrida, DeMan, Foucault, DeLeuze Guttari, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Rorty, and made an effort to get a grip on Irigaray, Kristev, Butler, and Spivak. I am pretty confident that they share a family resemblance in advocating: 1) antifoundationalism, by which they seem to mean a sort of naive realtivism, a denial of objective truth, in favor of social constructiism; 2) antiessentialism,a denial that humans as such or specific groups of humans have an objective nature, social or biological; this is associated with a sort of individualistic nominalism, an insistence on "difference"; 3) anti-grand-narrativism, specifically a rejection of the idea that history has any directionality of thes ort espoused by historical materialism (in particular); 4) Linguistic idealism; the idea that reality is constituted by local linguistic conventions; 5) "marginalism," an affection for groups at the margins of society (not the working class) which is also connected with 6) An identity politics that focuses on respect and recognition rather than a class politics taht focuses on interests and power. Not every pomo recapitulates all of these themes, but most of them recapitulate most of them, in their own way, an their epiones in the American academy ampliy and vulgarize them to a ludirous extent. I am not any more embarassed about attributing these views to pomo than I am about attriuting class politics, etc. to Marxism, without necessarily getting real specific about which marxists have class politics. Besides, we have here an advocate of (1) and (2), Nicole, who clearly does hold these positions and has put them up for discussions. And finally, I think that if Temps or any other pomo fan, such as Doug, can explain why their favorite pomo does not advocate a relevantly large subset of these positions, I would be enlightened. --jks In a message dated Fri, 8 Sep 2000 12:05:50 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Timework Web [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Gee, it seems that either a lot of folks have read much more post-modernist stuff than I have or maybe it's that it is easier to make sweeping generalizations about something on the basis of hearsay. There's a lot of crap that gets written under the pretension of post-modernism. The same can easily be said for "marxism" or "sociology". The "Post Modern Condition" happens to be the name of a specific book by a particular author, Lyotard. Other than that "post-modern" is a sloppy label or a reviewer's crib for "a bunch of those French guys, you know the ones I mean." Temps Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: anti-Pomo babble
BUFFALOS? --jks In a message dated Fri, 8 Sep 2000 2:45:29 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Doug Henwood wrote: Are "these people" any worse than most of the economics literature, which is all too often obscure, abstract, remote from reality, and apologetics for the status quo? The economists are clearly of the enemy, and are recognized as such by all on the left. So I would say the SWP, MIM, Butler, the BUFFALOS, Left Democrats, the left-over Third International Parties, Kristeva, Lacan, RCP, are much worse than the economists. They are barriers, of varying degrees of seriousness, to the formation of a left in the U.S. Carrol
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: anti-Pomo babble
Me, an economist? Sir, there is my gage! And having shown little interest in philosophy? What would show a lot. pray tell, beyond gettimng a PhD in it and working the field until the jobs ran out? --jks In a message dated Fri, 8 Sep 2000 3:20:41 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Jim Devine wrote: BTW, Doug, is this the comparison we want to make (pomotistas vs. neoclassical econ.)? isn't there a third alternative, like reading LBO? Well of course. But I'm biased. Carrol Cox wrote: The economists are clearly of the enemy, and are recognized as such by all on the left. Yes, but I'm continually baffled by the energy with which a group of progressive economists denounce "pomo," having otherwise shown little interest in culture, philosophy, or "Theory." It's a little like old vets getting together to re-fight the war, except there was no war. Bashing postmodernists seems to satisfy some deep emotional need among left political economists, as if it were some kind of compensation for being so marginal. Doug
Re: Re: anti-Pomo babble
I had the same sort of training as Ken Hanly, somewhat later on, basically high powered analytical philosophy: rather than Austin and Bowsma, my icons were Quine, Davidson, and Rawls, my teachers Rorty, Harman, Kuhn, and Scanlon (undergrad), Gibbard, Railton, and Mary Hesse (grad). I did pick up a love for classical German philosophy from Kant and Hegel through Marx, and I was never allegic to the continentals. Unlike Ken, I think very highly of Foucault, and in particular of Discipline and Punish, which I regard as a genuinely great book; Derrida is obviously very deep and interesting too, though I do not pretend to have mastered his thought to my own satisfaction. But I took this material seriosuly enough to work on it and, when I was teaching, to attempt to teach it--as much to learn it myself as anything else. By and large, I didn't like it, with the exceptions noted above and a few others--Nancy Fraser and Iris Young are excellent. Colin's irritated response here accuses me of not getting it, given my summary of what I learned. I make certain generalizations, and he says there are exceptions. I admit that, and he accuses me of weaseling. Can't win on that sort