Re: Re: The Rise and Future Demise of World-SystemsAnalysis
What? third worldist media? IW? Julia Roberts? I am quite mellow and busy today, just checking my e-mails at the moment. You really haven't provoked me yet! Mine Ricardo Duchesne wrote: Mine Aysen Doyran wrote: Anthony DCosta wrote: Wallerstein writes, irrespective of what others write. He doesn't listen--to paraphrase some of his students (who are my friends) and colleagues! Cheers, ohh, definetly, he is very persistent of his own position. That is expectable from a sociologist of grand theory, especially of a marxian variety. If people listened to each other all the time, they would not be different! He is very articulate when he talks, BTW: clear and to the point. I like his style.. Am sure you like his style: no reflection, just sheepish acceptance. But I do wonder how much satisfaction he can get knowing what sort of people accept his "ricity" and "lity". Or, has the third worldist media created a star who like Julia Roberts does not know the crowd who's coming to see her movies? Anthony P. D'Costa Associate Professor Ph: (253) 692-4462 Comparative International Development Fax: (253) 692-5718 University of WashingtonBox Number: 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA xxxxxxx -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 _______ -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: Up a Hayek in a kayak without a paddle
I am sorry for breaking the rule (shut up! shut up! agghhh!), but somebody always *learns*... Mine Well, the first Marxist lesson is that what looks like "'economic'/technical" issues can't be divorced from what looks like "social/political/moral" ones. The system couldn't have reproduced and expanded itself economically without state repression of various kinds (from policing to union busting to war) as well as hegemony (of the kind that Gramsci, among others, discussed). Wow, I didn't know that. There's just no end to what I'm learning on PEN-L lately. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Harry Magdoff on market socialism
Lou is correct.. Alfred Stephen, in _Authoritarianism in Brazil_ argues that Hayek and his neo-liberal team, who were backed by the US, were regularly visiting the regime's anti-communist/pro-market think tank in the late 70s to give advises to military technocrats in charge of the neo-liberal program in Brazil. ohh yeah right! that is what you get from libertarians. Mine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Luo says that the "general desire for a better life" is enough of an incentive for everyone to tell the truth, even if that means making oneself work harder with fewer resources, or voting to disrupt your life by shutting down an inefficient enterprise or even a line of work (think of typesetters). i don't believe it. i think that common interests like that are too weak to overcome individual interests. Note that I am not positing some sort of a priori selfishness, but am talking about the historically located incentives created by planning itself. This is a wholly materialist approach. I disagree, too, that Hayek's approach is about the USSR. In fact, Hayek's key papers were written in the 30s, during the first five year plans, not during the NEP. Obviously the USSR was (and remains) a main testing ground for theories of planning. People like Harry Braverman used to point to it to show that Hayek was wrong. But the argument is general, and it is confirmed by all kinds of planning experiences, capitalist (think of the Pentagon!), monopologtsic, as well as state socialist. In a message dated Fri, 14 Jul 2000 3:11:38 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The "incentive" is a desire to make a better life for all of society, as hard as that is to believe. Most human beings would prefer it that way, despite libertarian propaganda. The Hayekian critique revolves around the former Soviet Union, despite Justin's claim that it is a "general" argument. The problem is that as Harry pointed out there was a general disappearance of planning in the USSR during the time that Hayek was developing his critique. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Rise and Future Demise of World-Systems Analysis
Ken Hanly wrote: By the way, why should it not be useful to extend the concept of social class beyond the capitalist system? Cheers, Ken Hanly Ken, hi. Actually, it is very useful to extend the concept of social class beyond the "nation-state", which is what the world system people and marxists writing in the field of International Relations are trying to do (See folks like *Van der Pijl*, Robert Cox, Gill who are mostly informed by Gramsci's hegemonic concepts of control, historical materialism and geo-politics of capitalism). As far as the world system theory is concerned, it must be added, its very premises rest upon the existence of structural differentiation of labor among regions of the world economy. For example, "Modes of Labor Control", as introduced by IW, is a concept used to characterize the "dual mode of labor involvement" in a capitalist world economy: "Free labor is the form of labor control used for work in core countries; whereas coerced labor is used for work in peripheral areas. The combination thereof is the essence of capitalism" (1974). I have been recently reading Pijl's new book _Transnational Classes and International Relations_ (Routledge, 1998). It is a unique contribution to IPE literature, and social sciences in general. American economists have a lot to learn from it, especially the ones misinformed by the very premises of Anglo-Saxon/ Analytical/functionalist school of Marxism. The book combines a lot of Marxist ideas in a very productive fashion (Marx, Lenin, Gramsci, Poulantzas, Mandel, Wallerstein). It offers a historical account of "transitional integration" of the capitalist class-- the ways in which different factions of capital interests involve in the process of globalization, transnationalization of capitalist production and capitalist control of the world economy; Pax Britannica; Pax Americana, etc.. I particularly liked the book. It is very contemporary. Dennis was hinting elsewhere that US hegemony is weakened by the rise of Japanese and European capitalisms (although I think it is *confirmed*). Arrighi *heavily* touches upon these issues (See his article "the Rise of East Asia and the withering away of the Interstate System"), but this book is really *ideal* for assessing how transitional capitalism and its current ideological mode of accumulation (neo-liberalism) are being reinforced/ rearticulated by different centers of the world economy; sometimes through *conflict* other times through *cooperation* among major capitalist powers. It is a good starting point to make sense of the globalization of neo-liberal hegemony from a Gramscian perspective. Mine Mine Aysen Doyran wrote: Ken Hanly wrote: I read through this but I fail to see anything that I can identify with Marxism. I only recall capitalism mentioned once. Capitalism does not seem to enter as a unit of analysis. mentioned once?? In the _Modern World System_ and _The Capitalist World Economy_ capitalism is mentioned in *every* SINGLE identifiable page, probably like hundred times, in the whole book, although not specifically mentioned in this *small* introductory piece. how many times do you mention *capitalism* in your posts, Ken? The concept of class is not mentioned as far as I could see. There is no use of the base, superstructure distinction, no mention of class conflict or class struggle or organising for revolutionary change. there are two chapters in the _Capitalist World economy_ that specifically deal with class, among other things (race, slavery, rural economy, etc..): 1) American slavery and the capitalist world economy 2) CLASS FORMATION IN THE CAPITALIST WORLD ECONOMY. In the below parag, note the emphasis on the importance of _dialectics_ and _class analysis_. " SOCIAL CLASS AS A CONCEPT WAS INVENTED WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE CAPITALIST WORLD ECONOMY AND IT IS PROBABLY MOST USEFUL IF WE USE IT AS HISTORICALLY SPECIFIC TO THIS KIND OF WORLD SYSTEM. CLASS ANALYSIS LOSES ITS POWER OF EXPLANATION WHENEVER IT MOVES TOWARDS FORMAL MODELS AND AWAY FROM DIALECTICAL DYNAMICS. "THERE IS A SHORT RUN LOGIC IN THE FORMATION OF CLASS. IT IS THE GRADUAL PERCEPTION OF COMMON INTEREST (THAT IS SMILAR RELATIONSHIP S TO THE OWNEERSHIP AND THE CONTROL OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTON, AND SMILAR SOURCES OF REVENUE) AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOME ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES TO ADVANCE THESE INTERESTS IS AN INDESPENSABLE ASPECT OF BARGAINING" "THUS CLASSES ARE FORMED,-- BUT THEY ARE THEN REFORMED. THIS IS WHAT MAO MEANT WHEN HE SAID PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA "THE CLASS STRUGGLE IS BY NO MEANS OVER" "THIS CONTINIOUS RE-ERUPTION OF THE CLASS STRUGGLE AFTER EACH POLITICAL RESOLUTION IS IN MY VIEW IS NOT A CYCLICAL PROCESS, HOWEVER, BUT PRECISELY A DIALECTICAL ONE. FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A CLASS, HOWEVER TRANSIEN
Re: Re:The Rise and Future Demise of World-Systems Analysis
Ricardo Duchesne wrote: Mine Aysen Doyran wrote: Why don't you have a look at Giovanni Arrighi's piece on this debate I posted a while ago? "It would be easy to dismiss Brenner's critique as being based on a highly selective reading of Marx. In this reading there is no room for Marx's more world-systemic theorizations, most notably the thesis that the formation of a Eurocentric world market in the sixteenth century was the single most important condition for the emergence of capitalist production in Western Europe, England included, in the following centuries. Nowhere does Marx say that "the formation of a Eurocentric world market in the 16th was the single most important condition"; and nowhere can WS find any evidence for this claim. Arrighi's 1+1 is a good step. Actually, you are quite mistaken, because your are taking Arrighi *literally* here. There are indeed *evidences* for productive "world systemic theorizations" in Marx's writing. You can go and reread 1)"The modern theory of colonization" 2) "British Imperialism in India" 3) "the historical tendency of capitalist accumulation" 4) the Communist Manifesto: "workers of all countries UNITE" 5) *international* socialism. Mine -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: The Rise and Future Demise of World-Systems Analysis
himm? I don't see any mentioning of Durkheim,Weber and Marx in the below post, but Rostow. Being highly critical of Rostow's modernization theory, IW is a *still* a modernist. You don't need to be anti or post modernist to be a critical of Rostow, and definitely, I should add, WSA is a radical extension of modern thinking in sociology, which emerged partly as a reaction to Rostowian/ mainstream paradigm dominating the sociology of development/modernization in the 50s. Regarding modern thinkers mentioned above, IW makes use of their ideas from a historically reconstructive* perspective in the _Modern World System_. Index and bibliography (which is nothing but *original historical documents* in French, not secondary publish/perish documents) are an evidence of this high *intellectual quality* and value; *much* so higher than Elster's game theoretic/ functionalist/ahistorical/anglo-saxon reading of Marx. frankly, why don't you e-mail your criticism to IW or post it on WSN net work (which he is a co-moderator)? I am sure you will get some very productive responses. Mine This geopolitical discovery had the effect of undermining the nineteenth-century construction of social science which had created separate theories and disciplines for the study of Europe/North America on the one hand and for that of the rest of the world on the other hand. Durkheim, Weber, and Marx are still going strong. Neither was modernization theory undermined. One easily could list 15 or 20 works published in the last two decades. What is the relevancy of this comment? Mine NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: US to punish Peru
