Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Page One Feature -- WSJInteractiveEdition
Doug Henwood wrote: Mark, when you first brought this up a year or two ago, I made a point of tracking down interviewing some oil "experts." All, except your pals at Petroconsultants in Geneva, think this point of view is hogwash. Doug, I sometimes track down experts who are knowledgeable on a huge range of subjects, and who also prefer to remain anonymous. You can find them in the saloon bar of the Admiral Duncan pub, just up the road from here. Whether these experts are as wise as yours I dunno but they are always good for a pint. I'm glad you mentioned Petroconsultants. They are, as you may know, the only international oil geology consultancy which has a true world database, which even the USGS and the US EIA utilise in their own often uninterpretable assessments. Last year, at a meeting of the International Energy Authority which has gone down in industry history and led to the CEO's of BP-Amoco and other oil majors stating publicly that 'the age of Big Oil is ending', Petroconsultants people debated the kind of experts you know, including famous n-c oil guru Morris Adelman. He that your own oil 'expert' Greg Nowell, repeatedly told us all was the industry 'maven' whose word was that oil was 'essentially renewable' and would 'last forever'. Against strong US government resistance (ie, strong resistance to facts which no-one else felt witchy enough to blindly deny),the International Energy Authority abandoned its previous hardline optimism about resources and adopted a more realistic stance (not yet realistic enough, but they are afraid of mass panics) like the one put forward by Petroconsultants. Adelman lost the argument. This was a watershed event and from that time on, I find myself in the odd position, in a debate with you, of being (more or less) with the official viewpoint. The IEA, for those who don't know, was set up by OECD in the 1970s to make sure there would be no more oil price shocks; it is the west's first line of defence against the OPEC terrorists. Mark
Re: Re: RE: The Nader Campaign, part three: historical precendents and sectarianism
David, where I was wrong in the way I answered Lou, and I've been thinking about it for hours, was in the absurdly uncomradely way I dismissied Nader - uncomradely to Lou, that is. If he feels and people I respect feels there is some point to promoting Nader, then it's crass for someone to arrive boots first in the discussion from a long way off and without first hand knowledge or without hvaing sensed the mood at first hand, so Mea maxima culpa. In short, it's wrong for me to label Nader a 'dubious creep' and thank you for giving me the chance to correct myself. What I'd like to see is for Lou to develop his thoughts about why Nader should be campaigned for, and why in general we should be putting forward Father Gapon figures (I know, shouldn't call him that way either). So my tone was wrong to . I understand the parall;el you want to draw with Livingstone. He is also a compromised figure, but I supported him, right? Well, I think Nader should be supported, but he should be persistently challenged on his polices and his ideas. However, there one slight difference between Nader and Livingstone (several actually). Livingstone won. He, too, should be and was and is challenged. But he represented a huge plurality. Nader may get around 10%. That is not a plurality, that is a man and a programme which in general we ought to reject, capturing the left/greens as a constituency and that is not a goal worth turning into a cheshire cat over. What happens afterwards, the next time someone tries to organise something big? They will have the whole, federally-financed electoral apparatus of the Greens to answer to. It won't be pretty, it will awful. But I'd like to hear more from Lou. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: "David Welch" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, July 01, 2000 11:16 PM Subject: [PEN-L:21164] Re: RE: The Nader Campaign, part three: historical precendents and sectarianism On Sat, Jul 01, 2000 at 10:51:40PM +0100, Mark Jones wrote: Just like telling people to abandon all doubt "commit their heart and soul", fall glumly silent, and then give their all for some dubious creep like Ralph Nader, in fact. Or Ken Livingstone?
Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: capitalist collapse -- socialism?
Jim Devine wrote: if there's no _reason_ for the exponential increases, they're worth forgetting. Well, the increases in oil and energy consumption are matters of fact, of history. The problem is (a) explain and (b) propose effective policies against. Albert Bartlett seemed to assume that the increases were due to human greed and stupidity in the absence of real information either about the limits of the resource or about the consequences when anything grown exponentially. Later someone sugested to him the Malthusian answer. Even then Bartlett said, if population is the problem, its the population of America which is the worst problem, since Americans use proportionately more energy than anyone else. In others words, he continued to say, it's energy that's the problem. My answer is to say that expanded capitalist reproduction is the explanation for the exponential growth which even know every OECD, IMF, WB etc report celebrates. Given that the world's population is still growing exponentially at 1.6-1.7% p.a., energy consumption must inccrease by at least that amounbt, other things being equal, for living standards not to fall. But the actual increase has of course been higher. One thing I know is that deflation and underconsumption go together. Not necessarily. Global deflation can coincide with hefty gnp per capita increases for certain social groups and certain nations or regions. It happened after 1870. It hapened in the 1930s and it's happening now. More: there is no strict causal relationship between deflation and underconsumption. The latter does not determine the former. Deflation, in othger words, is not a realisation problem, it is an accumulation-dynamics problem. You do not need anything from Keynes to explain, that I can see. Attempts to invoke Keynes to plug imaginary holes in Marxism inevitably result in problems. There is a problem of a global capital shortage. If you boost demand, you will just get energy shortages still quicker, followed by stagflation and then worse things. a statement of faith? No, it is not. There is excess capital which cannot profitably be invested. This is because there is an overall capital shortage relative to an underlying problem: the problem is that no series of innovations or path-breaking systems or novel resource discoveries have emerged which can cheapen the cost of capital and allow the rate of surplus-value to grow. The world-system is short of capital on a number of different levels and is therefore unable to transform either the global means of production or the global production relations (the institutes and systems of US hegemony primarily) in order to allow for new growth. This is a systemic problem, ie it is a crisis of US hegemony. It is also a structural problem, ie the structures of production are exhausted but cannot be renewed because the existing capital base is too small to do what is required (for example, if as some energy engineers who seriously argue that the solution to energy is to import H3 from the planet Jupiter, then we clearly do not have the capital to do that; but in reality we do not even have the capital to convert the global energy system to alternatives like PVs even if, as some now argue, the net return on new-generation solar cells is as high as 7). you'll have to explain more. Is there an energy economics expert in the house? Doug had one. Where is he, Doug? It does explain the phenomenon of falling energy prices in an era of growing resource scarcity, and this argument explains the fallacy of Simon's thinking. what fallacies are those? This is a separate discussion, about natural resources other than energy, which I don't want to get into now. But I already gave enough reasons in an earlier posting, which I cannot repost to the list right now. Arguments about Simon tend to become waterfalls. It's a waste of time. Are you saying that the price of oil has been falling relative to what it "should" be? No, I'm not. I'm saying that the fall in energy prices is politically-overdetermined. I've posted on the 'true price of gasoline' at length before on this list. yes, but there was a downward trend before 1989. The big fall was in 1986 or so. Which figures are you using? I'd be interested to know. And if there is an energy economist in the house, I'd be interested to talk more about what the lessons, if any are, of the Soviet oil collapse. It's my belief, based on personal experience of both the Russian and N Sea oil industries, that a similar collapse in production is now happening in the N Sea. US production is, of course, falling rapidly. what I didn't follow was the assertion that we're running out of oil. Since even the International Energy Authority now accepts that recoverable oil resources are limited and that production will peak in the next few decades (I think it has already peaked), who still argues that we're NOT running out of oil. BTW, the importance of the Soviet
Re: jhurd_newparty: RE: The Nader Campaign, part three: historical precendent...