of argument, of course, but this is part of pomo nominalism: everything is difference, nothing is like anything else, there are no valid generalizations, so the very sort of critique of pomo, indeed the very idea of a critique of pomo, is flawed from the start. Oh well. Some brief replies: Then he should know that there are very large differences among them. Of course. As I said. But I think most of them advocate most of the positions that I indicated. Who is the naive relativist in the list above? "Relativism" is the key term in the standard, ignorant, conflationst attack on the mythical unity of "pomo". Relativism is in fact a highly modernist position. See for example Haraway's blistering attack on relativism in her "Situated Knowledges" essay. Yeah, and Rorty has denied that he is a relativist or that relativism is a coherent position. But he also accepts the doctrine that I understand to be relativist that there is no nonarbitrary way of choosing between different basic conceptions of the world or justice. We start where we are and we stay there; our ideas are ours that thus justified. That's realtivism as I understand it. Foucault claims that "truth" is just the operation of power--which claims are true is determined by what the structures of discipline and normativity will allow to be said and accepted. What's that if not relativism? Etc. Most of the big guys and gals in this game are not "naive"--unlike Nicole, they know the moves and countermoves, but that doesn'r mean they are not relativists as we "modernists"--I guess I am one--understand the term. 2) antiessentialism, and 3) anti-grand-narrativism, These 2 apply only in the sense that learning how to critique these things helped a lot of different people see deeper problems. But this is just a first babystep. Indeed this kind of critique, by itself, is not even terribly new. OK, so Colin admits that these "babysteps" are actually held by most pomos, although he regards them as nothing new. Well, Marx never claimed that class analysis was anything new, but it's acharacterustic Marxist position anyway. And what are these great new insights we get by discarding the idea that people or groups of them have any objective nature or that history has any directionality, including any progressive tendency towards greater technical productivity or emancipation from class oppression? 4) Linguistic idealism; the idea that reality is constituted by local linguistic conventions; Wrong, if this phrase means anything at all. Here we can see the kind of confusion that conflating pomo and post-structralism produces. Two can play at that game. No, you are wrong, and probably meaningless too. But in fact, the relativist doctrines (denied to be such) urged by Rorty and Foucault implicate precisely such a linuistic idealism, which after all is no more (or less) puzzling than the claim that material objects are constituted by ideas (Berkeley), the operation of the understanding on the intuitions generated by the affection of the thing in itself on the mind (Kant), or lots of other wacky idealist theories. I suppose the second sentence is meant to suggests that postrucs may be linguistic idealists but pomos are not. But poststrucs are an early moment in the history of pomo, and pomos like Derrida do treat everything as a text. 5) "marginalism," an affection for groups at the margins of society (not the working class) which is also connected with Right only to the extent that 2-3 above compel attention to exclusions and omissions, and call into question (which is not the same thing as deny) simple unities like "the working class." OK, so I am 3 for 5 so far by your very own
Re: Re: :realism
Yoshie asked: It doesn't seem to me to require a belief that statements (e.g. E= MC2) are Platonic entities in order to believe that what some statements refer to existed before the statements were made. Am I missing something? * * * No, you are right. But that is not what I said. What I think we want to say is not just that the interconvertability of mass and energy obtained before there were minds, but that the statement "e=mc2" was true back then. That might force us into a sort of Platonism. Jerry Katz defends such a view. --jks
Re: Re: Being serious about Pomotismo (with quotes for Doug)
I agree with Yoshie here, and I d o not think that you believe what you say. Do you find it hard to pass judgment on Henry Kissinger or George W. Bush? --jks Understanding that this is relative however makes passing judgment almost impossible. And I am not talking about the judgment of whether or not to walk off the cliff which so many of you seem to think I am talking about. I am talking about academia and establishment of grand narratives, theories, definitive works which so often are passed off as truth. At least now I know to limit my discussions of relativism to the life of the mind. Lacan and Kristeva discussing language, signs and symbols are surely limiting their discussion to the life of the mind. The new question then becomes do pomos actually discuss anything that takes place outside of the mind? This would then automatically limit the criticism to the same orientation. I know Foucault discussed prisons, but wasn't this just on how they made people feel? Kristeva discusses the language of science, but not scientific findings themselves... Well? -Nico Theories that refuse to pass judgments retreat into "the life of the mind" (whatever is meant by the term) do not further but in fact hinder political projects that aim at social emancipation: feminism, socialism, etc. Yoshie
Being serious about Pomotismo (with quotes for ...