Does the list therefore support this democratic initiative, or should our sympathies lie with the Tupamarus or the supporters of Shining Path, or perhaps with the oppressed and misunderstood President Fujimori? Chris Burford Is there a choice between defending US militarism and its ally President Fujimori, and Shining Path on the other? I would not underestimate the power of the latter. Although being effectively exterminated, Shining Path militants have marked a revolutionary/anti-imperialist breakthrough in the history of Peru; and, *principally*, Marxists should be on their side, not on the side of US. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Upheavals of June,2000
Charles Brown wrote: CB: What is the difference between "core-periphery" and "imperial center-colonies" ? Charles, they are almost the same. Probably, I over-stated the difference in the first place. Technically, periphery is a formerly colonized part of the world. The reason I specifically like the concept is that even in the *decolonized* phase of capitalism, peripheralization is still continuing, so periphery is an efficient tool to analyze new forms of inequalities, poverty and exploitation on a global scale, although these problems have been in existence since the 16th century. Also mind you that there is the semi-periphery category. These three levels (core/semiperiphery/periphery) show the degree/extend to which countries are integrated into the world system, geographically and time wise. For example, Brazil is not the same with Nigeria; one is on the top of the other in the hierarchy of the world system. So these concepts are useful in terms of understanding the articulation of multiple hierarchies, mechanisms of surplus labor extraction, and other power/ideological structures that coexist with capitalism ( racism, sexism). adios)))) Mine -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: The Rise and Future Demise ofWorld-Systems Analysis
From today's perspective, Rostow looks much better: Italy, France, and Japan have joined the core. Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, the Hong Kong SEZ, Spain, and Ireland are joining the core, and there appear to be a bunch more lined up behind them... Thanks to military dictatorships and IMF programs who have brought the Tigers to the level of the core. If T, SK, SP, HK relatively did better, it happened so by peripheralizing other countries in the region'; ie by hiring Malaysians, mostly women and children, as cheap labor in garment/maquiladora industries in the Pacific Rim, at $1.65 per hourly wage rates or so, and by mostly keeping them non-unionized and without any job security. There is a *small* world system there, characterized by inter-regional differences and inequalities. So the relevance of IW, and the difficulty with Rostow. --- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: The Rise and Future Demise of World-Systems Analysis
Ricardo Duchesne wrote: We are not there yet, but we are clearly moving in the direction of such a demise, or if you will permit my prejudices, a bifurcation. What are the contradictions of world-systems analysis? 1) The first is that world-systems analysis is precisely not a theory or a mode of theorizing, but a perspective and a critique of other perspectives. It is a very powerful critique, and I personally believe the critique is devastating for a large number of the premises on which much of social science presently operates. If we go not by what the pupils feel, but how the scholarly world relates to WS, then this theory (sorry, "perspective") has been in demise long time ago. A devastating critique only of Rostow (which Frank had already done), which is why W only took on Rostow in this descriptive recollection of the rise of WS. W is plain ignorant of much of what has happened in social science since the 60s, hardly understands critical theory, has never read Habermas, and barely knows the Weberian historical sociologists who are much more sophisticated than he. Critiques are destructive; they intend to be. They tear down, but they do not by themselves build up. I called this earlier the process of clearing the underbrush. Once one has cleared the underbrush, however, one only has a clearing; not a new construction but only the possibility of building one. Yea. Old theories never die, but they usually don't just fade away either. They first hide, then mutate. Thus, the work of critique of the old theories may seem never-ending. The risk is that we shall become so enamored of this task that we may lose ourselves in it and refuse the necessary risk of moving on ourselves. Code word for: no everyone became my pupil; one can only do so much trying to convince others of the "True" and the "Good"; I had a great scholarly career repeating myself; I am afraid I might you bore you if I keep doing this, so it is time to move on. To the extent that we shall fail to do this, we shall become redundant and irrelevant. At which point the mutants come back, stronger than ever. The attempt in the 1990's to relegitimize modernization theory is an instance of this, albeit thus far one that has been rather weak. If I might continue the medical metaphor, the problem today of world-systems analysis is analogous to the problem of overused antibiotics. The solution is to move forward from medical therapy to preventive medicine. Listening pupils? You have a new task ahead, time to take preventive medicine. I have tried already to indicate the ways in which our terminology, or something close to it, is being used for purposes other than we had in mind, which then can have the effect of corrupting what we ourselves do. I cannot stand the thought that WS will be submerged under globalization theory; I am not just a paragraph in a book; I am the TRUE and the GOOD and, as such, am not willing to share my perspective with any other "corrupting" perspective. Really the rest is plain self-serving, paternalistic stuff about what his pupils should or should not do regarding the future of "world system analysis", with some bombastic questions which he could never answer. Take it easy Ricardo! you are there already... bump! -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: The Rise and Future Demise of World-SystemsAnalysis
Anthony DCosta wrote: Wallerstein writes, irrespective of what others write. He doesn't listen--to paraphrase some of his students (who are my friends) and colleagues! Cheers, ohh, definetly, he is very persistent of his own position. That is expectable from a sociologist of grand theory, especially of a marxian variety. If people listened to each other all the time, they would not be different! He is very articulate when he talks, BTW: clear and to the point. I like his style.. Mine Anthony P. D'Costa Associate Professor Ph: (253) 692-4462 Comparative International Development Fax: (253) 692-5718 University of WashingtonBox Number: 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA xxx -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Upheavals of June, 2000
How about Theda Scokpol's and Brenner's critique of "liberal" and neo-smithian approaches of IW? xxx Anthony P. D'Costa, Associate Professor Comparative International Development University of WashingtonCampus Box 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA Phone: (253) 692-4462 Fax : (253) 692-5718 xxx True, but "neo-liberal smithian" label of IW is completely Brenner's mischarecterization of IW. In fact, IW's central struggle in the _Modern World System_ is to illustrate the fact that capitalism has *never* been the capitalism of *free trade* and competitive market* liberalism as Smithians argued. IW demonstrates this historically by documenting the capitalist *power struggle and *inter-imperialist* rivalry within the core. Actually, I am attaching Arrighi's article of non-debates among Skocpol, IW and Brenner in the 1970s. If my memory does not mistaken me at the moment, Skocpol was arguing in the _States and Revolution_ that France was *not* capitalist in the16th/17th centuries, given the predominance of aristocratic/landowning classes, challenging IW's characterization of Colbert's mercantilist policies as *capitalist*. In my view, Skoc misses the *historical* argument in IW here: Mercantilism is *one form* of modern capitalism, *not* a deviation from or less developed stage of capitalism. if we take Skoc's criteria of what capitalism means somewhat seriously, then no country in the world is capitalist; only the west par excellence. Skoc seems to endorse a typical modernization perspective, albeit in a closet fashion, of the kind Smithian/orthodox economists would subscribe: "No necessary prerequisites, No capitalism", so the argument carries a danger of obfuscating imperialism and relagating capitalism to the sphere of country's internal charecteristics rather than to the world system.. Furthermore, In the theory chapter of her dissertation, Skoc also classifies IW under world system/ marxist theories of capitalism, and is somewhat critical of marxism in general. okey, I need to go to bed... i will attach the artricle later.. Mine Mine On Tue, 11 Jul 2000, Mine Aysen Doyran wrote: De long wrote: Yes! He does not seem to have learned the extent to which the neo-liberal program is successfully advancing. Bind all prosperous market economies of the world into one single bloc in which the prosperous development of all is a precondition for the prosperous development of each. Then embrace-and-extend as countries that adopt Marshall Plan politico-economic institutions are brought into the core as they receive massive amounts of technology transfer from core-located firms, and countries that remain outside the core strive to adopt political democracy, free trade, and market economics. No. IW does *not* endorse the Smithian view implied above. He is a marxist. Mine -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___________ -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Upheavals of June, 2000
