Abraham Lincoln, the Corporations and Ralph Nader
According to the Socialist Worker, The Green Party campaign of Ralph Nader for president in 2000 was a lightning rod for grievances throughout U.S. society - and helped to bring together activists from different movements who had never worked together before. But while elections do matter, struggle matters more. That's how our side has won in the past--and will again in the future. (November 8, 2002). According to Kevin Phillips, in his new book Wealth Democracy, it was in January, 2000, on the eve of the stock market crash, that a movement to draft Ralph Nader to run for president (not exactly a mainstream crowd, he says) - rallied at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, at which they reportedly read from a letter of November 21st, 1864, written by Abraham Lincoln to Colonel William F. Elkins. Looking beyond the American civil war (1861-65), Abraham Lincoln had prophesied: I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me, and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. Yea, verily, amen. Phillips then claims the Lincoln passage which was read out by the Nader supporters, and often quoted by anti-corp people, had been taken from the book Democracy At Risk - Rescuing Main street from Wall street by Jeff Gates, a Georgia Green Party activist, who, in turn, got it from page 40 in The Lincoln Encyclopedia by Archer H. Shaw (New York: Macmillan, 1950). For his part, Archer H. Shaw sourced the quote to p. 954 of Volume 2 of Abraham Lincoln: A New Portrait, by Emanuel Hertz (New York: Horace Liveright Inc, 1931) but the full quote actually provided by Hertz himself was: Yes, we may all congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its close. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. The best blood of the flower of American youth has been freely offered upon our country's altar that the nation might live. It has indeed been a trying hour for the republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless. Some American historians questioned the authenticity of this exact quote. So did folksinger Pete Seeger, who sent a fax to the Abraham Lincoln Association seeking verification. Correctly so, because no such letter actually exists in the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, a chronological compilation with supplements compiled by the Abraham Lincoln Association. The quote was in fact originally cited in Hertz's 1931 book without providing any date, source, or other identifying information. Caroline Thomas Harnsberger quoted it in her book The Lincoln Treasury (Wilcox Follett Co., 1950) citing the earliest known documentation for it by George H. Shibley in The Money Question (Chicago: Stable Money Publishing Company, 1896), but she said that this letter, often quoted is considered by the Abraham Lincoln Society to be spurious Emmanuel Hertz's The Hidden Lincoln; from the Letters and Papers of William H. Herndon (New York: Viking Press, 1938) says Herdon compiled many of Lincoln's utterances, written and oral, into a collection, which served as a basis for subsequent authoritative treatises on Abraham Lincoln. But Herndon himself was critical of various big-name authors who relied mainly on his compilation for primary sources: They are aiming, first, to do a superb piece of literary work; second, to make the story with the classes, as against the masses. It will result in delineating the real Lincoln about as well, as does a wax figure in the museum. Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, who owned almost all of his father's papers, dismissed the quote as inauthentic in an unpublished letter on March 12, 1917. He said he tracked the source of the quote to a Spiritualist séance in an Iowa country town, and that the quote had supposedly been voiced by Abraham Lincoln through a medium. Robert stated [B]elief in its authenticity should therefore be held only by those who place confidence in the outgivings of so-called Mediums at the gatherings held under their auspices. Yea. He had no recollection of any person called Elkins who was a personal
Why was the Taft-Hartley Act not rescinded
By invoking Taft-Hartley against the longshore workers, Bush is effectively declaring war on the working class here and the Iraqi people simultaneously. - Jack Heyman, business agent for ILWU Local 10, cited in Counterpunch (2002). I agree with Shane Mage on the Labor Management Relations (Taft-Hartley) Act 1947, as on many other essentials (I personally do not think Ernest Mandel really understood the long-term political-economic impact of this Act, although he understood its civil rights implications). Congress voted 331-83 for Taft-Hartley, with Democrats voting 106-71 in favour. The Senate passed the measure by a 68-25 margin, with 20 Democrats voting to override the veto, and 22 voting to uphold it. So a majority of Democrats in Congress in fact voted with Republicans in approving a policy which the labor movement characterized at the time as a slave labor bill. President Truman did nothing to galvanize support for upholding his veto powers. Taft-Hartley amended the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act 1935, a New Deal policy initiated by Senator. Robert F. Wagner of New York. The Wagner Act recognised the right to organize and bargain collectively for higher wages and better working conditions, set up a National Labor Relations Board, promoted independent, democratic unions, regulated union-certification, enforced fair labor practices, and provided arbitration of labor-management disputes. In 1965, at which time the US Democratic Party controlled both Congress and the presidency, a repeal bill was in fact passed by Congress, but it was then blocked in the Senate. What exactly was the reason why the bill failed to be endorsed by the Senate ? You have to get rid of dreary dogmatism in order to be able to understand this. Ralph Nader, who doesn't talk about some legal implications, has mentioned Taft-Hartley on every Labor Day since 2000, see e.g.: http://www.thevoicenews.com/News/2002/0802/Features/F01_Nader-Taft-Hartley.h tml or http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0901-08.htm See also: http://lpa.igc.org/lpv41/lpp41_spkr03rn.html http://www.muhajabah.com/muslims4kucinich/archives/006437.php I personally don't think that the way that activists sought to rescind the Taft-Hartley Act was politically advisable. In my experience, it's one thing to have a laudable political objective, but quite another to devise a suitable strategy and tactic to actually achieve it. I think in reality nothing did so much damage to the cause in the USA as stupid leftist attitudes to the legal system. In 2002, The White House has conducted an internal historical review of the use of Taft-Hartley and found it often doesn't produce the kind of long-term settlement both parties are seeking, according to people familiar with the deliberations. Rather, after imposing an 80-day cooling-off period, that study found that a stifled labor dispute often came roaring back. The unusual caution exhibited by the White House recently also stems from the fact that no president has attempted to invoke Taft-Hartley in more than 20 years. The last one-President Carter-failed to win the 1978 injunction he sought against coal miners. Taft-Hartley has got an aura about it, one senior aide said, and it isn't one Mr. Bush wishes to dwell in just five weeks before Election Day, when a perceived heavy-handed move by the White House could energize the Democratic Party's labor base. (...) According to labor-law experts, the bottom line on Taft-Hartley, created shortly after World War II to prevent laborers from striking during national emergencies, is mixed. A 1998 study by the Congressional Research Service that is circulating in Washington, D.C., found 35 instances of the Taft-Hartley emergency provision being invoked since 1947, with only a few denied by courts. Most resulted in a settlement before or during the cooling-off period. An injunction can sometimes make them more willing to settle, said John Dunlop, a Harvard University professor emeritus and former Labor Secretary under the Ford administration. But it also shows about 10 occasions that devolved into strikes after the cooling-off period expired. Most involved longshore workers, though from the East Coast-based International Longshoremen's Association, which isn't affiliated with the union representing the West Coast dockworkers. The ILA was hit with seven Taft-Hartley injunctions between 1954 and 1971. http://www.teamster.org/02news/hn_021004_5.htm The mass consequences of a capitalist collapse would be far more catastrophic now than in the past simply because of the way so much of the world's population is now integrated into, and therefore in some sense crucially dependent upon, the functioning of the world market. It was for this reason that I argued for a new New Deal in The New Imperialism - Prof. David Harvey. Jurriaan
Re: Reply to Doug Henwood on Ralph Nader
Could someone explain what Ralph Nader's candidacy has to do with the development of a socialist party in the U.S.? I could swear he was a petit bourgeois who believed in the beauties of small business and competition. This seems to be more a kind of supercilious political racism on your part, showing little understanding of the meaning of petty-bourgeois or of competition. There are three kinds of radicals: those who take political responsibility, those who don't take political responsibility, and in-betweenies. Undoubtedly the personal ethical stance a person has must have something to do with class background - normally taking political responsibility requires respecting the rule of law. Nader was born in Winsted, Connecticut, on Feb. 27, 1934 to Lebanese immigrants, Mr Nathra and Mrs Rose Nader. Nathra operated a bakery and restaurant. As a child, Ralph played with David Halberstam, who's now a highly regarded journalist. Nader received an AB magna cum laude from Princeton University in 1955, and in 1958 he received a LLB with distinction from Harvard University. As a student at Harvard, Nader first researched the design of automobiles. His career began as a lawyer in Hartford, Connecticut in 1959 and from 1961-63 he lectured on history and government at the University of Hartford. In 1965-66 he received the Nieman Fellows award and was named one of ten Outstanding Young Men of Year by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce in 1967. Between 1967-68 he returned to Princeton as a lecturer, and he continues to speak at colleges and universities across the United States. In an article titled The Safe Car You Can't Buy, which appeared in the Nation in 1959, he concluded, It is clear Detroit today is designing automobiles for style, cost, performance, and calculated obsolescence, but not-despite the 5,000,000 reported accidents, nearly 40,000 fatalities, 110,000 permanent disabilities, and 1,500,000 injuries yearly-for safety. After a stint working as a lawyer in Hartford, Connecticut, Nader headed for Washington, where he began his career as a consumer advocate. He worked for Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the Department of Labor and volunteered as an adviser to a Senate subcommittee that was studying automobile safety. In 1965, he published Unsafe at Any Speed, a best-selling indictment of the auto industry and its poor safety standards. This book indicted unsafe automobile design in general, and specifically General Motors' Corvair. When it became publicly known that General Motors had hired private detectives, in an attempt to dig up information that might discredit Nader, a Senate subcommittee that was looking into auto safety summoned the president of General Motors to explain his company's harassment, and personally apologize to Nader. The incident catapulted auto safety into the public spotlight, leading to a series of landmark laws that have prevented hundreds of thousands of motor vehicle-related deaths and injuries. Nader was henceforth typecast as the incorruptible advocate for the little guy. Largely because of Nader's initiatives, Congress passed the 1966 National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. Nader was also influential in the passage of 1967's Wholesome Meat Act, which called for federal inspections of beef and poultry, and imposed standards on slaughterhouses, as well as the Clean Air Act and the Freedom of Information Act. Ralph Nader stated in a recent lecture at University of Alberta on September 13, 2002 We have grown up corporate and have forgotten how to be active as citizens within a civic society. While the Stalinists, Trotskyists and Maoists were fighting with each other, Nader personally founded, or helped establish, the following organisations: American Antitrust Institute Appleseed Foundation Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest Aviation Consumer Action Project Capitol Hill News Service Center for Auto Safety Center for Insurance Research Center for Justice and Democracy Center for Science in the Public Interest Center for Study of Responsive Law Center for Women Policy Studies Citizen Advocacy Center Citizen Utility Boards Citizen Works Clean Water Action Project Congress Project Connecticut Citizen Action Group Corporate Accountability Research Group Democracy Rising Disability Rights Center Equal Justice Foundation Essential Information FANS (Fight to Advance the Nation's Sports) Foundation for Taxpayers and Consumer Rights Freedom of Information Clearinghouse Georgia Legal Watch Multinational Monitor National Citizen's Coalition for Nursing Home Reform National Coalition for Universities in the Public Interest National Insurance Consumer Organization Ohio Public Interest Action Group Organization for Competitive Markets Pension Rights Center Princeton Project 55 PROD - truck safety Public Citizen Buyers Up Citizen Action Group Critical Mass Energy Project Congress Watch Global Trade Watch Health Research Group Litigation Group Tax Reform Research Group
Re: Teaching and Politics - reply to Carrol
(By professional revolutionaries Lenin did NOT mean fulltime revolutionaries. He meant ordinary people who were working for a living but in what time they had for politics they trained themselves as well as possible.) I think Carrol is basically correct, but: (1) She does not distinguish between different levels of activity of different groups of party workers, synchronically and diachronically (fulltimers, parttimers, supporters, contacts, voters). (2) I think she leaves out a consideration of the motivational structure of somebody who is professional, i.e. specialised work with its own ethos. (3) She leaves out the concept of forms of association Let me explicate briefly: for the professional revolutionary, revolutionary activity would not consist of just ideas or episodic acts, but it would become a job or vocation performed with increasing perfection. But beyond this, Lenin's point was really that in a politically professional situation, the shared political goals would be (increasingly) the primary principle ruling one's life, i.e. a definite commitment or dedication which shaped how one actually lives one's life, and what life-choices one makes. But this insight was not specific to Lenin at all. What was specific to Lenin was only a specific answer to that challenge, a specific improvisation, which fitted with the time and place in which he lived. This topic raises very important personal (cultural, sexual, moral, psychological and lifestyle) questions, which feminists quite correctly intuited, and sought to question, in terms of the relation between the political and the personal. But, unfortunately, a healthy, practical, experiential how-to workingclass point of view was swamped by a moralistic, philosophical, self-justificatory (and not infrequently racist) middle-class point of view, in the literature on the topic. Not entirely surprising, since that literature was written mainly by the educated classes, who often didn't approach the problem from a functional, pragmatic or practical point of view. The same cannot be said for the American communist James Cannon, but nevertheless his classic discourse on this question, aping expressions from his Russian friends to a great extent, amounts to a kind of catholic-Stalinist-racist catechism, which, while proposing a kind of moral attitude, and making some valid points, shows very little insight into what the real human problems consist in or how you would solve them. Thus Cannon says: For the proletarian revolutionist the party is the concentrated expression of his life purpose, and he is bound to it for life and death. He preaches and practices party patriotism, because he knows that his socialist ideal cannot be realised without the party. In his eyes the crime of crimes is disloyalty or irresponsibility toward the party. The proletarian revolutionist is proud of his party. He defends it before the world on all occasions. The proletarian revolutionist is a disciplined man, since the party cannot exist as a combat organisation without discipline. When he finds himself in the minority, he loyally submits to the decision of the party and carries out its decisions, while he awaits new events to verify the disputes or new opportunities to discuss them again. (...) The conflict between the proletarian revolutionists and the petty-bourgeois intellectuals in our party, as in the labour movement generally in the whole world for generation after generation, does not at all arise from ignorant prejudices of the workers against them. It arises from the fact that they neither cut themselves adrift from the alien classes, as the Communist Manifesto specified, nor do they join the revolutionary class, in the full sense of the word. Unlike the great leaders mentioned above, who came over to the proletariat unconditionally and all the way, they hesitate halfway between the class alternatives. Their intelligence, and to a certain extent also their knowledge, impels them to revolt against the intellectual and spiritual stagnation of the parasitic ruling class whose system reeks with decay. On the other hand, their petty-bourgeois spirit holds them back from completely identifying themselves with the proletarian class and its vanguard party, and reshaping their entire lives in a new proletarian environment. Herein is the source of the problem of the intellectuals. And so on and so forth. http://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1940/party/ch01.htm Deconstructing this generalisation, it is an interesting as an exercise to substitute the key jargon terms (proletarian revolutionist, party patriotism, socialist ideal, party, combat organisation, petty-bourgeois intellectuals, alien classes, proletariat, parasitic ruling class, petty-bourgeois spirit, proletarian class, vanguard party, etc.) by a different set of terms taking from management textbooks, and then see how the passages read then. You will see that this primitive rhetoric by Cannon is logically
Re: Fetters on Forces of Production? was Re: RS
The fundamental cause of the present acute party crisis lies in the extremely indecisive, vacillating and dilatory policy of the centre's leading elements. Confronted with un-postponable organizational needs of the party, they try to gain time and thereby provide a cover for the policy of directly sabotaging the trade-union question, the united front issue, that of party organization, and so on. The time thus gained by the leading elements of the centre has been time lost for the revolutionary development of the French proletariat. The World Congress instructs the ECCI that its duty is to follow with the utmost attention the internal life of the French Communist Party; and by relying on the party's unquestionably revolutionary proletarian majority, to rid the party of the influence of those elements who have provoked the crisis and who invariably aggravate it. Trotsky, Comintern speech on the resolution of the French Question, 1922
Re: Doug's insult
Uh, that was a joke, unlike Jurriaan accusing me of political racism, or some such, which I just let pass. Here in Europe, we distinguish between passing wind and a joke. The New Zealander Bill Rosenberg, a social democrat who sometimes has interesting things to say, has sometimes posted sheepfarting stories on PEN-L. I think the problem with your taken approach is that you end up trivialising serious questions, and thinking that trivial questions are serious, without thinking more profoundly about the total situation which make questions trivial or serious. There are cases of flatulence, including intellectual flatulence, which are regarded as humorous here, but that is only because people see the funny side of something, which they would normally regard as rude or unpleasant (e.g. do you fart in the bed ?). I think I have answered your question quite adequately - Nader personally achieved what American socialists just talked about, and you can learn from that. How did he do it ? To learn from Nader, you have to part company with effete, supercilious and smug impressionist trendies, and concentrate more on how Nader does what he does, and how he avoided the handicap of literal Marxisms. Jurriaan
Reply to Jim C. on marginalisation
Jim C. wrote: it is an honor to be marginalized and demonized by half-wits, sycophants and idiots and if for some reason they did like me I would worry and lose sleep what I am doing wrong - why I have not drawn the line of demarcation clear enough. With due respect, I don't look on it that way, and here's why. (1) There's nothing good about being marginalised, except perhaps for some pleasant margins somewhere (being marginalised is a bit like Trotskyist groups asking themselves why are we so small ? or a Dutch woman acting as though her vagina is a purse). The challenge however is, (1) whether I can be the creator of own my life in a good, constructive way, without having it stolen, perverted, exploited and destroyed by half-wits, sycophants and idiots, in the way that I want to, without losing my sense of who I am. (2) whether I can sway anybody with my own independent thought and demonstrate the validity of my own idea practically, without everything being drowned in verbiage. (2) There is no honour in having half-wits, sycophants and idiots demonise me, why should they be allowed to pester me and insult my human dignity ? Should I get demonised etc., I have to understand why that happens. Because, basically, the halfwits, sycophants and idiots must get their ass kicked, and placed somewhere where they do no harm. The other side of the story is, that (a) a halfwit does have half a wit, (b) a sycophant does get his styles from an original source, and (c) an idiot is usually very clever at something, i.e. constructs his idiocy in a negation of a human norm - all of which can be a source of learning. (3) If they like me, that's better, than if they don't like me. Because in that case, they might assist me, and also, a motivation exists, which could lead to the emancipation from halfwittedness, sycophancy and idiocy. There is of course, a difference between proven stupidity and just calling somebody stupid. I think marginalisation occurs often because of some or other traumatisation and the incapacity to feel/experience things (same thing really) so that a full participation in social life seems impossible. If you've studied Marx, however, you know the links between your personal predicament and life in bourgeois society, with its incessant competition, exploitative relations, and the emotional complexes that result from it - quite simply, you are affected by things beyond your control that can grind you down, and material poverty begets mental poverty in some sense, in a vicious circle. You can get too many criticisms, insults, disrespect, misunderstandings and exploitation, and you can also make the wrong response to it, so that you go down in the fight against the exploiters. Nevertheless, you do have some control, and you can regain more and more control over what happens. If there was no real dialectic between freedom and determinism in history, such as Hegel and Marx among others suggest, then any talk of social change and any political involvement would be a useless waste of time. In each and every epoch in the history of bourgeois society, bourgeois culture will exult and emphasize those personal characteristics which define success in the competitive battle for self-enrichment. Given the growth of the nouveau riches in property development, financial deals and media (other sectors having been already monopolised by the ancienne bourgeoisie), and the growth of a managerial class in the capitalism of our generation, the accent is on the ability to negotiate, hustle, huckster, dealing, and the personal characteristics which you currently require, to succeed in that sort of activity (i.e. creativity and strengths as applied to huckstering). This ability stands in contrast to the actual ability to make or produce something yourself, which is relegated to creative hobby activities. Suppose however that you're not good at huckstering, you don't believe in it, and you don't like it - well, then, it's easy to become marginalised; and indeed being marginalised can give a feeling of safety insofar as giving little, receiving little, taking little and getting little, means that ultimately the greedy idiots cannot grab much from you, or affect your life too much, simply because they cannot get at it. The fact, that they think you're boring can be helpful, because then you are left alone more, to concentrate on more interesting things and cultivating your own mind. But nevertheless the challenge remains of realising your own life, and find a true realisation of your idea of love, even if this means only singing I know it's only rock 'n' roll but I like it). If that wasn't so, human emotional predicaments would not become a site of political battles (cf. Frank Furedi, Therapy Culture). Bourgeois society gives the promise of individuality and individuation, but when we unpack that, there's nothing in it. We can fully admit, with Marx, that: Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an
Re: Socialist Scholars Conference - reply to Justin
Justin wrote: Nonetheless there are certain obvious differences between 1917 and now, like the existence of mass working class radical movements of the left and the far left, and a history of revolutionary struggle that shook the government within living memory, and socialist parties that were not mere infinitesmal cults, and a whole lotta other stuff, including a weak and hapless ruling class and a rigid and inflexible state structure. None of that exists now. 1. In my opinion, this entire perspective depends on a prior decontextualised idea or definition of what a revolutionary movement means, or what it should be like. For example, Lenin did such and such, Castro did such and such, Mao did such and such, that is why we should do it. 2. But why should workingclass people, radical middleclass people, black people, hispanics, poor people, farmers etc. always organise the same way ? 3. As far as I can see, those people are nowadays more organised and more conscious than they were ever before, and also have much greater behavioural flexibility than before. Maybe dogmatic Marxists cannot see it, but I can. I can prove it with very objective indicators as well. 4. It's refreshing to me, that they have thrown out a bunch of methods that didn't work, anyway. I hope they keep doing that, too. Why stick with methods that don't work, that aren't successful ? 5. The pessimism is an artifact of a certain mentality, a certain way of thinking, which has nothing much to do with objective reality. It's a mood, and moods change. The pessimism grows out of an incapacity, but the incapacity itself grows out of an unwillingness to change thinking, and try something new, to consider a point of view that makes success possible. 6. The fact, that people organise their lives and activities in a way which doesn't conform to some ideal typology you or I might have, is of no concern. The primary question is not how people SHOULD organise, but how they DO organise already, that is the point of departure. 10. Because, any viable organisation must built on the way that people are already organising, the way that their real nature is, and organisational theory must start not from past primitivism or romanticisation of the past, but from the most advanced technologies and methods available today. The capacity for organisation is one of the great strengths of Americans, and obviously, they have to organise in accordance with their own nature, like I said. 11. If I constantly ruminated about the fact, that the way people live their lives, and the way that they organise, does not conform to my own picture of how they should be doing it, then I am constantly thrown into despair and disappointment. Moreover, I alienate myself from the community I have to deal with, rather than be part of it. 12. I mean, there might be some ways of organising that I personally like, or some styles that I don't like, and I would stay out of certain scenes, for sure. But the point of departure is always the actual ways of organising that people already have. There is nothing particularly original about this insight, as far as organisation is concerned, it's just ABC. So let the Marxists theorise about Lenin, I will generalise from how people are now, and how they will be. 13. Suppose I got a new job (which I want), and on my first day I walk in, and I started to say to my new colleagues, listen up guys, you're doing it all wrong, and we have to reorganise everything now, because we need a Leninist Party and we need a Workers Council and we need lots of people demonstrating with red flags. 14. People would think I am crazy, they would say, who are you, and I'd be fired before I even really knew my ass from my elbow in the job. At most, they would say, maybe your ideas have some merit, but that is not how we do things around here. And I might fall from one amazement into another, because these people get things done, even although they are not getting things done, in a way which conforms to my thinking about it. 15. But what's really important here ? The fact, that things are getting done, or the fact, that they are not getting things done in a way that fits with my idea of how they should be doing it, the way I've learnt it, the way a textbook says you should do it, and so on ? Well, obviously it is the fact that things are getting done. 16. You don't organise for the sake of organisation, you organise to get things done, to get some kind of specific result. Organising is a means to an end. We evaluate organisational styles on their capacity to achieve results. 17. As I indicated in my short piece on sectarianism, this is not how the sectarian operates, because the sectarian wants to impose his own organisational model on people as the only correct one, and then wonders why people don't accept it. And it's obvious, why they don't accept it. Because it's not in their nature to organise that way, it's not their style. 18. Now I can run
Just trying to be helpful - a research inquiry into the Lord's mission in Iraq
(Dutch Premier Balkende's visit to President Bush inspired me to write this story). In 1975, Dr Henry Kissinger, speaking about the CIA's policy towards Iraqi Kurds, declared that covert action should not be confused with missionary work. Ahem. Amidst more horrific, gruesome carnage, Al Jazeera reported today that in Iraq, The International Bible Society has distributed 10,000 books in Arabic, titled Christ Has Brought Peace. Poor Jesus, I'd personally think he'd turn in his grave, if he had one. And if he rose again, he'd emigrate. Premier Balkenende would kick him out of Holland. But that's rhetoric, so let's explore this further. 1. DRIED FOOD Al Jazeera comments guardedly: The presence of missionaries in the majority-Muslim country is highly resented by locals as another element of foreign interference. In fact, Christianity Today magazine admits 96 percent of Iraq's 22 million people are Muslim, as against a few hundred thousand Christians, and that some Muslims are hostile to any Christian presence. So what the hell are they doing there then ? More recently some Christians in Iraq panicked about the idea that Sistani would declare an Islamic State, but in fact, the Shiites have not adopted any official policy hostile to Christian Iraqi's. That's more Western propaganda. It would be the least of their worries. If anything, Shiite concern is with foreign invaders trying to reshape Iraq into the image of Christianist capitalism. But obviously this does not stop the empire's evangelists at all. Al Jazeera estimates about a hundred functional missionaries gained official clearance from the occupying forces to go personally to Iraq, since Baghdad fell to American and British troops last April. Quite possibly the number is higher, taking into account circumstantial evidence. Previously, the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has 5,411 personnel serving around the world, raised money from 42,000 congregations nationwide, to send about 45,000 boxes of dried food to Iraqis (beans, rice, flour, and other staples). Jim Walker, one of the members of the team handing out this food in Iraq, told IMB's Urgent News bulletin that he had met village children starved of attention, and I could tell some of them have not eaten well. But their biggest need is to know the love of Christ. The christian boxes included zero religious literature (which could have been blocked by the military at the border), but they featured a label quoting John 1:17 in Arabic: For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. SBC's Jim Brown, a director of World Hunger and Relief Ministries, explained that he thought this verse was an appropriate expression of Christian faith to Muslims. Moses and Jesus are both prophets for Muslims, Brown said. I don't think a Muslim would find that verse offensive. I would. I would get very irate. However, Mr Brown added that the misionary organisation had no plans for mass evangelism in Iraq. He explained, Freedom to share God's love in Iraq is limited to one-to-one, God-given opportunities, not man-orchestrated events. How how does the scene operate ? Mrs. Jackie Cone, age 72, a Pentecostalist grandmother from Ohio, went to Iraq in 2003. She said recently God told her to join a second mission to Iraq in 2004. I sensed Him telling me to come back in January. Mrs Cone is confident she has converted people in Baghdad. In her hotel, she met a Muslim woman on crutches, with a leg operation due that day. Mrs Cone knelt on the lobby floor, and prayed that surgery would not be required. I saw her that evening and she said God had healed her, and she hadn't needed the surgery. She didn't say Allah, she pointed to Heaven and gave God the glory, Mrs Cone said. Mrs Cone led the Kurdish woman and her brother in prayer, asking Jesus to enter into their hearts. I'd given them a Bible and a Jesus video in Arabic. I think they think of themselves as Christians now, she said. They have the Bible, and I hope they will grow in grace. I hope grandma Cone returns home in one piece. If she doesn't, I don't think it would have much to do with the Lord. Best to keep Grandma home, I would say. 2. THE THEOLOGY OF IT There has actually been considerable debate in American christian circles about the real scope for evangelising the good news in post-sanctions Iraq. Ben Homan, the president of the Food for the Hungry aid organisation, commented quite sensibly that If an earthquake struck in Texas, and someone forced you to hear a religious message in exchange for food or medicine, we think that would be wrong. Quite. Food for the Hungry actually spent millions to feed thousands of Iraqi families. World Vision is likewise actively involved in charity work (mainly in Mosul). World Relief, Food for the Hungry, and Venture International have been working with Jordanian church agencies and the United Nations to supply Iraq's churches with food,
Re: Socialist Scholars Conference - reply to Justin
Now that Justin is a rich lawyer, his career as a poor professor of philosophy derailed by the politics of academia, he should take a break and travel abroad, which I think will reinvigorate his political spirits more than any PEN-pals can. It's not for me to say what Justin ought to do, obviously, but he's always welcome to stay with me while I still live here. We still have freedom of speech here, although the liberals and christianists both want to shut us down. Benito Spinoza was in favour of it, and it's been a tradition since that time here, it's actually very difficult to shut down. I hope some American lawyers will go to Venezuela though, to demonstrate that there also still some Americans at least, who DO respect international legal agreements. If I am too pessimistic, no one has explained to me why. The consensus that has emerged from this discussion is that we should not think to hard about the odds or the future, but should just keep fighting. I suppose we must, but it does seem like trying to empty the ocean with a sieve. I cannot explain your pessimism either, at least not on this list. But these optimism/pessimism themes have no interest for me anyway, I'm a bit beyond that really these days, it's just distracting. Do we always have to fight ? I think often we're doing well enough just by being ourselves, doing our thing, and sharing what we have to share. Mainly I just like to think about the arguments, otherwise I get bored. Personally, I struggle more with myself and getting enough things done. I'm fifteen years behind with my life, because of the hassles I had, mistakes I made, the spying, Hollywood games, media complexities, lying accusations and all that, all the troubles you have, when you get all these people parenting you without your consent. It's demoralising, absurd. You end up with many bad feelings, a confused sense of responsibility, and an empty bank account, and then you still have to do all the stuff you wanted to get done, 15 years ago. I think John Kerry is correct, in stating that the world's governments want Mr Bush to step down, even if he gets lots of corporate handouts in return for his rich handouts to the corporations. The main reason for that is, that the international relations scene has suffered a cultural regression by the unilateral Judeo-christianist imperialism of his cabinet, and that sensible, rational discussions can no longer take place by people who are experienced in the field (with a few honourable exceptions). It basically doesn't really matter who is in power, Bush or Kerry, from the point of view of the financial markets, except that with Kerry, there's a possibility we're still talking sense in international relations and that there's more honesty, rather than superstitious anxiety stories about Moses, the prophets and the apocalypse. Personally I'd vote for the Greens if I was a US citizen. Anything to break up the tweedle-dee, tweedle dum politics. I think America needs politicians who understand that most of the world isn't America, and that they are only one player in the concert of nations, and that America has caused the death of far more people than the USSR ever did. In other words, no more brainless, unscientific ideology as a basis for policy. How are they going to get them ? There must be an absolute stop to the idiotic war on terrorism, axis of evil and other manic, fear-mongering theories, which hide mass murder while the focus is on a few individual terrorists, who, when caught, are treated bestially just to prove who has moral superiority here. Jurriaan
Re: Bob Kerrey says no to unionizing the New School
Disgusting. First they changed the name of my school for marketing purposes and now they are completing the process of destruction of radical tradition that the New School represented. It's bad if American scholars have forgotten what democracy is, or what a university is, for sure. But can they really destroy the radical tradition of the New School ? I'd imagine the good scholars have a lot of friends in the NYC community who could make life awfully difficult for the tyrants. Radical is derived from the Latin radix meaning root, i.e. the radical goes to the root of the matter, the heart of it, the core of things. Quine used to say, the university is not the universe. I told students once, research cannot not occur in a vacuum. But if those theorems are true, that means that the community could also impact on the university to rescue good thinking from narrowminded money-grubbing, since the university is not a sort of medieval castle removed from the rest of life. By the way, I didn't intend to insult you with the song bit I mentioned, it was just a thought I had at the time. The Rosdolsky reference I mentioned before is: Roman Rosdolsky, Die Rolle des Zufalls und der Grossen Manner in der Geschichte (1965) [The role of coincidence and Great men in history]. Kritik, Heft 14, Vol 5, 1977, p.. 67-96. Rosdolsky argues that revolutions cannot be made and that the revolutionary process does not follow an historical determinism, but occur quasi-automatically. It's quite a job to translate though, since it has 57 footnotes, where you have to look up the English editions as well for the citations. I'm still planning to do a project on Rosdolsky some time. Jurriaan
Re: there's no hope?