In a message dated 9/7/00 3:54:34 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Am I right in locating the core error in pomoism (as currently defended) in its assumption that claims are either "true" or "unjudgeable opinions"? Such a view excludes the possibility of criteria that would pass judgment on claims even in the absence of any knowledge that they are truly "true". The Putnam-type argument (which I accept) undermines teleological criteria (a claim is better to the extent it approaches the final truth) but not the sort of criteria most of us use to judge claims: consistency with evidence, logical coherence, consistency with other claims we accept, passing ethical tests (like Kant's), etc. These kinds of criteria give me grounds for rejecting GW Bush even though I doubt I possess "the truth" about government, economics, etc. Well, there isn't a single target taht we distrust pomo have been shooting at. However, since I am a believer in old-fashioned copper-plated truth-as-correspondance, I wouldn't say that the dichotomy you mention is a central pomo error. I would say that the rejection of truth and objective knowledge. I did suggest the Humean move, appropriated by Rorty, that there is a sense in which epistemological, semantic, and ontological questions don't matter for most purposes, because whatever we thgink or don't about such questions, we can bracket them when we ask, What's going on in East Timor? Is the Labor Theory of Value useful? And so forth. But this is secondary in my view. I think pomism advocates a false position, articulated in an incoherent manner, for bad reasons, when it advocates naive relativism of the sort urged by Nicole.. I don't think I have to say that I have the truth to think that it exists. Indeed, the reason I engage in inquiry, or a reason, is to find truths that I don't know. --jks
Re: Re: Hume the Postmodern Grin without a Cat (was Re: pomois...
In a message dated 9/7/00 6:14:44 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So why haven't post-modernists taken Hume seriously? Especially since a lot of what I read from them sounds like it was cribbed from Hume? Hume is an empiricist. He takes science seriously. He writes beautifully and lucidly. He argues very carefully. He's a conservative of a rather more boring but sensible sort that Nietzsche, the pomist's reactionary of choice. He is a fairly unreflective racist, typical of his time; also a sexist (unlike Hobbes, for example). He isn't canonical in pomist lit--Derrida, etc. don't write about him, because he's not in their scope. --jks
Pomo, again! (response to Jim)
In a message dated 9/7/00 9:41:28 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [after this message, this discussion will be off-list, given Michael Perelman's preferences.] I don't seewhy. There are a lot of people who are interested in the questions being discussed here, even if Michael is not. --jks
Re: Re: Being serious about Pomotismo (with quotes for Doug)
I wasn't picking on Nicole, who is after all a student, but on supposedly professional scholars in the pomo mode whose analysis is no better. I except some of the big shots: Derrida, Foucault, DeLeuze, Rorty, etc., are quite sophisticated. Lytoard, however, is not. --jks In a message dated Wed, 6 Sep 2000 3:22:20 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Rob Schaap [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: G'day Justin, But what is the point of engaging in this exercise? I enjoy an epistemological dustup as well as any and better than most ... But at the level at which the present discussion is carried on, the game is not worth the candle. It's a distraction. I don't agree with this, mate. Sure, we should blast away at the limits of our respective capacities at times - push ourselves, enjoy the cut'n'thrust, and see if we end up surprised by where we've arrived (that's the ultimate mailing-list buzz, after all) - but there are quite a diverse bunch assembled here (it may not be what Michael dreams of, but it's pretty damned diverse by economists' standards!), and sometimes you get the chance to help someone who's not up to scratch in your particular area. I've found Pen-L to be great at that, myself, and to the degree I sound off with more confidence and relevance than I used to, it's coz I've had, for instance, a Devine to help me out with a macro-problem or a Furuhashi on an anthropology question, or a Henwood on a finance question, or a Coleman on a feminist labour history question, or a Perelman on an economic history question - or a Schwartz on an epistemology problem! (er, mebbe I shouldn't have started that list - they're just examples of many a talent and many a Pen-pal, anyway.) That said, I enjoyed your summary execution of pomo excesses a lot. Always do. Cheers, Rob. ... relativism: (1) undercuts itself by leaving you unable to say that the disagreement on which it is purportedly based is not real; (2) leaves you unable to engage in criticism of the things that appall you, such as the subordination of women, because on your relativism their existence is just a matter of opinion about which no nonarbitrary agreement is possible; (3) likewise leaves you unable to say that whatever you don;'t like, such as racism or sexism, is wrong rather than just not to your taste; and (4) ina ny event do not follow from the premises about disagreement, because it does not mean, just because two views disagree, that neither of them is right, just that both of them cannot be right at athe same time?