Stephen E Philion wrote: Mine, Aren't you giving labels to people in fact? I mean, would Wallerstein accept the appelation, "World System Marxist" ? I got my MA in his dept and I don't recall his ever using that term to describe his approach. You excoriate anyone who uses game theory in their Marxism as 'non-Marxist', even when they think of themselves as and call themselves Marxist, yet writers who don't call themselves Marxist like Wallerstein and Barrington Moore are Marxist in your book and worthy of praise as the correct kinds of Marxists. Just sounds sloppy to me, forget at what level we're talking about. Steve Stephen Philion Lecturer/PhD Candidate Department of Sociology 2424 Maile Way Social Sciences Bldg. # 247 Honolulu, HI 96822 Stephen, First off, my call of IW as a "world system marxist" is just a *descriptive* labeling of IW's position in order to distinguish him from other forms of marxism or positions within marxist theory. IW specifically uses the term "world system analysis" instead "world system theory" in his article "Rise and Demise of World System Analysis", so I should have instead used the term *analysis*(form of method) rather than *theory*. Well, I still continue to label IW Marxist or _at least_ some form of _socialist_, as far as the analytical nature of his work is concerned: Transnational class driven perspective of international politics and economic history. What is he then, if we need to label him for descriptive purposes? (*Marxist* is not my *labeling* of him , BTW. it is wtritten in every *standard* sociology and international poitical economy text book, including Ronald Chilcote's). He does *radical* sociology, criticizes methodological individualism, pays attention to hierarchies (core/periphery) at the global level, and more importantly he proposes a *systemic* analysis of capitalist accumulation on a world scale, which move beyond state centric/individualistic approaches to capitalist development. His analysis is very illustrative of global system and inherent contradictions of capitalism. second, I did not call Moore a marxist, but I meant that there are Marxists heavily influenced by his work. third, game theory has no relevancy to the issue here if you wanna bring into *dead horse* topics, game theory is not even a radical school of thought; I mean *methodology* wise... fourth, I will appreciate if you do *not* contact me privately now or in the future. enough!! Mine -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Upheavals of June, 2000
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Marxists are good people Mine approves of, ergo, Barrington Moore and Immanuel Wallerstein are Marxists, even though they rejected the label, while John Roemer and Jon Elster are not Marxists, even though they say they are. And _I_ am most definitely not a Marxist, whatever I say I am. --jks 1) I am repeating, and closing off this thread for the sake of not raising myself to level of deliberative "label" attachers. Actually, I really would like to discuss and learn more about IW's work with those who *professionally* read him, critically or reconstuctively, but at this level of high ad hominem and marxism bashing , it seems practiacally impossible. 2) I did *NOT* *NOT* *NOT* say that Moore was a marxist. I would like to see the *documentation* for this. I was instead *criticizing* Moore from IW's perspective, and making a point about marxists who read Marx under the influence of Weber and Moore. (nation state versus world system approaches capitalism) 3) IW does not *reject* the label marxist, although he does not specifically use the term to sell himself in the intellectual market place. Not using and rejecting are totally different issues. I don't use the label in every second, but I don't reject it either. In the final analysis, his work in Marxist in nature and he is a marxist, but he is differenct from *other* marxists I named a while ago. He writes in socialist journals and engages in every marxist forum I have ever been to. Refer to previous posts or some of his articles to get a better picture of who he is, why you disagree or agree, or discuss the nature of his work, analysis, papers, or show me citation dude, or whatever the fuck is from his major works... I gave direct citations from Elster or Roemer when I criticized them, instead of making speculative comments or ad hominems. Why does IW use a Marxist analysis of WS? "the modern world system is a capitalist world economy, whose origins reach back to the 16th century abroad. its emergence is the result of a singular histrorical transformation, that from feaudalism to capitalism. this capitalist world economy continues in existence today and now includes geographically the entire world, including those states commited to socialism... the usefullness of capitalism as a term is to designate that system in which structures give primacy to the accumulation of capital per se, rewarding those who do it well and penalizing all others, as distinct from those systems in which the accumulation of capital is subordinated to sum other objectives, however defined... "What distinguishes capitalism as a mode of production is that its multiple structures relate to one another in such a way that in consequence , the push to endless accumulation of capital becomes and remains dominant. Production tends always to be for profit rather than for use... 'capital is accumulated by appropriating surplus prioduced by labor, more the capital is accumulated , the less the role of labor in production" (pages, 271-273, _The capitalist world economy_) Mine In a message dated Wed, 12 Jul 2000 3:32:05 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Stephen E Philion [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Mine, Aren't you giving labels to people in fact? I mean, would Wallerstein accept the appelation, "World System Marxist" ? I got my MA in his dept and I don't recall his ever using that term to describe his approach. You excoriate anyone who uses game theory in their Marxism as 'non-Marxist', even when they think of themselves as and call themselves Marxist, yet writers who don't call themselves Marxist like Wallerstein and Barrington Moore are Marxist in your book and worthy of praise as the correct kinds of Marxists. Just sounds sloppy to me, forget at what level we're talking about. Steve Stephen Philion Lecturer/PhD Candidate Department of Sociology 2424 Maile Way Social Sciences Bldg. # 247 Honolulu, HI 96822 -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Upheavals of June, 2000
Dennis R Redmond wrote: On Tue, 11 Jul 2000, Mine Aysen Doyran wrote: there are also conference papers by Arrighi and Wallerstein (His article on _Rise and Demise of World System Theory_ is pretty useful in outlining some of the features of the world system theory. http://fbc.binghamton.edu/). Sure, but here's Wallerstein writing in 1997 on the potential conflict between Japan, the US and the EU in the 21st century (full text available at http://fbc.binghamton.edu/iwrise.htm), where he bets the farm on Japan: "4) Since a triad in ferocious mutual competition usually reduces to a duo, the most likely combination is Japan plus the U.S.A. versus the E.U., a combination that is undergirded both by economic and paradoxically cultural considerations. 5) This pairing would return us to the classical situation of a sea-air power supported by the ex-hegemonic power versus a land-based power, and suggests for both geopolitical and economic reasons the eventual success of Japan." Sea power versus land power -- in the era of GSM and bullet trains? I mean, come *on*. This isn't to bash Wallerstein, who's written some neat things, but he does seem to focus on the geopolitics and not the geo-economics. But then, I'm just one of those carping, post-American litcritters, so what do I know. -- Dennis You are making a valid criticism here, Dennis. No need to get emotional. My question is that "are *geo-politics* and *geo-economics* separate" in the way that you imply above? From a world systemic perspective, the capitalist world economy expands geographically (because it needs expansion. Period), while dialectally reinforcing economic expansionism at the same time. Geo-economics is not the reified opposition of geo-politics. In fact, capitalist powers are those who are already powerful geo-politically; their power emanates from not their *political* strength (state machinery) but from the strength of their ruling classes; the specific nature of socio-economic groups located within the state, and their ability to specialize in core economic activities. For example, If you remember, IW keeps on arguing in the _Modern World System that the reason why Netherlands was a strong sea power with a strong military capacity in the 17th century was because Netherlands was able to militarize itself by developing and thus channeling the division of surplus value, which was extracted from peripheral zones. While redistributing of surplus labor enriched the pockets of the Dutch merchants, it also helped Netherlands to finance a military capable of expanding overseas, and hence to maintain its hegemomy. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Upheavals of June, 2000
I don't keep people butting up. I just don't want some people to "cc" me. that is all I want. one can post his ideas on pen-l. he does not need to cc me, unless he asks my approval. Mine Michael Perelman wrote: Mine, You are a very smart person, but you keep butting up against people. This sort of talk is not needed here. Mine Aysen Doyran wrote: fourth, I will appreciate if you do *not* contact me privately now or in the future. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: Re: The Rise and Future Demise of
M. H. wrote: Wallerstein's approach is circulation rather than production. Actually, he does emphasize production. Athony Brewer, in his famous book, _Marxist theories of Imperialism: A Critical Survey_ classifies IW's world system theory under the section of_Modern Marxist Theories of Development and Underdevelopment_ (p.165). How does IW use a Marxist analysis of WS? "the modern world system is a capitalist world economy, whose origins reach back to the 16th century abroad. its emergence is the result of a singular histrorical transformation, that from feaudalism to capitalism. this capitalist world economy continues in existence today and now includes geographically the entire world, including those states commited to socialism... the usefullness of capitalism as a term is to designate that system in which structures give primacy to the accumulation of capital per se, rewarding those who do it well and penalizing all others, as distinct from those systems in which the accumulation of capital is subordinated to sum other objectives, however defined... "What distinguishes capitalism as a _mode of production_ is that its multiple structures relate to one another in such a way that in consequence , the push to endless accumulation of capital becomes and remains dominant. Production tends always to be for profit rather than for use... "capital is accumulated by appropriating surplus produced by labor, more the capital is accumulated , the less the role of labor in production" (pages, 271-273, _The Capitalist World Economy_, IW.) -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: The Rise and Future Demise of World-Systems Analysis