Of course, if we don't see more street heat in the future, these changes will likely not last. Personally, I had the 'flu the last few days, felt terrible. Didn't make it out the door tonight, and ended up discussing Biblical politics in the Middle East with my flatmate Youssef. He reckons things in the worse are going to get worse - I just remarked on how evil it is of christians to sow the seeds of religious animosities in Iraq with a Bombing and Bibles brigade. To quote the Good Lord Jesus, God help them, they know not what they do. So anyway not much heat from me, so far. I still feel a bit exhausted, frankly. Jurriaan
The emergence of the do-it-yourself nuclear bomb: the Netherlands-Pakistan connection
Aaron Gray-Block reports on the Expatica site: Pakistan has pardoned atomic guru Dr Abdul Khan for trading nuclear secrets, but Khan's Dutch business partner is under investigation in the Netherlands. (...) International intelligence services have accused Henk Slebos - the Dutch academic friend and business partner of Pakistan (...) Justice Ministry sources confirmed on 17 February that an investigation was now underway into a possible Dutch role in Libya's nuclear programme. It is not yet certain what crime Slebos is alleged to have committed. The Haarlem Public Prosecution Office (OM) has refused to confirm the name of the suspect, but a spokesman said an investigation is being conducted into an alleged breach by a Dutch company of the import and export law. The allegations relate to dual use goods that besides peaceful purposes, can also be applied to military use. (...) It is widely believed that Slebos is the suspect in the investigation. The Pakistan inquiry and other investigations will examine the roles of several intermediaries who allegedly helped supply nuclear technology - including Dutch suspect Slebos - and who were mentioned in reports about Khan's confessions. The US media also reported last week that American intelligence services had evidence allegedly implicating Slebos in the black market trade. The Associated Press reported that the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and US agencies have said that Khan's network became a comprehensive shopping venue for countries wanting atomic bombs. IAEA chief Mohammed El Baradei has also recently said that the danger of a nuclear war has never been so serious as it is now. In addition, the Dutch secret service AIVD has confirmed it is investigating how Dutch technology from the Urenco consortium - based in the eastern Dutch city of Almelo - was passed onto Libya, Iran and North Korea in the 1970s. The AIVD is working in co-operation with the IAEA. Khan worked with a Dutch company called Physics Dynamic Research Laboratory (FDO) from 1972-75. The company conducted research for Urenco, which was set up by the British, Dutch and German governments to provide equipment to enrich uranium. India detonated its first nuclear device in 1974 and it is widely assumed that part of the Pakistan project to develop its own bomb is based on the academic knowledge Khan gleaned in the Netherlands. Khan obtained blueprints for Urenco centrifuges used to extract uranium 235 - which is needed for a nuclear explosion - from uranium hexafluoride gas. This means that uranium can be enriched for use in a nuclear power station, but also for the higher levels needed for a nuclear bomb. The nuclear scientist left the Netherlands in the mid-1970s and set up near the Pakistan capital Islamabad the AQ Khan Research Laboratories. It is here where he started making his country's bomb. Convicted in absentia in the Netherlands for stealing the designs, Khan's conviction was overturned because he was not properly served with court papers. Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot and Economic Affairs Minister Laurens Jan Brinkhorst officially admitted to the Lower House of Parliament, the Tweede Kamer, last month that besides Pakistan, the centrifuge technology was possibly also passed onto Iran and North Korea. (...) And on the eve of the US invasion to oust Saddam Hussein last year, Frits Veerman, the Dutch technician who worked with Khan and unintentionally helped him obtain nuclear secrets, claimed that the Pakistan academic had also sold centrifuge blueprints to Iraq. Khan is revered as a hero in Pakistan and is quoted as saying that he was on a holy mission. Prior to his confessions, he also told De Telegraaf newspaper in 2001 that his work was only intended to put Pakistan on the nuclear world map. He expressed pride in his work and expressed his thanks for the Netherlands. But for Veerman, the brilliant academic and his illegal activities have brought the world to the edge of a nuclear disaster. As far as I am concerned, he deserves the strongest penalty - life imprisonment. Full story: http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=1story_id=487 8
Re: Observations on the Socialist Scholars Conference
Well, as I said, if we in the US had what they have in Sweden or the Netherlands, we'd think we had won. And certianly it would be a great victory. The grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence. What you shouldn't overlook is that inequality and disparities have increased a lot in the Netherlands also (as well as in Sweden), and this can be proved quantitatively quite easily. The Gini coefficient for the USA and the Netherlands are growing closer all the time. The down side of social-democratic or christian-democratic type of regulation is that large numbers of people could also be trapped in a poverty cycle here, because phenomena like market-segmentations, prejudice and market closure can also mean the white middle class shuts workers out of opportunities with the most patronising, snobby racial rhetoric. That is why the sexual revolution has been culturally progressive here, but, this does not necessarily mean that egalitarianism is breaking out everywhere here either, to the contrary. It just means that new rules for access to resources are emerging. So insofar as Dutch society is more egalitarian, this may not necessarily be attributable at all to social democracy either, we have to be careful about that idea, because social democracy often only redistributes wealth that is already there, and previously obtained through trade. The Dutch Constitution, like the Swedish, is more progressive than the American one, but even so I've had almost none of my Constitutional rights respected in the Netherlands. What is progressive in the Dutch Constitution, is article 20, which states that Dutch nationals resident in the Netherlands who are unable to provide for themselves, shall have a right, to be regulated by Act of Parliament, to assistance from public authorities. That means the Dutch government has a statutory obligation to look after the survival of its citizens, and therefore also has a responsibility to ensure it can do this. In Sweden, you do not have the same right, the Swedish Constitution just affirms that All persons shall have access to nature in accordance with the right of public access. The EU Constitution, which is a purely bourgeois constitution, effectively removes any constitutional obligation for social assistance. To compare constitutions, refer to http://confinder.richmond.edu/). Nevertheless, the trend towards viewing the state only as a private corporation with the business of forcing taxes out of citizens is also visible. What is really troubling about Marxist discussion concerning a socialist market is, that what a market means fails to be defined specifically. Marxists just do not really know what markets are. That is partly why they have almost never been able to specify what such concepts as Marx's law of value refer to. That is why much of the market-socialism discussion is technically useless. One of the basic fallacies involved in this discussion is an adaptation to bourgeois ideology, namely people talk about the market as if there was only one market, which operates according to uniform principles. This is not the case at all. It is a bourgeois fetishism. In reality, class and sectional forces operate through the market, to strengthen their own position. Jurriaan
A Cambridge lesson for US Democrats: how Prof. Eatwell answered Alan Greenspan... 11 years ago
Professor Lord John Eatwell, one of the brightest British reformist economists(http://www.jims.cam.ac.uk/people/faculty/eatwellj.html) wrote a very simple but quite prophetic article at the beginning of the Clinton era, which I've edited a little, with ten new subheads to fit with the current situation (although the essential argument is no different from what they was then). If you happen to think his argument is a trivial platitude, just calculate if you will, as a very simple exercise, what the size of real GDP for all OECD countries combined would have been in 2003, if economic growth had continued at about 4% for the last thirty years (the average economic growth rate during the long boom 1947-1973, conventionally measured). You will see then, that the discrepancy is astronomically large. But that is just to say, as Marx frequently remarked, that the supreme contradiction of the capitalist system is in fact Capital itself; at a certain point, it begins to brake the growth of the productive powers of human labour. Mediating this contradiction by means of deregulation, has the global effect that the gains of increased capital mobility are outweighed by the losses in employment growth plus skyrocketing debts, and consequently the decline of aggregate buying power and the displacement of that buying power from the weak to the strong. This has the effect, that while socio-economic inequality increases, capitalist development at the same forcibly compels a search for alternative allocative principles, to claim and distribute resources, which at least in part culturally prefigure new distributive principles - JB). 1. THE MARKETS The markets, exercising their influence not just through the domestic funding of the government debt, but also in the foreign exchanges, determine the monetary stability of the economy. Market hostility to government expenditure plans would be expressed through falling bond prices, a falling dollar, rising interest rates, and, in due course, the threat of a financial crisis-- imposing the humiliation of political retreat, with plans abandoned and policies reversed. (...) But who are the markets? What determines that awesome collective opinion expressed through millions of independent purchases and sales? What is the relationship, if any, between the views of the markets and what might generally be regarded as desirable government policies on employment, industrial investment, or trade? Answering these questions is as important as the design of the new economic initiatives. Getting the markets on board--ensuring, by whatever means, that their role is supportive, not destructive--is the key to breaking out of the economic failures of the 1980s, in America, and in all the other G-7 countries. 2. THE DIALECTIC OF THE WORLD MARKET (...) In the domestic economy, there will be a race between the revenue-generating benefits of growth and the deficit-enhancing expenditures intended to make that growth possible. In the international economy, there will be a race between the expansionary investment necessary to improve competitiveness and the deterioration in the current account that expansion will inevitably bring, as higher domestic growth stimulates imports. The two races are really just one contest. If American industry were so competitive that none of the growth-inducing government expenditure leaked overseas into imports from abroad, then the increased incomes derived from government spending would generate the extra taxes and the extra savings needed to fund any addition to the public deficit. That leakage overseas, due to lack of competitiveness, means that taxes and savings are generated outside America and need to be borrowed back. The leakage weakens the impact of government spending on the real economy, and the financial impact of higher overseas borrowing threatens to restrict the scope of [government policy]. But the restoration of competitiveness, necessary though it is, will not be enough to secure long-term, sustainable growth. Enhanced competitiveness, conventionally defined, essentially involves capturing markets and jobs from trading partners--shifting the unemployment around the world--rather than creating new prosperity within the western economic system as a whole. In a period in which every government is facing the political pressures of recession, enhanced competitiveness in one country may well produce self-protecting retaliation in others--just think of the tensions now in U.S.-Japanese trade relations. 3. THE CHALLENGE To achieve his goals, [the US government] needs to break out of this international game of pass the unemployment [and] create an economic environment in which expansion at home is not wrecked by pressures in the international money markets. That requires the creation of a new growth-oriented framework for the world economy and the establishment of international monetary stability where instability is now the rule. The omens are not good.
Is a revolution in the USA possible ?
Doug asked: I'd like to hear someone argue to the contrary. At the risk of appearing impossibly arrogant and irresponsible, I think it is quite possible to unleash a revolution in the United States, you just need to attack the weakest links in the chain there. All that is required is to create a sufficiently large disturbance in US money and capital markets, i.e. something which massively reduces investor confidence, such that the credit system practically collapses. We have already seen that just bombing a few buildings in the US (the 9/11 incident) could have a very powerful economic effect, but just imagine now, if the banking system as a whole became totally unworkable because somebody pulled the plug on it. If that happens, then quite simply very large numbers of people are blocked from any real monetary income at all, and have no option other than to take or barter what they need, to survive at all. The question however is whether this is ultimately a beneficial procedure, rather than an impatient ultraradical, extremist scam. Because, whereas you could technically completely stuff up the US economy through a few precisely targeted interventions, this does not necessarily mean that anything better will eventuate out of the fracas; that all depends on the political maturity and organisational capacity of the American working class and its allies to deal with the consequences, and the best indication of that political maturity is the ability of that class and its allies to invent real alternatives to the status quo, which really work. In addition, a capitalist collapse in the US just now would have gigantic adverse repercussions throughout the world; millions of people in addition to the number already dying of hunger and disease now, would also die. The ethical implications are horrendous. A revolution is not desirable for its own sake. It is merely an instrument, a means for reallocating power and wealth so that a better life becomes possible for all. Just because you instigate a revolution, doesn't necessarily mean any better society will necessarily emerge out of that. In fact, the Nicaraguan revolutionaries decided at a certain point that continuing the revolution in Nicaragua carried too high a price; imperialist aggression and blockade imposed too high a cost on the Nicaraguan people, offsetting the great benefits of civil security, land reform and economic management which the overthrow of US-supported dictator Somoza had made possible. So they agreed to step down, reluctantly perhaps, but they did it - on the basis of a sober assessment of the balance of forces and good ethics. Which is just to say that a revolution isn't always desirable. Lenin would have dismissed leftists who argue this as totally irresponsible. In the coming years, it is certainly possible that a certain sort of collapse could occur anyhow. But whereas the USA would be able to recover from that reasonably quickly in an economic sense, because of its internal resources, many other, much weaker dependent countries, would not be able to - they would suffer economically for a very long time. So, wrecking economies to foment revolutions is not part of the real socialist or communist program. For Marx at least, that sort of thing could be safely left to the bourgeois classes themselves, as they struggle with the contradictions of capitalism which their own theory denies. Jurriaan
Reply to Louis Proyect on revolutionary socialism
Louis wrote: B-52's raining Volkswagen size bombs on peasant villages recruited me to socialism, not elegant descriptions of the benefits of a future world. I do not see how the one need exclude the other, and it really avoids the question of what would recruit young people to socialism these days anyway. The very term recruiting is problematic, because this suggests that people are being conscripted into a military service under a Marx commander, a Marxist boss. And this is one of the factors which gave rise to autonomism in the first place. People search for forms of association which are no longer ruled by people who claim to have all the answers in advance, whether religious or secular, but who through respect for dialogue and individuality can show the benefits of joint work. They reject grand narratives not because they necessarily hate grand narratives or disagree with them, but rather because they cannot find a place for themselves in those grand narratives - the big story wasn't developed from their story, but somebody wanted to impose a big story on their story. What I think you really need to understand is why somebody would become a politically organised socialist in the first place. If you disregard the labels, there are in the USA literally millions of unconscious socialists - they live their lives in conformity with principles which can only be described as Marxist, class conscious or socialist etc. even if they do not call it that. There is little point in lecturing these people on calling things by the politically correct names, as you might as idealist in a university, which is indeed likely to be counterproductive for ordinary folks, rather, the challenge is how you could get them to cooperate in a way which both benefits them, and has a real effect. If you recognise that this is the problem, then you can begin to make an analysis which really answers that problem. But a dogmatic, sectarian stance cannot solve it. It cannot even frame the problem. In the 40-60,000 strong Dutch Socialist Party (even if in your terms it is reformist), it is recognised that the motivational structures different groups of potential socialists is different, they are interpellated by different themes. Thus, an honest socialist, leftist or Marxist would say: I believe that the most important priority for me is to work on such-and-such a theme, issue or problem with such-and-suc a group, but I also realise, that this does not exclude the preoccupations of other socialists, who may be interested in quite different topics from me. There is room for everybody, we just try to find a place for everybody. The objection to that is, well how then can you have a unified political organisation, instead of a loose, hotch-potch coalition, never mind a virile, disciplined bolshevik party, steeled in relentless struggle, headed by Louis Proyect or Jack Barnes ? And the answer to that is basically, that you have to affirm the validity of what people are already doing, and demonstrate how they could work together more effectively, in a way that is really beneficial to them, as well as having a real political effect. So the true political organiser in that sense is constantly searching for common themes which can unify people to work together, based on an overall plan. S/he establishes himself as leader only only through really showing the way. I do not not pretend to do this correctly, I am not so strong or competent you know, my abilities or initiatives were wrecked in two countries so far. But the American Left - it doesn't even have any plan, an agenda for American socialism in the 21st century. Reciting texts from James Cannon ain't going to help solving those problems, and that is why today the American radicals in their majority do not get significantly beyond Green party politics. Jurriaan
Re: corporations/More Side Issue
Charles asked: How do you avoid touching during sex ? Must be quite a trick. This is a slightly "schizo" answer maybe, but I would say, it could happen in a dream. John Lennon explains this as follows in his track #9 Dream, as follows: On a river of soundThru the mirror go round, roundI thought I could feel (feel, feel, feel)Music touching my soul, something warm, sudden coldThe spirit dance was unfolding. When as Annie Lennox sings "your crumbling world falls apart", then all you have left is a dream and a pocketful of mumbles. But, you could also think of it more soberly in terms of one of the besttracks by the band Blondie: When I met you in the restaurant You could tell I was no debutante You asked me what's my pleasure; "A movie or a measure"? I'll have a cup of tea, and tell you of my dreaming Dreaming is free I don't want to live on charity Pleasure's real, or is it fantasy? Real to real is living rarity People stop and stare at me, we just walk on by We just keep on dreaming Feet, feet, walking a two mile Meet meet, meet me at the turnstile I never met him, I'll never forget him Dream, dream, even for a little while Dream, dream, filling up an idle hour Fade away, radiate I sit by, and watch the river flow I sit by, and watch the traffic go Imagine something of your very own; something you can have and hold I'd build a road in gold, just to have some dreaming Dreaming is freeSee further:http://www.marx2mao.org/Lenin/GNA21.htmlhttp://www.russiangifts4less.com/Jurriaan
Re: Reply to Louis Proyect on revolutionary socialism - rejoinder
This is a very good point. The appeal of autonomism is that you can call yourself a revolutionary without actually forming organizations and taking responsibility for anything. This was also the appeal of the New Left in the 1960s. But, with due respect, even there I think you are mistaken. Autonomists often form very extensive networks and, certainly, here in Amsterdam the Autonoom Centrum is a definite organising post. See for yourself at http://www.xs4all.nl/~ac/ . In the New Zealand unemployed rights movement there were also many good people who were autonomists that you could learn a lot from. If it had not been for this Centre in Amsterdam, many people here would have been dead or sick, and that is not a small thing, at least not for me, because I have to be concerned, above all else, with life. The autonomists also take an active role in championing the cause of immigrants unjustifiably deported from this country. You might not necessarily win a car through autonomism, but that doesn't mean much of their work isn't extremely valuable. I'm not disparaging them at all, and I don't think I ever have, I've only just had some specific arguments with some autonomists sometimes, about points of theory. But heck, a lot of them are far more capable than I am, that's the reality. If I were to write a critique of the autonomists, I would do it by tackling the issue that they feel is their very strongest case. But why ? I see no political point in it whatsoever at this time. I prefer to criticise ideas which I believe are an obstacle to my own political program, real opponents, but even if they are real opponents, this doesn't necessarily mean they do not deserve respect, and that aside, I have to keep firmly in mind what the purpose of criticism is, otherwise I will slide into critical criticism which is easy to do, if I do not watch out. In saying this, I don't want to posture as more politically correct than you are. I am saying it only because I strongly believe it is an ABC principle of any effective politics. Jurriaan
The ABC of sectarianism
Since my time as Education student, I have frequently pondered the phenomenon of sectarianism. Here's my thoughts, for the record: 1. ORIGINS Sectarianism refers to mistaken and stunted attitudes to politics, real social movements and human relations. The point of departure of sectarians is basically idealist. Idealism has its source in the development of ideas in abstraction from practical experience, and removed from an adequate disciplining of mental schemes by practical experience. This leads to continual overestimation and underestimation, exaggerated expectations and unjustified disappointments, a superpoliticisation (every trivial thing seems to have a political significance). Sectarianism escapes from the real dance of life, and being outside it, cannot grasp the real motivation of the dancers. Projection, addiction, transference, paranoia and a whole bag of pathological phenomena therefore follow. It's a sort of infection. The roots of this idealism are in the division of labor between thinkers and doers, and in superspecialisation and overgeneralisation from experience, i.e. from malabstractions (one-sidedness) created by a specific position in life which is not fully understood, in the sense that the precise limits which that position implies for thought, are not fully understood. Already here, it is clear that sectarianism is incompatible with scientific activity and contradicts it. Postmodernist culture can make that worse, because it starts to draw into question what science is, and provides new justifications providing a new cover or new outlets for sectarian practices. The idealism encourages the sectarians to believe they have already discovered the solution to the problems of their constituency in an idea. This solution is elaborated as a doctrine or set of principles, ultimately with a universal application; all problems can be assimilated to a unitary set of concepts of categories, from which any solution can be computed to any problem. The abstractive or deductive process involved consists largely of making analogies (logical, non-logical or arbitrary associations) between a new situation and the theoretically envisaged situation or precedent, for which the sectarian already claims to have computed a solution in advance. This stops real thinking, and avoids an exploration of different ways of obtaining knowledge. In turn, this implies an overextension of theory in a way which cannot be scientific, because (1) scientific theory always specifies the limits of the application of a theory, (2) develops its theory from the object of that theory experientially, i.e. pursues the growth of knowledge through a competition between rival theories, in their confrontation with the same experiential evidence. For the scientist, theory is a means to an end. For the sectarian, there is a certainty to be found in theory or doctrine itself, because theory has become a faith, and therefore an end in itself. Its function has changed. 2. CONSOLIDATION This ideational basis of the sectarian is then consolidated in an organisation of people who agree with that ideational basis. Obviously, any political innovator must go through a propaganda stage, an advertising stage if you like, in order to get a hearing for his or her ideas and attract support, to sway people. But what exactly does the sectarian seek to persuade people of, and how does he do it ? They want to persuade people of the intrinsic validity and superiority of an idea, held to be the only correct idea, which is indispensable for advancing the objectives of their claimed constituency. That can work well in a university context, a workplace, a musical group, or a church. But in real power politics, it easily produces sectarianism, because it makes participation in a group conditional on acceptance of the idea and the rejection of any idea incompatible with it. The sectarian implicitly or explicitly looks on life as a great school with himself as a teacher or preacher in it. Healthy thought would take lived experience as its point of departure, and always return to it. But the sectarian lives in a sphere of ready-made formulas and slogans, supported by texts and authorities. The gap between ideas and real experience that results, and the lack of a method to bring them together, means that the sectarian constantly has to make his ideas more precise, and thus constantly talks about clarity. He might say it's clear that... but in reality, it is as clear as a bloody Mary. Sectarians like to have discussions along these lines, but the more he discusses, the more what has to be done escapes him. He is like a man who satisfies his thirst with salt water; the more he drinks, the thirstier he becomes (Lev Trotsky) Of course, there are millions of different ideas held by people in a community, and often they clash. The sectarian is convinced his idea is superior, and he wants to win other people to that idea. But what does winning people to an idea
Re: Observations on the Socialist Scholars Conference
about two months before the Russian revolution Lenin apparently wrote to Krupskaya and said that they were not being able to see any socialist revolution in their lifetime! That's true as far as I know. Roman Rosdolsky actually published a really interesting piece on this topic, about the role of the individual in relation to revolutionary processes (in Kritik). Unfortunately it is in German, I haven't translated it. I have a copy of it somewhere, I'll post the ref later. Relax don't do it When you want to go to it Relax don't do it When you want to come Relax don't do it When you want to come When you want to come - Frankie goes to Hollywood, Relax.