Being serious about Pomotismo (with quotes for Doug)
I was a professional philosopher of science, taught at Michigan, Cambridge, Kalamazoo College, and Ohio State. Now I am a lawyer. You present the argument, suggested once by the Harvard phil of science prof Hilary Putnam, that we should conclude that all of our beliefs are wrong because all of the beliefs that were once held by people in the past are now regarded as wrong. This argument is actually interesting, unlike your argument from mere disagreement. The argument from mere disagreement to relativism does not follow. All that follows from disagreement is that one or both of the parties who disagree is wrong, not that necessarily both are wrong. However, the "apocalyptic meta-induction on the history of science," as Putnam calls it, is a promising objection to the idea that science is progressively closing in on the truth. it is not a knockdown argument. Note that it does not show that anything in particular is wrong with any actual belief we hold. It also does not address the reply that the rejection of previous scientific beliefs allows for their approximate truth. Thus, we reject Newtonian Mechanics for relativistic mechanics, but we do not put NM in the trash. it turns out to be a special case of RM, false if taken absolutely but true where spacetime is flat (or treatablea s flat) and velocities how enough not to show up relativistic effects. Finally, the metainduction does not address the many beliefs that have remained constant over the millenia: the grass is greeen, thunder precedes lightning, freedom is better than slavery, and the like. But even if we were to accept the metainduction, it is not clear what effect it should have on ordinary inquiry. Hume, a real skeptic, came up with powerful skeptical arguments that he saw no reply to, but, as he said, when he came out of his study, he had to proceed as if he knew all the things he thought he did prereflectively. He wrote a big and rather good history of England, did research into political economy, and acrried on in the usual way. Why indeed should we be paralyzed by skeptical arguments even if they are good? And, as I say, the meta-induction is pretty good, but not that good. For the points you forgot, I have repeated them three times. They are to the general point that the naive relativism you have been espousing is self underming because it relativizes its own factual and moral predicates. See if you can find the specific points in your old mail folder. --jks In a message dated Wed, 6 Sep 2000 1:00:40 PM Eastern Daylight Time, "Nicole Seibert" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: This is what I meant, Doug, when I said that pomoisma encourages bad epistemology and metaphysics that districts everyone from debating important substantive issues while failing to advance epistemological or metaphysical discussion. And where you are wrong J is that you think academia and the rest of the world should just continue with its "substantive" work even if it will be inevitably concluded incorrect later on down the road because we can't address the issue that truths is relative. This is an epistemological and metaphysical question. Nico--who has not attempted to address the questions I gave her--finds lack of agreement in the classroom, but apparently has divined somehow that it is "true" that in other eras and countries not everyone agrees with what people around her think, and concludes from this that "truth is relative," whatever that means, and indeed, whatever can be the basis for such a statement, given that the apparently factual predicate on which it is based, the "reality" (as she puts it) of disagreement can only be a matter of opinion and not real reality or actual truth. J - don't remember the question. What was it? It is not that I find lack of agreement just in the classroom. Walk outside of the classroom. Look throughout history. Truth is relative means that everyone believes fundamentally is different things. I would venture to guess that even here on this listserve there are people who may agree with you on certain things, but most of them would disagree with what you have to say; just like you are disagreeing with me now. What we find important, interesting today may not have been 100, 1000 years ago. This is what knowing our history does to us. We are to learn from the past. What we learn is that what J says today is important and interesting will not be in as short a time as 100 years from now - not only that but it is highly likely that people will find his work wrong. So, what do we do? How do we correct this problem? Do you continue to try and find a universal truth or a grand narrative or the answer to the universe? Do you limit your research by announcing who you are, where you come from and what you studied in ad nausum detail? Do we denounce our own authority as experts or limit our expertness by time and space? Or is there another answer that we have not come up with