Ken Hanly wrote: I read through this but I fail to see anything that I can identify with Marxism. I only recall capitalism mentioned once. Capitalism does not seem to enter as a unit of analysis. mentioned once?? In the _Modern World System_ and _The Capitalist World Economy_ capitalism is mentioned in *every* SINGLE identifiable page, probably like hundred times, in the whole book, although not specifically mentioned in this *small* introductory piece. how many times do you mention *capitalism* in your posts, Ken? The concept of class is not mentioned as far as I could see. There is no use of the base, superstructure distinction, no mention of class conflict or class struggle or organising for revolutionary change. there are two chapters in the _Capitalist World economy_ that specifically deal with class, among other things (race, slavery, rural economy, etc..): 1) American slavery and the capitalist world economy 2) CLASS FORMATION IN THE CAPITALIST WORLD ECONOMY. In the below parag, note the emphasis on the importance of _dialectics_ and _class analysis_. " SOCIAL CLASS AS A CONCEPT WAS INVENTED WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE CAPITALIST WORLD ECONOMY AND IT IS PROBABLY MOST USEFUL IF WE USE IT AS HISTORICALLY SPECIFIC TO THIS KIND OF WORLD SYSTEM. CLASS ANALYSIS LOSES ITS POWER OF EXPLANATION WHENEVER IT MOVES TOWARDS FORMAL MODELS AND AWAY FROM DIALECTICAL DYNAMICS. "THERE IS A SHORT RUN LOGIC IN THE FORMATION OF CLASS. IT IS THE GRADUAL PERCEPTION OF COMMON INTEREST (THAT IS SMILAR RELATIONSHIP S TO THE OWNEERSHIP AND THE CONTROL OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTON, AND SMILAR SOURCES OF REVENUE) AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOME ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES TO ADVANCE THESE INTERESTS IS AN INDESPENSABLE ASPECT OF BARGAINING" "THUS CLASSES ARE FORMED,-- BUT THEY ARE THEN REFORMED. THIS IS WHAT MAO MEANT WHEN HE SAID PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA "THE CLASS STRUGGLE IS BY NO MEANS OVER" "THIS CONTINIOUS RE-ERUPTION OF THE CLASS STRUGGLE AFTER EACH POLITICAL RESOLUTION IS IN MY VIEW IS NOT A CYCLICAL PROCESS, HOWEVER, BUT PRECISELY A DIALECTICAL ONE. FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A CLASS, HOWEVER TRANSIENT THE PHENOMENON, TRANSFORMS THE WORLD SYSTEM" Nothing on dialectics, about socialism and so on and on. actually, he wrote a book called _Anti-systemic Movements_ with Hopkins and Balibar. World System Marxism seems like Analytical Marxism, Marxism in name only. World System Marxism overcomes two limitations of Analytical Marxism in 5 *weak* areas 1) methodolological individualism 2) ahistoricism 3) centrality of nation state 4) non-hierachical vision of capitalism and exchange 5) neo-classical treatment of historical stages through which capitalism is approximated as the ideal (modernization theory). The *specificty* of IW's analysis is that he *extends*, by analogy, Marx's analysis of class exploitaiton between capitalist and worker to analysis of the relationship between *core* and *periphery*, reorienting (globalizing) the centrality of class towards *capitalism as a world system*. So capitalism emerges as a transnational phenomenon with transnational classes at the core of the analysis, not a nation state a phenomenon confined to the charecteristics of X, Y, Z country. There is no Turkish capitalism, for example, there is a semi-peripheral status and this status more or less defines where you are positioned within the world system; economic and political wise. Commentary on his book: "In the capitalist world economy, IW FOCUSES ON THE TWO CENTRAL CONFLICTS OF CAPITALISM, BOURGEOIS VERSUS PROLETERIAN AND CORE VERSUS PERIPHERY IN AN ATTEMPT TO DESCRIBE BOTH THE CYCLICAL RHTYMS AND THE SECULAR TRANSFORMATIONS OF CAPITALISM, CONCIEVED AS A SINGULAR WORLD SYSTEM. THE ESSAYS INCLUDE DISCUSSIONS OF THE RELATIONSHIP OF CLASS AND ETHNONATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS, CLARIFICATION OF THE MEANING OF TRANSITION FROM FEUDALISM TO CAPITALISM, THE UTULITY OF THE CONCEPT OF THE SEMI-PERIPHERAL STATE, AND THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE SOCIALIST STATES TO THE CAPITALIST WORLD ECONMY" Mine CHeers, Ken Hanly Mine Aysen Doyran wrote: http://fbc.binghamton.edu/iwwsa-r.htm -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: The Rise and Future Demise ofWorld-Systems Analysis
Yoshie wrote: I realize that Robert Brenner identifies himself with Analytical Marxism, but I'm not sure what exactly stamps Brenner's work as Analytical Marxism (as opposed to other kinds of Marxism). here is Brenner/Wallerstein debate by Giovanni Arrighi! -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 Title: G. Arrighi, "Capitalism and the Modern World-System: Rethinking the Non-Debates of the 1970s" "Capitalism and the Modern World-System: Rethinking the Non-Debates of the 1970s" by Giovanni Arrighi ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Fernand Braudel Center 1997. (Paper presented at the American Sociological Association Meetings, New York, August 16-20, 1996) Talking at cross purposes is often a major ingredient of so- called debates in the social sciences. The real, though generally undeclared purpose of such non-debates is not so much the shedding of light on their alleged subject-matter as establishing or undermining the legitimacy of a particular research program--that is, what subject-matter is worth investigating and how it should be investigated. Criticisms of empirically false or logically inconsistent statements are advanced not to improve upon the knowledge produced by a research program but to discredit the program itself. This, in turn, produces among the upholders of the program a siege mentality that leads them to reject valid criticisms lest their acceptance be interpreted as a weakness of the program. Worse still, the same fear leads to another kind of non-debate--that is, to the lack of any debate of even the most glaring differences that arise among the upholders of the program. Useful as these non-debates may be in protecting emergent programs against the risks of premature death, eventually they become counterproductive for the full realization of their potentialities. I feel that world-system analysis has long reached this stage and that it can only benefit from a vigorous discussion of issues that should have been debated long ago but never were. The purpose of this paper is to raise afresh some of these issues by examining briefly two major non-debates that marked the birth of the world-system perspective--the Skocpol- Brenner-Wallerstein and the Braudel-Wallerstein non-debates. 1. The World-System Perspective and Wallerstein's Theory of the Capitalist World-Economy. As Harriet Friedmann (1996: 321) has pointed out, the emergence of the world-system perspective as research program is inseparable from the influence of Immanuel Wallerstein's The Modern World System, Vol.I (henceforth TMWS) and from the new institutions formed in its wake, most notably the PEWS Section of the ASA, the journal Review, and the Fernand Braudel Center. Thanks to this text and these institutions, the new research program "opened questions later blazed across headlines, and the subject of fast-breeding academic journals. If sociology has kept pace with `globalization' of the world economy, it is to the credit of the institutional and intellectual leadership initiated in 1974 by [Wallerstein's] remarkable study of the sixteenth century" (Friedmann 1996: 319). The new perspective redefined the relevant spatial and temporal unit of analysis of the more pressing social problems of our times. In Christopher Chase-Dunn's and Peter Grimes' words, At a time when the mainstream assumption of accepted social, political, and economic science was that the "wealth of nations" reflected mainly on the cultural developments within those nations, [the world-system perspective] recognized that national "development" could only be understood contextually, as the complex outcome of local interactions with an aggressively expanding European- centered "world" economy. Not only did [world-systemists] perceive the global nature of economic networks 20 years before such networks entered popular discourse, but they also saw that many of these networks extend back at least 500 years. Over this time, the peoples of the globe became linked into one integrated unit: the modern "world-system." (1995: 387-8) In pioneering this radical reorientation of social research, Wallerstein (1974, 1979 [1974]) advanced a theoretical and historical account of the origins, structure, and eventual demise of the modern world-system. Central to this account was the conceptualization of the Eurocentric world-system as a capitalist world-economy. A world-system was defined as a spatio-temporal whole, whose spatial scope is coextensive with a division of labor among its constituent parts and whose temporal scope extends as long as the division of labor continually reproduces the "world" as a social whole. A world-economy was define
Re: Re: Re: Re:The Rise and Future Demise of World-Systems Analysis
Stephen E Philion wrote: Mine wrote: World System Marxism overcomes two limitations of Analytical Marxism in 5 *weak* areas 1) methodolological individualism Steve writes: I've never heard world system theorists addressing themselves to the AM question actually...and of course Marxists like Brenner, Petras,..have criticized WS for its ahisoricism... Steve It was my own interpretation of the strenght of the World System Theory *over* Analytical Marxism. I did *not* say that WS theorists *address* themselves to analytical marxists. How would IW-Brenner debate take place without addressing each other, btw? Why don't you have a look at Giovanni Arrighi's piece on this debate I posted a while ago? "It would be easy to dismiss Brenner's critique as being based on a highly selective reading of Marx. In this reading there is no room for Marx's more world-systemic theorizations, most notably the thesis that the formation of a Eurocentric world market in the sixteenth century was the single most important condition for the emergence of capitalist production in Western Europe, England included, in the following centuries. Brenner's theory and history of capitalist development does provide at least part of the explanation of why England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries emerged as the main center of capitalist production. But they have even less to contribute than Wallerstein's own theory and history to an explanation of how and why the world-systemic conditions for the development of capitalist production in England and elsewhere were created" "My purpose here, however, is to underscore not the weak but the strong points of Brenner's critique in order to see whether and how they can be met from a world-systems perspective. Two related issues seem to me to deserve special attention: 1) the impossibility of reducing processes of class formation and, more generally, socio-economic structures to position in the core- periphery (with or without semiperiphery) structure of the world- economy; and 2) the impossibility of explaining the transformation of the European world-economy into a capitalist world-economy without a theoretically and historically plausible account of the competitive pressures that have promoted and sustained the transformation" Stephen E Philion wrote: Mine wrote: World System Marxism overcomes two limitations of Analytical Marxism in 5 *weak* areas 1) methodolological individualism Steve writes: I've never heard world system theorists addressing themselves to the AM question actually...and of course Marxists like Brenner, Petras,..have criticized WS for its ahisoricism... Steve Stephen Philion Lecturer/PhD Candidate Department of Sociology 2424 Maile Way Social Sciences Bldg. # 247 Honolulu, HI 96822 -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: anti-communism