Re: Reply to Louis Proyect on revolutionary socialism
There are going to be bosses. Leadership or being boss means you have accepted - one way or another, responsibility to do something. Okay, so now there are going to be bosses. The question raised however is: how do they become bosses, by what process ? How do they establish their leadership ? To explicate the problem simply, let's just take you and me in an ordinary managerial situation. I propose, for example, something like this: 1) Melvin, I am your boss and you got to do what I say, just do it, don't ask me why, this is a matter on unquestioning obedience in the great cause which we share. Remember Joe Stalin. or: 2) Melvin, you're my guy, you are a leader, I want you to lead these people, because I know you will succeed, I have every confidence in your ability to lead. or: 3) Melvin, you're the boss and I haven't a clue, I am at a loss, I want you to tell me what to do, and whatever you say, I am going to do exactly what you say, and nothing else. or: 4) Melvin, I think we have both one half of the truth. We got to talk, maybe we ought to go back to school, but we need each other anyhow to get the full picture here. or: 5) Melvin, today you've been the boss telling the story, but tomorrow I need to be the boss, because your competency is not relevant to this job. or: 6) Melvin, whatever happens, you've got to defend me and guard my ass, because if we fail, we're both in deep shit. or: 7) Melvin, whatever you do, whatever you say, I will always support and defend you, no matter what happens. This is true love here. or 8) Melvin, you're an okay guy, but I cannot see how we could every cooperate on anything. There is no way we can be friends, ever. 9) Melvin, things have turned out different then I thought, and we cannot do what we said we were going to do, we have to do something different. I don't know how you are going to do it, but you have to explain to our people we have to do something else. 10) Melvin, you said this and did that, now people are up in arms about it, I don't how the hell I am going to solve this, you have to give me a clue, I'm the wally here. How are you going to respond to this kinda stuff ? I'd be interested to know. Also raise the thing to a higher level and imagine all these questions are coming at you at the same time from different people. How are you going to deal with it ? Jurriaan
Re: Reply to Louis Proyect on revolutionary socialism
Peter, Thanks for your comment, which is encouraging. I've never really had any despair about political prospects or the lack of them. I don't care about that, it's none of my concern. For most of the 1980s and some years in the 1990s I was involved in various groups and campaigns on and off. But I didn't have any expectations of political success, I was just trying to find out stuff for myself about the meaning of success. I despair only about my own inadequacies, one has these moods, but that's just a personal, subjective thing, I don't propose to project that on the world or on other people. You can get oodles of people who project their own pathology onto you, and then it takes a very thick skin to shrug that off, because some insults go very deep, they go to the bone, to the heart, they dehumanise. Sometimes I just think, cannot be bothered anymore, kick the bucket, but all things must pass, including the worst. I have never disparaged the WSF, I don't see any point in that, I just try to figure out what it's about, or why people would set up an alternative conference to it, what the political basis of it is, and so on. However, I don't really believe in the buzzword of globalisation other than the world is round, hot air, etc. and conferences are not really my thing except for a few specific purposes. I might could talk about cloud shapes, it's wonderful to lie down on your back and look at the changing cloud shapes, but saying that I could infer what the world is thinking and doing from cloud shapes is a bit like reading tea leaves. Other people say if the talk is about globalisation, you should be talking about it, but I don't, I just say hot air, the world is round, etc. The obverse of sectarianism is an exaggerated concern with anti-sectarianism, whereas it's best just to disregard sectarians as much as possible since giving attention only feeds the sectarians whatever they cannot get from anywhere else. You will get these people who try to prove how unsectarian they are, they want to expose sectarians to prove how unsectarian they are. Anti-sectarianism can be a cover for opportunist tail endism and vagueness. Then you have to stand back and look at the big picture, and not get flushed away by a political maelstrom, where you're running behind events and just being reactive. Main thing with the WSF is: we can all agree, that another world is possible, all 6.2 billion of us. But now what ? What follows from this ? Are we just testifying to the faith ? What is the soul of this gathering ? Personally, I spent more time trying to figure out what the Davos conference people were thinking and doing, but I've seen few leftists publish on it (I haven't either, because I didn't finish what I was working on). I see the Internet as a means for sharing ideas, but not really as a major organisational tool in the political sense. I suppose it depends what you take organisation to be about. I know people who get very sophisticated in their Internet use and can achieve a considerable temporal compression as a result. And temporal consciousness is everything, if you want to organise. People try to wreck your species activity, you end up with a temporal problem, a relaxation problem and all sorts of problems. I have other things to contend with meantime, and I just use the Net mainly to share ideas and get answers. Especially when you've had problems with having your views misrepresented, it's a good device to state what you think, in a way which cannot be misconstrued and is on record for everybody. Regards Jurriaan
Re: Will the oil run out ? Reflections from a layman
1) On the global level, the U.S. wields control over the oil wells for some time to come and this would place it in a better competitive position vis-à-vis partners in the Western World. But is that really true ? My understanding is that the US controls SOME of the oil resource but not ALL of the oil resource. Jurriaan
Re: Will the oil run out ? Reflections from a layman
I didn't catch the earlier part of this thread, but what scale are we talking here? The world's largest oil producer is Russia. World scale. I get back to you about this later. I got my times mixed up and came to early this morning for my appointment, tut tut. Got to go now, J. -Original Message- From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 12:41:45 +0100 Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Will the oil run out ? Reflections from a layman 1) On the global level, the U.S. wields control over the oil wells for some time to come and this would place it in a better competitive position vis--vis partners in the Western World. But is that really true ? My understanding is that the US controls SOME of the oil resource but not ALL of the oil resource. Jurriaan
Re: What is this thing called love?
Personally, I often think that love is smoking your last cigarette, and knowing that you'll never smoke again, because your are faced with something fantastic (or have something fantastic in your face) which makes that you don't want to smoke anymore. My hunch is that human awareness is best categorised in terms of subconscious, subjective, intersubjective, objective, reality-transforming, and transcendent (these forms build on each other). Different facets of love apply to each of those forms of awareness. But as I suggested, love is contained in practices and relations involved in interchanges between people - acts of giving, getting, receiving and taking (which, in a market economy, become to an extent reified). Forms of awareness mediated those interchanges, but those interchanges go beyond that awareness, such being the limitations of human consciousness. On that foundation, I could devise a praxiological theory of love and so on, which explicates all the different permutations there are. But, you can analyse that and bore that to death, and such a theory would be only as satisfactory as the ability to implement the theory; and in my experience, it is possible to theorise far more than you can put into practice, i.e. a scholar can have far too much theory, making his practice one-sided, just as a practicist can have far too much practice and not enough theory, making his practice also one-sided. That aside, the transcendent part of human awareness cannot be theorised using logical operators, it can at most be named, but even the naming is not free from multiple interpretations or alternative namings, so, it is kind of poetic. A mystical statement is a statement the object of which is indefinite, hence prone to paradoxes which refer to the contradictions in human experience. Thus, the Koran suggests that whereas poets have their role, you shouldn't think that poetry can substitute for other forms of awareness, especially in regard to leadership (to get the full flavour of the idea you really have to follow the Arabic, but I do not understand Arabic). I just got back from a trip to the Bijlmer which was enjoyable, and you could see a lot of love there, in fact quite a few people were smiling, unusual for Amsterdam, except on holidays, when it's sunny. As I got back home, one of my neighbours said in passing, you're naive. Which probably I am in certain aspects (I don't know to which part of my behaviour he was referring, the interview, talking to particular people, or not picking up a girl, or something like that). It's a funny culture here really, because people are both very judgemental and very tolerant, i.e. both strong opinions and live-and-let-live. There's always supposed to be something wrong with me, especially since I rarely join in Dutch culture these days (because I often experience it as rather harsh, corrupt, criminal, heartless and exploitative if I get hypersensitive; I don't like the Dutch circuses either). Dutch people like to think about what other people deserve or do not deserve, whereas I am thinking about dessert. Probably as regards pop music, the love song I like the best is a very simple, calm and modest number John Lennon wrote, called straightforwardly Love (very literal, rather than metaphoric), which has terrific harmonics in it, from a musical point of view (I actually like a version of it done by a female singer better, she has a fuller, more modulated voice, larger tonal range, more conviction, pathos and dignity in it, but I have forgotten who it was, I saw it on TV once; it's difficult to sing, so it actually sounds good rather than pathetic). At that time he wrote it, JL had been doing his Primal Scream stuff with Dr Arthur Janov, trying to get his pain out through the vocal chords, so his singing wasn't the best anyhow, rather raw. Ah wel, you tend to like the music you grew up with, that is really anchored in your experience. Arguably pop music is about sex, not about love, but really pop music is mostly about whatever is popular, I would think, and the themes change. Jurriaan
International politics update: three Dutch MNCs back Bush campaign financially
In the latest copy of Revu (p. 8), Henk Willem Smits mentions that KPMG, Fortis and Philips are supporting the Bush campaign, contributing $400,000, $119,000 and $34,000 respectively. KPMG said that the US branch had made an autonomous decision. Likewise, Fortis said an independent decision was made by the US subsidiary. Philips said 23,000 employees of the US arm had themselves collected the funds, emphasising Phillips corporation itself doesn't support political parties. So anyway now it's clear who is supporting whom here. It would be a remarkable feat in US political history if Bush couldn't purchase enough votes with his capital in the electoral market, and thus lose the presidential vote - just imagine all that lovely money spent for nothing. Meanwhile a sprightly blonde sexworker walking her three white poodles here in Amsterdam told me off yesterday for trying to give money to a beggar, on the ground that the beggar would just spend it on drugs. Ain't life amazing. I think I'll settle for poetry tonight. Jurriaan
Spotting the error: the Jackson breast, statistical fallacy and women's health
February 12 2004 Cleavage Among the Voters? USA Today's poll on Jackson's breast baring We usually think that spotting an error in a professionally administered poll takes some extra degree of training, or some knowledge of higher math. But sometimes spotting a major problem in a poll published by usually reputable news organizations is unbelievably easy. Take a poll published in USA Today on Wednesday, which reported that 55 percent of Americans who watched the Super Bowl half-time show were not personally offended by the baring of Janet Jackson's breast, and that 45 percent were. It seems like a distinct split - but the poll also had a margin of error of +/- 5 points. People often don't realize that the margin of error applies to all the percentages given in a poll, and that it can work in either direction. So, really, the USA Today poll shows a statistical dead heat: the percentage not offended could be as low as 50 percent, the percent offended could be as high as 50. The poll's results are still meaningful, but only to show how ambivalent America is about seeing Jackson's breasts on TV - not how divided. http://www.stats.org/logentrybrowse.jsp?type=logentrydate=trueorderby=date +desclimit=11start=0 In 1994, an epidemiological study on the relationship between induced abortion and breast cancer risk, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, [FN2] made national headlines. [FN3] Dr. Janet Daling and a team of researchers at Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center reported that [a]mong women who had been pregnant at least once, the risk of breast cancer in those who had experienced an induced abortion was 50% higher than among other women. [FN4] When women underwent abortions before the age of eighteen or at age thirty or older, the study found more than a twofold (150%, or 110% higher, respectively) increase in risk. [FN5] Since an average American woman's lifetime risk of developing breast cancer is already about twelve percent, [FN6] a twofold increase would imply an absolute effect [FN7] from a single *1597 induced abortion that is comparable to the risk of lung cancer from long-term, heavy smoking. [FN8] The Daling study is just one of many published since 1957 showing a statistical link between induced abortion and the occurrence of breast cancer. http://www.johnkindley.com/wisconsinlawreview.htm
Of democracy and dead cattle
Jim wrote: so that the dominated groups can dominate. Dominate what, or what sense ? (if you like word puzzles and poetry, in Dutch, dominate = domineren, cryptologically containing the words dom (=dumb), dominee (=church minister), nee (=no), ren (=run). neren is also close to nieren (=kidneys). Dominate is obviously not the same as dominant, since one can dominate without being dominant. To me, the interesting question about democracy is always, how specifically the majority can rule effectively so that an optimal allocation of resources would actually result. One could of course always say, that one is in favour of democracy, but this in itself may not mean very much because the specifics are important - it may be that it's always me who is democratic, whereas the other guy is undemocratic. For quite some time, the bourgeois ideology has been that the market is always democratic, and that the market is the only basis for democracy; you cannot have democracy without markets. But the question then is, how specifically markets could be compatible with, or promote democracy. Market power is in the final instance dependent on buying power, but if buying power is very unequally distributed, how then can democracy really assert itself at all ? This question is becoming very urgent in the upcoming US elections, since there is a gigantic disparity between the campaign financing of the various candidates (in many European countries, such a gigantic disparity could never exist, because legislation prevents it). The wealthiest candidates might of course argue, that it doesn't matter how much money you have, because the one-man-one-vote principle means, that no matter how much money you have, you might still lose. In reality, however, it's the specifics of how democracy actually functions, which is important. Leaving aside rigging and Gerrymandering, the one-man-one-vote principle might actually be undone by the fact that one man with market power is worth a thousand other men. If it is true, that the majority is not always correct in its opinions or behaviour, then the question is, how the majority could impose checks and balances on the minority, in such a way that, if the minority in fact happens to be correct, and the majority is wrong, the minority could become the majority, within a specific time-span which would permit an optimal allocation of resources anyhow rather than creating a catastrophe. The epistemic requirement here seems to be, that of a genuinely open society in which alternative views are not just tolerated, but also that it is clearly and honestly understood precisely how/why they are alternative, so that it is possible (1) to acknowledge, who was in truth really correct, and who was really wrong and (2) act constructively on that insight. It seems that this epistemic requirement can be satisfied only if there is a genuine open dialogue possible through commonly held information channels accessible to all.' Here's a clip from Hahani Lazim, a member of Iraqi Democrats Against Occupation: Strife between ordinary Sunni and Shia Muslims has never been a major feature of Iraqi history. But, when Iraq in its modern form was established in 1920, the British rulers chose to favour a section of society. This is an old imperialist trick. They promoted a small minority, pushing them to power and helping them to keep their privileges. This minority then feels that its privilege depends on the imperialist power. (...) Iraq is one of the poorest countries in the world now. That is not just because of Saddam. Iraq was destroyed through sanctions - one of the greatest crimes in history. Now a government has been imposed upon Iraq by the same people who imposed the sanctions. The other disaster faced by Iraqis is the spread of depleted uranium left over from weapons used by the occupying forces. This is a crime against humanity. Electricity in Baghdad is on for around 12 hours each day. Fuel is rationed-in a country swimming in oil. Iraq used to refine oil and export fuel. But the US have destroyed the refineries, so that companies like Halliburton can refine the oil, and sell it back to us at their prices. The US want to create a government in Iraq under their protection, which will allow US corporations to come in and monopolise everything. The US government has another sword on the neck of the Iraqis - the debts. These were built up during wars supported by the US. Under sanctions there was the oil for food programme. But under this programme, it was prohibited to pay interest on Iraq's debts. So it kept accumulating. A third of Iraq's income had to go to other countries like Kuwait, because of the 1991 invasion. Where is the compensation for Palestine or Lebanon, when Israel went in and destroyed these countries? When they see US patrols, Iraqi people look through the troops as if they don't exist. If they were welcome, the Iraqis would at least make eye contact. The troops are just seen as unwanted
Re: Observations on the Socialist Scholars Conference
what sense does it make to proclaim revolutionary socialism today? The estimable Ernest Mandel once drafted an article on revolutionary politics in a non-revolutionary situation (he never published it I think), and indeed there was a real question there which needed to be answered. How specifically could you be revolutionary, if there was no revolutionary prospect, or development ? What actually do you do ? Wouldn't revolutionary talk just be a sectarian, irrelevant rhetoric ? This focuses the meaning of revolutionary activity, the aegis which, if I recall correctly, Lenin said would encompass all forms of activity seeking to alleviate oppressive conditions suffered by human subjects, and all forms to overcome them. Thus, in a sense, the revolutionary movement must build itself through tackling all the real problems which people actually confront in their lives. They do not live for the revolution, they live for today, or for their children, and so on. What then could make a constructive difference in their lives, that could focus the need for a revolutionary transformation ? Well, I cannot remember what exactly Ernest actually wrote about it (I do not think I located the manuscript itself, only the title) but, presumably it would mean that you would try to shift the balance of political power to strengthen the political position of the revolutionary class, the revolutionary subject hypothesised to be able to carry through the revolutionary transformation, as much and as fast as possible, on the basis of a specific analysis and political assessment of which groups and tendencies currently represent the avant garde of the movement. In that case, the real problem is that you cannot make that assessment, unless you are really involved in the politics of it, i.e. a personal engagement. And, you also have to live your own life at the same time, as a specific person limited by a specific history. Isaac Deutscher remarks how, in an epoch of crisis of revolutionary proportions, we can see with hindsight that history fashions the human material adequate to the tasks posed by history. But for Marx and Engels, we should not transpose the past to the present. History does nothing, possesses no enormous wealth, fights no battles. It is rather man, the real, living man, who does everything, possesses, fights. It is not History, as if she were a person apart, who uses men as a means to work out her purposes, but history itself is nothing but the activity of people pursuing their aims. (The Holy Family). In that case, revolutionary activity would have to be vitally concerned with the human subject, refashioning the human subject in way which points towards revolution. And you may find yourself, living in a shotgun shack And you may find yourself, in another part of the world And you may find yourself, behind the wheel of a large automobile And you may find yourself, in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife And you may ask yourself - Well...How did I get here? Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down Letting the days go by, water flowing underground Into the blue again, after the money's gone Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground. And you may ask yourself How do I work this? And you may ask yourself Where is that large automobile? And you may tell yourself This is not my beautiful house! And you may tell yourself This is not my beautiful wife! Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down Letting the days go by, water flowing underground Into the blue again, after the money's gone Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground. Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was... Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was... Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was... Water dissolving...and water removing There is water at the bottom of the ocean Carry the water at the bottom of the ocean Remove the water at the bottom of the ocean! And you may ask yourself What is that beautiful house? And you may ask yourself Where does that highway go? And you may ask yourself Am I right?...Am I wrong? And you may tell yourself MY GOD!...WHAT HAVE I DONE? - from Talking Heads, Once in a lifetime, from the album Remain in Light.
Re: Observations on the Socialist Scholars Conference
Revolutionary socialism contrasts with reformist socialism that believes in changing capitalism so as to socialise certain aspects of the system to distribute wealth and power somewhat more equitably and tomake capitalism more responsive to the needs of everyone and specifically the worst off e.g. universal healthcare, minimum wages, environmental controls, etc etc. but not doing away with the private property in the means of production or with profit as an engine of production. That might be true as a generality. But the real problem is, how you could make a qualitative difference to people's real lives at any given time. Marxist schematism just talks abstract verities about revolution versus reform and so on, but reality is, that if you study people's real lives, half the time when they are not seeking some pleasure they're just trying to cope with problems which are bigger than they are, and which grind them down. Unless one can make a revolutionary difference to that situation, these people cannot be revolutionary subjects, and they cannot revolutionise their circumstances. In what some regard as the birth certificate of historical materialism, Marx thus writes: The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by people, and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing, can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice. The changing of people and the changing of circumstances thus occurs in a single act, in a unitary process, through which people revolutionise themselves, while they try to revolutionise their circumstances. My tea's gone Cold, I'm wonderin' Why 'got out of bed at all. Mornin' rain Clouds out my window. and I can't see at all. Even if I could, it would all be Gray, but your Picture's on my wall: it reminds me that it's not so bad, it's not so bad drank too much last night, got bills to pay my head just feels in pain missed the bus again, and there'll be hell today late for work, again. Even if I'm there, they'll all imply, that I might not last today, but then you called me, then it's not so bad, not so bad and I-I want to thank you, for giving me, the best day of my life and Lord, just to be with you, is giving me, the best day of my life. Push the door, I'm home at last and soakin' through and through then you handed me a towel and all I'll see is you. Even if my house falls down, and I wouldn't have a clue because you're with me Chorus repeat x2 - Dido, Best day of my life Jurriaan
Re: Corporations
that investors find the limitation of liability an attractive feature. What is wrong with that view? Wrong in what sense - moral culpability, economic benefits or private interest ? The search in on for new legal forms to offload costs and losses. LLCs provide tax and managerial advantages. J.