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re:realism
In a message dated 9/6/00 9:07:49 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Laws of course only exist in thought (except for pure Platonists, who believe that forms or ideas are more real than the actualities they refer to or describe). What exists outside of thought are the things in motion that the "laws" describe. "E=Mc2" is a thought, though it is a thought through which we grasp more or less accurately a reality which is external to thought. Hence the literal "e=mc2" is (itself) more like a sonnet by Keats than a chair, though "e=mc2" is much more helpful in understanding chairs than is a sonnet by Keats. * * * Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie) holds the view you maintain here, that laws are mere fictions. But that is a nonstandrad view. A standard Humean take on laws is that laws are statements of real regularities in the world (Hempel, Mackie). On the (David) Lewis possible worlds view, laws are sets of possible worlds in which a certain regularity holds universally. A realist "propensity" view of the sort I maintain, urged by Rom Harre EH Madden in their Causal Powers, is that laws state actual natural necessities in this owrld such that, in virtue of the causal structure of something, something else must occur in certain given circumstances. It's a complex topic.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re:realism
In a message dated 9/7/00 12:04:53 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I don't think you and I are in any real disagreement on this. "Laws *state*." "e=mc2" *states* something about light, but were minds not around to make the statement light would do just fine by itself. Actually e=mc2 states nothing about light, although it uses c, the velocity of light, to state the equivalence of mass and energy. But you are trading on the idea, which may be true--I am not sure, although I think not--that statements require minds to state them. Someone might say that statements are Platonic entities that are there and true or false whether or not anyone is around to state them. A reason we might want to say this is that we want to hold that e=mc2 was true in the several billiion years before there were, so far as we know, any minds or human language. Einstein formulated the statement about 100 years ago, but it would be true even if he had not done so and no else did, and even if there were no people, don't you think? --jks
Re: Re: Pomocanadianism
Touche, Charles. In a message dated Tue, 5 Sep 2000 12:47:50 PM Eastern Daylight Time, "Charles Brown" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: And Capital has Canada. CB [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/04/00 04:07PM In a message dated 9/4/00 3:58:48 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: BTW, ever met anyone who didn't know the capital of Canada? Canada has a capital? --jks
Re: RE: Pomocanadianism
In a message dated 9/5/00 7:10:10 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: According to Carrol it is Ottawa. - Sez you, sez the postmodernist. --jks
Being serious about Pomotismo (with quotes for Doug)
In a message dated 9/5/00 8:06:44 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Academics are in a position of authority. Authority that historically does not pan out. I have never been in a class in which what a past academic said was taken for truth. And the reality of the situation is that we walk around in our nice academic world thinking that we are actually coming up with something good. This just goes to prove my point that truth is relative. Depending on what country you live in, what generation you were born during, what point in history we can never actually have any "truth(s)." Truth is relative. * * * This is what I meant, Doug, when I said that pomoisma encourages bad epistemology and metaphysics that districts everyone from debating important substantive issues while failing to advance epistemological or metaphysical discussion. Nico--who has not attempted to address the questions I gave her--finds lack of agreement in the classroom, but apparently has divined somehow that it is "true" that in other eras and countries not everyone agrees with what people around her think, and concludes from this that "truth is relative," whatever that means, and indeed, whatever can be the basis for such a statement, given that the apparently factual predicate on which it is based, the "reality" (as she puts it) of disagreement can only be a matter of opinion and not real reality or actual