Yes, I used the wrong tone in speaking of Nader. Let us hope you are right about him. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 02, 2000 4:55 AM Subject: Re: jhurd_newparty: RE: The Nader Campaign, part three: historical precendent... In a message dated 7/1/00 2:54:33 PM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: some dubious creep like Ralph Nader, in fact. I've heard Nader answer questions on several national news programs recently and have read transcripts of several other interviews. His views about issues of all kinds, ranging from military spending and the use of U.S. military power (he favors greatly reducing spending, waging peace rather than war, and using power to protect victimized people rather than corporations and corrupt dictators) to universal health care (he favors a single payer system that covers everyone) to same sex marriage and health benefits for same sex couples (he said "yes to both") are as good or better than any significant U.S. candidate for president (one with a chance of at least, say, 2% of the vote) that I can remember -- comparable to Barry Commoner, as I recall. If Nader is your idea of a "dubious creep," then we might as will give up all hope forever for electing a truly progressive President. He's not perfect, but who is? Are you? Frankly, people who say Nader gives them the creeps just because he's done or said a few objectionable things in his 66 years give me the creeps. Your brand of perfectionism is a sure ticket to political oblivion. -Ralph Suter
Re: Re: Re: re: whatever
Doug Henwood wrote: Speaking of neoclassicals, didn't Jevons worry about Britain running out of coal? And Jevons was right. Today the British coal industry has all-but disappeared and can never again, under any circumstances, be the energetics-base for large-scale capitalist production. The coal did indeed run out, entropically-speaking. N Sea oil is now running out too (peaked several years ago). Capitalism is like a man running deeper into quicksand but not sinking all at once because he finds occasional tussocks to cling onto. These temporary reprieves only make his ultimate fate more certain. In Jevons' time British coal was a primary energy source not just for Britain but for WORLD capitalism. The ominous significance of the collapse of coal escapes us because 100 years seems like a long time. It is a long time for a person but not for history. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in theWorld-System and National Emissions of]
Giving enemies a name is a sinister business, I agree. It is akin to witchcraft, but then economics IS witchcraft. But sometimes it is no more than pulling a bearskin off a shaman and revealing a poor trembling actor inside (I do not mean Doug of course). A hundred years ago, bitter battles were fought between those who claimed the mantle of Marxist leadership (Kautsky, Bernstein etc) and those who from the margins of the movement (Luxemburg, Lenin) bitterly denounced them as impostors, bourgeois politicians and above all, "revisionists", whose purpose was to deny the possibility of capitalist crisis and the reality of proletarian revolution, and to deliver the working class bound hand and foot to its mortal enemies. The same thing is going on now, not just here but al over the place. It is part of a pre-revolutionary ferment. Today the person we should mostly be attacking politically is Ralph Nader. For him to consolidate his leadership of the US Greens would not be a good thing. It will mark the full assimilation of the Greens, as has happened now in Germany. This will split the anti-capitalist movement even more, and it is already split about everything except the need to come together for specific issues/events/struggles. Our anticapitalist movement extends from the nationalist far-right to the sectarian ultraleft and takes in EF! along the way. The ambition of our enemies is to fragment this movement so completely that it will no longer even be able to find unity in action and will become what it was, a fissiparous, quarelsome morass of hundreds of groups, special interests etc who have no shared view, interest or strategy. They way to do this is to strip out the dominant core, or centre of gravity of this burgeoning movement, by reconsolidating its centre around an authoritarian figure who actually does not speak to the real activists, and whose ideology albeit confused is rootedly petit-bourgeois: the ideology of a disaffected shopkeeper. Nader's role is what it always was: to prevent a real radicalisation of the broader masses outside the activists fringe. However, nothing can slow the ascent of Nader to national political prominence as a 3rd party leader; it is he who will be the political beneficiary of Seattle/DC etc and the movement which has sprung up and breathes in his sails. The contradictoriness and shallowness of his own thought makes him the perfect choice; he is a template cut from the contradictions, doubts and political illiteracy of the masses themselves.It is necessary to support his candidacy while exposing ruthlessly, the rottenness of his politics. That, to judge from what I have seen on lbo-talk, is more or less the position taken by Doug, who will vote for him 'without illusions' (I stand to be corrected if I misunderstood). But Doug Henwood takes a correct position in an overly fastidious, Pilate-kind of way. We must not be vestal virgins. This is a great opportunity for Henwood himself to find supporters and go forward to seek high office. He is in tune with the movement and au fait with its MO and many of its leading figures; and many respect him. He is perfectly capable by nature, disposition, natural charm and connections, of being a credible aspirant for high office. Of course, Henwood has no such ambitions, and his politics is too lacking in necessary clarity. In order to form a bloc or position within the emergent radical right-green-left movement, you have to have an absolutely clear theoretical position of your own. This is 1902 stuff; before uniting, you must divide. You can make your own checklist of points, and it practically writes itself, on gender and identity politics issues, on ecology, on supranational instances of power, on centre/periphery relations, on our characterisation of late capitalism holistically, systemically, and above all on our view of the nature of capitalist crisis. How real are items like global warming, N-S divisions, water, oil, GE etc etc? Not as ethico-political quandaries or flags marking ways thru a moral maze, but as *indicators of crisis*, and how weakly or strongly determinant of crisis are they, what degree of hysteresis do they embody? You have work thru these items, systematically, one by one, with a clear programmatic intent. And this programme must never be cast in stone, never be a mosaic fetish-object 'owned' by some sectarian leadership, it must always be the subject of debate, dispute, rejection, clarification, development, re-adoption etc, in light of real analysis of concrete events and actualities, above all in light of best available science. What is the real science of GE, of global warming, of fossil-depletion, etc? You have to base yourself on science. I think that in the context of *struggle for a movement*, that is to say, of a struggle to participate in shaping a broad social movement (which may possibly emerge under certain circusmtances as a true revolutionary movement), it is quite possible to settle
Fw: My Links of the Month
- Original Message - From: "Harald Agerley" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "ENVTECSOC - csf" [EMAIL PROTECTED]; "ENVINF-L" [EMAIL PROTECTED]; "ELAN - csf" [EMAIL PROTECTED]; "ecol-econ" [EMAIL PROTECTED]; "ECOFEM . CSF" [EMAIL PROTECTED]; "BIOREGIONAL - CSF" [EMAIL PROTECTED]; "EP - CSF" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, July 01, 2000 8:49 AM Subject: My Links of the Month 'My Links of the Month' for July are now available. They cover the following subjects: * Next-generation wind power technology * Economic Growth and the Scarcity of Natural Resources * Solar: Our Greatest Untapped Energy Reserve * Hard Green or Hardly Green ? * Energy-efficient Foam Home * Is Extended Producer Responsibility Effective? * A climate neutral vacation * Fuel Cell Vehicles are Coming Go directly to the Links at : http://csf.colorado.edu/authors/Agerley.Harald/mylin/gatejul.html Harald Agerley - Sønderborg - Denmark
Re: Re: you simply ignore the benefits of dams -- Kenneth Hanly
Ken Hanly wrote: How does it follow from this example that dams have no benefits or that you do not ignore the benefits? Ken, according to the US DoE the contribution of new hydropower planned or commissioned by US utilities under green power marketing initiatives is 0.0% of the total (which itself is a miserable 225 MW, ie equivalent to about one medium sized fossil burning station). The industry itself no longer believes in dams. Mark
Re: re: energy
Rod Hay wrote: Okay, Mark, please explain why no other energy technology is feasible. This kind of thing is debated on Jay Hanson's list, where ex-vice presidents of PV companies argue that PV's are the future and people answer them like this: From: Mark Boberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed Jun 28, 2000 11:02pm Subject: PV (was RE: Re: Lynch recap) --- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Glenn Lieding [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Investing today's oil-energy in manufacturing, deploying, and maintaining PV, in order to realize an energy return on that investment in the future, makes sense if the average rate of energy made available by the PV, multiplied by the lifespan of the PV, exceeds the total energy invested. A real world test of PV viability would be for a PV manufacturer to commit to building and operating a PV production facility using only PV power to do it. Solarex (BPAmoco) has a plant with an impressive all-PV roof. I sent them an Email asking whether that plant was self sufficient. Their answer was: no, actually we are the second largest electricity consumer in the county. So, PV industry, if you're listening, here's the challenge: 1) Using your coolest, best, most efficient technology, build say 10 megawatts of PV panels. Acquire all the necessary mounts,trackers, inverters, wire, batteries, controllers, etc. We won't even count the energy required to make all this, its a freebie. 2) Find the best solar site in the World and set up your system there. 3) Locate, lease, and set up the equipment necessary to construct a PV plant from scratch. Select versions of all this stuff that will run on PV electrical power (invent new versions as required - an electric backhoe comes to mind). Use a PV powered truck, train, boat to bring the equipment and raw materials to the site. The lease cost of this stuff will be charged to the future PV production of the plant on an energy basis (ie equivalent PV panel lifetime energy production). 4) Saw the wood, smelt the steel, burn the limestone for the cement, crush the gravel, machine the bolts, dig the dirt,etc, etc, and erect the building, all using the PV from your 10 megawatt system. 5) Locate, lease, and set up the equipment necessary to produce PV panels complete (silicon production, wafer production, panel assembly, etc.) The lease cost for this stuff will also be charged to the future PV production of the plant on an energy basis. 6) Operate the plant, the employee housing, the stores and utilities supporting the employees, all from the 10 megawatt system. Don't forget to pay the employees in scrip redeemable in PV panels. 7) Produce PV panels until "breakeven", which would be something like 10 megawatts worth (item 1) plus a bunch more (items 3, 5 and 6). 8) (Maybe) produce a bunch more "net" panels until the plant wears out. Don't forget to subtract any panels made to replace "burnouts" in your 10 megawatt array and PV panel scrip redemptions by the employees (I'm guessing about one to three 100 watt panels per employee per week). 9) Divide the number of panels produced by the number of "breakeven" panels in item 7). If the number is say, 2.0 or more, you win. Less than 2.0, we all lose. This isn't really an unreasonable challenge, IF PV really has what it takes to replace some significant portion of the hydrocarbon energy demand. So, how about it? Solarex? Siemens? Koyocera? Solec? Anybody?