The idiocy of Israeli fascism
A new species of officer is achieving greatness in the Israel Defense Forces. These people did most of their service as occupation officers, and their excellence is a function of the degree of violence and brutality they exercise against the Palestinians. The most striking example of this trend is Brigadier General Gadi Shamni, a graduate of Lebanon and Hebron, who last week concluded his tour of duty as commander of the Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip and was promoted to head of the Operations Division in the General Staff, a post which is a major step on the way to becoming a major general. The promotion of an officer of this type speaks volumes about the IDF's value system and its order of priorities, far more than what it says about Shamni himself. Perhaps not since the days when Ariel Sharon was a serving major general has the Gaza Strip seen an officer as violent, as boastful and as brutal as General Shamni. If Shamni's predecessor, Brigadier General Yisrael Ziv, only mounted numerous useless operations against the lathes of Gaza, which also resulted in nothing more than unnecessary bloodshed but didn't prevent the firing of Qassam rockets at Israeli targets, along came Shamni and initiated a series of showcase operations - totally pointless and only generated even more killing. In the last of these operations, the one that resulted in the killing of 15 Palestinians last week, Shamni even articulated a new IDF doctrine: stimulus and response. The purpose of the operation, it was reported, was to stimulate the armed individuals to come out and then kill them off. This method, which led to the killing of innocent people, including children, drew no critical reaction. No one asked why every armed Palestinian is marked for death and why it's necessary to stimulate armed people in Gaza altogether. Shamni decided, executed and was promoted. Some in the IDF also explained that the latest operation was actually meant to be a farewell party on the eve of the ceremony of the handover of command. Text at: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/404272.html
Re: Critique of Louis Proyect, on the topic of socialist scholars
Just to reply quickly to Louis's points: 1. To begin with, there was absolutely nothing about Venezuela or Haiti - two of the more important hot spots in the world today. Reply: Best to concentrate on what is there, not on what is not there. Louis underestimates very much the attack of Richard Pipes-type neo-conservative Stalinism on the academic freedom of thought, the academic freedom of expression and the academic free inquiry. Most, if not all, of those socialist scholars at the conference would oppose foreign subversion in Haiti and Venezuela, but this does necessarily mean that they are in a position where they can speak about that publicly. Louis sees socialist academics are part of the problem, rather than part of the solution, and therefore, he cannot solve the organisational question in this specific area either. 2. Discussions of imperialism and the world economy are becoming more and more a centerpiece of such gatherings. (...) Is the patient healthy? Is GDP rising? Reply: I've predicted that for years, and had planned to publish on that by now, except, I was politically a bit naive about the capacity of racist imperialism to really wreck my own life, assisted by eggheads claiming to be scientific or artistic. And I was not even talking about Venezuela or Haiti or anything. Louis is correct, many of these scholarly people do not know what the questions really are, or what the point of the theory is. There I agree with him. Nevertheless, much of their work is extremely valuable. Louis's problem here really is, that he is always looking for the most radical position from within the socialist camp. This causes a perceptual distortion, since statistically, people at such a conference are already more radical or more advanced in their thinking at least, than the majority of the US population. If Louis wants to tell other people what to do their research on, or how to do their research, that's okay, but then he has to explain why. 3. Entirely missing from these discussions is the all important question of what is to be done. Reply: I don't see what Louis's problem is here. It's quite clear what is to be done, and most of those scholars are doing it. What else do you expect a socialist scholar to do, except scholarly research in his field of interest ? The question is how you could help them, in doing what they are already doing, better. As regards What is to be done, this is an activist question. There is absolutely no way, that a scholar can solve the political problem of organisation, except for himself or herself personally, at most he could contribute to that problem. theoretically, or in terms of empirical research. A scholar cannot be also an political activist, or at least, not all of the time, otherwise no scholarship and teaching would get done. In addition scientific integrity limits the possibilities for political activity. The real challenge is to see how you can utilise the contributions of researchers and their research (what they are already doing), and if you can link them (1) to other researchers in their area of interest, and (2) to people who are appropriately placed to benefit from that research, and who are also prepared to defend those researchers in their academic position (since anti-imperialist and anti-elitist scholars get purged by neo-conservative-type Stalinism). What Louis needs to understand is that people like Horowitz, Pipes etc. really represent the indigenous American Stalinism, and that they are very prepared to justify the murder of far more people than Stalin even if officially they deny this. That is, Louis underestimates just how anti-human, reactionary and racist the neoconservatives are. In a certain sense, Louis is too good to understand how bad the neoconservatives are. 4. When it comes to activism, the SSC gives heavy representation to open enemies of classical Marxism. Reply: Classical Marxism doesn't really exist anyway and never existed. That was just a typology which the honourable menshevik Isaac Deutscher had, which does not truly apply to historical realities if you really know about them. It's more a sort of studenty myth Trotskyists and Cliffites have made about the glory days of socialism, without understanding the real dialectic of ideas and material reality. Just because Chris Harman publishes a book about the real Marxist tradition doesn't mean it is true, you are much better off listening to a Tori Amos CD. If Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg and other golden oldies are being attacked, the question is not whether this is sacrilege, but rather whether or not the attack is valid, is not valid, or is irrelevant. Suppose that in reality the dillemma was not socialism or barbarism, but the victory of socialism, or the victory of Marx. Which then would you choose ? Of course ! You would choose the victory of socialism. Who cares about whether Marx was correct or not, if we can have a real egalitarian, non-violent and free society ? 5.
Re: Derivatives
I think it was good of Juriann Bendian to raise it, and bad for Sabri to curtly dismiss his effort as a bad essay without any explanation except derivative are dangerous (indeed) and to invite me to kiss his sweet cheeks for pursuing the thread. Don't worry about that. Sabri is really talking about something different. Sabri is a good guy anyhow. Sometimes he just overemphasises his need to be Turkish, that is all. J.
Re: Derivatives
a) prohibit the $130 trillion trade in derivatives altogether. It is not a $130 trillion trade in derivatives, if you want to be precise. The trade is a contractual assurance exchanged for a fee. That BIS estimate, refers to the value of the underlying asset (tangible or financial), which is itself not part of the trade. The actual appropriation of gross income from hedge contracts would be more like a tenth of that value, but even if that is correct, the amount is still astronomically and gigantically big. It means many things, e.g. that the deregulation is not just lucrative, but also raises total costs from the point of total social capital and that it adds to the capital which is tied up in activities which do not create additional employment. The topic of derivatives is extremely important to understand from the point of view of how the bourgeoisie aims to solve the world debt crisis. Financialisation means that you can transfer the financial burden of asset ownership to somewhere else in space-time, that is the point. People do not understand the significance of derivatives, also, because they do not understand the gigantic difference between currencies in rich countries and in poor countries. Even a value of US$1 billion is a gigantic, astronomical amount, from the point of view of poor countries, as regards real buying power. With that sort of money, you can have a gigantic effect in poor countries. Suppose that you would revalue food imports into the USA according to price norms applied by American food producers. The difference would be gigantic. At the moment in India, derivatives are being used as an instrument to encourage primitive accumulation, no less. It is better than selling kidneys, of course. Naturally my friend Melvin would dispute all this, but yep, in the real world it's happening. In the old days, you might go to the pawnshop, but these days, there is a derivatives pawnshop and it's global. What used to be called pawning is now called derivatives or another fancy label, but the important thing to understand is that pawning could now occur on a very large scale, in fact, it is possible to pawn a whole country financially. The development/underdevelopment discussions in the haute bourgeoisie are in truth different from what Marxists think they are. J.
Re: corporations/More Side Issue
One of the problems with a capitalist society (or, more generally, a commodity-producing one) is that market competition encourages rampant individualism and instrumentalism, undermining the needed fellow-feeling and trust. A problem I think is that many leftist politico's think that solidarity is just about that fellow-feeling and trust, even although they do nothing to actually create that fellow-feeling and trust within their own ranks. I would say that is this is one of the most basic reasons why rightwing people are often more successful. Personally, I've had the experience of getting more work done in a church, than in a Marxist meeting. J.
Re: Derivatives
That's because he is in exile. Yes, I knew that. My own exile is more self-imposed, to the extent that, after what happened to me, basically I just want to shut a lot of stuff out, so that I concentrate better on saying and doing what I mean, and not what I do not mean, or what other people think I should mean etc. (but this is just difficult for me, and it is difficult for me to relax correctly, and so on). From my point of view, Sabri is a very skilled guy, with whom I'd share a lot of interests and philosophies, I'm sure. At least he's interested in things like love and poetry. I met Sungur Savran once, very impressive guy too, reading through things I realised there was a very sophisticated economic and political tradition in Turkey which I didn't know (but then I don't speak the language or anything either). From a scholarly point of view, I may take a different view about using statistical tools and game-theoretical tools, but that is just a trivial difference really, and anyway he's a better statistician and mathematician than I am (I am more interested anyway in the interpretation of aggregates, and only in a few specific mathematical issues) so little point in arguing on about that. J.
Re: Music 30-35,000 years ago
BBC World service this week featured a programme about drums quoting a Paul Barnes saying that the earliest evidence for human music making goes back 30-35 thousand years ago Well you shouldn't believe just any sort of sexed-up English story, you know. There's the serious side of the BBC and then there's the puberal side of it, as anyone knows, that's market forces. Neanderthals were already making music, i.e. probably twice as early as Barnes suggests. Anthropologically, the origin of language and music are very much related in human culture. Cognitively music and math are also closely related. A much better, thoughtprovoking site to consult (if you get bored with dumbdown culture) might be: http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/oct1983/v40-3-criticscorner1.htm Personally I am mostly just concerned with a few pop tunes at the moment, not profound musicological interests (although I have always taken my pop music very seriously; it's just that if music just becomes degraded to functional suck-and-fuck, or a mere sign, well then one just has to reframe music in a different way, for an interesting, enjoyable or creative effect). There is a lot of interesting literature on the use of music in workplaces, wars, and so on, i.e. the uses (and abuses) of music in politics, economics and regimes of accumulation (if I may use that awful term for want of a better word). But that sort of thing is far removed from the Neantherthal phase of musical enjoyment of course. What kind of tonalities are actually conducive to social amelioration in this crumbling postmodernist culture we live in ? It's an interesting question I think, although some idiot would probably trivialise and banalise that also. Jurriaan
Re: corporations, love, exchange and the philosophy of pop music
Why not simply say that human relationships are bound by love. After all, contracts are always conditional, whereas love is not. Let's have a think. This idea would possibly help to explain why many people disparage free love so much, as a dreamy hippy phenomenon, applying only to marginalised people, who just weren't brought up sexually in a correct way, and suffered from a post-war Dr Spock syndrome. But this liberal notion of course abstracts from the social relation within which that development occurs, concentrating on the isolated, possessive individual. If love is free, you cannot make money out of it, or obtain money from it; in addition, free love might indeed subvert moral-emotional principles, which depend on ideas of ownership, exclusivity and reciprocal obligation which are indispensable for: (1) private property boundaries (owning), (2) market transactions (distributing, through ownership transfer in exchanges) (3) capital accumulation (appropriation based on appropriation, i.e. cumulative appropriation) and (4) consumption (appropriation conditional on exchange). Certainly, love would seem to be best characterised as a life process, or practice, involving the interactions and relationships of giving, receiving, obtaining and taking, in which emotions, awareness and morality are necessarily implicated. This definition (often reflected in pop music, as young people try to work out what these relations are, how they really operate, and how you cope with them) would explain why love is so difficult to define, even if we can recognise, experience or feel love (incidentally, the indefatigable Marxist Ernest Mandel dedicated one of his books to his deceased wife, the journalist Gisela Scholtz (alias Martine Knoeller), for whom he said generosity was like breathing). It also means you could give too much or too little, take too much or to little, receive too much or too little, and so on. In fact, the equilibium equation for love might be difficult to reach, if indeed it could exist at all, rather than be a hypothetical state, or hypostasis. If love is unconditional or has no conditions, this implies (at least in some christian-type or Islamic-type cultures) an act of giving without any (immediate) reciprocation or expectation of reward. But if love is interpreted as a relation, process or practice, rather than simply a state of being or awareness, love may not be unconditional, because such an act of giving presupposes the non-existence of a scarcity, which would permit the giving to occur. Yet, there may be scarcity, and it might be not just a subjectively perceived, marginal utility-type scarcity or an anal-retentive type of scarcity perception, but an objective, materially imposed scarcity. Fact is, you cannot give something, if you don't have something to give, in the first instance. Conversely, the more you have, the more you are in a position to give. Hence, there may be an objective material basis for love; that is to say, to distribute love, it has to be created, and so long as human beings are not simply souls, but physical beings, living in a material world, that creation itself has material prequisites and sublimates. Furthermore, while unconditionally giving something might not in fact express love at all (as it might help somebody into hell, as when a mother smothers an infant), being able to unconditionally give something, might also mean a dissociation from any feelings involved. In Paris in 1844, Marx scribbled: Assume people to be human, and their relationship to the world to be a human one: then you can exchange love only for love, trust for trust, etc. If you want to enjoy art, you must be an artistically cultivated person; if you want to exercise influence over other people, you must be a person with a stimulating and encouraging effect on other people. Every one of your relations to people and to nature must be a specific expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real individual life. If you love without evoking love in return - that is, if your loving as loving does not produce reciprocal love; if through a living expression of yourself as a loving person you do not make yourself a beloved one, then your love is impotent - a misfortune. (MECW, Vol.3, p. 326, translation revised). In what Michael Perelman calls the perverse economy, the possibility for the permutations of exchange have become seemingly boundless, such that anything can trade against anything in an unlimited, relativistic postmodernist culture, which has its consequences for human development, because the trading process might in fact destroy more love than it creates, resulting in war. Specifically, the act of trading itself becomes viewed as a creative process, and creation becomes viewed as an act of trading, with the consequence that the production of love can no longer be distinguished from the appropriation or exchange of love. In that case, it may no longer be
Re: corporations, love, exchange and the philosophy of pop music - addition
Peter Drucker, the doyen of the management community, claims that 90 percent of all financial transactions in the world have no relationship with either production or trade [of tangible goods and services]. Drucker refers to this as the growth of the symbol economy (see Peter Drucker, The New Realities, London, 1989, p. 121; cited by Ankie Hoogvelt, Globalisation, Exclusion and the Politics of Resistance (1997), at: http://.vuw.ac.nz/atp/articles/hoogvelt_9704.html). Jurriaan
Jackass complaint, and the culmination of the perverse economy in Iraq
ROADSIDE BOMB Shakespeare wrote once that all's fair in love and war. Associated Press just now reports that in Tikrit, a roadside bomb killed two American soldiers and wounded three this Saturday. They were the first casualties suffered by a new US army regiment taking over security in Saddam Hussein's hometown, as part of a troop rotation in Iraq pulling out 130,000 troops, some of whom have been in Iraq since the March 2003 foreign invasion. The bomb damaged the troops' armoured Humvee, as they patrolled through downtown Tikrit at around 5 am, hours before the outgoing 4th Infantry Division's 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment handed over security duties from the 18th Infantry Regiment at a ceremony on Saturday. In the attack, gunmen reportedly opened fire on the rear vehicle in the three-Humvee patrol, then a bomb went off by the second Humvee. A Bradley fighting vehicle sped to the scene, spraying the area with machine gun fire. It is not known if any of the attackers sustained casualties. Afterwards, platoons fanned out through Tikrit searching for evidence, asking locals for information. Three wounded American soldiers were evacuated to a military hospital north of Tikrit, said 1st Infantry Division spokeswoman Major Debra Stewart. Roadside bombs are now the main threat to American soldiers on patrol in the Sunni Triangle. Saturday's deaths clocked the official death toll of American service members to 560, when counted from the start of military operations in Iraq. CONCERNS EXPRESSED Concerns have been expressed by the occupation forces, that insurgents might in fact infiltrate official Iraqi security forces. American troops said among other things, that they had discovered that four Iraqis and their translator, suspected of killing two civilians, later turned out to be in reality trained and active policemen. The victims were: (1) Ms. Fern Holland, 33 an Emma Peel-type lawyer from Oklahoma, who was employed in civilian duty by the Department of Defense, and served as an Iraqi interpreter. Ms. Holland grew up in Miami, Oklahoma and earned a law degree from TU. She worked on women's issues in the Hillah region, investigating human-rights violations, setting up conferences and centres, and assisting in writing up the women's rights section of the new Iraqi constitution. I love the work, and if I die, know that I'm doing precisely what I want to be doing, Ms. Holland wrote in an e-mail to a friend on January 21 this year. (2) Mr. Robert John Zangas, 44, a regional press officer married to Brenda in suburban Pittsburgh, and previously a Lieutenant Colonel on active duty as marine in Al Kut. He had returned to Iraq as CPA press officer. On April 26, 2003, Ali Baba looters in Al Kut had smashed and looted local radio and broadcasting facilities. When I saw the looting at the station, I felt exasperated and dejected, Colonel Zangas said on duty at that time, but I wasn't surprised. As a salesman in his civilian career, he stated that dealing with the angry crowd in Al Kut was the hardest sales call I've ever made. These people have been free for less than three weeks, and need to learn to police themselves and each other. They shouldn't blame us [for the looting], and should help us to help them. Polish troops patrolling Hillah suggested that the identified police officers had stopped a car containing Zangas and Holland at a checkpoint, and subsequently shot them at point blank range. But occupation force operations chief Major General Mark Kimmitt said, the real killers could have been in a second car, that actually ran the occupation force staffers off the road. Not since the construction of the Biblical Tower of Babel on a hill surrounded by a military base have so many different languages been spoken in Iraq. JACKASS COMPLAINT Who on earth doesn't remember the heady rush of adrenaline, the thumping heart, the sweaty palms, the loss of reason, the thrashing about of unwieldy emotions love brings. When we face the one helplessly, and with abandon, when there are intimations of immortality and grandeur - when there seems to be no other option but to allow us to cross continents, run on empty, and float in a bubble that's not rooted in everyday reality. Broken marriages, illicit affairs, overdoses, grand theatre, great art, timeless writing is testimony to its power. Shakespeare says it even better in A Midsummer Night 's Dream than he does in Romeo and Juliet. Cupid aims his arrow and a beautiful woman falls in love with a Jackass. War is no different. Like the one against Iraq. The adrenaline of a man who can with his little pinkie set hundreds of thousands of soldiers in motion, flood a country with bombs and missiles, disregard the UN and buy up the support of smaller countries. Then there are the trigger-happy, testosterone-pumped soldiers, the intimations of grandeur in holding weapons that can wipe out 20, 30 or a few thousand lives in seconds. (...) All's fair in love and war
The emotional economy in Holland
Reflecting on Robbie Williams, Dutch journalist Jan Kuitenbrouwer has some interesting backchat comments on the critique of the political economy of consumption, in a recent issue of the middleclass Hague Post/Time magazine (12 March 2004 issue, p. 90), of which I have translated this excerpt: I was at the Shoe Giant this week, with my daughter. Shoe Giant is a chainstore in Holland for discount shoes. You can quickly buy a knockoff there of any shoe fashion trend, for a tenth of the price that you would pay for the designer brand that started it a few months' earlier. My poor daughter was pining for a special type of shoes that is now terribly fashionable (a sort of haha-over-the-top whorepumps model - once upon a time introduced as a kinky statement on a Parisian catwalk, but nowadays readily available for All Ages in every shoe store). But since we refuse to buy them for her, she wanted to buy them from her own pocket money, and that is how we got there. A bare hall, racks provisioned for battle, advertising everywhere in screamy colours, and in the corner one of those cashier castles with the staff, a couple of bored, uniformed teenage girls, on duty. There are so many shoes there, assembled from so many inferior materials, that the chemical smell alone is unbearable, never mind the depressing ugliness of what was on sale, and how it was presented. For the ceiling suddenly crackled, rather loudly, a radio station: two DJ's were in dialogue, or rather, the diskjockey and his sidekick (a new occupational group in the radio world, of which the representatives, I read, are called co-hosts). They were talking about a singer, an Idols candidate of whom nude images had been discovered and published in one of the gossip glossies. They explained in detail to each other what could be seen on those photo's: yep, they were fucking, yep, he was in her, and in that take, she had him in her mouth. I stood there, among that grotesquely ugly footwear, in that terrible smell and the rancid conversation, and there was my daughter, with one of those grotesque whore-shoes in her hand, dreamily staring in front of her, as the teenagers hung about, boredly chewing chewing gum by their cashiers' castle, in this Dutch Shoe Giant filial, one of the 200 where 22 million shoes are sold every year [Dutch population: 16.2 million - JB], and the DJ and his co-host, who must have been earning 500,000 euro a year, kept on talking about those porno pictures (was she a tasty morsel or not, and so on). For a short moment, just fleetingly, I had the feeling that I was in hell - where there is no more dignity, no decorum, not even any skin. Just flesh and bones. Jurriaan
Re: corporations/More Side Issue
Jim wrote: I think that Sabri goes much too far. All contracts -- including unsigned ones -- are based on trust, not love. (...) One of the problems with a capitalist society (or, more generally, a commodity-producing one) is that market competition encourages rampant individualism and instrumentalism, undermining the needed fellow-feeling and trust. This makes contracts harder and encourages an over-use of monitoring (hierarchy) and the like, along with constant law-suits. This keeps the lawyers in business. I would basically agree with that, except that a contract might be based, for better or worse, both on trust and on love, or on neither - i.e. it may be precisely the lack of trust or love which forces the making of a contract, which would not be necessary if love and trust really existed (consider, for example, litigation disputes). In responding to Michael Perelman on Frank Partnoy's conscience, I wrote The question nowadays regularly arises as to what compliance to the law [in respect to derivatives securing the conservation and increase of value] would mean. The problem here is, that all sorts of new creative ideas for contracts and (as Sabri would say, deals) are dreamt up which are not even captured by legislation. This is the root of the dualistic free trade/protectionism debate, because the bourgeois is in favour of trade which improves the position of his own kind, but is against trade which harms his position. Bourgeois accumulation may be viewed as legalised theft, but unequal exchanges may not even be legalised. The radical, class conscious working class typically inverts the bourgeois position, thus, where the bourgeois calls for free trade, the working class calls for protection, and vice versa. Since however both classes are human beings living in the same society, there might be some degree of overlap permitting of class compromise, in which case the question arises whether it is a good compromise benefiting both classes or whether it is a rotten compromise (a sell-out masking a a mutually beneficial deal). If the overlap is too large, the compromise is so well understood it becomes tautological and need not be discussed. If the overlap is very small, the compromise becomes rhetorical nonsense generating indifference. This is forgotten in Fukuyama's sociology of trust, because it abstracts from the fact the the bourgeois classes seek to regulate the market in their own favour. But this story has another implication. As I have said previously, the perfect crime is the crime which is not a crime since then it considered a crime, and can be prosecuted legally as such. This could be construed in two ways: either negatively, the crime is not recognised in law as criminal, or else positively, the crime is actually endorsed by the law, in which case, it is not a crime at all legally speaking. This is what bourgeois derivatives culture is all about, and it has its corollary in proletarian culture wars, which are the only source of moral debate vital to a blooming culture, since, for better or worse, they test out the limits of the status quo. Parasitism leads to the disintegration of bourgeois culture, because it is forced to derive a justifying morality from other social classes. If the crime is actually endorsed by the law, then it can only be viewed as a crime from a different moral perspective, in which case we are back with the problematic of difference which bedevils postmodernist culture. As soon as that moral perspective is admitted as valid, then the universalist pretensions of bourgeois law are invalidated. The question then arises as to what moral behaviour would be, and how we would know that. And moral behaviour ultimately depends on the practical ability to secure the conditions for survival and improve life, and so then we can discuss the practical ability of individuals to survive and improve life... while the social foundations of capitalist society remain unquestioned. Here the difference between the liberal and the Marxian view of ethics begins to show up. In answer to the question, why should I be moral ? the liberal answer is essentially a stasis: (1) all morality is based on a no harm policy (do unto others..., don't do unto others...) (2) moral rules intrinsically apply to all individuals under the same circumstances (3) Premiss (2) permits rational discussion of morality and moral rules (4) being moral means adhering to moral rules (5) adhering to moral rules guarantees the autonomy of persons, permitting survival and improvement of life. The Marxian critique of the liberal answer is essential dynamic. For a start, ethics for Marx could not be discussed in abstraction from real practical activity, and consequently could also not be discussed separately from class interests and self-interests; an ethics abstracted from real practical activity, he considered an ideological, not a scientific discourse (NB the question then is how exactly this should be
Re: Mel Gibson splits the Neocons where Marxists failed ?
Have you seen the movie? No, not yet, but intend to see it when I am thinking about my father again. Jurriaan
Correction
I wrote: But this story has another implication. As I have said previously, the perfect crime is the crime which is not a crime since then it considered a crime, and can be prosecuted legally as such. That should obviously be: But this story has another implication. As I have said previously, the perfect crime is the crime which is not a crime since then it cannot be considered a crime, and cannot be prosecuted legally as such. Jurriaan
Re: The emotional economy in Holland
There's got to be a way to find my way to heaven, cuz I did my time in hell, to paraphrase Keith Richards. Actually, I quite like short skirts on women, but then, I'm a man. I haven't got time just now to go into a whole dialectical analysis of Dutch Treat, but thanx for the comment. J.