truth. No doubt the heavyweight pomos like Foucault and Derrida are more sophisticated. They at least know the moves and the pitfalls. But what is the point of engaging in this exercise? I enjoy an epistemological dustup as well as any and better than most. After all, I did this stuff professionally for years before I went into law. But at the level at which the present discussion is carried on, the game is not worth the candle. It's a distraction. Nicole, have you any response to the arguments that your sort of relativism: (1) undercuts itself by leaving you unable to say that the disagreement on which it is purportedly based is not real; (2) leaves you unable to engage in criticism of the things that appall you, such as the subordination of women, because on your relativism their existence is just a matter of opinion about which no nonarbitrary agreement is possible; (3) likewise leaves you unable to say that whatever you don;'t like, such as racism or sexism, is wrong rather than just not to your taste; and (4) ina ny event do not follow from the premises about disagreement, because it does not mean, just because two views disagree, that neither of them is right, just that both of them cannot be right at athe same time? --jks
Re: Re: Re: pomoistas
In a message dated 9/4/00 2:27:17 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So should I issue a blanket condemnation of economics as a criminal enterprise, to quote Jim O'Connor? It's sort of tempting, isn't it? --jks
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Pomotismo
In a message dated 9/4/00 2:37:06 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Most "truths" aren't of the 2+2=4 variety, at least the truths of political economy. Is a certain income distribution fair? Is a certain production process efficient? Are men and women equal? Where does nature end and culture begin - and does asking that question already presuppose an answer? Keynes said economics involves introspection and judgments of value. How many economists think that way today? * * * Sure, Doug, but first, radical relativism, of the sort perpetrtaed by many pomos (don't ask me who, tell who who doesn't!) faces a challenge with the denial of the "2+2=4" and "grass is green" sort of truth. The sort of things Nicole says invite a request for an explanation, if not mockery and abuse, with respect tpo those sorts of truths. Secondly, it is not clear what stating radical relativist theses adds to the understanding of any sane person that some questions, like ones you mention, are very hard. Every grownup recognizes that these questions have no easy answers, that even if there are right answers they will not necessarily command universal agreement, and not merely because some people are pigheaded, but because reasonable people can differ, and that even where hard questions may get widely accepted answers we might be wrong. What does it add to this common knowledge of every civilized adult to assert, in addition, the daring statements that "truth" is is merely power,a discursive effect, a phallocentric operation of male dominance, etc? All that does, in my view, is to unnecessarily divert us dfrom talking about important substantive questions, like What income distribution is fair, to talk of epistemology and metaphysics--talk which, in my view, while fun and interesting, is not done particularly well by the pomos. I will add that antirealism and relativism are honest and respectable philosophical positions. In a face off between a smart relativist and the best realist, the outcome is likely to be a rather refined tie. To see the way this ought to be done, you can read, e.g., anything by Paul Feyabend, in my view the best relativist in the business. However, arguing with most pomos is like one of those Three Stooges fights, where Moe holds Curley'[s face at the end of his extended arm while Curley windmills futilely. The average pomo hasn't a clue what moves to make, just a lot of jargon to deploy. It's pathetic to see LaClau and Moufee reply to Norman Geras' critiques--they can't lay a glove on him, they are lost. So it's not worth the discussion, except to discredit them for innocents who might be led astray into thinking that these people might be worth paying attention to on those matters. You will notice that Nicole has not tried to answer the questions I have posed her. On other matters, such as sexual politics, the situation may be different--I am just talking metaphysics and epistemology here. The long and sort of it is, metaphysics and epistemology are good clean fun, but only if you know what you are doing, and they should be kept away from the kind of imporatnt hard questions you raise, where everybody knows the questions are hard and the answers are provisional, and that's all that needs to be said, eh? --jks
Pomocanadianism
In a message dated 9/4/00 3:58:48 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: BTW, ever met anyone who didn't know the capital of Canada? Canada has a capital? --jks
Re: Re: Re: Re: Baudrillard