energy entropy + capitalist crisis
Entropy is of course a key concept in any meaningful discussion about energy. The argument that energy supply is 'infinite' derives from the neo-classical economics concept of substitutability. The argument does not of course (for obvious epistemological reasons) take account of the bounded nature of the planetary energy system or of the entropy involved in any use of energy. Whether or not sunshine is infinite, the earth is a closed entropic system. The solar fluxes it can capture (by photosynthesis or human photovoltaic technology, or wind (a climatic product of solar energy) or whatever other method) are therefore also limited. Thus it is intuitively obvious that energy supplies available to planetbound humans are by nature limited. There are industry suggestions of capturing helium from the gaseous clouds around Jupiter, and using this as the raw material of the future hydrogen economy. Such talk is suggestive of desperation more than anything else. The problem with substitutability is that it involves the same kind of leap of faith which Yoshie Furuhashi reminded us was the great French mathematician Pascal's definition of Christianity. You cannot argue with neoclassicals because their faith in markets is not susceptible to reason. As is clear from discussions on this List, some who might define themselves as Marxists also turn out when scratched to be made of different metal. It is argued that invoking energy as the prime mover of capitalist accumulation is actually a ricardian thing to do, or even Physiocratic. Malcolm Caldwell's highly original book 'Wealth of Some Nations' attracted this kind of criticism when first published in the early 70s. Caldwell argued that capitalism was coterminous with the era of fossil fuel use: it began when coal began to be used extensively in industry and transport, and will end when oil runs out. Malcolm (he was a friend of mine) paid with his life for his visionary ideas, the logic of which drove him to support the kind of sustainable communist utopia which he imagined Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were just then installing in Cambodia. Being himself a communist and a man of action, he went to Cambodia and was assassinated there on Christmas Day in (I think) 1975. I was influenced by his ideas then and am now: but I did not support his solidarity with the Khmer Rouge and urged him to abandon it (the last time we met and talked about this was in a pub outside Heathrow Airport, from where he was about to depart to Khampuchea; I never saw him again). But there is an awful warning about his fate, and I sympathise a little with the motivations of those who joke about me as a 'Jim Jones apocalypticist'. But they are wrong to identify me with a cause so abhorrent as Pol Pot's. Actually my position is exactly the opposite to Malcolm Caldwell's: I am saying that *if we want to avoid that kind of dreadful outcome, we need to not sleepwalk into another and this time final energy crisis*. We need to keep our utopian speculations alive, but place them in the context of a different world from the one which socialists hoped for: a world with a damaged ecosphere, and very little *usable* energy (orders of magnitude less than now). In such a world, capital, raw materials and energy will be relatively more valuable factors of production than they are now, and labour will be worth very much less. This is actually a recipe for a return to warlordism, for slavery and for grinding poverty, terrible barbarity and generalised brutality. But it need not be this way, and some societies, for example modern Cuba, show how it can be different. It is Cuba, not Cambodia, which must be our common future. Energy is a commodity like any other, and its value (and ultimately price) is determined by the socially-necessary abstract labour which it embodies. But energy is also a commodity unlike any other, since it is an input (like labour-power) into all other commodities, and since available energy is the key determinant of the rate of *relative* surplus-value. The rise in social productivity which is the technical, material correlative of the rate of s-v, can be expressed as *the more efficient use of energy in the transformation of objects into commodities*. And this applies to energy itself, the appropriation of which has always been subject to technical/material transformation and to increased efficiency and productivity (in material/technical terms, this is the process of 'decarbonisation' according to which energy-bases and industrial systems switch from more to less carbon intensive fuels: from coal, to oil, to gas, to hydrogen; each time an atom of carbon is dropped, capitalism has renewed itself on a new and radically more efficient energy base). This process by itself goes some way to explain the paradox that although energy is becoming relatively more scarce, its value and price continue to fall and will do so until a qualitative change sets in. At this point the world energy-system,
Re: On Mark to Rod, was Re: Re: re: energy
Hans, do Hillier/Buttler have some secret parallel list where they hold the *real* discussion, as opposed to the vacuous imbecilism of their front-organisation, the marxist-leninist-take-me-for-an-idiot-list? Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: "Hans Ehrbar" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2000 3:57 PM Subject: [PEN-L:20939] On Mark to Rod, was Re: Re: re: energy On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 18:10:45 -0500, Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: So unless you really do agree with Hans Ehrbar on the need for an elitist putsch to stop global warming, you had better give some thought to how that mass support can be (beginning now) marshalled It is not my view that an elitist putsch can stop global warming. On the contrary, only those who experience the exploitation and oppression of capitalism by their own body and soul every day are able to put up the consistent fight against capitalism that is needed. An appeal to the intellect that the world is burning will not change the members of PEN-L or any other email list into the devoted, disciplined, selfless fighters which are able to overturn the system. Thinking that it can or that it ought to is idealism. Such fighters exist today, capitalism creates lots of them every day with its cruelty, but in the leading industrial countries they will always be in a minority. We intellectuals have to join the organizations of these committed workers and help them write a consistent programme how to avoid ecological catastrophe by a world wide proletarian revolution, and establish a minority dictatorship which will carry out this programme with Stalinist methods. You will be surprised how many liberals with support such a proletarian-based movement once it is big enough. Therefore my advice is: join any proletarian communist party, whether it be the Worker's World Party (my personal favorite at the moment), the CPUSA, the SWP, etc., whatever, and help them reach more workers or improve their theory. For those who cannot function in such an environment, an alternative might be to use your computer skills to build a new internet-based international which combines all these scattered proletarian organizations. Sven Buttler and Jim Hillier's marxist-leninist-list is working in this direction. Or use your computer skills to write the software for a computer-based planned economy, which could then perhaps be adopted by countries like Cuba, using Cockshott and Cottrell's "Towards a New Socialism" as the starting point. Whatever you do, think big. Stop diddling around. I am appending a message I sent to the bhaskar list on June 12 which explains more of the theory behind this. Hans Ehrbar. Sunday morning I sent the following message to Louis Proyect's marxism list and to leninist-international. I think it might also be of interest to the Bhaskar list, since it was inspired by RB in at least two respects: (1) Bhaskars criticism of Marx that he, following Hegel, put too much emphasis on internal, at the expense of external contradictions (the ecological limits of the earth are an external contradiction of capitalism, and Marx's dictum in the preface that "the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or are at least in the course of formation" is only valid for internal, not for external contradictions). (2) Bhaskar's repudiation of the fact-value distinction which encourages me to say here that only those who truly hate the capitalist system have a correct grasp of its reality. I have not yet received any responses for this posting on the other two lists. Something tells me that I might get a response on this list here. Capitalism makes profits by the exploitation of labor. Those who create all the surplus value, on which capital depends in order to function, see their lives reduced to drudgery, without enough time or money to care for their children, without access to proper medical care, see their neighborhoods blighted, their youth terrorized by police, denied their life chances and a decent education, driven into drugs. Every day they are reminded of the contempt the system has for their lives and everything that is dear to them. These people get to the point where every molecule in their body hates the system. They are also the ones that can overturn the system, because capital needs them, organizes them, teaches them hard work and discipline, and at the same time makes implacable enemies out of them. They are willing to face bullets and torture and their own deaths and continue fighting after 1000 defeats. This is what it takes to overturn the system. This is the vanguard which needs to organize itself world wide, even if they are a minority in countries like the
Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of]
Doug Henwood wrote: Does the revo also mean there won't be modern transportation, chemical fertilizers, mechnized plowing and reaping, etc.? Then there's truly no way to sustain a world population of more than, say, a billion people, maybe fewer - meaning that at least 80% of us have to go. No, the revo will not be responsible for the loss of modern transportation and the collapse of the agro-system which is based on using soil to hold down plants while petroleum-derived chemicals are applied, for the purpose of creating what are called 'phantom acres': ie, we use sunlight trapped a long time ago to artifically boost production: "Catton expands on the "ghost acreage" concept raised by Georg Borgstrom, who was talking about food. The term in Borgstrom referred to imports from elsewhere, meaning supplementation of what a region or nation has available internally with the product of some other region's or country's land and sunlight./1/ Catton initially is interested in imports from elsewhen, meaning the use of fossil-fuel energy, or supplmentation with the product of land and sunlight from long ago. He uses "fossil acreage," meaning the "energy we obtain from coal, petroleum, and natural gas...the number of additional acres of farmland that would have been needed to grow organic fuels with equivalent energy content."/2/ Dependence on this fossil acreage yields dependence on "phantom carrying capacity" that evaporates when the fossil fuels become unavailable./3/ A few pages later, he defines phantom carrying capacity as "either the illusory or the extremely precarious capacity of an environment to support a given life form or a given way of living" (Chris Kuykendall) The revo will happen *because capitalism's energetics basis has collapsed*. That is why transport, agrobiz etc will also mutate in forms which will look like a collapse. Of course an enormously wasteful system like the US contains enormous potentials for energy saving and no doubt something approaching normal life could be sustained by using 50% less fossil, and in time much less. There are Marxists who think that's just another profit opportunity and to a degree they are right. But what you have to reckin with is that the history of capitalist accumulation was predicated logically on the existence of fossil fuel and the ability to constantly cheapen this input and to increase energy efficiency. My question is not so much about whethere normal life can be preserved albeit with some very important changes. I just don't see how capitalism can survive or be the agency of those changes, and that is why there will be and already is, a developing crisis. It won't go aware just be pretending it aint there. It is there. I have yet to see you embrace this even as a hypothesis. The collapse of Big Oil will have devastating side-effects including on food production. It will quite inevitably require many more people to go work on the land. You may not like that, but you still have to explain what is the alternative. Yelling at people that they are atavists, apocalyptics etc, doesn't answer any more than Jim Devine throwing queenie fits answers the questions. Whenever I raise the issue I get literally dozens of offlist emails from lurkers on pen-l who want to no more but are not willing to expose themselves to ridicule from the 'orthodox' list-professors. Where are the Marxists? This neo-primitivist vision is quite anti-Marxist, and it's quite reasonable that Marxists are not participating in your vision. It comports perfectly with the politics and preferences of Brown and the fuzzies, though. But no marxists round here are promoting such a vision; it's a phantasm of your own. You're locked in struggle with figments of your own imagining. And how is Mandel present? Try to answer the question: do you think oil is an exhaustible and irreplaceable energy supply, or not? Do you side with Morris Adelman, the guru invoked by your own resident oil expert Greg Nowell, and think that oil is 'Infinite, a renewable resource' ? If you accept that it is running out, what do YOU think we should do? What is YOUR plan, apart from asking me for mine? Mark