A new religion in economics: the privatisation within privatisation in Israel
Banking is one of Israel's largest industries. In 1996, the banking industry (1) generated NIS 15,250 million ($4,690 million) in added value, (2) accounting for 8 percent of business sector product and 20 percent of total product in trade and services. (...) http://www.iasps.org.il/bank.htm (...) Today, yet another Israeli brand is finding a tremendously warm reception: International Private Banking. At the forefront of this significant trend is Israel Discount Bank, one of the nation's largest banks [it ranks third - JB], with over US$29 billion in assets and over US$1.2 billion in equity. Michal Alon, the vivacious Head of International Private Banking, together with her seasoned team, have helped build Israel Discount Bank's Private Banking services into one of the institution's leading areas of expertise. Hilton Israel Magazine: Is private banking only for multi-millionaires? Ms. Alon: Although Private Banking is certainly for the wealthy, it is also for many others - business people and investors, regular visitors and overseas perfectionists - who wish to have a nest egg in Israel. In fact, many people are pleasantly surprised to learn that for an investment of only US$25,000 or US$50,000 they can become part of the institution's Private Banking framework and benefit from our discreet, personalized services. Others are enjoying the million dollar treatment in especially designated centers, for the bulk of their internationally diversified and sophisticated investments. Hilton Israel Magazine: What do you offer your customers? Ms. Alon: There is no doubt that our clients demand both top discreet professional services, as well as an excellent working relationship with their Private Banker in our bank. But that is just the beginning. Israel Discount Bank offers people the opportunity of putting their money to work, through their Israeli account, either as private individuals or via a business or offshore corporate account. Hilton Israel Magazine: Is it significant that you offer a global network? Ms. Alon: Let's not confuse global service and global network. It is a cliche to speak about a global village but there is no doubt that people are more attuned to what is going on in real time around the world than ever before. A customer can, and in fact does invest through his Israeli homeaccount in all major financial centers around the globe. However, when he wishes to meet a familiar face, we are there for him, with a permanent presence in London, Paris, Geneva, Berlin, New York, Miami and Beverly Hills, as well as throughout Latin America. (...) Article at: http://www.discountbank.co.il/cgi-bin/inetcgi/discount/front/eng_show_item.j sp?itemOID=18470catID=-11452 The board of directors of MI Holdings and Accountant General Yaron Zelekha yesterday approved the privatization framework for Israel Discount Bank. (...) In keeping with the plan, the state will offer to sell 26 percent of the bank's shares to a controling shareholder, who will have an option to purchase the additional 25 percent. If one of the contenders chooses to purchase more shares and less options, the state will allow this. According to state regulations, when a government company is privatized, 10 percent of the shares sold - 5.7 percent of Discount's stock, in this case - are given to the company's employees at a 25-percent reduction. Despite this regulation, Discount employees are demanding options for bank shares and to be a part of the sales process. On Wednesday, the bank's workers committee, headed by Ricky Bachar, declared a labor dispute because of the sales process. Article at: http://www.haaretz.com/ It is the 'small motor' that sets the 'big motor' of the masses in motion (Regis Debray, Revolution within the Revolution, p. 83).
Re: An essay on economic basis of bourgeois risk and gambling culture
The above is true only if they have the reigns in their hands. Just as they can make more money faster, they can lose more money equally faster, if they don't have the reigns in their hands. If you think it's not a good essay, I'd like to know more specifically why, so that I improve. See for an example of how hedging schemes are advertised: http://www.gemstudy.com/InvestmentDownloads/Hedge_Funds_The_Real_Story_Prese ntation.pdf I am really more interested in the quantitative and qualitative economic implications, the ethical implications and the cultural/sociological meaning of the derivatives business, about which I didn't really write, and in the economic/investment expertise of derivatives brokers (their ability to anticipate future profitability and economic growth). I would certainly agree with Sabri that you can both make money faster, or lose it faster, through derivatives investments. I thus said specifically, only that profitability in derivatives can be much higher, but not, that it always will be. Mary Poovey cites an investor's guide to the effect that between 75% and 90% of all futures traders lose money in any given year, but, obviously, if they didn't make more money than they lost overall, they wouldn't be in the game, and the game would close down quickly. The fact that it doesn't, and instead grows, suggests that it is becoming more lucrative, not less. Typically a secure investment will always have a lower rate of profit than the (potential) rate of profit on a risky investment, and the differential is precisely what the risk-taker makes his own money on. What derivatives imply, is among other things the ability to invest and divest much more quickly, as one surfs world profit rates and volumes. Looking at the available evidence (admittedly not all that precise, because of measurement difficulties), it seems to me that both the volume and rate of returns on derivatives, as well as the total capital tied up in derivatives, has grown. Poovey writes: As it reworks the relationship between temporality and value, [the new financial axis] also redefines labor, agency and responsibility. In the new culture of finance, value can be created without labor, agency is transferred to an unstable mixture of mathematical equations and beliefs, and responsibility for disasters is pinned on the individual (a bad apple) or simply dispersed as analysts blame their investors' losses on flawed computer programs or unforeseeable market forces. op. cit., p. 34). This is of course not quite correct, at least in two ways: the broker still has to work his ass off to make his money, constantly absorbing new market information, and, in the last instance, the whole system still depends on (1) the continual conservation of existing asset value by living labor, and (2) the production of a net incremental value by living labor. A financial claim may be a claim on another financial claim, but however long the chain of claims may be, the financial claim is ultimately always claim on surplus-labour (Mehrarbeit) or the incremental market value of a tangible asset. Mr Buffet is really just saying that because the whole bubble is built around beliefs and perceptions about future profitability which affect investor behaviour, this means, that real returns themselves becomes substantively contingent on those beliefs and perceptions, and this is a potential house of cards since those beliefs and perceptions are prone to volatility and manipulation of a type which can evade mathematical analysis (beliefs being things that can change qualitatively). But that is really no different from Marx's observation that the development of the credit system has the potential to blow the foundations of the capitalist system sky-high. BTW as regards the controversy about outsourcing, ...the latest monthly survey of 55 economists by The Wall Street Journal's online edition shows that most agree on one point: Offshoring isn't the prime culprit. (...) On average, the economists estimated that the number of U.S. jobs lost by movement of operations overseas since 2001 has been 188,000 in the services sector and 502,000 in manufacturing, for a total of 690,000. That's a small fraction of the 58.6 million in overall layoffs that companies undertook between 2001 and 2003. The vast majority of those layoffs were offset by new hiring elsewhere in the economy, but on a net basis, payroll [i.e. employment] levels declined by 2.3 million during this period. Source: http://www.quicken.com/investments/news_center/story/?story=NewsStory/dowJon es/20040311/ON200403112136001338.varcolumn=P0DFP J.
United States campaign contributions - some helpfull links
I previously sent this to some friends, thought I would post it - maybe useful for other PEN-Lers. They're URLs of sites which give campaign contributions to parties in the United States. So if you want more details on campaign finance, these links might help you out. http://www.fundrace.org/moneymap.php http://www.opensecrets.org/index.asp http://open-gov.media.mit.edu/search.jsp http://www.ire.org/cfic/ http://ils.unc.edu/crfilter/ http://aacaw.org/!ippndemocracy2004august.htm http://www.fec.gov/finance_law.html http://www.bop2004.org/bop2004/ http://www.tray.com/ http://www.vpap.org/index.cfm http://www.commoncause.org/laundromat/ http://www.followthemoney.org/ http://www1.soc.american.edu/campfin/search.cfm http://www.ire.org/datalibrary/databases/feccc/ http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=9862 http://congress.nw.dc.us/chamber/bio/fec?id=227cycle=2003-2004 http://powerreporting.com/files/ http://www.ibiblio.org/javafaq/bush/ http://www.campaignfinance.org/foi.html http://www.pirg.org/ http://www.ewg.org/dirtymoney/ http://www.congressproject.org/ http://www.50statesonline.org/cgi-bin/50states/States.asp http://www.public-i.org/Statesecrets_02_072601.htm#amount http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/
Re: An essay on economic basis of bourgeois risk and gambling culture
Frank Partnoy's book suggests that most derivatives exist in order to get around financial regulations. That's true in my opinion, although originally that wasn't so much the case. The question nowadays regularly arises as to what compliance to the law would mean. It's part of a larger greedy phenomenon, that really wrecked a lot of things here in Holland as well. But, I think also the role of derivatives is subject to changes over time. A straightforward introduction to derivatives is provided by John Khambhu, Introduction to Derivatives (Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Sept. 2002). The Futures Industry Association site is at http://www.futuresindustry.org/. I haven't seen The Human Stain yet. Jurriaan
Re: Love Affair Update
I believe this song (Robert Gordon ?) is very popular in Iraq again.I'm drivin' in my car, you turn on the radio I'm pullin' you close, but you just say no You say you don't like it, but girl I know you're a liar 'Cause when we kiss, ooh, fire Late at night, I'm chasin you home I say I wanna stay, you say you wanna be alone You say you don't need me, but you can't hide your desire 'Cause when we kiss, ooh, fire You've had a hold on me right from the start It felt so good, I couldn't tear it apart Got my nerves all jumpin', actin' like a fool 'Cause your kisses they burn, but your heart stays cool Romeo and Juliet, Samson and Delilah Baby, you can bet the love they couldn't deny Well, now your words say split, but your words they lie 'Cause when we kiss, ooh, fire Oh-oh, fire Mm-mm, fire Oh-oh, fire Oh-oh, fire - Original Message - From: Michael Dawson To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, March 12, 2004 8:33 PM Subject: [PEN-L] "Love Affair" Update Nobody knows where the phrase originated. I'm going to go spend some time in the stacks trying to figure it out.
Re: Love Affair Update - additional comment
why send the lyrics to the list? It does not add much. Sorry. A bit of dark sarcasm. I'll try to be more constructive and observe good style. Okay then. From a linguistic point of view, in American idiom, the expression America's love affair with..., America's love of/with... etc. is in truth applied to a variety of American fascinations, real or imputed, sometimes sincerely and sometimes cynically or sarcastically (including the rebel, baseball, Israel, fresh herbs, SUVs, the community, littering etc.). In literature, for example, we have Norman Mailer writing in Marylin, chapter 1, that So we think of Marilyn who was every man's love affair with America. Marilyn Monroe who was blonde and beautiful and had a sweet little rinky-dink of a voice and all the cleanliness of all the clean American backyards. But the expression surfaces also in Britain, Ireland and Australia these days, i.e. it has become a generalised Anglo-Saxon expression gladly adopted by the car industry. Examples: As was said by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, however, one cannot deny that the motor car has fundamentally changed our way of life. It is a vitally important part of the way in which society functions. I agree with the noble Lord's point about social attitudes towards cars. The motor industry is probably the most ultimate symbol of the love affair with the car. The car has become one's personal space and it allows personal freedom--or at least it appears to. The motor industry presents us with an object which travels at tremendous speed requiring the driver's tremendous skill and in strident competition. It is something to which people can relate. - Lord Addington, speech to the British Parliament, 24 Jan 1996 To say that the United Kingdom has had a love affair with the car is not to overstate the matter. This is particularly so in Northern Ireland, where motor sport and cars have been a big part of social life. Because of our interest and for reasons of the economy, geography and social background, th e car has been to the fore in planning. I am not saying that that is a bad thing, but it is part of a situation that has evolved: cars have become very necessary. Someone said that we have come to a defining moment. It is a defining moment for the individual, for public transport and for the rural aspect. It is a defining moment for planning issues, for the Government and for the car industry. These are all areas of great concern, as is the environment, including the quality of the air. - Mr McAlister, Northern Ireland Forum for Political Dialogue, 14 November 1997 The year 1903 marks the beginning of Australia's love affair with the car, now a century-long romance that has fostered some remarkable engineers, entrepreneurs and trading partners, not to mention rally and racing drivers. http://www.focus.com.au/motoring/ When I was a student in Thatcherite times, I saw a political movie once called The Plowman's Lunch about Thatcherism, I think starring Jeremy Irons, a sort of British version of Sam Neill. The Plowman's Lunch was the name given to a dish marketed as an English traditional dish, even although in reality the label was just invented one day by an entrepreneur as a commercial venture. It is thus quite possible that similarly the concept of America's love affair with the car is a latter-day ascription; while it might recall James Dean and Jack Kerouac, in fact I personally cannot trace a use of this exact expression in the 1950s, and thus I venture to suggest, this idiom came into wider use only in the 1970s. The Dutch tend to talk more about our holy cows in reference to personal cars. Hope this helps :-) - Jurriaan
The logic of Baghwati's neoliberalism
Just to add to Yoshie's comment: looks to me as though the real finish of neoliberalism is necessarily the extensive privatisation of government debts, but in a specific way. Suppose you have these government institutions, and they have large debts. How then can you balance the budget ? In New Zealand, demagogue lawyer, preacher and ex-premier David Lange (of whom Jagdish Baghwati is an Indian clone) discovered through experience that the options were limited. You could: - reduce government expenditure, so you reduce the amount of new debt incurred - reschedule the old debts to reduce repayment burden, and share out liabilities - enforce a monetary discipline which wipes out all enterprises not competitive in the world market - increase your revenue, through additional taxes and charges, widening the tax-base and more cost-plus activities - sell off indebted government institutions altogether, so they're off your books - restructure and reconsolidate government accounts, through merging or splitting different government services - apply new accounting principles, which make the deficit look smaller, and revenue look greater (including real asset accounting, of a type which creates new assets where you didn't think you had them) - propagandise no gain without pain, confidence and things will get better in the future The real competitive market advantage which the federal government has here as player in the market, vis-a-vis the corporations, is that the federal government can, to a much larger extent, be a law unto itself. That is, it can not only make up its own rules and change its own rules, it can also impose new rules on the rest of the population. That is the principle Dick Cheney is utilising. Democratisation is basically a couple of bisexual girls, or two girls one of whom wants to, but the other one doesn't and you have to guess which one it is. But the latest rage in the financial world is really debt management. What this means is that, instead of seeing debt as something terrible, a liability incurred by inferior people, you apply a bit of judeo-christian profundity and see it as an opportunity to make an extra profit while appearing charitable. How does that work ? Well, the existence of a debt means, that a statutory obligation exists for a debtor to pay a certain amount of money in a certain amount of time, and a statutory entitlement exists for a creditor to receive a certain amount of revenue, according to the law of the land, an obligation which can be enforced as such. Now suppose that you are able to trade in these obligations as a commodity like any other, and renegotiated terms. This of course already happens on a grand scale. In that case, a government could sell off its debt obligations to private enterprise, simply by changing the law, such that a debt liability can be sold off. Maybe the debtor can pay, or maybe the debtor cannot pay. But if he cannot pay, they you could always renegotiate debt repayments in some way. And you can keep on renegotiating endlessly, and through that renegotiation process force people into a behavour which respects the rules of the capitalist market. It's really the greatest scam there is: first you tax citizens, and transfer an increasing portion of tax money to private investors who see your government as a secure source of income, insofar as it has a large army which can enforce financial claims. Next, if your deficit becomes to large in comparison to the tax revenue you can levy with a revolt of the population and massive capital flight, you private the debt obligations themselves. Being able to pull off this scam depends on your ability to enforce the repayment of debt obligations, but so long as you have very large armed forces, you should be able to do it. Many socialists object to the debts of poor countries on the ground, it's unfair and unkind, those poor hardworking people shouldn't have to pay back all that money, and so on. But this misses the real dynamic of late bourgeois society, namely the utilisation of the instrument of indebtedness, to change or renegotiate the terms of exchange themselves (what really trades against/for what), and the growth of real slavery. The Dutch National Geographic (Sept 2003 issue) featured an article about slavery. It said there are now 27 million people on earth living in conditions defined as slavery, as slaves, men, women and children, and they earn a mere 13 billion euro. That's a funny statistic, because what definition of slavery is involved here ? Basically, de facto forced labor, on the basis that the worker is himself/herself is owned by someone else, and can be bought and sold. Then you're talking 0.4 percent of the world population, or nearly 1 percent of the world's workforce (3 billion people earn an income of 2 euro or less per day, i.e. less than 730 euro a year). Now, this really implies that approximately one in 115 people within the world's paid workforce is a slave. The article
Jagdish Bagwhati and New Zealand's world-historical lesson in petty-bourgeois morality
As a characteristic neoliberal, Bagwhati actually denies economics is a science. If all that is objective about society is actual prices paid, and if there is market uncertainty, then you can never really know what the aggregate effects of market forces will be, and there can be no economic laws, only individuals acting in the market place; and that is exactly Von Hayek's idea. In an interview with Roeland Muskens of the Dutch magazine Internationale Samewerking (International Cooperation; published by the Dutch Foreign Affairs Ministry, p. 24), Bagwhati was asked by Muskens: Does there exist a watertight economic recipe ? If things turn out different than the economists predicted, they always point to unforeseen circumstances. Shouldn't economists admit for once that economics is to a great extent metaphysical ? Baghwhati replied whorishly, in a very explicit way: In a certain sense. Economics is not a science. It is an art. Luck plays a big role. You can help luck along a bit. Free trade is a precondition, but even then it can fail. And if there's a war, then of course you cannot achieve much anymore. There you have it. To get economic growth and reduce poverty, people have to truck, barter and exchange, simple as that. Everybody has something they could sell, and if they can sell it, they can buy stuff, and this will induce people to produce more, because they have an incentive to do it: if both parties did not gain from trading with each other, they would not do it. So if everybody trades, then everybody gains. But what if the operation of the market creates gigantic disparities in wealth and povery, gigantic socio-economic inequality ? What if both gain, but some gain vastly more than others ? In that case, what they say is what ex-premier David Lange already said in New Zealand long ago: inequality is the motor of the market economy. Inequality is not a problem, because inequality creates an incentive to get even, to get rich, an incentive that forces people to trade, and the more trade there is the ciher people will be. The problem is not that the rich are rich but that the poor are poor; the rich are rich because they are rich, i.e. they are rich in talent, rich in initiative, rich in entrepreneurship, rich in managerial ability, rich in negotiation skills and personal qualities and so on. If the problem is that the poor are poor, but why are they poor ? Because they are poor, i.e. poor in the sense they lack the personal qualities the rich have, they are deficient. The rich are just better people, that is all, and that is why they are able to make other people work for them. So then, what people really need to feel, is that urge to enrich themselves, to possess the personal characteristics required for enrichment, and to become cultured in this way, but that is not an economic question, but a cultural question. They should look up to their betters, not down to their inferiors, and that's the stairway to heaven. If it is all a cultural question, and if economics is not a science, then it is no longer legitimate to talk about the distribution wealth in society, at most you could talk about your own wealth or the lack of it. But if you lack it, the reasons why you lack it must be psychological, emotional, cultural, ethnic, etc. In New Zealand, David Lange started off his premiership in 1984 announcing that, having opened up the government books, it turned out that the public debt was unsustainably high, and required drastic action to correct it. And his Labour Government took drastic action, privatising and marketising everything as much as possible in the most radical neoliberal experiment tried anywhere in the world. In previous PEN-L posts, I have described briefly what the consequences of that were, for the New Zealand economy: - stagnating real production, - fast-increasing socio-economic inequality and concentration of wealth in fewer hands, - a foreign take-over of New Zealand assets and culture, - an increasingly servile population, - an increase in speculative activity (the greatest proportion of what little economic growth is recorded consists of real estate development, capital gains, and financial activity based on speculative trading). But the most interesting story is really the story of debt. The New Zealand Government got rid of its debt, and balanced the books to a great extent, using the techniques I have described in my previous PEN-L posts (17 July, 20 July, 20 August, 19 Sept 2003, 28 Sept 2003, 5 Oct 2003, 19 Oct 2003.). But what did the privatisation of debt actually mean, ultimately ? It meant that: (1) having divested itself from revenue-generating activities, the state was forced either to borrow and tax more or else reduce its activities more, and government debts ended up just like what they were before, i.e. prior to the surgical operation to sanitise public finance and balance the books. The New Zealand government became a means for foreign creditors to cream
Mel Gibson to Iran: pithy commentary from the Asia Times
Mel Gibson's Lethal Religion Mel Gibson has laid a cuckoo's egg in the nest of American Christianity. What he has hatched in US cinemas is a quasi-pagan throwback to the sepulchral old-world cult that the United States was set up to oppose. The US is a by-product of the Protestant Reformation's purge of pagan elements in Christianity, and the enthusiasm for The Passion of the Christ among Protestant evangelicals suggests that they have forgotten more than they have learned. (...) Why does the US remain a Christian nation while Europe has abandoned the faith, along with its will to live? It is not only because Americans are different, but also because American Christianity is different. It derives from rejectionist English Protestantism, whose two defining acts were to translate the Bible and to destroy sacred images. (...) It is a commonplace that Bible translation was a cornerstone of modern democracy, which sprang from the premise that every man must read and interpret Scripture for himself (Mahathir is right: Jews do rule the world, October 28, 2003). But iconoclasm, the destruction of sacred images, was no less essential. (...) One cannot blame Mel Gibson, the Catholic traditionalist, for dwelling obsessively upon the physical torture of Jesus. Traditionalists like Gibson feel that the American Catholic Church has forsaken Christianity's spiritual mission, and seek ways to shock their co-religionists. Gibson has explained his intentions with frankness and humility. In the dark night of his soul, he tells interviewers, the Australian actor really is the suicidal detective of the Lethal Weapon films. In his despair, he reached back into the dank places of European convent life and encountered the gory visions of the 18th-century German nun Sister Anne Emmerich. What he places upon the altar is the craft of his hands, namely Hollywood's full suite of manipulative visual techniques. Lovingly he has given the world Lethal Religion. (...) After writing the above lines I listened to the whole of Johann Sebastian Bach's St Matthew Passion, that crown jewel of Christian art. I heartily recommend it as an antidote for allergic reactions to The Passion of the Christ. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FC09Aa01.html Just a fraction too much friction: PRAGUE - More threats and demands are coming out of Iran, with the Middle East nation now threatening to end its cooperation with the United Nations' nuclear watchdog as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is set to release its damning new resolution on Iran's nuclear program. (...) The text of the draft resolution, to be issued by the 35-member board of governors of the IAEA and debated on Thursday, reportedly criticizes Tehran for not fully living up to pledges to be completely transparent about its past and present nuclear activities. News agencies report that the United States - joined by Canada and Australia - has reached agreement on the issue with the United Kingdom, France and Germany. But Iran's ambassador to the IAEA in Vienna, Pirooz Hosseini, said that the draft resolution is the result of US bullying. (...) Iran says its nuclear program is for civilian purposes only, but Washington accuses Tehran of pursuing a clandestine weapons program. (...) Mehdi Mozafari, a professor of political science at Arhus University in Denmark, says Iran is in effect trying to blackmail the IAEA by threatening to halt cooperation. In this situation, the Iranian government is finding [itself] under huge pressure both from the [UN nuclear] agency and also from the Americans and Europeans. I don't think really that the Iranian government has much argument or possibilities to counterattack the peaceful strategy from the agency, Mozafari said. This week Tehran called on the IAEA to remove Iran's nuclear program from its agenda. But IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei said Iran's nuclear program will be taken off the agency's agenda only after all outstanding issues are resolved. A spokeswoman for the agency, Melissa Fleming, spoke to Radio Free Europe(...): Certainly, the most urgent and important issue is to resolve the question of why the IAEA found traces of highly enriched uranium on components and at sites in Iran. This question is still unresolved. Iran blames imported materials from third parties for the contamination. Highly enriched uranium is a key ingredient for the production of nuclear weapons. (...) http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FC12Ak03.html
Mel Gibson splits the Neocons where Marxists failed ?
As ticket sales for the Australian superstar-filmmaker's gory, blood-drenched cinematic interpretation of the last 12 hours of Jesus Christ's life surpassed the US$200 million mark less than two weeks after its Ash Wednesday release, the debate over whether the movie is anti-Semitic in its intent or effect has unexpectedly split the neo-cons who, in pursuit of their strong support for Israel's security, have made common cause with the Christian Right for some 25 years. The Passion, which could become the biggest-grossing movie of 2004 and surely the biggest ever with subtitles - the actors speak in Aramaic and Latin - appears to have pushed some very influential neo-conservatives over the edge. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FC11Aa01.html
An essay on economic basis of bourgeois risk and gambling culture - parasitism as derivatives, options, swaps, hedge funds etc.