In a message dated 9/4/00 5:34:22 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'll answer you after right after you answer this question. Are children an exploited class? Are they an investment good? A consumption good? I just can't make up my mind. Doug An expensive luxury good. --jks
Re: RE: Pomotismo
In a message dated 9/2/00 6:01:57 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Here's a question: If there are two scholars, one male and one female, who write exceptionally on fundamentalism which would be cited, referenced, quoted and read more often in a classroom? If you can't answer this question off the top of your head then some statistics are in order. I won't go there unless you make me. Are we being objective when we make this decision? Chances are we aren't. So then who becomes the leader in the field? W But how, on your line, can you say there is an objective matter of fact about whether men are cited, promoted, etc., disproportionately with respect to men, merely because of their gender? If I accept your view, why can't I say, well, that's just an interpretation. it''s not mine? And if you cannot say that there is an objective inequality, how can you say that there is an injustice, rather than a clash of views about what is going on? And while we are at it, even if someone were to grant, hypothetically, that in some sense there is a non-objective disproportion of thes ort you are talking about, whatever a non-objective disproproportion might be, how could you say that there was anything wrong with it, rather than just that you didn't like it? For reasons I explain in the piece Yoshie mentioned (thanks for the plug, Y), I think that antifoundationalism is consistent with truth, objectivity, realism, and a rejection of relativism and skepticism. I think that foundationalism, understood as the thesis that there is a certain and indubitable basis for knowledge, is false, but practically no one maintains this view nowadays. If I thought it were true, however, I would defend it even if I thought it ran the risk of being misused for political purposes. As for essentialism, I don't knwo what you mean by that, but if it is the proposition that human beings have characteristics independently of what characteristics they think they have, I think it is obviously true. If you do not eat, you will die, for example, no matter what is your opinion or anyone else's on the subject. --jks
Re: Re: pomotismo
The tend to put meaning(less) parentheses around parts of words, use terms like "discourse," "privilege," and "theorize" freely, dispise essentialism and "foundationalism," "valorize 'difference,'" and think ill of class analysis, science, or objectivity. They are armed, but not dangerous, or maybe it is the other way around. --jks In a message dated Thu, 31 Aug 2000 4:10:56 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Jim Devine wrote: there are lots of non-pomotistas at Amherst, e.g., Bowles Crotty. What's a pomotista? Are there some characteristic markings? Are they armed and dangerous? Doug
Mill's Socialism
This seems to be capitalism among co-ops. Maybe that is what Justin means by market socialism. Mill's musings on competition would please the most ardent free market capitalist. * * * Well, it's not the sort of market socialism I would advocate. As many of you know, I would get rid of private property as well as wage labor. Mill only expected wage labor to be displaced. He doesn't address property relationships, but he seems to suppose that the co-ops will own the productive assets. I would follow Schweickart in having them owned by the state and leased to the coops. However, Mill's model is arguably a sort of market socialism. Opposing labor markets and capitalist exploitation is a lot--it's at least 70% of the way, i would say. But of course I am a right winger who despises democracy and exudes contempt for thes truggles of ordinary people, so what do I know. --jks
Re: Re: RE: Re: Econophysics
It's only "thin" in being concise. Most of Hirschman's writings are terse, elegant, concise, laconic, and crystalline. This is another of his marvels of compressed erudition. --jks In a message dated Fri, 1 Sep 2000 10:16:25 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Hirschman, Albert O. 1991. The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press) covers the same crowd quite well. It is a thin book, but quite good for what it does. Keaney Michael wrote: Ian wrote: Can anyone out there please point me in the direction of a bio of Pareto wherein his relationship to fascism is spelled out? MK replies: Don't know if anyone followed this up, but a few years ago I read a very useful book entitled "Modern Italian Social Theory" by Richard Bellamy, published by Polity Press (I think also Stanford UP) which had a chapter on Pareto, as well as Mosca, Croce, Gentile, and Gramsci. Given the inclusion of Gentile, especially, it's a safe bet there will be discussion of fascism. Michael K. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