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of] (fwd)
Growth of 0% is fine, but unfoprtunately it's not happening, especially in the US, where the population may rise to 500mn by 2050 and not stop there, either. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: "Louis Proyect" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2000 11:32 PM Subject: [PEN-L:20981] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and National Emissions of] (fwd) sustainable than the U.S. But is a growth rate of 0 low enough? Could we feed and house 6 billion people if we all spent our time searching for "Jack-in-the-Pulpits or fishing for pickerel"? That kind of rural leisure is available to someone living in a rich country; in a poor country, you'd be more likely tilling the soil or grinding corn from dawn til dusk. These apocalpytic imaginings aren't serious politics, they're just lurid fantasies. Doug My dear chap, I was trying to respond to your question about the existential authenticity of my living on the Upper East Side 3 blocks from Woody Allen, while defending a simple life close to nature. Now you've switched gears in the most underhanded fashion and talk about overpopulation, a legitimate topic of social science rather than pop psychology. I ought to put a hungry wolverine in your knickers. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: RE: energy entropy + capitalist crisis
Max, Undoubtedly baseball was the right choice. It was Samuelson who said something about 'the planet doesn't need resources; resources are infinite' (can't remember the exact quote, can't be bothered to look it up. He was talking about oil + substitutability at the time, the idiot). Morris Adelman, oil industry economist sans pareil, wittered on about 'oil is essentially infinite, a renewable resource' etc (can't be bothered, etc. I'm just listening to Bob Dylan: All the authorities, they stand around and boast' etc. That seems a better idea even than baseball. Next I'm gonna drink a bottle of non-renewable Gouts et Couleurs (vin de pays d'Oc. Oc as you know is a country which named itself after its favourite word, Oc, meaning Yes. This is the kind of place I want to live. The girls are great there, of course.) Georgescu-Roegen, Oc. I agree. This list should close down for a week while everyone goes away and reads him,Oc? Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: "Max Sawicky" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2000 3:57 PM Subject: [PEN-L:20938] RE: energy entropy + capitalist crisis Several quick comments . . . MJ: . . . The argument that energy supply is 'infinite' derives from the neo-classical economics concept of substitutability. . . . I don't think this is true of neo-classical econ, namely there is no doctrine of infinite resources that I recall from the course in resources that I took. (I was doing well in it, until the finals, which coincided with the baseball playoffs). There are theorems about the optimal rate of exhaustion of (exhaustible) resources. Certainly prices are held to inspire investment in substitutes, but there is no guarantee that such substitutes will be found or be feasible in the long run. There are technical and natural limits in play. I suppose it is possible that in some professorial treatments, simple optimism not unlike the sort I reflected is offered as some kind of scientific certainty. I wonder if anyone is familiar with Nicholas Georgescu-Rogin (sp?). He was brought to my dept to give a seminar way back in '81 or so and seemed to have a similar take on all this, albeit at a very high level of mathematical abstraction. He was of Romanian extraction, I think, and flipped everyone out by talking about constant, fixed, and variable capital. mbs
Re: Re: Re: Re: energy crises
You have Yeltsin here? Cool. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: "GBK" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2000 1:45 PM Subject: [PEN-L:20935] Re: Re: Re: energy crises But I do keep receiving messages! This time when I finaly got connected I've got more than 100 of them. What is wrong? Boris -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 27 ÉÀÎÑ 2000 Ç. 22:47 Subject: [PEN-L:20749] Re: Re: energy crises Nordhaus assumed that there would always be an available "backstop" technology. I think that he had nukes in mind at the time. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
Re: Re: RE: My looniness
Ken Hanly wrote: Although I appreciate Jim Devine's argument for higher gas prices there is a definite income bias involved. The relatively well off can continue to drive their SUV's etc. while the lower middle classes will be priced right out of the automobile market. This saves oil but in a totally unfair way. This is what *really* makes me wonder. When you are faced with the catastrophe of global warming and the terminal catastrophe for capitalism (and us) of exhaustion of its huge energetics base, you start talking about tax-offsets and equity in gasoline prices. If you were on the Titanic you'd be discussing whether rent being charged for a lifeboat seat was absolute or only differential. Hopeless, completely hopeless. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
Re: Re: Reply to Carrol Cox
- Original Message - From: "Carrol Cox" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2000 2:09 AM Subject: [PEN-L:20795] Re: Reply to Carrol Cox Yes I agree the house is on fire. So what do we do? stop discussing rock music, waterfalls and brand imagery. Mark
Re: Re: Re: We used 10 times as much energy in the 20thcentury as in the 1,000
Unfortunately Rod does not understand what Yoshie is saying. It is simply wrong to say "the problem is with the social system not with the technical feasibility." The problem is precisely with technical feasibility and it is mystification to argue anything else. If you think another social system would miraculously find vast new undiscovered deposits of fossil fuels, or work out how to make cold fusion work, or how to run bulldozers with light-bulb power PV's, then you are simply and wholly wrong about the elementary facts of the case. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: "Rod Hay" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2000 2:01 AM Subject: [PEN-L:20794] Re: Re: "We used 10 times as much energy in the 20thcentury as in the 1,000 I agree Yoshie. But the problem is with the social system not with the technical feasibility. Rod Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: There is no shortage of energy! Nor of any other resource. The environmental problem we have to solve is how to get rid of our garbage without fouling our environment to such an extent that it is inhospitable for human life. Rod I agree that waste management is an urgent problem, but the reason why there is "no shortage of energy nor of any other resources" is that the market rations their use. Econ 101 says that any shortage can be cured by an appropriately higher price, so it seems there is no point in celebrating an absence of shortage. The poor in poor countries have no access to electricity, clean water, reliable transportation, household appliances, and other goods that consume oil and other resources in their production, because they can't afford them. If everyone in the world were to live according to the standards set by rich nations, wouldn't there be a problem (though capitalism does prevent this particular problem from ever arising, since the majority are doomed to poverty)? Yoshie -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: energy crises
Brad deLong wrote: Ummm Brad, you may end being known as the man who put the 'um' in 'dumb'. Do you suppose Simon's bet with Ehrlich is safe ground for you to stand on? You too, simply have no idea what the issue is. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
Re: Re: RE: RE: RE: Re: energy crises
Max Sawicky wrote: I just don't believe it. When fossil fuels become sufficiently expensive, massive efforts will go into developing alternatives. There will be a lot of money to be made, coordination problems aside. To me that's more likely than green consciousness leading to revolution No, there will be no such massive efforts as you suppose because the material basis for making such efforts will have disappeared. No, there will be no money to be made, but there will be signs of severe social and historical stresses in all countries including the overpopulated, third-worldised US whose Ogallala aquifer will just be running out when the population hits its first half billion. Your hopes are false. The time to do something is obviously now, not later. You should make this the central issue of your work and life because the fact of this crisis simplify falsifies and empties of worth the kinds of worthy but now pointless social policy things you do do. It's hard to accept, I know, and much easier to make a flip joke about barbecues, turn your back on the problem and get on with your life while you can; but this option is already not as easy as it was, because there is so much more evidence now than there was even two years ago, when I last rattled the pen-L bars, and Doug produced a tame petroleum economist to prove me wrong (where he, Doug? Changed specialty?). And in 2 years time when the evidence is incontrovertible enough to be finally getting thru even to economists, self-appointed wonks and marginal pundits, a moment will come when you will all be talking about nothing else, but in reality nothing will change because you will still be being led by the ideological nose thru the wastelands of broadsheet and NGO 'policy analysis' and CNN gibberish about 'the energy crisis'. The results will be to amplify dsaster, and to set a minus sign against your life's work. You want that Max? The US state and polity cannot be saved, it will be destroyed, and the question is only what comes after. Hiding from the clear evidence of energy crisis and whistling in the dark that you 'just don't believe it' does not show manly scepticism, only undimmed ability to avoid the real nitty-gritty. Mark
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: We used 10 times as much energy in the 20thcentury as in the 1,000
From your database of 1, you produced a profound sample, no? Now, however, let's talk about fossil carbon and what it means and what it does, or else stop wasting our time. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: "Rod Hay" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2000 12:32 PM Subject: [PEN-L:20818] Re: Re: Re: Re: "We used 10 times as much energy in the 20thcentury as in the 1,000 London (1830) Economic pundit X: If the economy continues to grow at its present rate, in fifty years we will all be buried in ten feet of horse shit. Rod -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Dogmatism, and homosexuality
Doyle Saylor wrote: Greetings Economists, Doyle, I don't think you should speak of/to the disabled like this. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:We used 10 times as much energy in the 20thcentury as in the 1,000
Carrol, you keep asking what to do, I'd suggest superglue, go to a power station in a state of elation, stick yourself to a chimney, then we'll see, if it's a nuke you stay till you're blue, if it's coal you stay till your ole, if you wanne be eco n' even more ego, tape yourself to a windmill, whaddya say? Quixote, you'll soon be green, but at least you'll be seen Alternatively, help us ORGANISE. Help us fucking organise, man. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: "Carrol Cox" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2000 1:26 PM Subject: [PEN-L:20821] Re: Re: Re: Re:"We used 10 times as much energy in the 20thcentury as in the 1,000 M A Jones wrote: Unfortunately Rod does not understand what Yoshie is saying. It is simply wrong to say "the problem is with the social system not with the technical feasibility." The problem is precisely with technical feasibility and it is mystification to argue anything else. Then do we a) Forget about it? b) Petition the capitalist class to save us, though they can't? c) Or what the hell is your proposal for action? It really seems to me Mark that you and Lou are no longer interested in socialist action but merely in presenting poetic images of our end. Carrol
Re: Re: Re: Re: Reply to Carrol Cox
Carrol Cox wrote: you and Mark, so far as I can tell, have actually persuaded just one person -- Me! You haven't had the tiniest effect on anyone else as far as I can see. So what are you going to do with your one single solitary convert -- you are going to swear at him for saying, let's see how we can do something about it. Well, we reserve the right to cuss you in all circs. But you are wrong to say we didn't change anyone else. Even the 5 cats in my house are now deeply aware of what means an eco-footprint. You should see the way they tiptoe around me when I'm reading Brad's posts for eg. BTW, you were a weatherman? Interesting? Mark 'Sisyphus' Jones
Re: Dematerialization, decarbonation, post-capitalism and the entropy liberation front