The derivatives market has expanded enormously in recent years, with investment banks selling billions of dollars worth of contracts to capitalists as a way to minimise loss of their capital through unforeseen market fluctuations that could possibly lower its value (what Marx called devalorisation, Kapitalentwertung, which typically happens in a recession or depression, as market prices must adjust to paid labor hours worked). Forbes 400 magnate Warren Buffett has claimed however that derivatives are time bombs and financial weapons of mass destruction that could harm not only their buyers and sellers, but the entire capitalist system. Some derivatives constructions, this doomsayer opines, indeed appear to have been devised by madmen. He has warned that derivatives can push companies into a spiral that can lead to a corporate meltdown, like the demise of the notorious hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1998. Blind greed could lead to ruin. But what are derivatives anyway ? Derivatives are basically just financial obligations which allow investors to gamble on the future market prices of commodities, interest rates, currency values or shares - without investing in any tangible or productive asset at all. They are just legally sanctioned and legally enforced financial claims to income without any tangible property ownership or real production being involved. Derivatives such as futures, options, hedges and swaps reduce capitalist risks in financial markets. You effectively buy yourself a bit of insurance against adverse market fluctuations, and the broker pockets his fee, in order to make even more money, on the basis of his superior market knowledge. Derivatives are a commercial idea which possibly originated in agriculture - as a contractual obligation used by farmers to assure the price of their produce in advance. Before they started sowing, they would make a deal to sell their goods at a guaranteed price, come harvest time. This then enabled them to budget farm operations on the basis of a definite income, allowing them to economise. After the harvest, goods would be sold at the pre-agreed price, regardless of the movements of market prices and the effect of bad harvests (including their own) on those prices. The contract might earn less income than the actual market prices permitted, but, at least, it allowed farmers to eradicate market uncertainty. In the wake of the 1930s depression, many governments decided to offer farmers guaranteed prices in this sense, and this became a real gravy train for many, until farming was deregulated; after that private investors stepped in, and created many more financial products of a similar type, permitting a range of possibilities. In the 1980s, financial futures began to dominate trading. Futures on commodity prices, bonds and currencies are nowadays traded on exchanges all over the world. The main US stock market indices, the Dow Jones and the SP 500, are really traded as futures contracts, involving a mathematically calculated guess as to where the profit averages will be in the future. These investments are called 'derivatives', because they are derive from an asset the value of which is maintained by the living work effort of the working classes and the peasantry. But, nowadays derivatives have become a very popular means of investment in their own right, rather than just as an insurance policy, simply because: (1) the rate of profit on capital can be significantly higher, and the risk much lower, than if you invested in any tangible or productive asset - derivatives allow many bigger capitalists to make more money faster, with less bother and less risk. The reason is that derivatives can be 'leveraged' to be worth many times the value of the tangible asset to which they refer - so that, if the market price of the asset goes up $100, the value of derivative goes up by $1,000, whereas the industrial rate of profit might only be 12-15%. (2) derivatives are used, because they are much more flexible than the underlying tangible asset. Their value is based on the price of the underlying product, but most contracts are settled in cash terms, so you can bet on price movements without having any bother of having to deal with real assets and the stupid people (sic.) that still use them to produce something tangible. Why invest in producing new wealth, if you can consume it, with extra money from your derivatives investment ? The beauty is that you win both ways, you cannot lose, you can only win more or less. at least if you own assets. These days, you can speculate not just on currency fluctuations, but actually you can speculate on the speculation in currencies shaping modern money markets. All it takes, is some financial and economic nouse, basic maths, intuition, and a PC Internet connection. The banks actually have computer programmes based on statistical models which tell them how much they could lose, if the market moves by a certain amount,
A tactical debate
Looks like I'm back on PEN-L after all, but hopefully more sparingly... I don't know what these comrades are talking about here, but then again, I realise I'm not an American. In a lead-up to the election, the candidates normally try to sound out or air views to find a consensus or base for unity, which could be modified lateron, and much more important than specific utterances of Kerry or Bush, is the strategic project which they represent, or seek to articulate beyond the rhetoric. In other words, they search for a winning formula in regard to supporters and voters, with themes which they think will appeal. But behind what is said, one ought I think to look at the objective predicament and the objective interests which the new president would have to deal with, in other words, the real constellation of political forces. Any bona fide Marxian analyst would seek thus to understand the real strategy behind the rhetoric, and not merely make disparaging remarks about the candidates, which is a rather useless activity anyhow. To demonstrate this, just have a look at Bush's statements just prior to the 2000 presidential elections and immediately after those elections, in other words, compare what he said then, to what actually happened and what he said later. It's quite clear there were numerous inconsistencies and absurdities, and that, really, often he had no basis at all for saying what he said. Whether or not Kerry happens to be in favour of multilateral foreign policy initiatives or unilateral policy initiatives at this stage probably has little bearing on what he would actually do if he became president, because in that case he would be under pressure to express the policy of a government apparatus and a team of politicians which is much larger than he is. Rather than rail against the unprincipled nature of the personalities, it's much more constructive I think to look at what the principles of the candidates really are, and what the implications of that are. Jurriaan
Russian shadow economy, GDP and Marx's value theory
I will just post a digressive comment I made to Chris Doss, with some additions, in case anybody is interested in this type of issue. As I told Chris, I know little about contemporary Russia. I think the main thing to note is that the black and grey economy (or the shadow economy) in Russia is so large in money terms, that it is equal to anywhere between 20-40 percent of Russia's GDP, and that means the GDP estimate cannot accurately describe economic activity overall. Thus, it is important to understand what the Russian GDP measure actually does measure, what its limits are. Of course, the shadow economy would consist both of activities defined as production, and activities consist only of transactions unrelated to real production (transfer incomes), one guesses about half of the total shadow economy each. To some extent Russian statisticians do try to impute estimated values for the informal economy. Transfer incomes are part of personal income receipts, but they aren't included in GDP, because they are considered unrelated to the value of any production, and indirect taxes paid are thus offset (at least in UNSNA accounts) against government producer subsidies received by enterprises, to capture only that portion of indirect taxes paid by producers, which represents a fraction of net new income generated by production (net income taxes paid in the accounting period are considered simply as a portion of net new income produced). Central to Kuznets's GDP idea was really the notion that new additional net income is generated only through production (financial transactions could only redistribute or transfer that new wealth), and from there, a distinction is drawn between new value added and conserved/transferred value. Marx's idea that no new value is created in exchange is thus implicitly accepted to a great extent (although the social accountant could just argue, of course, that his measurement objective, is just to measure the value of production). Thus, the implicit idea of the GDP concept remains that the origin of new net additions of economic wealth must have its source in production. Production is widely defined in SNA type accounts, as any activity carried out under responsibility, control and management of an institutional unit, that uses inputs of labour, capital and goods and services to produce outputs of goods and services. (For some critical comments on how that definition is applied, see e.g.: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/soc/SocialMoments/yaiser8.htm). On that basis, the argument is then that the value of production (gross output) is equal to the incomes generated by that production, and by deducting the value of goods used up from gross output as an expenditure unrelated to the value of net new output wealth created (the intermediate consumption, goods and services used up), we then arrive at a net output value called GDP, considered to be the new value added. Curiously however, various business-to-business services, as distinct from services to final consumers, are not regarded as services used up to create final output, i.e. not regarded as intermediate consumption. This means that if business-to-business services increase, they could boost GDP, even although they may in reality not add any value to final output, but are rather constitute just an additional impost on real production, no different from raw materials used up (in BEA accounts, however, an attempt is made to distinguish between services which are intermediate consumption, and services which are not, but how that distinction could be validly drawn is not always easy to see). In reality, UN SNA-type national accounts often include insurance premiums paid in consumption of fixed capital (depreciation), the underlying argument being that such premiums, like depreciation charges, represent a portion of gross income newly generated by production, or that they could be treated as a necessary component of fixed capital used up. If you think about it, it is clear that consumption of fixed capital cannot be new value added, because it refers to the value of fixed assets consumed (used up) in making new outputs. Marx therefore refers to the value product as the sum of (gross) wages of productive labor and (gross) profits. The social accountant however looks at it more from the point of view of gross income of enterprises. The concept of value added in reality straddles conserved value (value of fixed assets transferred to the new product) and new value (profit+wages). Depreciation charges could be seen as part of gross income or gross profit (depreciation write-offs could contain a fraction of undistributed profit, as recognised in adjustements for economic depreciation as distinct from depreciation for tax purposes). All of this reflects ultimately an inability to decide conceptually precisely what is a cost of production and what is a revenue from the standpoint of society and the economy as a whole for some activities,
Re: A tactical debate
Jim wrote: one thing that's striking is how humble Bush acted in the 2000 presidential debates and how arrogant his administration has been. Quite. Maybe like that song Oh Lord it is hard to be humble ?. To arrogate is to claim or seize without real justification, or to make undue claims to having something (a characteristic, attribute, property etc.). This suggests that arrogance or cheek has its emotional relevance in capital accumulation and imperialist conquest, which as Marx suggests, is always in the last instance based on getting something for nothing, whatever emotional duplicity might obscure this or twist it into something else. More generally, the pursuit of power seems to require a certain arrogance, namely the belief that it is fitting that one ought to have power or acceed to power. This can be philosophically justified with an elitarian philosophy such as Straussianism, according to which, egalitarian notions devalue philosophy by rejecting anything that cannot be understood by the common man. The idea here is that the public is not capable of understanding or accepting universal principles of right. Therefore, they posit the rectitude of the noble lie which shields the less enlightened public from knowledge of unpalatable truth, for which the public might hold the philosopher to blame (e.g. Socrates). But lying of some sort might in fact be necessitated by the modern information society itself in the specific way that, apart from not being able to cope with the consequences of honesty, still contains the inability to reconcile class or sectional interests with the interests of the community as a whole. I've often had occasion to think about the concept of arrogance, since, as a youthful student in New Zealand my mates thrashed me for being an arrogant upstart. They felt, that Dutch people often came across as arrogant, or that they were naturally arrogant. Returning later to the Netherlands from New Zealand, I had the same irritating experience, but how objective is that really ? Later I've often reflected, that maybe it is not really so much arrogance as a natural self-confidence or over-confidence instilled in children from a young age, of which one could indeed be envious, particularly if, as immigrant, one isn't so self-confident. But it's something that is difficult to be objective about, and I confess I still often get livid within myself about the emotional content of some interactions I experience here. Traditionally Dutch people often have an ability for a confident directness, where other ethnic groups would be much more reserved. The question is then whether this confidence is really justified or appropriate, or whether it has no real justification (maybe just a sort of bluff). It might take considerable emotional and practical insight to understand that. Paradoxically, that the corollary of self-confidence is often the attempt to viciously cut everybody down to size in ways, maybe even derogatorily, something which might culminate in the celebration of mediocrity or the lowest common denominator. Status envy and competitive rivalry seems an interminable problem... Machiavelli writes: Many times it is seen that humility not only does not benefit, but harms, especially when it is used by insolent men who, either from envy or for other reasons, have conceived a hatred against you. Of this our Historian gives proof on the occasion of the war between the Romans and the Latins. For when the Samnites complained to the Romans that the Latins had assaulted them, the Romans did not want to prohibit such a war to the Latins, desired not to irritate them; which not only did not irritate them, but made them become more spirited against them [i.e. the Romans], and they discovered themselves as enemies more quickly. Of which, the words of the aforementioned Annius, the Latin Praetor, in that same council, attest, where he says: You have tried their patience in denying them military aid: why do you doubt this should excite them? Yet they have borne this pain. They have heard we are preparing an army against their confederates, the Samnites, yet have not moved from their City. Whence is there such modesty, except from their recognition of both our virility and theirs? It is very clearly recognized, therefore, by this text how much the patience of the Romans increased the arrogance of the Latins. (Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses, chapter XIV). J.
Will the oil run out ? Reflections from a layman
After the second world war, the Middle East was said to have perhaps 16 million barrels in oil reserves (deposits), by 1967 the estimate had risen to 250 billion barrels, in the 1990s it reached 500 billion, and now it's at over 900 billion barrels or close to a trillion. In approximate figures, official estimates of world oil reserves seem to range from about 1 trillion barrels to 2.3 trillion barrels (correct me if I am wrong). That's just to say we don't truly know how much oil there is on the planet, in advance of more exploration (sounds poetic). The big difference here is between proven reserves and potential or possible reserves (see Dept of Energy estimates, US Geological Survey estimates and various other expert estimates). I cannot assess how accurate these figures really are, but let's suppose for the sake of argument that world oil consumption is about 28.3 billion barrels per year. Then this suggests oil reserves would be sufficient for anywhere between 35-80 years if consumption remained at a constant level, and if no new reserves are proven or estimated. Now of course in reality there is no constant level, and the average growth in annual world consumption (taking the last decade) is around 1.3% - it might well rise to an average of 2%. You'd have to factor that in. In that case, you'd think that oil reserves would be depleted by consumption within anywhere between about 15 to 40 years or so, if no new reserves are discovered. Apart from not distinguishing precisely between output, extracted stocks held, various oil uses, oil sales and final oil consumption, this simplistic approximate calculation does not of course consider prices, or price fluctuations. If oil prices rise, consumption falls, and if prices fall, consumption tends to rise. Oil prices are likely to rise in the future; but technological change which would substitute other energy sources could change the picture completely. Rising oil prices would certainly cause a diversification into other fuel sources. That leads me to think the debate really is about the oil running out, but about who should have it, at what price, that's the salient point really. Whatever the case, it's a good bet that masses of people in poor countries will never have the opportunity to drive petrol-fueled motorcars. By the time they have the money to buy them, insufficient oil remains to fuel those cars with petrol at an affordable price. As regards OPEC, while the total world output of oil in physical terms is estimated to have trebled since 1974, in those thirty years OPEC's share of the world oil market declined from half in 1974 to about 38% at the present, and continues to decline. At the same time, while oil supplied one half of the world's total primary energy demand in 1974, today it is below 40 percent. That is just to say, that oil supply is becoming relatively less important in aggregate as an energy source, even although world oil output has increased gigantically in physical terms, and that, in addition, the actual share of OPEC countries in that oil supply is substantially reduced. This just reduces OPEC's very ability to be a price setter, quite apart from political factors and larger strategic oil stocks. Take for example gas. The share of natural gas in the world's total primary energy use is said to have risen from less than a fifth to nearly a quarter since 1974, and continues to rise. US domestic natural gas production for example is expected to increase by over a third in the next twenty years, when natural gas would generate nearly a third of all US electric power, versus less than a sixth today (but mainly US gas is substituting for US coal, not petrol; it's cars that burn up most of the oil products). The United States still has very large reserves of (both known and undiscovered) natural gas and oil deposits in the ground, but really conditions in the world energy market determine whether those resources are explored and developed. Petroleum exploration in the US itself just happens to cost more than in places like Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East, and in these places deposit finds are larger than in the US, while fewer bores need to be drilled to identify and extract the deposits. Oil companies just focus on exploiting reserves in regions where energy can be produced most profitably, at a given price structure. Although this may mean increased dependence on imported fuels, their own relative production costs are lowered against cartellised prices for oil, making possible surplus-profits of various kinds. The US itself supposed to produce about a tenth of world oil output, but consumes nearly a quarter of that output, thus, the US imports over half of oil consumed there. Those imports could be reduced by greater local oil exploitation or alternative energy sources, but if this isn't happening, it's mainly just a matter of relative prices and costs in a capitalist market. That is just to say, that I
Re: A tactical debate - some more views
Jim wrote: I think the Bushmasters are arrogant because of their long experience with having power (as part of the economic or military elite). Bush and the like went to elite schools, etc., etc. Quite. You say it very succinctly. But here's some additional comments, for the more patient readers: At Harvard Business School, thirty years ago, George Bush was a student of mine. I still vividly remember him. In my class, he declared that people are poor because they are lazy. He was opposed to labor unions, social security, environmental protection, Medicare, and public schools. To him, the antitrust watch dog, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Securities Exchange Commission were unnecessary hindrances to free market competition. To him, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was socialism. Recently, President Bush's Federal Appeals Court Nominee, California's Supreme Court Justice Janice Brown, repeated the same broadside at her Senate hearing. She knew that her pronouncement would please President Bush and Karl Rove and their Senators. President Bush and his brain, Karl Rove, are leading a radical revolution of destroying all the democratic political, social, judiciary, and economic institutions that both Democrats and moderate Republicans had built together since Roosevelt's New Deal. President George Bush and the Gilded Age by Yoshi Tsurumi (Professor of International Business, Baruch College, the City University of New York ).http://www.glocom.org/opinions/essays/20040301_tsurumi_president/ Republican gerrymandering of electoral districts has created a Congress where a Republican majority is virtually assured as most seats become permanently 'safe'. Experts now believe there are only 25 contestable House seats left. At the same time, a Bush win would mean that by 2008 a Republican President would have controlled the appointment of senior judges for 20 of the past 28 years. By the end of a second term, Bush would be likely to have named three more Supreme Court judges, locking up the court for cultural and political conservatives for a generation. 'There is something dangerous at work here. The Republicans, if they win again, are in a position to change the structure of American democracy,' said Robert Kuttner, editor of US Prospect magazine. Source: http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/2-21-2004-50835.asp?viewPage=2 MSNBC: And [John Kerry] becomes the anti-establishment candidate then? [Tim] Russert: That's exactly what he's hoping for. Someone wants to be the alternative to the front-runner. First it was Dean, now it's Edwards. (...) MSNBC: All in all then, what are we hearing in all these Democratic primaries, beginning with Iowa? Russert: They oppose the war. They think the economy's in bad shape by a margin of 80 percent and over 80 percent say they're angry or dissatisfied with President Bush. The one interesting thing that's been so striking to me is the way the Democratic Party has united. And, at the polls, if you ask about the war, every state -- Arizona, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina; north, south, east and west -- there is overwhelming opposition to the war. When it comes to the economy, in Oklahoma, Missouri and South Carolina, over 70% say the economy is not good. And there's anger and dissatisfaction with George W. Bush. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4146741 It looks to me, that there's no way at all in which Kerry could match the Bush team in campaign funding, in which case the image of being anti-establishment is really the only way to go, and then you hope for a large anti-Bush default vote (at the very least a lesser evil vote). The problem in these elections is really is, that they are about nothing, because nobody seems to have any comprehensive constructive policy which genuinely aims to resolve the social, economic and environmental problems of American society itself. The Federal Government basically functions as a technically bankrupt corporation which, unless some genial financial policies are devised, can only survive by selling off the family silver. One thinks of what Marx wrote in Capital Vol. 3: Accumulation of capital in the form of the national debt, as we have shown, means nothing more than the growth of a class of state creditors with a preferential claim to certain sums from the overall proceeds of taxation. In the way that even an accumulation of debts can appear as an accumulation of capital, we see the distortion in the credit system reach its culmination. These promissory notes which were issued for a capital originally borrowed but long since spent, these paper duplicates of annihilated capital, function for their owners as capital in so far as they are saleable commodities and can therefore be transformed back into capital. Marx, Capital Vol. 3, chapter 30 (Money capital and real capital, I), Pelican edition, p. 607-608. How could Kerry deliver a New Deal or social contract of any sort, if he couldn't actually finance that, but is in reality forced to
Re: Krugman on Greenspan and Bendien on Bujes
Joanna wrote: It's funny how a rational centrist (Krugman) can sound like a raving socialist these days. So what is the point of this ? This type of comment is useless in my view, and I will say why. What is the purpose, beyond trying to show how savvy or smart you are about the latest political fashions, or how you are a leftist authority, or moaning and groaning about the rightward drift of the political spectrum ? It's just a loser's game of political posturing. The real point to be made, in my view, is different: if raving socialists argued more like Krugman, they'd have a lot bigger audience, and this doesn't require any concession of principles either, just more attention to actually existing forms of consciousness and behaviour, and how these forms change over time. What people want is good clear arguments based on facts and logic, not whinging and blaming: a genuine critique in the classic sense of the word. Personally, I often much prefer Krugman's text to the text of raving socialists, because Krugman is often more attuned to where people are really at, or where the debate it at, plus, he can add something new to it, and take a definite position, and that is a skill. Because of this, you can argue with him; you might not agree with him, but you can argue with him and thus gain more knowledge and insight. I don't think that socialists should sound more radical than they really need to be, and I predict, that within ten years, you will see that Krugman will appear much more radical than he seems to be now. It is just a leftist deformation to always want to be the most radical. If the political spectrum moves to the Right, all you need to do is just stay yourself, and automatically you will appear more radical over time, simple as that. I can illustrate the real problem of raving socialists by briefly examining some of your own behaviour, namely some of your recent utterances just on PEN-L. (1) you tell me in a cavalier way not to think and then you write about how you cannot think yourself about managing the investment of your private wealth, whereas in reality - who knows ? - you just want to show you have got it, or that you don't want to have to think about it, or that others are to blame if you lose money; and you even imply that talking about your investment problem benefits other people as well. (2) You accuse me of boasting, and then you talk about how smart you are yourself, with reference to your academic credentials. (3) You talk about cunt on PEN-L: and then you complain about my reference about wanting to avoid arrogant female pricks. (4) You consider yourself something of an expert in sexuality and human development issues, and then you whinge about men. You may be a professional technical writer and a clever talker, but having gained very exact personal experience of you and of your Morenoist ex-husband, my judgement is that you're just playing games and twisting meanings to suit yourself with a mixture of love, hate and frustration. Thanks but no thanks. In itself you stance is not a problem, after all, I don't have to relate to it, that is my choice or misfortune, but it becomes a political problem, if you accuse, imply, allude or insinuate that a behaviour you engage in yourself, is wrong when OTHERS do it. What is the pay-off of your game then ? It seems to be (a) soliciting attention, (b) enhance your status and showing how smart you are (how you have the moral high ground), and (c) how OTHERS are inconsistent and how you are better than they are, (d) need for a good old chat to vent your thoughts and frustrations. But in that case, what is the psychological difference between your (allegedly leftist) ravings and a discourse like http://dissectleft.blogspot.com/ ? To me it is all just Californian middleclass chutzpah and status envy; you own real behaviour is inconsistent, and you presume things which do not really apply. The result of that is, that you cannot recognise how other people see things differently, and project your own defiencies on those whom you oppose. But the basic effect of blaming strategies, is that the cause of the problem is somewhere else about which you yourself cannot do anything, and thus, blaming strategies demobilise and paralyse people. As somebody who studied for Phd in Education (I quit studies in the end) and worked as photographer, researcher, library officer, statistician and archivist, I can tell you with absolute certainty that the fact, that somebody has a Phd degree or a maths major says nothing at all about their real intelligence, either rational intelligence or emotional intelligence or moral intelligence. They might just be a Beta moron. They might have an IQ of 170 but be crucially lacking in human insight or self-insight, and useless from the point of view of a genuinely caring, trustworthy contact, so that all that really happens is a game of middleclass projection and transference. In which case I think we ought to
Angela Davis returns: are prisons obsolete ?
Book Review - Are Prisons Obsolete?, by Angela Y. Davis. New York, Seven Stories Press, 2003. While the US prison population has surpassed 2 million people, this figure is more than 20 percent of the entire global imprisoned population combined. Angela Y. Davis shows, in her most recent book, Are Prisons Obsolete?, that this alarming situation isn't as old as one might think. Just a little over 30 years ago the entire prison population stood at 200,000 in the US; that is a tenfold jump in just one generation. In California alone, 3 prisons were built between 1852 and 1952; from 1984 to the present, over 80 facilities were constructed that now house almost 160,000 people. While being jailed or imprisoned has become an ordinary dimension of community life, according to Davis, for men in working-class Black, Latino, Native American and some Asian American communities, it is also increasingly an issue women of these communities have come to face. Davis points to the increased involvement of corporations in prison construction, security, health care delivery, food programs and commodity production using prison labor as the main source of the growth of the prison-industrial complex. As prisons became a new source of profits, it became clear to prison corporations that more facilities and prisoners were needed to increase income. It is evident that increased crime is not the cause of the prison boom. Davis writes that many corporations with global markets now rely on prisons as an important source of profits helps us to understand the rapidity with which prisons began to proliferate precisely at a time when official studies indicated that the crime rate was falling. (...) http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/103/1/28/ Angela Yvonne Davis was born 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama, the daughter of schoolteachers. She studied at home and overseas (1961-67) before becoming a doctoral candidate at the University of California, San Diego, under Herbert Marcuse. Davis joined the Communist Party in 1968. Because of her political opinions and despite her record as instructor at the university's Los Angeles campus, the California Board of Regents in 1970 refused to renew her appointment as lecturer in philosophy. Through the Black Panthers, Davis became an advocate for black political prisoners, and spoke out in defense of the inmates known as the Soledad Brothers. After the killing of inmate George Jackson by guards at Soledad Prison, Jackson's younger brother, Jonathan, attempted to free another prisoner from the Hall of Justice in Marin County, California on August 7, 1970 by taking hostages. Four people were killed in the shoot-out that followed, including the trial judge. The guns Jackson used were registered in the name of Angela Davis. Even although she was not near the courthouse at the time, a warrant for her arrest went out. When Davis defied the arrest warrant and went into hiding, she was placed on the FBI's ten-most-wanted list. Her capture in a New York motel room in October 1970 and her subsequent imprisonment inspired Free Angela rallies around the world. Davis spent 16 months in jail, before she was released on bail in 1972. She was later acquitted of all charges by an all-white jury. Davis resumed teaching at San Francisco State University, and subsequently lectured in all 50 US states, as well as internationally throughout Europe, Africa, the Carribean, Russia and the Pacific. She is now a member of the Advisory Board of the Prison Activist Resource Center. In 1994 Republicans objected to her appointment to a presidential chair at University of California, Santa Cruz, where she is professor in the History of Consciousness Department. The final protest song on John Lennon's album Some Time in New York City (1972) was devoted to Angela, but some rock critics thought it was facile. Robert Christgau stated: Agitprop that fails to reach its constituency, however, is hardly a thing at all, and since Lennon's forte has always been the communication of new truths to a mass audience, that possibility is very distressing. He isn't exploiting his charisma this time, he's gambling it. Not that he isn't singing better than ever. Not that Phil Spector hasn't added brilliant musical touches--invisible strings, bottleneck guitar, little Peggy March riff--or that Elephant's Memory, a fine-rocking movesymp band, doesn't boogie throughout. But the lyrics exhibit a fatal movement (and avant-gardist) flaw: While striving to enlighten, they condescend. I have yet to hear of a woman, feminist or no, who isn't offended by the presumption of the two feminist songs [on the album]. Does Angela Davis have to be told that she's one of the million political prisoners in the world? It's bad enough to praise David Peel and worse still to record him, but imitating his thoughtless hip-left orthodoxy is worst of all. Still, you can trust a paradox-finder to discern some hope in all of this. Imagine was a successful popularization
Re: DeLong on Paul Sweezy - brief comment on law of value
So, Sweezy wished to clarify the meanings of the terms socialism and communism by saying that the law of value still continues to operate under socialism to the extent that economy is capitalistic, i.e., governed by market discipline, whereas it won't under communism worth its name. As Jim Devine said four years ago, Well, this is a pretty mild and inconsequential thing to agree with Stalin [or the Soviet economist(s) who wrote the work attributed to Stalin] about Jim raised the question in that post Yoshie mentions: But then again, I'm not sure exactly what it means to have to have the law of value continuing to operate under socialism. Does that mean that the economy isn't totally under a plan? The answer to Jim's question is really that in the USSR you basically had (at the risk of simplification) a capital goods sector where the distribution of inputs and outputs were mainly regulated by the plan according to administered prices and countertrade agreements etc., and a consumer goods sector, where at least many outputs were priced either by regulating prices (controlled by the planning authorities) or by market prices. In some areas that worked very well, but in some areas it did not work much at all, in which case the result was black and grey markets, informal trading and so on. A market is not necessarily a capitalist market, since it is not necessarily dominated by the imperative of private capital accumulation. Market refers only to a regular pattern of trade involving a certain number of buyers and sellers applying to a specific supply and demand, but just exactly what the nature of that trade is, what the terms of exchange are, can vary and need not necessarily be dominated by private bourgeois accumulation. This is ABC for any economic historian or anthropologist. In a certain sense, what you had in the USSR was an extended social democracy without much popular democracy. It is amazing really how well it worked economically, relatively speaking, even in the absence of many civil liberties, popular democracy and many modern communication/information technologies - the material conditions of life could be improved very fast, for a very large number of people. To a certain extent this was of course due directly to forced labour. But forced labour by itself cannot explain the successes of Soviet economic growth, you can see this easily by looking at the quantitative proportions of labour what was truly forced. In reality, economic modernisation in the USSR wasn't simply a question of workers being forced to produce a surplus for bureaucrats. There was also genuine enthusiasm for improving the conditions of life, and improving human culture, and people felt they had a personal stake in improving their society. There was both cynicism and enthusiasm. The reason why markets weren't abolished despite state controls, is of course because you still had wage-labour, and a large portion of claims to consumer goods and services were realised through a waged income in roubles; Soviet citizens had a constitutionally guaranteed right to work, an obligation (duty) to work, and a lot of job security as well, but, those jobs took the form of wage work, and the possibilities for job mobility often wasn't very great, given the way the larbour market was organised. So even if Soviet workers couldn't buy what they wanted with their roubles, economic exchange therefore wasn't abolished at all, formally or informally, all sorts of trading (including barter) continued to occur. But the terms of exchange were drastically changed, being to a large extent controlled, regulated and limited by the authorities. The law of value states, in its most general (transhistorical) expression, that globally speaking, the value of commodities in exchange is regulated or determined by the socially necessary work-time required to produce them. This law, expresses the social necessity of a relationship between production costs and social needs, and it applies to markets, and ONLY to ma rkets, and therefore, it concerns relative price levels of goods and services, and relative exchange-ratios in trading. The word value in the exp[ression law of value applies to the value of the object of trade. It sets limits to what relative price levels can be, it sets limits to relative exchange-ratios, and it means that relative productivity levels reached in producing output, influence the direction in which relative and absolute prices move, because cost considerations will change the terms of exchange, and balance them out over time, given a relatively constant basic consumption structure. To the extent that administered prices had nothing to do anymore with real production cost or real demand for products, and competition between enterprises for sales could not level out prices, or establish regulating prices in an open market, the law of value was no longer a regulative principle for trade in the USSR; the exchange-ratios of traded
Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime
this is sort of circular isn't it? or is it that only the rest of us are to learn? That depends on your definition of agreement and disagreement. Obviously I am not arguing that only the rest of us should learn. For Marx, learning is a process of dialog. J.