Michael, I liked the article, especially the part where you mention US legitimization of apartheid in Africa. One thing I find amazingly disturbing among the liberal academics dominating the university system is that they deliberately engage in red baiting communism for being anti-democratic, while they, implicitly or explicitly, support fascism, imperialism and racism elsewhere or here. Apartheid is one horrible example among others. Nowhere in the world has the capitalist world system seen a strategic support for systemic racism by western capitalist powers. US democrats were proud of Henry Ford when he was awarded by Hitler's representatives for his profitable business activities in Germany. Ford was _never_ punished for his anti-Semitism; he was praised. He was a man of virtue. Especially nowadays, in the post-cold war hegemonic era, the US has channeled racism into a new direction, in the name of overcoming ethnic conflict, promoting globalization and stabilizing the international economic order. This rhetoric is used to assist in the assimilation and disempowering of minorities in neo-capitalist states through militaristic means, massive US foreign aid and destructive weapons., i.e.., Chiapas in Mexico, Kurds in Turkey, Iraq and Iran, and other oppressed minorities elsewhere. The below is a small excerpt from Bill Clinton's reply to a journalist about the leading role of the US in a post-communist world order "I even made a crack the other day"gosh, I miss the Cold War.. how does one deal with hostile warlords in Somalia and respond to ethnic and nationalist unrest in the Soviet successor states? Finding a workable framework for this new era and defining the role of the United States" Clinton added "could take years". Mine Michael Yates wrote: THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION May 14, 1986 I was stunned. I wondered why my colleagues could not see that South Africa is unique in its policy of systematic racial oppression. Whatever faults can be attributed to the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, it has treated no group, including former members of the National Guard, remotely as badly as the white South African state has treated its black citizens. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is to be condemned, of course, but the university holds no stock in companies there. Such is not the case in South Africa, where the influence of our government is great, our investments are considerable, and the victims of apartheid have asked for help. My colleagues seemed to be saying that since we cannot solve all of the world's problems we should not try to solve any of them. Although it is true that we are not experts in portfolio management, I'm sure we could quickly learn enough to be able to give some sound advice. After all, we pretend to no such lack of expertise when we apply for grants. I left the meeting furious, muttering loudly about my colleagues' racismwhat else, I thought, could explain such hostility to the mere discussion of divestment? But now that I am in a calmer mood, I see that racism alone is an insufficient explanation. Of course, it is a factor. I have witnessed open racism many times. A colleague once wondered aloud in the faculty dining room why he had to pay for his daughter's treatment at the university's dental clinic when "all those Negroes" got treated for nothing. Others have groused about making Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday. And, to many teachers, nothing seems more likely to destroy college standards than affirmative action, unless perhaps it's "black English." Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
The Upheavals of June, 2000
ult to oppose. They simply didn't expect them to work. It seems likely that Clinton's announcement of a nuclear defense shield hastened interest in both Koreas in holding this summit. The North Koreans were anxious to vitiate the case for the U.S. missile defense shield. And the South Koreans were thinking a bit like the west Europeans, since they too are a "quasi-nuclear power." But consider the consequences. The first steps towards reunification have been taken. It will be a slow, difficult, winding process, but somewhere down the line it will occur - on what terms, one cannot be sure. One immediate consequence of the Korean summit has been to bring Taiwan and China one little step closer, as though they didn't want Korea to get a step ahead of them. Now if Korea unites and China unites, will the U.S. be able to continue the role it has been playing in East Asia? Very doubtful. Rather, we might see a China-Korea-Japan "alliance of Davids." This is not for tomorrow. But the U.S. has definitely overplayed its hand, and brought world geopolitical realignment into much more immediate prospect than it had been. It is in this sense that June 200 marks a turning-point. by Immanuel Wallerstein [These commentaries may be downloaded, forwarded electronically or e-mailed to others, but may not be reproduced in any print medium without permission of copyright holder ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.] __ -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: The Upheavals of June, 2000
Dennis R Redmond wrote: On Tue, 11 Jul 2000, Mine Aysen Doyran crossposted: "The Upheavals of June, 2000" Europe was born in June 2000. Of course, we have been talking about Europe for 50-odd years now. But heretofore Europe has meant western Europe, not Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals, dear to both Charles de Gaulle and Mikhail Gorbachev. Hitherto, the Germans would not really hear of it because of their post-1945 fidelity to the United States. For someone who invented world-systems theory, I always wondered why Wallerstein's vision of the EU is so, well, national (talking about "the Germans", "the French", "the Americans", as if there were still national capitalisms which corresponded to the term). The EU was born in 1990 when Eastern Europe finally put Marxism into practice, tossed out their one-party states, and forced the doors of Fortress Europe open for good, the general idea being, "Pay now for a Continental welfare state, or pay later for 40 million refugees". It's true the new metropoles are consolidating rapidly, but we need more in-depth analysis of why and how this is happening. Anyone know if the Binghamton folks are working on this? -- Dennis Dennis, I think we had better try to understand IW here. "The Upheavals of June" is just a monthly commentary. We can not expect him to engage in a deep analysis of the evolution of contemporary capitalism. For sure, he does it elsewhere, but not here. why don't you have a look at Fernand Braudel web-page, _Review_ journal, table of contents by issue. On the same web page, there are also conference papers by Arrighi and Wallerstein (His article on _Rise and Demise of World System Theory_ is pretty useful in outlining some of the features of the world system theory. http://fbc.binghamton.edu/). _Review_ is more historical. _Journal of World System Research_ more specifically deals with some of the contemporary issues you have in mind. Regarding Eastern Europe and capitalism, In recent volume _Review_, Volume XXIII, 4, 2000, there is an article by Hannes Hofbauer and Andrea Komlosy, " Capital Accumulation and Catching up Development in Eastern Europe". there are several other articles on similar topics in the archives of the journal. I understand your criticism of IW's limitation of Europe to western europe, but this is *not* theoretically contrary to WS theory. WS theory already starts with the assumption that capitalism originated in Western Europe as a world economy. *Western* is already implied in the definition of modern world system, but WS supersedes geographical limitations in the final analysis. so *western europe* does not carry a nationalist (or nation state) connotation in IW's theoretical framework. for example, Eastern europe was part of the same capitalist system too, although it was integrated differently, time wise, than that of other peripheral zones. Once a world system is formed, Western europe has no existential signifigance besides *hierarchical* (political economic) signifigance. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: The Upheavals of June, 2000
De long wrote: Yes! He does not seem to have learned the extent to which the neo-liberal program is successfully advancing. Bind all prosperous market economies of the world into one single bloc in which the prosperous development of all is a precondition for the prosperous development of each. Then embrace-and-extend as countries that adopt Marshall Plan politico-economic institutions are brought into the core as they receive massive amounts of technology transfer from core-located firms, and countries that remain outside the core strive to adopt political democracy, free trade, and market economics. No. IW does *not* endorse the Smithian view implied above. He is a marxist. Mine -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Upheavals of June, 2000
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I heard Wallerstein speak recently. He was contemptuous of Marxists, implying that they had a simplistic way of looking at the world. Obviously, some of us do, but his characterization was all-inclusive. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] I have heard Wallerstein speak very recently too, but I don't remember him implying that "Marxists had a simplistic way of looking at the world". As a Marxist, of course, he is critical of *certain* brands of marxist theory-- the orthodox developmental model-- which dominates the sociology of development literature with varying degrees, and takes the *nation state* as the unit of analysis instead of the *world system*. Accordingly, part of IW's criticism is related to whether societies have their independent logic of capitalist development or relate to one another within a world system. Barrington Moore and Brenner type Marxists are included in the former category, although Marx, from a world systemic perspective, had the world system, not the nation state, in mind when he was analyzing British capitalism. There is a fine line between world system marxists and marxists. The former subcribes to the core-periphery model. I find this a very powerful analysis of contemporary imperialism and capitalism, as far as the *sociology* of modern capitalism goes. You may disagree with it as an economist, but one needs to debate the *premises of* the world system theory first to be able to criticize it. If you disagree, fine; but you can state the rationality grounds of why you disagree; theory wise. Mine -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Upheavals of June, 2000
Stephen E Philion wrote: Lately I'm convinced the definition of Marxist on this list for some has become, 'I like xx, therefore they are Marxist.' Steve On Tue, 11 Jul 2000, Mine Aysen Doyran wrote: No. IW does *not* endorse the Smithian view implied above. He is a marxist. Mine I did *not* say "I like xx, therefore they are marxist". My proposition is unrelated to the proposition you impose on me. If you judged my proposition in light of what Delong had actually *said* (the previous prag), instead of taking my proposition out of context, you would not engage in this ad hominem. In any case, I have no intention of continuing IW debate at this level. I have precious things to do tonight...I advise you to relax too! -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
The Rise and Future Demise of World-Systems Analysis