- Original Message - From: "Lisa Ian Murray" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2000 4:26 AM Subject: [PEN-L:20801] Dematerialization, decarbonation, post-capitalism and the entropy liberation front to make the larger point that energy markets are already planned--just undemocratically. Care to expand? (seriously) Mark D H 'last time I hugged a tree it came' Lawrence-Jones
Re: Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and NationalEmissions of] (fwd)
Doug, Obviously none of the desirable changes you and I and Mine hope for will happen. But capitalism will collapse anyway. Prove me wrong. Address the issues. And stop whingeing about how awful it will be; we know that. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: "Doug Henwood" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2000 10:59 PM Subject: [PEN-L:20897] Re: [Fwd: Position in the World-System and NationalEmissions of] (fwd) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have found myself in agreement with Lou's recent post suggesting that the roots of ecological crisis and overpopulation pressures lie in the contradictions of capitalism, and that a socialist revolution is not only necessary but also desirable if we are to have a sustainable ecological system in the future. Hmm, ok, maybe I can get an answer from you: what changes in industrial and agricultural practices, energy sources, the build environment, living arrangements, etc., will occur under socialism that will avoid the eco-catastrophe capitalism supposedly has in store for us. It's not just a matter of invoking the words "socialist revolution" along the lines of "Presto Change-o," is it? Doug
Re: re: energy
Rod, I'd be happy to debate you but metaphysical assertions about 'infinite energy' which are easily + demonstrably untrue, are not a basis for debate. So yes, quit this silly non-debate. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: "Rod Hay" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "Pen-L" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2000 11:11 PM Subject: [PEN-L:20899] re: energy Let's stop this thread. All we get from Jones is invective. Not one thread of evidence, except some stupid post that shows what every high school math student knows -- exponential functions get large very quickly. Rod -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
The Times: Nuclear power option 'may beat global warming'
[The Royal Commission's extraordinary reporton Environmental Pollution repays reading. Its proposals often smack of desperation. For example it recommends a huge new wave of nuclear power stations, al;though even if long-term safety issues could be addressed (at a time when Britain's existing nuclear recycyling industry is in near-collapse because of safety scandals) there are scientific doubts about the value of nuclear power. First, such a huge construction programme would in energy-economcis terms amount to a huge subsidy of nuclear by fossil fuel, since large concrete constructions are intensive users of fossil fuel, requiring up to 12 gallons of oil-equvalent for each tonne of poured concrete; 2nd, concrete manufacture is itself a major cause of greenhouse gas; 3rd nuclear power stations add singificantly to ambient atmospheric heat levels and emit large volumes of water vapour (also a GHG). Fourth, even if the safety issues could be addressed adequately in a technically advanced country such as the UK, this is obviously no solution for the 3-4 billion people living amid a lack of infrastructure and where the human and technical capital does not exist to support large nuclear generation schemes. Therefore the implicit assumption behind the proposal is that the existing inequity between North and South will continue and even deepen, but the Royal Commission directly contradicts this in its alternative proposals for a new international carbon tax regime designed to create more social justice by evening-up energy consumption in the South, while reducing it drastically in the North. In this scenario is in effect calls upon Western citizens to use less energy even while helping people in the South consume relatively more, surely a politically-impossible goal. In effect, the Royal Commission is stating that the British Government must either revert to nuclear or adopt as official policy a plan to _reduce British per capital energy consumption by a staggering EIGHY PERCENT_ (not just the 60 % the Times mentions) in the next few decades WHILE AT THE SAME TIME EMBARKING ON MANHATTAN-SCALE CONVERSION PROJECTS to switch from fossil to renewables and convert the entire energetics-base of society. Another proposal which smacks of desperation and has been widely criticised for its likely effect on marine biomes, is the proposal to inject gigatonnes of sequestrated carbon under the sea shelf. No-one knows how to do this, or what the effect on marine biosystems will be of possibly converting the world ocean into dilute carbonic acid. Remember, most existing carbon-sequestration and most release of atmospheric oxygne comes about as natural results of ocean process and ecosystems and ocean-climate interactions. Thus the Royal Commissions ideas about finding "sustainable" solutions themselves involve radically tampering with large-scale natural processes, with hitherto-unknowable results. The report's many contradictions are the result of the seemingly insolube Gordian-know of problems which society as a whole faces in dealing with the longterm AND SHORT-TERM consequences of global warming. Above all, the Report's central conclusion -- that the industrial world's energy-system must be completely overhauled and transformed -- is open and public recongition of the scale of the crisis, the depth of the impasse, into which world capitalism's dependence on cheap fossil fuel, has led it. The Royal Commission argues that if nothing is done and the world continues to burn oil on a business-as-usual basis, while continuing to destroy the great carbon sinks such as the tropical rainforests, then by 2050 THREE BILLION PEOPLE will face water shortages and imperilled lives. Mark Jones] BY NICK NUTTALL, ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT BRITAIN may need 46 nuclear power stations if it is to help save the world from global warming, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution said yesterday. The academics, scientists, lawyers and economists concluded that a 60 per cent cut in carbon dioxide emissions was needed by 2050 if the worst effects of climate change were to be avoided. Sir Tom Blundell, the chairman of the commission, said: "To knowingly cause large-scale disruptions to the climate would be reckless. We stand on the threshold of doing that." Richard Macrory, Professor of Environmental Law at University College London, said that Britain was on course to cut global warming emissions by 12.5 per cent by 2010. However, he said, the achievements had been largely fortuitous and mainly the result of the switch from coal to cleaner, gas-fired, generation. Energy use was still rising and unless tough decisions were made within five years, emissions of gases causing global warming would again climb. Dr Susan Owen, lecturer in geography at Cambridge University, set out how the 60 per cent cut could be achieved. A big shift towards more energy-efficient transport, homes, offices and factories was one way forward. The
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Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: "UP.secr. (MG!)" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2000 10:06 PM Subject: [PEN-L:20248] MOBILIZE GLOBALLY ! (MG!) (2) ( 2. edition, after clarification and amendment on basis of netters' comments ) REINFORCE, EXPAND AND UNIFY THE GLOBAL RESISTANCE MOVEMENT ! The next necessary step to maintain the momentum of, expand and carry through to their conclusion the historic victories in Seattle, Washington D.C., Havana, etc., is an ever more intense involvement and coordination of ALL progressives of the planet. These include the thousands of progressive NGOs worldwide, progressive trade unions, farmers' movements, peoples movements, minorities, research institutions, governments, etc., as well as individuals. At the same time as this global movement must maintain the flat, decentralized and democratic grassroot structure with everybody's opportunity to initiate and organize a local or global common project, it also must have one common name and one ultimate goal. The umbrella name appropriately could be MOBILIZE GLOBALLY ! (MG!) Obviously, no member should give up its own name. In each and every name a unique and inventive initiative appropriate for the specific purpose and situation is laid down. In principle, each one of the recognized members will become a member of ALL of the other organisations, and in the future carry on its activities on behalf of ALL of the global movement. Support of this worldwide movement should be demonstrated by adding the bracket (MG!) after the name of the individual or organisation. In e-mails it might be inserted permanently after the sender name in the heading. As CIA will do everything to infiltrate, proof of active fighting in agreement with the common goal and thus being a safe partner in the movement, may be obtained upon recommandation by already recognized members in the state in question. The proof will be the inclusion in a world covering list of names of individuals and organisations on a website, from where everybody can download the names. A committee composed of well known organisations points out trustworthy civil society organisations in each state to be responsible for approval of future applications for such confirmed MG! membership. For each state an e-mail address is published whereto applications may be sent. Only NGOs that are not funded directly or indirectly in any way by the corporations or their supranational organisations or governments may apply. In countries with very oppressive regimes, the Internet correspondance will be encrypted, and the lists will only be published when sufficiently large numbers of MG! s have been approved. The common ultimate goal at the same time must be broad and concrete enough, clearly define the enemy and thus be phrased as follows: Transfer of the economic and political power from the transnational corporations, their mass media monopoly and their governments, to the peoples. The worldwide Mobilize Globally! movement will - empower the total movement and its individual members in their various activities and struggles - focus on the superior common goal - enhance all kinds of cooperation nationally and internationally - demonstrate our overwhelming strength when the MG! symbol everywhere will catch the eye, and thus - attract ever broader circles of people. Everybody interested, not least well-known organisations interested in forming part of the initial state committees, please contact us ASAP. Ecoterra Intl. (MG!) http://www.ecoterra.net Indian Confederation of Indigenous and Tribal People, ICITP (MG!) Indigenous Movement (MG!) Insaaf International (MG!) http://www.geocities.com/insaafin Jubilee 2000 NY (MG!) http://www.j2000usa.org Project Censored (MG!) http://www.projectcensored.org Quantum Leap 2000 (MG!) /www.quantumleap2000.org The Foundation for Ethics and Meaning (MG!) http://www.meaning.org The United Peoples (MG!) http://www.unitedpeoples.net __ You are receiving this email because you are subscribed to United Peoples' email list or to some shared mailing list(s). To unsubscribe from the UP list, hit 'Reply', type 'Unsubscribe' in the subject line and hit 'Send'.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Nader campaign, part 1 (fwd)
Thanks for the clarification, Mine, I'll bear it in mind. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2000 12:54 AM Subject: [PEN-L:19914] Re: Re: Re: Re: The Nader campaign, part 1 (fwd) Mark, I would never put blacks, Indians, women and hispanics in the same equation with bankers. they are the victim, not the oppresssor.. Mine discrete and insular minorities protected by the "C" were/are who exactly? Blacks? American Indians? Women? Hispanics? Bankers? Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The comments about Jefferson and the Constitution are almost too silly to discuss. J was no great fan of the C, which he did not sign precisely because of its comparative conservatism, And as for the anti-majoritarainsim od the C, and especially the Bill of Rights, is that such a bad thing? Some people might think that it is the anti-majoritarianism of the C that is precisely its glory, in providing a defense against majoritarianian oppression. --jks Oh yes, the propertied minority needs vigorous protection against the masses. Just ask Madison, Federalist #10. Doug
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Nader campaign, part 1
discrete and insular minorities protected by the "C" were/are who exactly? Blacks? American Indians? Women? Hispanics? Bankers? Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The comments about Jefferson and the Constitution are almost too silly to discuss. J was no great fan of the C, which he did not sign precisely because of its comparative conservatism, And as for the anti-majoritarainsim od the C, and especially the Bill of Rights, is that such a bad thing? Some people might think that it is the anti-majoritarianism of the C that is precisely its glory, in providing a defense against majoritarianian oppression. --jks Oh yes, the propertied minority needs vigorous protection against the masses. Just ask Madison, Federalist #10. Doug