Re: Dying languages - Kenan Malik and the struggle for the lowest common denominator
Kenan Malik argues at http://www.kenanmalik.com/essays/die.html that: (1) The purpose of a language is functional: to enable communication. I think this is simplistic and question-begging because it fails to specify exactly what a language is or how exactly language enables communication. Language is also required to articulate and express concepts and ideas, and may satisfy needs which have nothing to do with its specific communication function. (2) It is enriching to learn other languages because making contact across barriers of language and culture allows us to expand our own horizons and become more universal in our outlook. I think this is true; but it shows premiss (1) has limited validity and ignores what actually happens in the ineraction between different languages. (3) The human capacity for language certainly shapes our ways of thinking, yet particular languages almost certainly do not. I think this is not true since language does shape ways of thinking, the dispute can only be about the exact degree to which it does this. The real point is that the capacity for language can manifest itself only through a specific language. There is no general language, although you can say some kinds of symbols or body language are universally understood. (4) Most linguists reject the idea that people's perceptions of the world, and the kinds of concepts they hold, is constrained by the particular language they speak. I think that that is true, because perceptions of the world do not curcially depend on language but on the use of the five senses. But particular languages are absolutely essential to the formation of concepts at a higher level of abstraction. (6) the inalienable right to a language and culture conflates individual rights and group rights; individuals certainly have the right to whatever language, but there is no obligation for anyone to listen to them, nor to provide resources for that. I think that is a moral argument not backed up with any substantive theory of ethics. Any substantive theory of ethics acknowledges that rights are meaningless without obligations, since a right cannot be asserted with an obligation to respect or grant that right or permit that right to be realised.. (7) Language campaigners confuse political oppression and the loss of cultural identity. I think this may or may not be true, but the fact is that colonisers deliberately and willfully repressed or wiped out local languages for control purposes and to changes the thinking of the colonised peoples. The regaining of that language can provide an important leverage for the liberation of a people. (8) There is nothing noble or authentic about local ways of life; they are often simply degrading and backbreaking. I think this is just a false generalisation and a personal judgement of taste. Kenan Malik is certainly correct insofar as he believes that the working classes need an internationally understood language, but this does not cancel out the importance of local languages reflecting local practices, and there is no reason why the two cannot co-exist. He also misses the gains which can result out of the confrontation of different languages. His discourse is just aimed at attracting a certain type of attention, and attack another type of attention, based on a certain type of cultural analysis. I think in general Malik argument as stated is too simplistic and shallow because: (a) he seems just to be adapting to a species of liberalism which he considers culturally progressive, universalist and sexy, on the basis of a perception of winners and losers in the world of culture. (b) You cannot evaluate whether the supplanting of one language by another is progressive or not, without reference to a specific context within which that language is actually used, and specific goals, (c) he ignores the specific political and class forces involved in linguistic competition and tries to take a universal position on something that you cannot have a universal position on, (d) he doesn't specify precisely what he means by the dying out of a language - does it mean the language is preserved in archived records, does it mean the memory of it is erased, does it mean the people who speak it are wiped out, does it mean they are repressed for speaking it, are languages dying out because of bourgeois competition or because of practical utility, is the language dying out as a spoken language, or written language, and so on. (e) If it is true that all meaning is relational, i.e. refers to relations between discrete or distinct entities, then a language symbolises, contextualises and expresses relationships and practises, including specifying relationships and practises independently from the context to which they refer (abstraction). If you destroy a language, then you may also destroy the ability to symbolise, contextualise and express specific relationships which are stored in that language, and which provide extra meaning. That
Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime
Well I think that substantiates your argument and my argument. I think David Schanoes is entitled to his viewpoint, but surely if a pithy article is written in the NYT explaining what is wrong with Greenspan's idea, then that helps us much more than a bunch of abuse and character assasination ? J.
Re: Economic question
I get the feeling that the international financial system is perhaps the weakest link in the whole world economy. That is a very long story, and, apart from requiring further research, in one mail I can only do a bit of justice to your important economic question. The question I would ask, is why is the international financial system weak ? The way I think about it is: the international financial system is based on a very complex system of financial claims and entitlements which makes the relationship between ownership and control of private assets and products very complex and opaque. We are talking about an ownership of things far removed from the person in space and time. Since the the lynchpin of the capitalist order is the defense of specific private ownership and consequently the urge to privatise and marketise, the question then arises, how can you effectively defend something that you cannot actually practically possess (i.e. you only have a legally sanctioned entitlement or claim) ? The whole thing ultimately depends on engendering societal trust and confidence, about which Fukuyama wrote a book. That is the weak link (Marx in fact mentions, the vice I excuse most is gullibility). Hence also a trend to invest in tangible assets when economic insecurity increases. The future of capitalism depends on the trust and confidence of the working class in their exploitation, that their exploitation is beneficial and that they gain from it just as much as capitalist who make money from the results of their work. Yet the autonomisation of circulation processes from production processes, together with deregulation of money markets and capital markets, actually exascerbates Minskyan risk, uncertainty and instability. Capitalism is developing increasingly on borrowed time, that is I think the essence of it, as I indicated in a previous PEN-L post. This means, that some people consume more than they produce, and others produce more than they consume, and in aggregate, the value of financial claims to output (through trade and credit) exceeds real output. That creates a situation of excess capital from the point of view of private accumulation: the contradiction of productive forces and production relations is mediated by credit. All the financial resource is there, all the productive capacity is there, but there's structural overcapacity, a maldistribution of income, and profitability is higher in trading assets or products than in tangible production of new products. The real problem for the bourgeois classes is then: how do you expand the market such that you get a cumulative, steady net increase in real output ? The only way they can think about that, is by an enclosures movement, i.e. privatising what was held in common: you separate something from a person, and sell it back to him. But just have a look at what the result of that is in the modern imperialist system - look at Russia, look at Iraq, look at Liberia or Sierra Leone or Argentina. The ultimate problem is that you cannot exchange something and transfer private ownership rights for money-making purposes if you haven't got something to exchange in the first place. To get that something, you must (1)either produce it or (2) appropriate it from somewhere else. (1) poor people, workers and peasants have to produce stuff, and then you can exchange it, and make money out of that exchange. The problem then is how you get poor people to produce stuff under conditions of extreme socio-economic inequality to which Michael Yates refers, so that you can privately appropriate the product of their work. How can you be an entrepreneur if you have nothing to be an entrepreneur with, and if the social framework for it is lacking ? This is the mystery of primitive accumulation to which I referred in previous posts. The carrot option is to foster new middle classes who show the way. (2) The stick option is (a) militarisation, to force a change in social relations such that new regions are subordinated to capitalist private property relations. We can inject purple politics and christianity to confuse the real issue, but that is what it is, and real socialists aren't confused about that, (b) economic coercion through exercising sanctions which force people to sell or buy. Proudhon's critique was that capitalism is based on legalised theft. Marx develops a more nuanced, dialectical critique, but the important thing to understand I think is that Proudhon and Marx both agree capitalism is always based on getting something for nothing, and because of the fact that we must all appropriate something we haven't created, the real social relations are mystified. Postmodernist discourse then focuses on the cultural modes through which entitlement to ownership is established. The central question of the bourgeois epoch in which we live is how can people get something for nothing while maintaining the status quo ? It is however completely false to think that
Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime
What character assassination? He did recommend Keating. He did tell Thailand to eat baht. He did recommend increased SS taxes, and if you look several years back at his Congressional testimony, you'll see him stating that SS was not facing financial ruin due to the pre-collection scheme. I think it is better to say that in your opinion Greenspan is engaging in scams, and then show what the scam is, rather than calling him a scam artist. You last longer in politics that way. So what article were you reading? I am no longer a student, hence I tell what I am reading only to my wife, my supervisor or people actually living with me. As I haven't got a wife, that option doesn't exit. As I don't have job, I don't have a supervisor. And my flatmate is not really interested in my intellectual concerns. I'd be interested to read a biography of Greenspan but I don't know if there is one. J.
Re: He does have a point
Marx wrote: The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it (Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert; es kommt aber darauf an, sie zu verändern). Alvin Gouldner then philosophises: Marxism is not attempting simply to understand society; it does not only predict the rise of a revolutionary proletariat that will overturn capitalism, but also actively mobilizes persons to do this. It intervenes to change the world. The problem is that if capitalism is indeed governed by lawful regularities that doom it to be supplanted by a new socialist society (when the requisite infrastructures have matured), why then stress that the point is to change it'? Why go to great pains to arrange capitalism's funeral if its demise is guaranteed by science? Why must persons be mobilized and exhorted to discipline themselves to behave in conformity with necessary laws by which, it would seem, they would in any event be bound. In his famous eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach Marx had held that the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. This surely reads as if Marx was calling on people to put forth an effort to change their world in reality and not only in thought. Yet, the question is, what obliges them to do so?. Evidently, both push and pull factors, and not infrequently, as Goethe says, you think you push, and you are pulled. Whereas the relationship between them must be understood in their totality. Music is an indirect force for change, because it provides an anchor against human tragedy. In this sense, it works towards a reconciled world. It can also be the direct experience of change... - Operation Ivy I'm so tired day after day, I pretend I'm awake I've been losing sleep Balancing in between, dream and this cold world Helplessly trying to keep Little bit of my sanity sand's running out of my hourglass Quietly I start to wait the burning hate And now I hear it calling my name Through the darkness and pouring rain I fight my battles all alone Descending blackness the source of my pain Once again my fears start to rise Walls of stone Between shadows and my dark desiress Walls of stone Keep this pain inside my mind Faceless friends of mine In this space and time Couldn't read my warning sign Push me over the edge it's too late to beg 'cos now it's too far gone Through the darkness and pouring rain I fight my battles all alone Descending blackness the source of my pain Once again my fears start to rise Walls of stone Between shadows and my dark desiress Walls of stone Keep this pain inside my mind No life to live I always stayed alone... Save Us... It's judgement day I don't have to wait anymore I am the silent one. - Burning point, I am the silent one. http://progresy.tripod.com/bpoint.htm
Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime
Next thing you'll be telling us is that Jack Welch is a great leader of men and women with a misquided theory, Kissinger is a great diplomat with a mistaken world view, Oliver North is a real humanitarian who made a poor career choice. That is why I associate with few Marxists, because they like to jibe and jeer more than think. J.
Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime
Follow the cash. It's that simple. If it were any more difficult, Greenspan would be flipping burgers at McDonald's. Okay. J.
Re: He does have a point
what obliges people to change the system? Marx took for granted the general antipathy of the socialist and communist movements of his day toward capitalism. Jim, I agree with the substance of what you say. But in your last sentence, I am inclined to think this ignores that it isn't pretty obvious for many working class people. My own opinion is that what Marx did was perfectly valid even if imperfect, the problem is not with marx but with Marxism, and specifically the culture of Marxism. Male Marxists outnumber female Marxists 10 to 1, just as an indication. What I like about Louis Proyect and PEN-L is an attempt to foster alternatives to a boring, alienating and stultifying Marxist culture, where people just engage in bile and nasty polemics. In my whole life, I befriended only one Marxist who really supported me at a personal level when I needed it. Sectarian stupidity by Marxists wasted part of my life. Most Marxists I experienced might have been brilliant thinkers, but were not significant as human beings. As a socialist, I support Marx but reject Marxism, because Marxism seeks to impose an ideology on the working class, and the end of that story is just a new elite and not a universalising liberating process. That explains my heterodoxy. We change the system by changing the way we live and what we do, and encouraging others to do it to, in a direction which makes us all stronger. We invent new cultures and defend them against bourgeois parasitism. Jurriaan
Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime
That, the above, was/is the sole and whole reason I took issue with JB's characterization of AG as a deep economic thinker with a wrong theory. One thing David Schanoes is very good at is falsely presenting somebody else's point of view. On previous occasions he has written to me or about me all sorts of abusive mails showing that he neither understood the issue nor what I was saying. Now he does it again. I did not say that AG is a deep economic thinker, I said I respected his efforts to understand the empirical economic facts rather than simply shooting off a formula like many economists do because they think wisdom equates with mathematics. I cannot assess the depth or profundity of AG's economic thinking, but the odds are that the ruling classes do not permit a shallow thinker to become chairman. J.
The lover of the devil: obtaining knowledge and the nuance of feminism fatigue
sex and black magic. And the Chinese Chun Sue wrote the rather boring story Beijing Doll. A book about herself: a puberal girl who dreams of freedom, love and her own life. She tells the story from her fourteenth to her seventeenth year, with many puberal escapades in it. We'd rather have these strong women, than a few old lesbians who are still living in the past. (translation by Jurriaan Bendien from Strictly Magazine, No. 2 March 2003, p-015-016 - if you want to use my work, ask me - and I hate arrogant female pricks just as much as I hate arrogant male pricks with their class snobbery and petty power politics). And in the end, the love you take Is equal to the love you make - The Beatles, The End
Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime
I didn't think that what David wrote was abuse and character assassination. Impassioned critique perhaps. Pointing out some very obvious and noxious facts abut Mr. G That shows more about what you are than about Al Greenspan and David Schanoes. J.
Re: He does have a point
I agree with your critique of Marxism Feminism and Marxism are oppressive if they tell you what you should do or think, rather than explain and exemplify why you should do it. J.
Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime
unless he works hard to meet their needs. Frankly Juriaan, you surprise me. You, of all people, are perfectly aware of the mediocrity and shalowness that characterizes a lot of economic stars. It is no different in economics than in society at large. The shit rises to the top. I see this daily in the very large corporation for which I work. The high-level managers who make decisions know next to nothing about reality. They don't really need to. No matter what happens: success, bankruptcy, etc., they walk away with the loot. Rather than sitting in on moral judgement about me, why don't you explain then how it is that the shit is able to rise to the top. What do you know about Greenspan ? J.
Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime
The shit rises to the top because the game is not about innovation or creativity or productivity...but about collaboration. That's like saying, it all depends on who you want to work with. As a technical writer, you should know that shit is produced through digesting food. Food enters the mouth. For the food to enter the mouth, you must open your mouth, so the food can get in. I distinguish between shit and food, but I'll just say not more than that I won't be eating at your place ever again. I make no moral judgments. I make the observation that you take badly to disagreement. I am also tired of posts where you call people pricks and then conclude with lyrics advocating the power of love. Yeah, it's just innuendo, insinuation and allusion that you do, maybe well-intentioned, maybe not. Well, there's little point these days in disagreeing with people, generally. That's not where it is at. It is not a negative dialectic, but a constructive dialectic we are doing. I do not take badly to disagreement, I take badly to disagreement from which nothing is learnt, and that is quite a different story. For 2003 as a whole, new money flowing into the hedging industry in the US is estimated at $72.2 billion, a more than fourfold increase over $16.3 billion in 2002 and more than double the previous annual record of $32 billion in 2001. In his latest Congressional testimony, Alan Greenspan notes that firms have increasingly hedged their currency exposures, which means the dollar might fall further. Do you understand what this means ? No. Does David Schanoes know this ? He doesn't. Why not ? Because Greenspan checked it out, and few other people did. Schanoes is just talking about steel and oil but it's not very significant. Do you understand the epistemic problem of intellectual property rights in free markets ? No you don't. Do you know about the time factor in financial transactions ? No. I did not call any specific person a prick, I was referring to categories of people and behaviours I personally don't like, so you are lying and being dishonest. I was saying, if you are an arrogant female prick, then leave me alone. I am not saying, that you are not allowed to be an arrogant female prick, that's okay with me, but just leave me alone in that case. When you say that I conclude with with lyrics advocating the power of love, you are lying again, because the lyric says nothing about the power of love, that is your interpretation. It is rather a conclusion: to get love (take love) you have to make love, create it, however you do it, and that means more than Joanna making love with her ego. It's a Karmic-type principle about human destiny, you get what you give out, although it may take a while to understand the balance and how the equation is arrived at, it's a very complex argument. Now get off my case, Ms. FBI. You don't know anything about what I went through, and you didn't even understand the meaning of my visit to Oakland. You just leave me alone, best thing. When I think of you I just want to go to the toilet. Kicks against the pricks are one of the UK's fastest rising metal acts. Here is a lyric for you though, from the band Bittersweet: Seven sin of wantonness and Everything that's good is gone Sell it all for glory from the peers Silicone priestess scratch the back and Twist the knife to bone Kick against the pricks and scrape the shins I'm the enemy in the enemies now Swallowed the pill And drank to the fill All these things I carry now In this bittersweet now Try to hold the world there sinking Swimming in a paper cup Try to own the one beneath the skin Held up to the flames still singeing Skin begins to draw and tuck Never told theres not a chance to win What couldn't be, wouldn't be now Swallowed the pill And drank to the fill All these things I carry now In this bittersweet now Hold your hand up to the sky and try So hard to rise above But everything is beating down Swallowed the pill And drank to the fill All these things I carry now In this bittersweet now Jurriaan
Re: Greenspan and the use of time to commit fiscal crime
Your remarks are irrelevant, because it ignores what currency hedging expresses. One more point-- your remarks to Joanna Bujes are completely out of line and have no place in public communications. Okay Mr FBI, perhaps you ought to get it on with Joanna. You just try to show how smart you are, like Joanna, so you belong together. Perhaps you two could set up a rating bureau. I am not participating in this discussion any more. J.
Re: Answering Ted Glick
You are really smart. J. i realize that part of above is rhetorical flourish but... re. pfp in 68: cleaver doug dowd (bless his heart) were on ballot in 12-13-14 states, received about 75,000 votes nationwide, made no difference in any state (which is what folks must focus on re. prez elections given electoral college), other left candidates that year included your guy swp fred halsted, slp, and liberal gene mcarthy (who had independent ballot line in 6-7 states and received about 13,000 votes)... re. witch hunt: if reference is to truman (who as senator in 40 had said on senate floor that us should back which ever side was winning between soviets and nazis and then turn on winner), loyalty oaths and other ferreting out of 'reds' precedes 48, in any event, wallace made no difference in any state while strom thurmond actually won 4 southern states (repeat after me: electoral college, electoral college)... re. gp building gp: of course, which is why greens should have abandoned nader after he failed to campaign in 96, poli sci people used to contrast 'third' parties as 'idea' parties and 'personality' parties, latter have no legs because they serve as and are identified with individual campaigns... re. learning from nader campaign: you surely don't mean 96 noncampaign, as for 2000, well, several possible lessons - don't rely on famous name, choose candidate who is not so boring, don't run prez candidates because money, time, effort might be better spent elsewhere... re. learning fuck-you to leftists who have failed: latter have certainly failed (for lots of reasons, not all their doing), as for nader, dem stupidity was failure to ignore his potential candidacy... re. nader comparison to allende: borders on sacrilege (if one were religious) for obvious reasons... michael hoover
Re: Critique of the Brookings Institute - correction
Chris comments: BTW [the author, John Dolan] not Russian; he's a US citizen who taught English in Auckland, NZ, for several years and then relocated to Moscow. His wife is a New Zealander. J.