sing urgently, some very fundamental questions, questions that in my view can only be satisfactorily addressed if one has unthought nineteenth-century social science and structures of knowledge and thoroughly absorbed the lessons of world-systems analysis. Allow me to list some of these fundamental questions: 1) What is the nature of the distinctive arena of knowledge we may call social science, if there is one? How do we define its parameters and social role? In particular, in what ways, if any, is such a field to be distinguished from the humanities on the one side and the natural sciences on the other? 2) What is the relation, theoretically, between social science and social movements? between social science and power structures? 3) Are there multiple kinds of social systems (I would prefer the concept, historical systems), and, if so, what are the defining features that distinguish them? 4) Do such historical systems have a natural history or not? If so, can this history be called an evolutionary history? 5) How is TimeSpace socially constructed, and what differences does this make for the conceptualizations underlying social science activity? 6) What are the processes of transition from one historical system to another? What kinds of metaphors are plausible: self- organization, creativity, order out of chaos? 7) What is the theoretical relation between the quest for truth and the quest for a just society? 8) How can we conceive our existing historical system (world-system)? And what can we say about its rise, its structure, and its future demise, in the light of our answers to the other questions? As you can see, the last is the question with which we started. A number of the other questions have been worrying various persons who consider themselves part of the network of scholars involved in world-systems analysis. Furthermore, of course, many other scholars, present and past, have worried about these questions, or at least some of them. The point however is to see that these questions are interrelated, and can really only be answered in relation to each other, that is, from a world- systems perspective. The other point is that world-systems analysts are, on the whole, better trained than most social scientists today to address these questions as an interrelated set. When we do begin to address them in this way, we shall no longer be acting primarily as a movement within social science, but we shall be laying claim to formulating the central questions of the enterprise. Is this hybris? Not really. As world-systems analysts, we know that intellectual activities are not simply a matter of intelligence or will but of social timing, in terms of the world-system. It is because the historical system in which we live is in terminal crisis that there exists the chance of addressing these questions in ways that can make possible substantively rational social constructions. This was not a possibility available to nineteenth-century scholars, however insightful or masterly they were. It is because the legitimacy of the hierarchies that are fundamental to the capitalist world- economy hierarchies of class, of race, of gender are being fundamentally challenged, both politically and intellectually that it may be possible to construct, for the first time, a more inclusive and relatively more objective social science. It is the times that make it possible, again for the first time, to stand on the shoulders of those nineteenth-century giants and see something beyond, provided we have the energy and the will. It is the times that permit us, without disgracing ourselves, to follow Danton's exhortation: "De l'audace, encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace." These are our times, and it is the moment when social scientists will demonstrate whether or not they will be capable of constructing a social science that will speak to the worldwide social transformation through which we shall be living. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Upheavals of June, 2000
Yes, he is a _world system marxist_, as i said.. Mine Michael Perelman wrote: He was taking pains to distinguish his own work from Marxism. Mine Aysen Doyran wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I heard Wallerstein speak recently. He was contemptuous of Marxists, implying that they had a simplistic way of looking at the world. Obviously, some of us do, but his characterization was all-inclusive. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] I have heard Wallerstein speak very recently too, but I don't remember him implying that "Marxists had a simplistic way of looking at the world". As a Marxist, of course, he is critical of *certain* brands of marxist theory-- the orthodox developmental model-- which dominates the sociology of development literature with varying degrees, and takes the *nation state* as the unit of analysis instead of the *world system*. Accordingly, part of IW's criticism is related to whether societies have their independent logic of capitalist development or relate to one another within a world system. Barrington Moore and Brenner type Marxists are included in the former category, although Marx, from a world systemic perspective, had the world system, not the nation state, in mind when he was analyzing British capitalism. There is a fine line between world system marxists and marxists. The former subcribes to the core-periphery model. I find this a very powerful analysis of contemporary imperialism and capitalism, as far as the *sociology* of modern capitalism goes. You may disagree with it as an economist, but one needs to debate the *premises of* the world system theory first to be able to criticize it. If you disagree, fine; but you can state the rationality grounds of why you disagree; theory wise. Mine -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___ -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sudan
ot. the problem is why you chose Arabism in the first place and excluded others. If you are telling me that pan-arabism could not assimilate (unite) arabs as effectively as the British anglicized the Irish, and for this reason arabism could not effecttively disarm the masses, you are implicitly subscribing to the logic of imperialism-- ideology of capitalist modernization-- that is used in the imposition of white supremacy, oppression and elimination of non-western peoples. Be free to check out our Communist Think-Tank web site at http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/ Subscribe to Revcommy Mailing Community at [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: Sudan
George Pennefather wrote: George: I enjoyed reading your posting. hi george. Mine: This sort of "equating" arabization with islamization reminds me of the anti-semite use of "international jew conspiracy" in the 1930s, which associated Jew people with "international finance capital" and helped to perpetuate the image of Jew people as capitalists since then. Now "eternal Jew" is replaced by "eternal Arab"! George: On the basis of your rhetoric it follows, then, that the English ruling class never tried to anglicise the Irish. George, stigmatization of jews and arabs was just an example _among_ others. It applies to whoever it applies; the irish, kurdish, gypsies, african americans, etc... there is no indication in my rhetoric that I ignore the injustices done to Irish people by the british ruling class. In fact, my point confirms your point. My general point was that pan-arabization does not per se mean Islamization. I agree with Michael in that respect. Are Northern Sudanese people arabs? No. So where does their fundamentalism come from? The same applies to Turkish islamic fundamentalists too. Turks have never been part of the pan-arabic project ; persians either, but they established the most institutionalized form of Islamic fundamentalism that the arab world has ever seen. Although there is no unitary conception of pan-arabism because of the fact that arabs are divided on many issues as you say, historically speaking, par-arabism was a nationalist bourgeois project aiming to unite Arabs on the basis of _Arabness_, not on the basis of some pure conception of religion per se. Sure that pan-arabism has religious connations for Islam is already part of the definition of Arab culture, however Arabs initially encouraged pan-arabism as an ideological weapon to emancipate themselves from both Ottoman imperial cosmopolitanism in the 19th century and British imperialism ( as well as French) in the 20th century. The next step to achieve this goal was to form a seemingly secular nation state (still bourgeois) strong enough to unite arabs. This project had failed due to the increasing inter imperialist rivalry among Arab nations fueled by Western imperialist powers and the failure to define on the part of Arabs what constitutes even an Arab nation. For example, Egyptian perception of pan-arabism differs from Syrian perception of pan-arabism with respect to the issue of who should lead the Arab word. Accordingly, Islamic radicalism has emerged as a reaction to the ambivalent pan-arabism of secular arabs in the Middle East. Despite its anti-imperialist rhetoric, Islamism is not an extension of pan-arabism, but rather a negation. Instead of forming a secular state somewhat insulated from religion, Arab seculars instead preferred to maintain Islam by regulating it within the confines defined by the state. For example, polygamy was not totally abolished, but it was restricted. While socialists rightly denounced this as a failure of the neo- colonial states to abolish polygamy totally and a sign of concession to conservatives, Islamists were too mad at the limited secularization attempts on the grounds that seculars were restricting religious privileges. Islamist radicals still continue to see "secularism" (however limited it is) as a weapon in the hands of the imperialist powers and their allies in the region to degenerate Islamic culture. This is where their artificial anti-imperialist and anti-statist rhetoric come from. They treat Marxism/Feminism in the same way: Bourgeois penetration by the west. They don't see that the non-socialist West has *never and ever* wanted to promote socialism it the Middle East. Islamists' attempt to associate socialists with western imperialist powers is just giving the encouragement to the US to oppress the progressive social movements in the region (which is what happened with the Kurds, socialist Palestinians, etc..). regards, Mine Comradely regards George Be free to check out our Communist Think-Tank web site at http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/ Subscribe to Revcommy Mailing Community at [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sudan
in the 70s) has been traditionally supportive of secularism and the nationalist bourgeois agenda of Kemalism (Jacobin type founding fathers of the regime). So they have been traditionally "statist". One thing the leftists have failed to realize is that the same secular state was also oppressive of the left, but they kept rationalizing how leftish was Kemalism, how it was concerned for the poor, welfare state, development of society, or how military ousted the conservative government in the 60s on behalf of the leftists, etc, etc.. After the 1980s, however, the left realized the limits of Kemalism when the military really fucked them in the coup detat. The left is now divided between the _Kemalist left_ and the _Socialist left_. Kemalist left is still arguing that they have lost the military to the right wing, and giving all sorts of bourgoies justifications about why Kemalism should be preserved to set off islamic opposition. On the other side, it seems to me that the socialist left agrees with the Islamist bouirgeois intellectuals on the necessity of liberalizing the political system towards a democratic system more inclusive of individual rights: freedom of speech; freedom of association; religious freedoms, etc. At this point, we (socialist left) have to be very careul about agreeing on the _principles_. Kemalists, who are in power, including the bourgeois liberals, are effectivelly using women's right card against islamic opposition and any discussion of _political liberalization is considered to be giving concessions to Islamists, so the socialist left_, of course, does not want to be associated with islamists for the sake of criticizing Kemalism. On the other hand, we don't want the shadow of military-- the institutional backdrop of kemalism. We need a Gramscian political strategy here to oust both the Islamists (although minority) and the kemalist regime.There are some serious people among kemalist social democrats whom we agree in pricinciple (secularism, women's right). It is very difficult at the moment to anticipate how the hell we should get rid of the military that successfully uses these cards to divide and rule the left! -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: unresolved questions