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Nader campaign, part 1
I don't talk about US domestic matters much because I don't know them much. But Nader is more than just that. He launched 'consumerism' in other countries too, so I'm interested. I'm old enough to remember the hoo-hah about vehicle safety in the 1960s and the susbsequent rise of consumer groups + issues in Britain. I thought then and I think now that it is all an utter distraction from what really matters; it is based on the crassest kind of self-seeking, privatising solipsism which boils great social/historical issues down to what's in it for me qua passive selfish consumer. What really mattered then and now for eg is not car safety but less cars and more public transport. What Nader did is help legitimise the care and ensures its social apotheosis to its current iconic status. That's disastrously bad. That's the essence of Nader's social constituency, what's more, and it cannot be the basis of a national issue-driven mass politics, except by default, ie because the real thing (a real mass socialism) is missing. But it's NOT missing any more. Seattle q.v. Therefore Nader remains a mere distraction and he and his ilk should indeed be revealed for what they are: a peculiarly rotten kind of little-Napoleon petit bourgeois politicking. Lou has hit the nail on the head again. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: "Rod Hay" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 04, 2000 5:03 AM Subject: [PEN-L:19866] Re: Re: Re: The Nader campaign, part 1 The political criticism of Nadar is valid, but the personal attack on him is misguided and fundamentally irrelevant. Rod Louis Proyect wrote: Yes, but not that much further. My parents, who lived on my dad's middle class income of about $25,000 a year back in those days, bought a $100,000 house in the NVA suburbs at the same time--it wasn't shabby, but it wasn't a mansion. You probbaly could have done better in the city in those days of white flight and before the city became fashoonable again. The main point is that it wasn't an $85 per month furnished room. be bought. If he stayed silent on no-fault, it was not because he was bribed, but because there are serious consumerist arguments against it. There are, The problem with Naderism is that we have to accept the honest motives of the leader pretty much as a given. It is in the nature of nonprofits, especially inside-the-beltway types like Public Citizen, to make decisions ON BEHALF of the public. It is inherently undemocratic. Even in the nickle-and-dime nonprofit I was president of the board of, there were constant complaints about the Executive Director making unilateral decisions--like starting a program in Africa, spending money on an ambitious direct mail program, etc. He once told me in private (I was the only person he ever really confided in) that he modeled the organization on the small businesses he ran in Utah, where he 'made everything go', even when it took big risks. We fired him in 1990 after he went totally overboard on certain financial matters. But with Nader you won't even get a board that has the gumption to challenge him. He is just too powerful for that. This, IMHO, sends the wrong kinds of signals to the left when the Greens nominate a guy like him. After accepting the nomination in 1996, he made a unilateral decision to lowkey the campaign. And today he is considering unilaterally whether to run as a Reform candidate, I'll betcha. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/ -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
Re: Dialectics and Nonlinear Dynamics
Chris, I got you wrong. From this post, I learned much, and I am not joking. All these years I tried to conceptualise the world in terms of forests, a handy analogue for space/time continua. You showed a better way. Here in England for example we have Epping Forest. This is a small woody area in North London full of things like Queen Elizabeth I's hunting lodge, pubs selling Thai food amid Ye Olde settings, with Great Oak swings in the garden which demented kids who hate to be torn from their playstations try to demolish, etc. In Germany OTOH they have the Black Forest. It is bigger, enough even for people to feel OK wearing lederhosen in. In Russia, it is all the opposite way round, as you'd expect being a cognescento of Russian philosophy: there they have these simply ginormous forests all over the place, interspersed with small beleaguered settlements of melancholic drunken Russians pretending this is part of Europe and lying amid the meadows while trying to speculate about the nature of the cosmos beyond the treetops. In the Black Forest, Wandervogel wander and think about knightly tasks. After a very long while they get lost and the problem then is to work out where the fuck they are. This is why Germans have so many parts of speech related to 'here' type questions. In Epping it's all 'now' type questions. Here in Epping, people decide to try Nature on Sunday afternoons. Mostly they hope to avoid each other, and to avoid deranged geese in the meres, crashed world war two warplanes complete with handlebar-moustached corpses of English heroic fighter pilots with skulls locked in a grinning rictus which seems to shout 'Tally-Ho!' at one, etc, before staggering back to the hypo and condom-littered carpark where they must decide time-questions like is there enough time for a swift half, enough time to catch the tube before closing time, etc. and then they rush to consult the timetables and work out that only a frenzied jog will get them to Epping tube station before the last train which has any hope of conveying them to the West End, civilisation etc. Meanwhile, in Russia the melancholics continue to stand motionless at bus stops where buses never stop, pointing three fingers at their necks (Barkley knows why). These woody metaphors were how I circumnavigated around philosophy. Barkley + his very clever Russian wife found a way of sublating the problems of space, time, trees, undergowth, cut shins, absence of bus stops etc, into a book about Marxism and non-linear dynamics. I am absolutely sure that Barkley like me has been involved in non-linear attempts to get out of intractable forest. This is why I relate to him and him to me. I'm about to post a big piece on oil. It may not be such of a yawn any more to anyone who just had to fill up their tank at a gas station. This is my direct route to the non-linear dynamics of capitalist crash. I drive a Fiesta, a brand new one admittedly, but even so I have no regrets. I get 60 non-linear miles to the gallon out of it. Soon I'll be foraging for firewood in Epping Forest though. I'll be thinking about you. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList PS I meant what I said. This was a good post. - Original Message - From: "Chris Burford" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, May 28, 2000 12:11 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19691] Dialectics and Nonlinear Dynamics At 11:27 25/05/00 -0400, you wrote: For those who are curious, I have a recently published paper on these issues. "Aspects of dialectics and non-linear dynamics," _Cambridge Journal of Economics_, May 2000, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 311-324. It is also available on my website without the figures at http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb. Barkley Rosser Congratulations on getting published in this journal. This is an important area of left political economy. I will copy the abstract and then comment on extracts.
an exchange on oil
Jay Hanson's energyresources list (http://www.egroups.com/group/energyresources ) has turned into a good site for tracking the fate of big oil, mainly because of the presence there of authoritative voices like Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere, 2 oil geologists who last year singlehandedly persuaded the International Energy Authority to adopt a new, more realistic and somewhat pessimistic assumption about the size of global reserves. This exchange about new Caspian finds may be of interest: I'd be interested to know what Listers think about reports of possible large new Caspian offshore oil deposits. the Caspian basin has seen reports ranging from the Wall Street's Journal's surely wildly overoptimistic forecatse of 190bn bbls of recoverable oil, to suggestions by I think Colin Campbell and others that reserves may total 19bn bbls; until recently the consensus seemed to be that the Caspian was at best another North Sea, not another Persian Gulf. Is this another false dawn? Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList Press reports, which seem now to reflect a certain authority, speak of a major discovery in Kashagan East, rumoured to be larger than Teghiz which has about 8 Gb. It is too early to know for sure. The prospect is very large, but only parts of it may have adequate reservoirs, and the extent of the criticial salt seal is not sure. My current estimate gives the Caspoian offshore 23 Gb (billion barrels), which I think is ample cover for the present discovery, but we must await appraisal drilling to be sure. To give a sense of proportion, 12 Gb would supply the world for six months. The Caspian was of course one of the earliest known oil provinces, but the offshore was not explored by the Soviets. How soon this new oil will reach western markets remains uncertain, but it is by all means a promising development best regards Colin Campbell - Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
Re: Re: Re: Sowing Dragons (fwd)
Franz Neumann, Behemoth Alfred Soh-Rethel: Class Structure of German Fascism ostensibly both about Germany in the 1930s, actually about planning in conditoons of autarky/containment on the basis of fordist inddustry. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: "Michael Perelman" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, May 14, 2000 2:22 AM Subject: [PEN-L:18916] Re: Re: Sowing Dragons (fwd) Schumpeter? Jim Devine wrote: [*] Has anyone ever noticed the similarity between the development of the USSR and that of the Ford Motor Company (or similar "entrepreneurial" corporations)? It starts with the radical idiosyncrasies of the Great Leader (Stalin, Henry Ford, Sr.), who is then replaced by nameless bureaucratic suits who normalize the regime. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The real price of gas: $15 a gallon?
[of course, if you paid the proper price for the stuff you'd be lucky to be even driving a Lada... Mark] The Real Price Of Gas Executive Summary This report by the International Center for Technology Assessment (CTA) identifies and quantifies the many external costs of using motor vehicles and the internal combustion engine that are not reflected in the retail price Americans pay for gasoline. These are costs that consumers pay indirectly by way of increased taxes, insurance costs, and retail prices in other sectors. The report divides the external costs of gasoline usage into five primary areas: (1) Tax Subsidization of the Oil Industry; (2) Government Program Subsidies; (3) Protection Costs Involved in Oil Shipment and Motor Vehicle Services; (4) Environmental, Health, and Social Costs of Gasoline Usage; and (5) Other Important Externalities of Motor Vehicle Use. Together, these external costs total $558.7 billion to $1.69 trillion per year, which, when added to the retail price of gasoline, result in a per gallon price of $5.60 to $15.14. TAX SUBSIDIES The federal government provides the oil industry with numerous tax breaks designed to ensure that domestic companies can compete with international producers and that gasoline remains cheap for American consumers. Federal tax breaks that directly benefit oil companies include: the Percentage Depletion Allowance (a subsidy of $784 million to $1 billion per year), the Nonconventional Fuel Production Credit ($769 to $900 million), immediate expensing of exploration and development costs ($200 to $255 million), the Enhanced Oil Recovery Credit ($26.3 to $100 million), foreign tax credits ($1.11 to $3.4 billion), foreign income deferrals ($183 to $318 million), and accelerated depreciation allowances ($1.0 to $4.5 billion). Tax subsidies do not end at the federal level. The fact that most state income taxes are based on oil firms' deflated federal tax bill results in undertaxation of $125 to $323 million per year. Many states also impose fuel taxes that are lower than regular sales taxes, amounting to a subsidy of $4.8 billion per year to gasoline retailers and users. New rules under the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 are likely to provide the petroleum industry with additional tax subsidies of $2.07 billion per year. In total, annual tax breaks that support gasoline production and use amount to $9.1 to $17.8 billion. PROGRAM SUBSIDIES Government support of US petroleum producers does not end with tax breaks. Program subsidies that support the extraction, production, and use of petroleum and petroleum fuel products total $38 to $114.6 billion each year. The largest portion of this total is federal, state, and local governments' $36 to $112 billion worth of spending on the transportation infrastructure, such as the construction, maintenance, and repair of roads and bridges. Other program subsidies include funding of research and development ($200 to $220 million), export financing subsidies ($308.5 to $311.9 million), support from the Army Corps of Engineers ($253.2 to $270 million), the Department of Interior's Oil Resources Management Programs ($97 to $227 million), and government expenditures on regulatory oversight, pollution cleanup, and liability costs ($1.1 to $1.6 billion). PROTECTION SUBSIDIES Beyond program subsidies, governments, and thus taxpayers, subsidize a large portion of the protection services required by petroleum producers and users. Foremost among these is the cost of military protection for oil-rich regions of the world. US Defense Department spending allocated to safeguard the world's petroleum resources total some $55 to $96.3 billion per year. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a federal government entity designed to supplement regular oil supplies in the event of disruptions due to military conflict or natural disaster, costs taxpayers an additional $5.7 billion per year. The Coast Guard and the Department of Transportation's Maritime Administration provide other protection services totaling $566.3 million per year. Of course, local and state governments also provide protection services for oil industry companies and gasoline users. These externalized police, fire, and emergency response expenditures add up to $27.2 to $38.2 billion annually. ENVIRONMENTAL, HEALTH AND SOCIAL COSTS Environmental, health, and social costs represent the largest portion of the externalized price Americans pay for their gasoline reliance. These expenses total some $231.7 to $942.9 billion every year. The internal combustion engine contributes heavily to localized air pollution. While the amount of damage that automobile fumes cause is certainly very high, the total dollar value is rather difficult to quantify. Approximately $39 billion per year is the lowest minimum estimate made by researchers in the field of transportation cost analysis, although the actual total is surely much higher and may exceed $600 billion. Considering that researchers