Re: article on MR website
I have an article posted on the Monthly Review website (www.monthlyreview.org) titled "Can the Working Class Change the World?" It is a write up of a talk I gave to the Marxist School in Sacramento. Comments welcome. I think the working class not only can change the world, but does change the world, and thus, the only real political question for me is what that changing is changing the world into, and how to engender the confidence to change it in a specific future direction according to a vision of the future we have. But your title is good, insofar as it implies, as an open question, that changing the world is a practical thing, and not simply a question of typing a lot of words into a keyboard as I have been doing for months. Question is raised, what is the best way to use Monthly Review articles for political education? I think you writing styleis excellent for political and educative purposes, because it is very clear and easy to follow, and you always provide relevant facts and illustrations to make you points very clear, and I can learn from that. But it is not my purpose to talk a lot about "changing the world" in the phase of life I am in, because I am having to change myself, if I may put it like that. As you know, the very word "change" is a loaded term these days, and I am a person who has to watch out with that. I have a lot of words, but I have to do a lot of things, nevermind my distractors, because if it is just words all the time,it's just noise ordiaper talk. Your most important point is reallythat "in the rich countries, the weaker the workers, the greater the inequality, and the less likely it is that workers will reach out in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in the poor nations". Mutatis mutandis, the stronger the workers, themore the inequality is reduced, and themore likely it is that workers will reach out in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in the poor nations. That is where workingclass politics starts, because nowyou have to know exactly what specifically strength means, and how you become strong, in every field of human endeavour, at a personal level and in what you do, so you can really operate this with assurance. In one of his last appeals to the youth, the elderly Ernest Mandel said in all modesty: "begin to change the world" but although this sounds good in French, that is not what we say in English. What we say is that change is already happening unless you're blind, and in those currents of change, we have to find our own place, without losing our real identity or be smashed up by misleaders. I don't think I am the strongest around and I have to watch what I eat, deodorant and so on, but with what I've got I can develop some strengths, and your writing is inspiring. If there is a problem with statistical abstractions, it is that you always have to try andbring that back to a human level so people can understand what it means personally in terms of active human subjects, and that in itself requires a good facility for abstraction and an organised, experienced life. You're good at it, as teacher. Few songsthat came to mind just now (I have this "jukebox" in my brain, although not a true radiohead): We grew up togetherFrom the cradle to the graveWe died and were rebornAnd then mysteriously saved. Bob Dylan with Jacques Levy, "Oh Sister" I remember Johnny - hey!Johnny come latelyI remember her shoes like a ballerinaA girl called Johnny whochanged her name when shediscovered her choice was tochange or to be changed - Waterboys, "A Girl called Johnny" I gave her laughter, she wanted diamondsI was romantic, she treated me cruellyWhere is the mercy, where is the love? - Mick Jagger, "Hard Woman" Love is youYou and meLove is knowingWe can be - John Lennon, "Love" Jurriaan
Re: Paul Marlor Sweezy (1910-2004)
I am very sad hearing that news and want to say something. I never met him personally but I knew him through his writings which made a lasting impression. He wasn't just a great publicist, an independent, pioneering American socialist, a team worker, and a great, cultured scholar, but he was also a good, humane person with a lifelong dedication to working for a socialist, egalitarian society. His book The Theory of Capitalist Development, which he published during the second world war no less, was among the first textbooks I read on Marx's economics in 1979 in Political Science 101 while trying to figure it out. Scholarly speaking, I personally didn't end up agreeing with his analysis of the USSR, nor with his interpretation of the transformation problem, but that was okay, I felt we shared the same goal, and Paul Sweezy never lost sight of it, irrespective of whether there was some particular agreement or disagreement or difference or anything like that. Later Ernest Mandel sent me an article in New Zealand for comment, which Ernest was publishing in a volume of essays in honour of Paul Sweezy and Harry Magdoff, proof to me that two scholars who sparred politically many a time were nevertheless united by their aspiration and did not lose sight of what was most important. Paul Sweezy was interested in dialogue, in explaining and understanding without obscurantism, and that was evident in his magazine Monthly Review also. He could distinguish precisely between a scholarly debate and a political controversy, and avoided silly sectarian nonsense. I hope there will be a very large memorial meeting for him, fully expressive of everything he contributed, and he gave so much ! He made history, and his work will live on and inspire us again ! Jurriaan - Original Message - From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2004 6:18 PM Subject: [PEN-L] Paul Marlor Sweezy (1910-2004) [lbo-talk] Paul Marlor Sweezy (1910- 2004) John Mage jmage at panix.com Sat Feb 28 09:12:20 PST 2004 Paul Sweezy, a man I loved, died last night. He was a Marxist revolutionary. john mage -- Yoshie * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Towards liberation from the camp in The Netherlands
A 35-strong group of rejected asylum seekers called A Long Walk to Freedom (recalling the title of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela's book, and the Chinese national liberation war) is on a 234km long march from Groningen in the far north of The Netherlands to the Parliament Building in The Hague, in protest against the hard-line deportation policy introduced by Dutch Immigration and Integration Minister Rita Verdonk. Whereas about 2,000 asylum seekers waiting for five years or more for their immigration applications to be processed will get permits, as well as 200 people whose cases are distressing (they would suffer dangers or severe hardships if sent back), another 26,000 are due to be expelled. Apart from the long distance, the marchers were also confronted with snow and ice-cold winds. We want to show the minister, that we are willing to endure pain in order to be allowed to stay, Massoud Djabani said on Friday. More people will join us along the way. Everyone agrees that the minister has handled this matter incorrectly as there are far more than the 200 distressing cases she has recognised. The new tough deportation policy was criticised in the international press, and Human Rights Watch says some people could be killed if deported - it is ridiculous to deport families who have had settled lives and jobs for years in The Netherlands. On 19 february artists from Friesland Province unveiled a large artwork in front of Parliament Buildings protesting against deportation. In Groningen there was a torch wake, on 15-18 march there's a bus campaign and on 10 April a demonstration in central Amsterdam. The Autonomist Centre in Amsterdam has sent a letter to private firms outsourced to deport migrants, and have appealed to airline companies to take a position against deportation. Manwhile, Rotterdam will take possession of the first prison ship in the Netherlands soon. The floating detention centre will become home to illegal immigrants awaiting deportation, as well as repeat offenders. The mayor said the ship was needed because the city had a severe shortage of cells. The Justice Ministry awarded 2.3 million euro extra to the court system in Rotterdam, because of the increasing number of cases being dealt with. Among 2,500 people protesting in front of the Dutch Parliament against deportations earlier this month was an asylum seeker who actually had sewed his eyes and mouth shut. Jan de Wit of the Socialist Party (SP) and Marijke Vos of green-left GroenLinkswere also there. All MPs were given a red heart by the protestors. On behalf of the group Heartfelt Pardon, MPs were also given a book on how to integrate in Dutch society. Meanwhile in Iraq, the Dutch army arrested ten Iraqi's on Saturday morning suspected of armed attacks, and the murder of a Spanish major, said military spokesman Bart Visser. Three weeks ago, the Dutch army had also arrested another 20 Iraqi's. Bart Visser said the arrests showed that the military were not being disoriented by the political controversy in The Hague about how to deal with violence in Iraq. Unemployment in Holland is predicted to increase by 95,000 people this year, primarily low-educated people aged 40+. Some of us are illegal, and others not wanted Our work contract's out and we have to move on But it's six hundred miles to that Mexican border They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves. A sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos canyon Like a fireball of lightning, it shook all our hills Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves? The radio says they are just deportees. Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria You won't have a name when you ride the big air-plane And all they will call you, will be deportees. - Arlo Guthrie, Deportees
Critique of the Brookings Institution - this time by a Russian
On 16 november 2003 I posted a critical comment on a book by Brookings Institution authors about Siberia on Marxmail and PEN-L. Here is another one by a Russian author that is much better (thanks to Chris for drawing my attention to it): Every year or so, another silly theory comes into vogue among Western Russia hands, that estimable body of scientific prognosticators not one of whom managed to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union until three or four years after it had occurred. This year's trendily daft notion is that the curse of natural resources is to blame for Russia's fate. That's right: Russia's problem is that it's got far too much oil, minerals and forests-just like other famously messed-up countries, like Brazil and Venezuela. It's not the rich countries' fault for stripping these places; it 's their own fault for leading them on with provocative displays of natural wealth. Story at: http://www.exile.ru/184/book_review.html
Re: demo fervor
if the data is poorly measured, then even a case where there are no empirical counterexamples may be wrong. Jim D. Of course, that's possible, yes. J.
Re: demo fervor
Bush thinks that homoskedasticity is unnatural and is going to ban any talk of it in government funded statistical studies. Only observations that are heteroskedastic will be allowed. Thanks. I'm not actually gay, but I had a lot of sexual harassment in the past, you end up doing things you would rather not, because of the heartless, racist, unsexy pressure to be something you are not, and of the systematic misrepresentation of who you really are by people who see themselves as Gods. Antonov Ovseyenko reports in his book The Time of Stalin that after Joseph Stalin had an academic give him private tuition in dialectics during the later 1920s, he had the academic killed off, at least the academic mysteriously disappeared. I have never been able to trace the complete details of that story though. J.
Re: demo fervor
if so, we agree. I cannot think of anytime I disagreed with you. The more I think about this, the more I think I disagree only with the people I disagree with, but, one always has to keep that critical inquiry going and not tule out the possibility you might disagree. It's also extremely hard to disprove (or falsify) a proposition empirically. Most propositions have ceteris paribus clauses which can be invoked to defend the prop. This is true, which is another reason why Benjamin Disraeli referred to lies, damn lies and statistics. However, statistics are indispensable to place the problem in proportion, and even it is not possible to conclusively prove or disprove a theorem, it is often possible to prove a margin of error, i.e. the limits within which quantitative variation can occur. This is an important corrective to rootless theorising which attaches enormous importance to something which, in the wider scheme of things, really just isn't so important. For example, in macro, empirical evidence has seemingly destroyed the monetarist proposition that rapid increases in the money supply always everywhere cause inflation (since it turns out that velocity is unstable and the relevant money supply changes over time, often in an endogenously-driven way). But there are some people who honestly continue to defend this proposition. (They may be honest despite their politic positions, which are bad in my perspective.) Yes, and Imre Lakatos explains why that is the case (showing also that Popper's idea of crucial experiments is strictly speaking false or at any rate must be relativised). When I was a university, I have a friend and he wrote a paper on this, applying the Lakatosian interpretation to the history of economic thought, with a Marxian interpretation of the objective conditions within which theorising took place. My own interest as Education student at that time, was in historical learning, i.e. from the same historical experience different people can conclude different things depending on the theories they use to interpret the experience. You have these historical learning processes and you can say at any time that in relation to a specific event, people of a particular generation drew a particular conclusion, maybe influence by their social station in life, but that conclusion was drawn, and that remains in memory as a basis for present and future evaluations or orientations. This is actually a specific problem in Marxian-type political theory, because we try to get people to draw specific lessons from real historical experience rationally understood, and not bother with false prophets or detractors and so on. Another application might be in regard to the fact, that the PNAC-type people drew particular conclusions from the experience they had in the past, and this shaped their policies, their thinking, and that experience also defines the dynamic of their thinking. Jurriaan
Re: Preventing Working-Class Electoral Participation
Any sweeping change in technology is not without its challenges. The Election Technology Council understands that while DRE systems offer the American public substantial advantages, it is natural that questions about the security of these newer systems will be asked. The ETC is ready, willing and able to work with government election officials, academia, and industry in identifying, developing and disseminating improvements to election systems environment. Such improvements may involve equipment standards, system testing, election day operations, voter registration, integration of other ballot types (provisional, phone, mail, absentee, military), auditability and other factors. The member companies of the Election Technology Council are committed to the election systems marketplace, to product improvement and to meeting customer needs as they evolve. Launched on December 9, 2003, the Election Technology Council is a group of leading election systems vendors. The ETC will work to educate lawmakers, election officials, voters and other key constituencies about the significant benefits of electronic voting. At the same time, the Council recognizes that it must also address issues as they arise concerning the trustworthiness of DRE systems specifically and public perceptions of the electronic voting sector generally. To this end, the Council's initial projects with focus in three areas: A code of ethics for electronic voting system vendors; recommendations in the area of national standards and certification for DRE systems; security best practices. http://www.itaa.org/es/gendoc.cfm?docid=314
Re: The Nader Factor
I cannot vote Nader from here, but I'll work on the campaign financing. J.
Re: Soft on the Empire
I hear that Gibson's film is soft on the empire and tough on the mob and the national elite. It's a fitting blockbuster for the New American Century. Well put. Maybe ought to reread Canetti anyhow. J.
Re: query: institutionalized population
In the US Bureau of Labor Statistics current population survey, who counts as being part of the Institutionalized population and thus is excluded from the labor force? Are prisoners who are paid to answer phones (etc.) part of the paid labor force and employment? The US non-institutional population excludes the armed forces, transients, people on ships or difficult-to-measure people etc., and institutionalised people, i.e. prison inmates, nursing home guests, psychiatric patients, hospitalised people etc. The concept of the paid labor force suggests that prison labor should be included in surveys, but in practice they do not do it, in virtue of the institutional/non-institutional distinction and possibly also because of measurement problems. In previous posts, I have tried to show the quantitative implication of the derivations of the different populations definitions used. My personal philosophy has always been, that population analysis (demographic analysis) should try to give a picture of the characteristics of the whole population of a country at a point in time, or during an interval of time, and thus, I've previously tried to estimate the composition of the US population as a whole, in terms of real categories describing what they are doing or what their position is, i.e. children, working, unemployed, housewives, idling, retired, sickness beneficiary, criminal, institutionalised, and so on, working up to a more precise analysis of the real position of social classes. But usually American scholars don't seem to do that sort of thing, such empirical research is just dirty and they'd rather just work on an econometric model with a formula. I can give a very simple example: do you know the number or proportion of fulltime housewives or househusbands in the United States ? It's very difficult to actually find out reliable info about it, I mean I tried all over the place to get an estimate, but I couldn't find any, and I just had to guess more or less what it could be within the limits I can define. Yet, there are oodles and oodles of lefties, sociologists, therapists and society magazines and they're all talking about housewives, the politics of housework and so on, blah blah, yet, nobody really knows how many fulltime housewives there actually are, what the significance of this is, and I think I would actually have to estimate this, via a procedure from existing Census data to create a benchmark, and then a formula, along the lines that if the number of females is N, the population size is S, the labour force is T and the employment rate is Q, then the total number of housewives will be such-and-such. I personally quite enjoy Erik Olin Wright's stuff because he actually gets empirical. There are some good scholars like that, like Edward Wolff, Bob Pollin, Thomas Weisskopf, Michael Yates, and so on, and plus of course your own good self and various PEN-Lers, who actually try to quantify and illustrate the objective picture of wealth and poverty in America, plus make the economic and social arguments, in a language people can understand. Prof. Perelman doesn't believe much in the quantification side of things, but actually, my own most powerful economic arguments defending Marx's basic idea are very much in terms of quantitative relations (but that's more about the world economy really). What this quantification means, is that we make the arguments more precise, and understand what is really feasible, what we can realise. Anybody can of course say the rich are too rich or the poor are too poor, but what we really want to know is, exactly what difference we could make to that situation, and how we could make it, in a way that advances our vision of a society fit for human beings to live in, and grow up in. If we have that knowledge, we no longer flipflop between saying we cannot change anything and we can change everything but we can identify a region within which change can occur, and specify what outcomes we seek given the values and aspirations that we have. It gets us out of the waffly middleclass postmodernist discourses, and relativises the arguments made referring to real experience. Personally, I have been criticised for my interest in statistics by socialists and Marxists for two decades now, and many Americans think statistics are nerdy, but I am quite recalcitrant and continue to believe in the value of statistical information. Ultimately I base that on Hegel's logic, because, if you think through Hegel's argument, it's clear that quantity and quality are not things you can disconnect from each other. Regards Jurriaan Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: demo fervor
http://economics.about.com/cs/economicsglossary/g/heteroskedastic.htm which tells us that such a beast does exist. and i thought i earned my math degree with higher grades than sonofabush! I think the definition isn't very good. Heteroskedasticity and homoskedasticity really refer to the actual distribution pattern of a set of observations in relation to a norm, as far as I remember. Suppose you wanted to know what would be the best predictor of price movements. Well, you could specify some relevant variables, and then some price vectors, and then you could study how actual observed prices deviated from the level or path which you have hypothesised. That is the type of analysis which Anwar Shaikh did once in support of the 93% LTV, published in the Robert Langston memorial volume. J.
Re: demo fervor
I have had this argument with you before a few times, and there is a philosophical difference between us there. I never said I agreed with Greenspan, but what I am saying is that he does try to investigate real economic life empirically in a serious way, as a basis for his governmental responsibility, which many economists do not do. If I abuse Greenspan, it has nil positive effect. But if I make a good argument which shows why he is mistaken, that could convince a few people, or even bring them over to my side. I stated previously Basically the bourgeoisie is telling the working class to go whoring, instead of receive social assistance benefits for which they were previously taxed by their own elected government. Maybe this seems an outrageous exaggeration by a sinner like me, certainly Joanna didn't like it and thought a correction was appropriate, but I think it is an empirically verifiable corrollary of endless marketisation, because I believe it is true that more market = more socio-economic inequality between people, irrespective of whether that is good or bad (for the most part, I think it is bad). The ultimate argument of the bourgeois class concerning individual initiative and the market is, that everybody has something they can sell to get an income, and thus, if they don't do it, the inquality or disparity which results is just natural (the dispute then is about exceptions to the rule, such as the disabled and so on). I.e., the rich are rich because they are rich, and the poor are poor because they are poor. And for the rest, insofar as the market doesn't enforce a specific morality, it is a question of fostering a specific individual morality. And I think you can legitimately question that and argue about it. But I don't think I get anywhere if I say that people should be arguing about things completely differently from what they are actually arguing about, rather, I ought to explain why they are arguing about it, engage with what's being said, and if I say they're just stupid clowns or scam artists, I don't think I score many points. I don't claim to have the complete picture of Greenspan but I have followed him a bit over the years and feel able to make the comment I did make. I think you are wrong to think that Greenspan doesn't have a theory, but I think Greenspan is also a politician or ideologist of sorts, who is fully aware of the furies of private interest to which Marx refers in his comments about the political economists in the Preface to his magnum opus. I prefer to stick to the norm of respect the person, criticise/change the behaviour if at all possible. J. - Original Message - From: dmschanoes [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 3:39 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] demo fervor Are you kidding me? Do you know anything about Greenspan? His history? His flacking for every flimflam artist in the 1980s? His Ayn Randism? This guy has given a new meaning to the word equivocation. Deregulation? What deregulation? That's total crap. When Long Term Capital Management collapsed, approximately one month after Greenspan testified that the markets did a better job of regulating hedge funds than any govt. agency could, the Fed intervened to arrange the loans and keep the corpse afloat. Deregulation only exists to the extent that it justifies the terms of expropriation. Theory? This guy has no fucking theory, he has an ideology which he uses and is used to adapt to the reality he happens to find at any given moment. Do you remember this clown's response to the emerging Asian currency crises in 1997? His smug talking down to Thailand and South Korea and Indonesia about restraint and budgets blah blah blah... Guy's a total fucking scam artist, a real hero of his times, with a face made out of silly putty and a mind to match. You're happy to say you admire this piece of shit? Well, as we used to say, There it is. Which means... No sense talking about it. dms - Original Message - From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2004 8:23 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] demo fervor Personally, I'm happy to say that I do admire Al Greenspan for his great personal dedication to finding out about economics and his great concern for the facts of experience, which many economists simply do not have. It's just that I think that his deregulation policies have different economic effects and consequences from what he thinks they have. I think the real evolution of the monetary and credit system since 1981 raises questions which his theory just cannot answer, and indeed contradicts it. Regards, Jurriaan
Re: demo fervor
The ultimate argument of the bourgeoisie? It's not about buying and selling, it's about aiming and firing. Not sure I agree - it seems often more firing and then aiming, i.e. shoot first and talk later. I am not immune to lapses of temper or swearing myself, but I prefer really to restrict that event type to my own quarters, preferably at times when no one else is around. It's an ideal of civility I have. If you were in Greenspan's position of responsibility, what would you do ? J.
Re: demo fervor
strictly speaking, no propositions at all can be proved with statistics. All one can say is that your hypothesis survived a statistical test. True, but it occurs to me that this might be too strongly worded, insofar as SOME propositions could be proved with statistics. For example, take proposition p which states that y will always greater than x. I go and measure y and I measure x and by golly, yep, I cannot find any single case where p is false. Now you could of course say, tomorrow I could encounter an example which contradicts p, and that is possible. This would demonstrate what we knew logically anyway, namely that there is no absolute proof of p, and, any counterexample of p is proof of that theorem. Nevertheless, in terms of the most basic tools of human cognition, i.e. stimulus discrimination and stimulus generalisation, the very fact, that we statistically established that p holds true as a rule, except in a few odd cases, is significant, because then we are not just talking logical entailment but real experience. Of course, I could also argue that p is true simply because it is true, or because A says so, or because it follows logically from q, but an appropriate statistical quantification of observations does I think add to the credibility of the argument. In general, these days, you get a lot of intellectually lazy people. They want to skim off the most advanced knowledge around for the purpose of gratifying their needs and so on, spy on other because they cannot think for themselves or create anything for themselves. A lot of it just revolves around a postmodernist spinning-out of concepts undisciplined by any real experience beyond a bit of screwing around (nothing wrong with a bit of screwing around, but it's not all of reality, if you know what I mean). In this situation, I think quantitative empirical inquiry has definite merit insofar as it limits the amount of waffle people can talk about the aggregate effects of their individual interactions. I.e. we try to count the horse's teeth, rather than hypothesise they are there. Personally, I'm happy to say that I do admire Al Greenspan for his great personal dedication to finding out about economics and his great concern for the facts of experience, which many economists simply do not have. It's just that I think that his deregulation policies have different economic effects and consequences from what he thinks they have. I think the real evolution of the monetary and credit system since 1981 raises questions which his theory just cannot answer, and indeed contradicts it. Regards, Jurriaan
MEGA II: towards recovering the real Marx
Især hos Marx og Engels fremtræder sammenhængen mellem deres udsagn og deres teoris forskellige dele tydeligt. En kronologisk fortløbende, sammenhængende udgivelse ville derfor have været bedre, har det været hævdet. Det er et rimeligt standpunkt, men afgørelsen er truffet for længst. MEGA kommer i fire afdelinger, og det kan ikke mere ændres. Det foreliggende bind er nemlig nr. 56 ud af i alt 123 planlagte. Anden afdeling af MEGA er planlagt til at omfatte 15 bøger, dog således at adskillige bøger er opdelt i flere bind. Det vil sige der udkommer i virkeligheden 24 bind, og af disse mangler seks. Efter planen skal de udkomme indtil år 2006. Det betyder, at denne afdeling vil være den første, der er helt færdig. Ganske vist er det også afdelingen med færrest bind, men det tager betydelig tid at udarbejde dem - forrige bind i afdelingen udkom i 1993. At der nu er kommet skub i sagerne skyldes, at de næste tre-fire bind bearbejdes i Japan, dog ét i samarbejde med forskere i Moskva. Forskerholdene i Japan har eksisteret i lang tid, men blev først efter 1990 inddraget i arbejdet med MEGA. Selv om anden afdeling altså er den mindste i MEGA, indeholder bindene i denne afdeling umådelig meget aldrig før trykt materiale. Som det er bekendt, arbejdede Marx i flere årtier på at udforme sin økonomiske teori, Kritikken af den politiske økonomi. Det var en omvæltning i samtidens forståelse af økonomisk og dermed samfundsteori. Det var en vanskelig opgave, blandt andet fordi et nyt teoretisk begrebsapparat måtteudvikles. Marx nåede således kun at få afsluttet bind ét. Men han havde lavet udkast til alle planlagte og arbejdet med at skrive dem. Han efterlod sig mange tusind sider manuskripter i en næsten ulæselig håndskrift og ofte i en form, så kun Engels kunne tyde dem. Det var ikke færdigt udarbejdede manuskripter, som bare lige skulle pudses af og forsynes med et par noter. Det var manuskripter, der var undergået mange forvandlinger undervejs. Den bog vi i dag kender som Kapitalen bind 2 var ingenlunde hele bindet, men kun første del, som dog var næsten færdigt. Engels påtog sig at udgive manuskripterne, og han kunne to år efter Marx' død i 1883 udgive bind 2. Arbejdet med det næste bind tog imidlertid næsten 11 år. Kapitalen bind 3 udkom derfor først i 1894. Det havde været Marx' hensigt at bind 2 og 3 skulle have været bind 2, men på grund af omstændighederne måtte Engels' foretage denne ændring. Engels' indsats dokumenteres blandt andet i dette nye manuskriptbind fra MEGA. Det er takket være hans indsats, at der siden 1894 har foreligget et værk, som har kunnet bruges i den videnskabelige diskussion. @u:Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: Manuskripte und redaktionelle Texte zum dritten Buch des 'Kapitals' 1871 bis 1895. Bearbejdet af Carl-Erich Vollgraf og Regina Roth under medvirken af Jürgen Jungnickel, Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2003, XI, 1138 s., Euro168.- http://www.arbejderen.dk/index.asp?S_ID=40 Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels Manuskripte und redaktionelle Texte zum dritten Buch des Kapital 1871 bis 1895. MEGA, II. Abt.: Das Kapital und Vorarbeiten Band 14 ISBN: 3-05-003733-4 Gb, ? 168,- , Erscheinungsjahr: 2003, XI + 1138 S., 24 Abb., 160 x 240 mm Wie Max Weber, Joseph A. Schumpeter und andere Klassiker der Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften hat Marx sein ökonomisches Hauptwerk nicht vollenden können, sondern lediglich den ersten Band des Kapitals in modifizierten Fassungen publiziert. Die Bände 2 und 3 wurden von Engels aus dem umfangreichen Manuskriptmaterial des Nachlasses zusammengestellt und herausgegeben, so daß die Authentizität des Kapital bis heute strittig ist. In der II. Abteilung der MEGA werden alle Text- und Manuskriptfassungen historisch-kritisch rekonstruiert. Von 15 Bänden sind bereits zehn erschienen, die ausstehenden Bände werden an der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften sowie in Moskau, Sendai und Tokyo bearbeitet. Band II/14 enthält die letzten Manuskripte von Marx zum 3. Buch aus den Jahren 1871 bis 1882 sowie alle überlieferten Texte, die Engels zwischen 1885 und 1894 bei der Redaktion des 3. Bandes verfaßt hat. Von den 51 im Band dokumentierten Texten werden 45 hier erstmals veröffentlicht. Im Mittelpunkt der sechs von Marx verfaßten Texte steht das hier erstmals publizierte umfangreiche Manuskript Mehrwertrate und Profitrate mathematisch behandelt aus dem Jahr 1875. Auch drei weitere Manuskripte gelten diesem Thema, während in den zwei anderen Fragen von Profit, Zins und Rente erörtert werden. Wenn die elf von Marx 1867/68 niedergeschriebenen Entwürfe zum 3. Buch in Kürze im MEGA-Band II/4.3 veröffentlicht sind, werden sämtliche überlieferten Manuskripte und Notizen zum 3. Buch vorliegen. Damit läßt sich erstmals auf gesicherter Textbasis ein Urteil über den Stand von Marx' Ausarbeitung dieses, den theoretischen Teil des Kapitals beschließenden Buches fällen. Es läßt sich feststellen, welche konzeptionellen Akzentuierungen und inhaltlichen Änderungen er bei seinen