Joel Blau wrote: I leave tomorrow for seven weeks in Nova Scotia, my 52nd summer there (every year since 1948). I live in a small rural fishing village: it is now possible to get e-mail (until 1986, all we could get were party telephone lines), but it seems to violate the ambience of the place. ops, I am just joking, but how will you live there without any internet connection for seven weeks? even the graduate school has not yet killed my urban bias in this miserable town of Albany. ohh well, I should admire Canadians. Probably you folks have better ambience there than we have around here, meaning rural wise... Mine So I want to warn the Canadians (Ken, Rod??) that I am coming and offer this short explanation for my silence. As my departure approaches, I have become increasingly apprehensive. In seven weeks, at about 50 messages a day, I'll miss roughly 2500 postings. Since that quota should be enough to answer most important questions, I would ask that as a personal favor to me, perhaps a few--maybe something as simple as the future of capitalism--could be left unresolved Joel Blau -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Crisis of capitalism
Incorrect charecterization. In fact, world system people are ridiculed by closet neo-classical economists who, for instance, argue that third world societies have remained underdeveloped, and will remain so, not because they were colonized by the West, but because they were _inherently_ backward: Tribal, uncivilized, culturally ill people. So the same people thought that capitalism would bring civilization to those societies and modernize them in ways to catch up the west. This was the position defended by, for example, Bernstein (See his support for colonialism in Morroco), Rostow type anti-communist manifesto preachers, and recently by Harvard/Kennedy school backed CIA advisors Samuel Huntington. Accordingly, WS theory questioned this one sided modernization perspective, applying Marx's analysis of class relations to a global level. First, one needs to understand the WS theory before challenging it. Whether you like it or not, its BIG contribution to Marxism is that 1) capitalism is not a nation or inter-state system; it is a world system 2) economic expansion of the "core" (which is starting point of modern world economy, at least according to Wallerstein, if not to Frank) first depended on the creation and integration of peripheral areas as agricultural exporters through "slavery and coerced cash crop production", before the full manifestation of wage labor and industrial revolution in Britain 3) and that this expansionism was necessary for primitive accumulation of surplus labor necessary to develop capitalism in the core (wage labor system) 4) and that _before_ becoming fully integrated into the world system, peripheral areas meant for European capitalists sources of cheap labor, *not* unproductive labor force as apologetic reifiers of wage labor assume, but the labor force drawn into sugar and cotton plantations at low immediate cost by force. See for this Polish marxist Withold Kula/Wallerstein debate. Whereas Kula argues that second serfdom (18th cent) in Poland was the natural result of Poland's historical and structural failure to generate capitalism of the kind West had, Wallerstein argues that second serfdom was the result of Poland's peripheral status in the European world economy-- a position that was precisely the result of its integration into capitalism *not* of its isolation. Then he goes on explaining the conditions under which different zones of the world economy have specialized in different agricultural regimes at different times. He shows how wage and other forms of labor stand at the "cornerstone" of capitalism as "dual mode of involvement", not as reified oppositions. Furthermore, _class_ is at the center of world system analysis. Core, semi-periphery, and periphery refer to positions in the economic system_: International division of labor. World economy is by "definition capitalist in form" (The Capitalist World Economy, IW, p. 33). Thus the argument that world system people do not take class into account is flat wrong: "There are two fundamental contradictions, it seems to me, involved in the workings of the capitalist world system. In the first place, there is the contradiction to which the 19th century Marxian corpus pointed, which i would phrase as follows: where as in the short run the maximization of profit requires maximizing the withdrawal of surplus from immediate consumption of the majority, in the long run the continued production of surplus requires a mass demand which can only be created by redistributing the surplus withdrawn. Since these two contradictions move in opposite directions (a contradiction), the system has constant crisis which in the long run both weaken it and make the game for those with privileges less worth playing" (_The Capitalist World Economy_, p.35)" Mine Anthony D'Costa wrote: These sweat shop studies (particularly apparel, footwear, and some electronic assembly) are favorites of world-system type analysts. It is self-selective since labor-intensive activities are low wage by definition and hence these studies seem to support their "theoretical" position. But what I am surprised about is Mine Doyran's non-discriminatory approach to flooding pen-l with world-system stuff. I thought the world-system folks were ridiculed for not accounting for class. Cheers, xxx Anthony P. D'Costa, Associate Professor Comparative International Development University of WashingtonCampus Box 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA Phone: (253) 692-4462 Fax : (253) 692-5718 xxxxxxx -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free
Re: Sudan
George Pennefather wrote: The civil war in Sudan is a product of the reactionary nature of the Islam regime that has dominated this country since the fifties in one form or another. The regime has been pursuing a programme of Arabisation since around its inception. Comrade George! What is happening to your small communist think thank nowadays? are you still saying that "Capital is wrong"? This sort of "equating" arabization with islamization reminds me of the anti-semite use of "international jew conspiracy" in the 1930s, which associated Jew people with "international finance capital and helped to perpetuate the image of Jew people as capitalists since then. Now "eternal Jew" is replaced by "eternal Arab"! Let me tell you one thing. Arabisation does not mean islamization or Islamization does not automatically mean arabization. Not all Arab people are islamic fundamentalists, and not all islamists are even arabs (Sudanese are not ARABS!); plus not all arabs or muslims are even religious. As a turkish, I am known to be a muslim, but I am an atheist, feminist and marxist. We have Samins, we have Nawal El Sadawis, we have Nazim Hikmets!! Why is Islam strongly emphasized in the rhetoric about Middle Eastern people, given that ordinary americans are extremely conservative and visit the church every sunday? In discourses about the West, christianity is not as deliberately emphasized as "Islamic threat", at least in the mainstream media,. Forget associating arabs with radical Islam or backwardness dude! You are contributing to the revival of US paranoia, the same imperialist paranoia that created the islamist strawman over there during the cold war to offset soviet communism and to oppress revolutionary movements in the region.. Now the soviet threat is over, US is looking for a new strawman: ISLAM. the strategy is "divide and rule" to have access to region's economic resources. Read Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations and you will see what I mean. Islam is also divided by all sorts of other divisions; ethnic, regional, cultural. Don't you see the distinction between shiite and sunni forms of Islam? Even within sunni islam there are orthodox and unorthodox divisions. There are hard core islamists, for example, among turkish people who historically hate arabs, for all sorts of bullshit racial reasons. The picture is far more complex than your easy generalization of the circumstances in the Middle East now. Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Crisis of capitalism
Anthony DCosta wrote: I am sorry I brought this up but I need not to be reminded of the world-system thinking. It was not my intention to remind you the world system thinking.You said that "world system people are ridiculed for not taking into account class forces". In my view, this was a mischarecterization of IW's position, since IW sees the formation of the modern "world system" as a historical process linked to acccumulation and internationalization of capital on a world scale. Class and world systemic forces are the sides of the same coin: Global capitalism. Regarding _agency_, Wallerstein heavily emphasizes anti-systemic movements, so I don't see why he neglects agency. Mine It's an old story (when I was in grad school), I attended two PEWS conference with Immanuel and others present, and Terry Hopkins had offered me an assistantship in the early 1980s to join the program. I know a good number of Immanuel's students, including some leading Turkish scholars. I agree that the "global" aspect was brought in more forcefully but it does not have the monopoly of talking about capitalism either in "class" terms or in terms of internationalization of capital. It was precisely treating "space" (core/semiperiphery/ and the periphery) as "class" processes that became problematic. Besides, while nation states seems to become less important, as underscored by world-system, we live with nationalisms, nation-states, identities, rules, policies, etc. Yes, it was good starting point against the modernization perspective (not necessarily the NC school) but got soon exhausted in explaining lots of details of the world economic dynamics. Where it truly fails (and here I am talking more like an anthropologist) is in the agency aspects of human behaviour. Its concern with macro structures shoves a lot of interesting details under the carpet. Differences are explained away rather lazily. Cheers, Anthony Anthony P. D'Costa Associate Professor Ph: (253) 692-4462 Comparative International Development Fax: (253) 692-5718 University of WashingtonBox Number: 358436 1900 Commerce Street Tacoma, WA 98402, USA xxxxxxx On Thu, 6 Jul 2000, Mine Aysen Doyran wrote: Date: Thu, 06 Jul 2000 15:25:08 -0400 From: Mine Aysen Doyran [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:21334] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Crisis of capitalism Incorrect charecterization. In fact, world system people are ridiculed by closet neo-classical economists who, for instance, argue that third world societies have remained underdeveloped, and will remain so, not because they were colonized by the West, but because they were _inherently_ backward: Tribal, uncivilized, culturally ill people. So the same people thought that capitalism would bring civilization to those societies and modernize them in ways to catch up the west. This was the position defended by, for example, Bernstein (See his support for colonialism in Morroco), Rostow type anti-communist manifesto preachers, and recently by Harvard/Kennedy school backed CIA advisors Samuel Huntington. Accordingly, WS theory questioned this one sided modernization perspective, applying Marx's analysis of class relations to a global level. First, one needs to understand the WS theory before challenging it. Whether you like it or not, its BIG contribution to Marxism is that 1) capitalism is not a nation or inter-state system; it is a world system 2) economic expansion of the "core" (which is starting point of modern world economy, at least according to Wallerstein, if not to Frank) first depended on the creation and integration of peripheral areas as agricultural exporters through "slavery and coerced cash crop production", before the full manifestation of wage labor and industrial revolution in Britain 3) and that this expansionism was necessary for primitive accumulation of surplus labor necessary to develop capitalism in the core (wage labor system) 4) and that _before_ becoming fully integrated into the world system, peripheral areas meant for European capitalists sources of cheap labor, *not* unproductive labor force as apologetic reifiers of wage labor assume, but the labor force drawn into sugar and cotton plantations at low immediate cost by force. See for this Polish marxist Withold Kula/Wallerstein debate. Whereas Kula argues that second serfdom (18th cent) in Poland was the natural result of Poland's historical and structural failure to generate capitalism of the kind West had, Wallerstein argues that second serf