Re: Forwarded from Anthony Boynton
- Original Message - From: "Louis Proyect" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2000 3:32 AM Subject: Forwarded from Anthony Boynton Louis, Not too long ago there was a discussion on your list (Marxism) about why the Soviet Union fell apart. I would like to suggest that the real reason was the Lada. There are some things right with this but lots of things wrong. First, Anthony's comparisons of machine tool etc production are with contemporary Russia, not with the USSR. A baseline of the mid-1980s, before the almost total collapse of Soviet production particularly in sectors like machine building, would show different results. Second, Ladas are clunky and old-fashioned and prone to minor breakdowns. But they are rugged and will get you from A to B even when A is in European Russia and B is the other side of the Urals in western Siberia (I know because I've done it). Believe me, when it's -30 deg centigrade outside and there is no auto rescue service or indeed no settlement of any kind for a hundred kilometres or more, you don't set off in a vehicle you don't have some gut faith in. It's not like hopping into your Jeep Grand Cherokee and driving across five miles of boulevards to the mall to pick up a six-pack. Ladas are and were highly serviceable cars in a society which wasn't a slave to the private car and didn't fetishise cars as the only form of transport. In Soviet Russia there were alternatives. Buses, taxis and trains worked; you could fly anywhere for a few roubles (you can't any more). The disasters inflicted by GM on US mass transit systems did not happen there (they are now; Moscow, where more than 100,000 children now live in the streets, has built a six-lane beltway to service its new elites who are building walled, gated new suburbs for themselves). Soviet city-design was ergonomic and eco-efficient. US urban landscapes are a social and ecological disaster and in the era when the oil is running out they will prove unsustainable (I'm not even going to mention the small matter of greenhouse emissions and global warming). The future of genuine mass transit for people living in the fSU lies in the past: with rationally-planned systems in which private cars play an impoprtant but minor part (the number of internal passenger-miles flown has fallen by 90% in the past ten years: in the new era of democracy and freedom to travel abroad, most ex-Soviet citizens are now more like open-plan prisoners than ever they were). That the future lies in the past, is true not only for Russia. Yes, greed and envy are easy to excite; socialism is about winning mass consensus for more livable, humane and collective solutions. Here in London, the car is on the way out; a new Mayor has just been elected by a huge plurality on a ticket whose main theme was beefing up public transport, introducing congestion taxes on private vehicles, and turning central London into a car-free zone. Even in the heart of the beast, facts sometimes speak loudly enough to polluted, asthmatic, noise-infested citizens who spend an average 2.3 hours daily commute on roads where the average speed is now lower (in Central London) than it was in 1920, to make socialist arguments look like second nature and to make the car look like the 'infernal engine' Winston Churchill famously called it. One more thing: I wouldn't be in such a hurry to dismiss Soviet weaponry. What did the Vietnamese use to blast the US out of their land? Whose missile shot down a Stealth fighter over Serbia last year? But of course, Soviet cars might have been better if they hadn't had to spend so many efforts on their weapons industries. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
The reality of German involvement in central Europe [was Re: Samir Amin: Not a Happy Ending (fwd)
Dennis R Redmond wrote: The Opposing Team is Daimler, Sony, Mitsubishi, Nokia, etc. and not just Microsoft and Intel. We've got to think *past* the Wall Street Bubble, not just against it. Germans flock East for cheap sex and petrol FROM ALLAN HALL IN CHEB, CZECH REPUBLIC AS a boom town Cheb has little to say for itself. Years of communist neglect coupled with the birthing pains of rampant capitalism have left buildings and streets in a decrepit state. Neglect hangs in the air like noxious gases from the defunct chemical plants that once spewed poison into the atmosphere with abandon. Yet this Czech Republic town and others like it are El Dorados for wealthy Germans who break for the border each day to carpetbag the spoils of consumerism with a vengeance. Berlin is painfully aware that billions of marks that should be heading into its cash-strapped exchequer are being lost annually in the bazaars of its not-so exotic eastern neighbour. Everything is cheaper in these frontier towns. Petrol costs 70 pfennigs (about 22p) a litre less; excellent Czech beer is 28p a half-litre in bars or £4 for a takeaway case of 24 bottles. Entire outfits of brand-name Neoprene sportswear, training shoes and counterfeit fashion wear - Versace, Calvin Klein, Louis Vuitton to name a few - are available for a pittance. They are hawked, curiously, by Vietnamese traders; once fighters for North Vietnam's liberation, welcomed as heroes by the commisars of the former communist Czechoslovakia and now exiles from their homeland. They have found a new life and, relatively speaking, new riches in the Czech Republic. Other items they sell in sprawling market stalls housed beneath plastic sheets are cartons of Western cigarettes, at £10 less per 200 than their retail price in Germany, bottles of high-grade spirit for £3 each, and neo-Nazi "white power" CDs that are forbidden across the border. Authorities refer to the hordes of visitors - an estimated 750,000 a month to Cheb alone - as the "TBZ Touristen"; T for tanken, or filling up the car; B for bümsen, a coarse German word for sex; and Z for zigaretten. This week saw the German equivalent of the CBI arguing against drawing the Czech Republic and its other eastern neighbour, Poland, into the European Union club too quickly. While the official line is that they are not "ready" to play at capitalism on a level field, the fear of German businesses, particularly small ones, is that manufacturing will be contracted out to them at bargain-basement rates. Besides the loss of revenue, German authorities are also deeply concerned about the B-word. Prostitutes line the boulevards in these seedy, border towns, wearing little more than scraps of clothing and offering cheap sex - mostly without condoms. "Mother comes here to get her hair done and father goes off to the brothel," Brigitte Valoweka, a waitress in a Cheb restaurant, said. "A lot of these girls are Roma, Gypsies. They are dirty and have no idea of staying healthy. They just want a few marks to take home. It seems that everyone is on the game. But they only want to do it with rich Schnitzels - Germans." On the outskirts of Karlovy Vary - the Sudeten spa town of Karlsbad to Germans - there is the undignified sight each day of hundreds of scantily clad prostitutes lining the pavement near Theresienstadt, the former Nazi concentration camp that is now a memorial to Holocaust victims. Every day 25,000 German cars pour into Cheb, with a similar number of vehicles crossing into Varnsdorf, heading for the sights and the bargains of such former Sudeten German towns as Liberec and Brux. Czech authorities like the hard currency - an industrial wage in the Czech Republic is a fraction of what it is in Germany - but bemoan the proliferation of the mafia that has muscled in to control the sex, booze, drugs and illegal weapons sold in the markets. Russian Makarov pistols and Kalashnikov rifles can be purchased for a few marks. A deranged imam, who killed his family of six before turning the gun on himself in Bielefeld last year, bought his KAL Czech pistol for £10 in a bazaar on the border. "They may be old but they are in good condition and you certainly can't get them as easily in Germany," Dieter Brandl, a civilian employee with the German Army, said. He travels twice a month from Hof, Bavaria, to practise shooting at a club outside Cheb. "The ammunition is half price and the weapons I am able to use much better. Everyone comes here looking for a bargain and this is mine." Although the locals deride the Germans and are contemptuous of their big cars, big waistlines and swaggering manner, they cannot allow personal feelings to get in the way of commerce. They are dependent on the hard currency as their jobless queues get longer and the economic outlook remains bleak. Max Sommerer, German customs chief at one of the border crossings, said: "There would be more crossing each day were it not for the traffic jams. It's like the
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Samir Amin: Not a Happy Ending
Jim Devine wrote: Eventually (in 1985-7), the dollar fell (in inflation-adjusted terms, using the trade-weighted measure), due to the large trade deficits (which had not yet turned into current-account deficits) and due to a convergence of US interest rates with those of the rest of the world. This is helpful but the real point is that previous dollar crashes (even Nixon taking it off the gold standard) have not affecetd the fundamentals of US hegemony. Why will it be any different now? If Wall Street goes, so will the world's other bourses; and when the world recovers, other things being eual, the US will lead the take-off. Plus ca change. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
Re: Re: Re: Re: Samir Amin: Not a Happy Ending
Jim Devine wrote: shouldn't the large US current account deficit signal a fall in the US$ and a rise in the Euro sometime in the near future? Why? Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
Re: Re: Samir Amin: Not a Happy Ending
Dennis R Redmond wrote: There probably will be a tomorrow for this world-system, but it'll be transacted in euros. Living in the shadow of the dollar Mark Milner, deputy financial editor The Guardian Thursday April 27, 2000 How low can the euro go? ... Today the currency slumped to fresh lows on the foreign exchanges despite a rise in interest rates by the ECB. Since its launch at the beginning of last year the euro has lost a fifth of its value against the dollar and a similar amount against the Japanese yen - the heavy weights of the global currency markets which the euro was meant to rival. When it was launched the euro bought $1.16. Parity - where one euro bought one dollar - was deemed unthinkable. Today, however, one euro is worth just over 91 cents. . The problem for the euro is that throughout its life there has been a very attractive something else - the dollar. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
Re: Re: Re: Re: Samir Amin: Not a Happy Ending
Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList Dennis R Redmond wrote: This is known as a buying opportunity of historic proportions. Some future George Soros out there is going to make an unholy killing by snapping up EUR and dumping USD. Hey, Russia posted a whacking bal of payments surplus last year and has done almost every year since 1991. Is it also a no-brainer to buy up some roubles right now? Mark 'no-brain' Jones
Fw: Re: Re: Re: Samir Amin: Not a Happy Ending
- Original Message - From: "M A Jones" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, April 28, 2000 3:57 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L:18398] Re: Re: Re: Samir Amin: "Not a Happy Ending" Hey, Russia posted a whacking bal of payments surplus last year and has done almost every year since 1991. Is it also a no-brainer to buy up some roubles right now? While I think about, the US has run a b of p deficit for at least two decades, so obviously we should have been piling into roubles since at least 1973, when one rouble was worth 1.7 US$ (unlike today when one dollar buys a kilo of dried roubles). The UK (which recently overhauled France in GDP, thus proving again the superiority of Anglo-Saxon methods) ran a deficit for most of the 19th century; no doubt the brainless thing then was to bale out of Nepalese rupees, Bahamian cowry shells etc and jeopardise your children's inheritance by buying sterling. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
Re: BLS Daily Report
Thanks for this, I've forwarded it to the crashlist but without attribution: in future do you want me to forward it in your name, or would you like me to sub you to the List? Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: "Richardson_D" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2000 10:45 PM Subject: [PEN-L:18270] BLS Daily Report BLS DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 2000 RELEASED TODAY: A total of 1.7 million injuries and illnesses that required recuperation away from work beyond the day of the incident were reported in private industry workplaces during 1998. The total number of these cases has declined in each year since 1992. In contrast, the number of injuries and illnesses reported with only restricted work activity rather than days away recuperating has increased during this same time period by nearly 70 percent to over 1,000,000 cases in 1998. ... Since 1993, truck drivers have experienced the largest number of injuries and illnesses with time away from work. The inflation adjusted weekly earnings of most U.S. workers climbed 3.7 percent over the year ended in the first quarter of 2000, according to BLS. In current dollars or without adjustment for inflation, the weekly pay of the nation's 98.2 million full-time wage and salary employees rose 6.9 percent between the first quarters of 1999 and 2000. The CPI-U increased 3.2 percent over the same period, making the real pay gain 3.7 percent. ... (Daily Labor Report, page D-25). Higher prices for oil imports and a Boeing strike that lowered aircraft exports helped widen the U.S. trade deficit to a record $29.2 billion in February, the Commerce Department says. ... The Secretary of Commerce says that about half the increase is due to higher petroleum prices. ... (Daily Labor Report, page D-1; Washington Post, page E3)_The United States trade deficit widened to a record in February, elevated by surging oil prices and growing demand for imports. The deficit in goods and services trade grew in February as imports climbed to a record and exports fell for a second consecutive month. ... (New York Times, page C14; USA Today, page 3B)_The U.S. trade deficit, continuing its record-breaking pace of last year, widened in February as high oil prices led a big jump in imports. Aside from oil prices and Boeing labor woes, economists said the underlying cause of the expanded deficit remains the same strong U.S. economic growth and consumer demand coupled with weak economic growth overseas, said a National Association of Manufacturers economist. ... (Wall Street Journal, page A2). Base salaries were expected to rise at about 4.4 percent this year, or about the same rate as last year, as more companies use stock options and profit sharing to supplement pay. An American Compensation Association survey showed that 63 percent of the companies offered stock-based plans to employees in 1999. Almost 57.2 percent extended stock options to hourly and nonunion employees (Washington Post, page E17). For years, antipoverty efforts have stressed work, education, and marriage as the way up the economic ladder for the single, jobless mothers who seemed to account for the bulk of urban poverty. Now a new analysis of census data shows that in New York City, in the midst of an economic boom, poverty rates rose sharply among just the kind of families with children that were supposed to be safe: those that include two parents, a worker, and a household head with more than a high school degree. Comparing three years ended in 1998 with the last comparable stretch of prosperity, in the late 1980's, the study found that the overall rate of poverty in New York City among families with children climbed to 32.3 percent, from 29.3 percent, despite a rise in education and employment that would have been expected to reduce poverty. The official federal poverty threshold is $13,133 for a family of three. The survey was released by the nonprofit Community Service Society of New York and suggests a collision of several trends: the growing gap between rich and poor, a surge in immigration, and, as welfare changes push recipients off the rolls, increasing competition for low-end jobs with eroding wages. ... (New York Times, page A25). The Labor Department commissioned a new survey to research the impact of the Family and Medical Leave Act, an effort that it hopes will be under way in the next couple of months. The survey will be conducted by Westat Inc., which released a survey in October 1995 that found approximately two-thirds of employers covered under the 1993 law had changed their personnel policies to comply with it, mostly by increasing the reasons for which leave can be taken. The new survey will include research into how family and medical leave can be made more accessible and affordable. It is intended to update the 1995 research on the law's
Re: Re: Marx on value
Chrish Burford wrote: I could not find the footnote, but Marx uses the word "assume" in the sense in which Jim uses it Playing with words. The results already obtained include Marx's logico-historical derivation of the _existent_, equal comodity exchange. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
Re: Re: Re: Marx on value
In fact surely the entire burden of Marx's thesis in all 3 vols of Cap + TSV and indeed in all his mature economics writing, is that profits MUST be explained and CAN ONLY be explained on the basis of EQUAL commodity exchange, not for eg according to Physiocratic notions about wheat harvests or mercantilist mysticism or whatever. The passages Jim Devine cites below exactly encapsulate this central idea. And this is a separate question anyway from the equivalence (or not) of values and prices, no? Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: "Jim Devine" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2000 6:06 AM Subject: [PEN-L:18220] Re: Re: Marx on value I wrote: At this high level of abstraction, the price of production of any commodity equal its value (while the market price of the commodity equals its price of production), if we measure prices and values using the same metric. I could also find the footnote where Marx admits that he's making an assumption, but all my copies of volume I are at work. (The no-realization-crisis assumption is in the preface to the section on accumulation.) what I was thinking of can be found at the end of chapter 5 of CAPITAL Vol. I: The conversion of money into capital has to be explained on the basis of the laws that regulate the exchange of commodities, in such a way that the starting-point is the exchange of equivalents. [footnote: ] From the foregoing investigation, the reader will see that this statement only means that the formation of capital must be possible even though the price and value of a commodity be the same; for its formation cannot be attributed to any deviation of the one from the other. If prices actually differ from values, we must, first of all, reduce the former to the latter, in other words, treat the difference as accidental in order that the phenomena may be observed in their purity, and our observations not interfered with by disturbing circumstances that have nothing to do with the process in question. [this abstraction is similar to making an assumption, though not in the sense of deductive logic. -- JD] We know, moreover, that this reduction is no mere scientific process. The continual oscillations in prices, their rising and falling, compensate each other, and reduce themselves to an average price [the price of production -- JD], which is their hidden regulator. It forms the guiding star of the merchant or the manufacturer in every undertaking that requires time. He knows that when a long period of time is taken, commodities are sold neither over nor under, but at their average price. If therefore he thought about the matter at all, he would formulate the problem of the formation of capital as follows: How can we account for the origin of capital on the supposition that prices are regulated by the average price, i. e., ultimately by the value of the commodities? I say "ultimately," because average prices do not directly coincide with the values of commodities, as Adam Smith, Ricardo, and others believe. The connection between "average prices" [prices of production] and values is on the macro level, as seen in Marx's equation of total prices with total value. In the quote above, Marx does not explicitly assume that prices = value, but this assumption follows directly if we abstract from the homogeneity within the capitalist class, ignoring differences in the organic composition of capital -- as Marx does in vol. I. I remember that Marx makes the assumption explicit somewhere in vol. II, but I don't have the energy to look at this point. [Returning home to Chris Burford's message, again I had no copy of CAPITAL vol. I on hand. (Weirdly, all four of them [!] at work, whereas I have three copies of vol. II here!) However, I remembered that I had a CD-ROM of the "Multimedia Capital." But I couldn't cut and paste a footnote from it -- so I had to find the above on the web. In the process, I found that someone put two folk-type songs on the CD-ROM. Neither has anything to do with CAPITAL! Perhaps the group that produced the CD-ROM includes a singer-songwriter.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Lagavulin was Re: Hundreds arrested
If the Dow even gets back to where it was last Friday morning, I'll look for other signs of the Second Coming like visions in the sky of Christ With His Bankers. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: "Max B. Sawicky" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, April 17, 2000 8:06 AM Subject: RE: Lagavulin was Re: Hundreds arrested Max, you should never have confessed to being teetotal. Helas, I drank the whisky. I did toast your health several times so the feng-shui might have done you some good. That's the only upside I can think of. Oh, and for being good sports, I've just subbed you and Enrique to the CrashList where you will get more news about the Great Crash of 2000, faster and with real-time Marxist commentary, than anywhere else on the Net. Any other disappointed Lagavulin drinkers are welcome to the same alternative. Just let me know. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList I'm not sure this will go down w/the masses. They want liquid nourishment, not more hot air. Re: the list, if all the indices go up ten percent this week, do you shut it down or retitle it the great recovery? mbs
Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: More on A16 fire hazard
- Original Message - From: "Jim Devine" [*] In CAPITAL, Marx goes a long distance with the contrast between "what's good according to capitalist standards" (trading at value, equal exchange) and how the system works in practice (exploitation in production). Surely Marx's entire point in Capital is to show that "how the system works in practice" is precisely by _trading at value_. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
Lagavulin was Re: Hundreds arrested
Max, you should never have confessed to being teetotal. Helas, I drank the whisky. I did toast your health several times so the feng-shui might have done you some good. That's the only upside I can think of. Oh, and for being good sports, I've just subbed you and Enrique to the CrashList where you will get more news about the Great Crash of 2000, faster and with real-time Marxist commentary, than anywhere else on the Net. Any other disappointed Lagavulin drinkers are welcome to the same alternative. Just let me know. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList - Original Message - From: "Max B. Sawicky" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, April 17, 2000 3:49 AM Subject: RE: Hundreds arrested damn straight about that one and i still haven't collected yet! kelley Don't forget you have to drink it out of your slipper. max
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: More on A16 fire hazard
- Original Message - From: "Jim Devine" In volume III, as he turns to the issue of how competition works and how the participants perceive the system and act on those perceptions, he drops the assumption that commodities trade at value (so that there is unequal exchange, the "transformation problem," and all that). So capitalism does not trade at value in practice (in Marx's view, at least). This seems misleading. In Cap III Marx does not 'drop the assumption that commodities trade at value'. It is NOT an assumption in the first place, if by this you mean a hypothetical speculation used to investigate a matter. What Marx tries to do in Cap III, and succeeds, is to show how real phenomena such as unequal exchange and value-price transformation can coexist with and even be entailed by, the fundamental fact of equal commodity exchange, including of course the exchange of labour with capital. Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