Re: Re: Re: Sudan
Dennis R Redmond wrote: On Thu, 6 Jul 2000, Mine Aysen Doyran wrote: ARABS!); plus not all arabs or muslims are even religious. As a turkish, I am known to be a muslim, but I am an atheist, feminist and marxist. We have Samins, we have Nawal El Sadawis, we have Nazim Hikmets!! "Woman at Point Zero" is amazing, a blowtorch of a book. How does one manage the religion thing, though? Or is this like the American fetish for "Judeo-Christian values", an ideological code word one professes in Turkey to be taken seriously in the political realm? -- Dennis Dennis, I don't see your point. Marxism and feminism are *not* "judeo-christian values"; They are universal values. They are not confined to western societies or european culture. Period. Why should I have a problem with religion? I do *not* believe in religion. Your attempt to associate my identity with religion reflects your desire to portray middle eastern people as religious and middle eastern women as traditional. When I said "I am known to be a muslim", I said this to criticize how people generally _perceive_ me, not to support what I beleive, because I am not a *muslim*. So I was criticizing the _label_! (turkish=muslim=religious equation). "What is your religion"? is a nonsense question in the US, especially if people know you are an international student. It reflects the orientalist mentality of imposing identity onto others.. should i have one? "Woman at Point zero" is a product of a woman who has radically questioned the circumstances facing women, including religion, patriarchy and sexism.. It is almost a classical text in the history of women's movement in the Middle East. We, third world progressives, are proud of it, even though our governments, the imperialist allies of the US, are not! why should it be an "ideological code word one professes in Turkey to be taken seriously in the political realm?" Me? turkish government? ha hayt! -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: class in the US
ohh really? I wishfully like to see the stats for that. My impression of African Americans accomodating in this town of Albany is that 1) they are living below the poverty line 2) they are structurally isolated _along racial lines_ 3) they are targeted as potential crime committers and drug dealers 4) and that two of the biggest police stations are located in predominantly black neighborhoods. " White trash" (whatever it truly means) do not live in those areas, not inside the city, at least; they are less vulnerable to organized crime of the police. Mine Rod Hay wrote: It really doesn't matter what you call it. It is there and has had many names in the course of its history. And it is not racial or ethnically defined in the U.S. There have always been the hicks, hillbillies, white trash, etc. Rod Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Or perhaps they are right. The working class is seen as and is a class in the middle between the capitalists and the underclass. Rod What's the definition of the "underclass"? Poor people of color? ...with loose morals and a propensity towards crime. The Atlantic has Nicholas Lemann's classic article on the topic at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/poverty/origin2.htm. A concept not unrelated to "The 'dangerous class', the social scum,-- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: Krugman Watch: Mexico
Given that this is the typical reaction to any honest election, it any wonder that the left in the past century has been so eager to lick the boots of so many dictators? Brad DeLong Actually, your government has a remarkable history of subsidizing fascist forces against leftist governments who have come to power by elections, let alone by revolutionary means. but you ended up saving the humanity from communist dictatorships... -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: Re: Crisis of capitalism
Doug Henwood wrote, regarding the increasing prosperity of the US economy: Profits are up, real wages are up, and employment is up by over 18 million. Bankrupticies are even edging down - see the Chicago Merc's page for the latest counts http://www.cme.com/cgi-bin/qbidata.cgi. Doug Edna Bonacich and Richard P. Appelbaum, Behind the Label: Inequality in the Los Angeles Apparel Industry. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000 (paperback 0-520-22506-6; $19.95). "In a study crucial to our understanding of American social inequality, Edna Bonacich and Richard Appelbaum investigate the return of sweatshops to the apparel industry, especially in Los Angeles. The "new" sweatshops, they say, need to be understood in terms of the decline in the American welfare state and its strong unions and the rise in global and flexible production. Apparel manufacturers now have the incentive to move production to wherever low-wage labor can be found, while maintaining arm's-length contractual relations that protect them from responsibility. The flight of the industry has led to a huge rise in apparel imports to the United States and to a decline in employment" "Los Angeles, however, remains a puzzling exception in that its industry employment has continued to grow, to the point where L.A. is the largest center of apparel production in the nation. Not only the availability of low-wage immigrant (often undocumented) workers but also the focus on moderately priced, fashion-sensitive women's wear makes this possible. Behind the Label examines the players in the L.A. apparel industry, including manufacturers, retailers, contractors, and workers, evaluating the maldistribution of wealth and power. The authors explore government and union efforts to eradicate sweatshops while limiting the flight to Mexico and elsewhere, and they conclude with a description of the growing anti sweatshop movement. " Edna Bonacich is Professor of Sociology and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside, and the author of many books including Global Production: The Apparel Industry in the Pacific Rim (1994). Richard Appelbaum, Professor of Sociology and Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is the author of States and Development in the Asian Pacific Rim (1995). -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: global keynesianism (fwd)] (fwd)
Chris Burford wrote: I am confident that you sentence below is quite incorrect as far as Thacher presented her policy in Britain: In fact, as you know, political economic policies of the New Right (Ronald-Margaret couple) was nothing but monetarism dressed up in keynesianism. Chris Burford Chris, _military keynesianism_ is not *my* fantasy. It is a concept heavily used by Marxist political economists writing about historical Keynesianism (ie, Bonefeld, Holloway, Mandel (1988). Furthermore, I did not argue that Keynesianism and Reagenism were exactly the same. I said "the only difference was that the keynesianism of the new right abondened the keynesian redistribution of income and employment _while_ it followed expansionary policies (demand side management of the economy), associated with keynesianism". In the US context, if you think about deficit demand management particulary in the area of _military expenditure_ after the 1980s, you may see what I meant by Keynesianism of conservatives. That being said, however, I am not quite aware of the case with the British. Even in the case of *original* Keynesianism, the Marshall Plan and massive dollar aid to Europe after WWII in oder to restructure European economies against communism are pretty indicative of the imperialistic/military dimension of global keynesianism. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Crisis of capitalism
Doug Henwood wrote: Mine Aysen Doyran wrote: Doug Henwood wrote, regarding the increasing prosperity of the US economy: Profits are up, real wages are up, and employment is up by over 18 million. Bankrupticies are even edging down - see the Chicago Merc's page for the latest counts http://www.cme.com/cgi-bin/qbidata.cgi. Doug Edna Bonacich and Richard P. Appelbaum, Behind the Label: Inequality in the Los Angeles Apparel Industry. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000 (paperback 0-520-22506-6; $19.95). "In a study crucial to our understanding of American social inequality, Edna Bonacich and Richard Appelbaum investigate the return of sweatshops to the apparel industry, especially in Los Angeles. Sweatshops? In the USA? Gosh, more new stuff I'm learning from PEN-L! No doubt Bonacich told me something about this when I interviewed her on the radio a couple of years ago, but I guess I was too busy thinking about my portfolio allocation to notice. Doug okey! You said US economy is doing well in the 90s; You said "profits are up, real wages are up, employment is up" (see above). I said US economy is *not* doing well, and my evidence was sweatshops. Now, as always, you are switching arguments here, talking on behalf of social justice. or saying that you had interview with Bonacich, or you learn more stuff from pen-l, or whatever; the regular journalistic ad hominems.. From now on, we will be in much better shape if we keep the distance in cyber space. I don't know why we happen to encounter each other, but I guess you remember the original contract. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
THE RIGHT OF ABORTION
but so surely should the rest of us. To the extent also that doctor and hospital adherents to the Pope's Encyclical are the recipients of public funds, they may be afoul of our First Amendment guarantees of religious freedom and anti-establishment of any church. And finally, if for sectarian reasons they withhold a procedure which in any given situation would be regarded as the proper medical response to the problem presented, they may be guilty of civil and criminal malpractice unless they at least explain to the patient their sectarian reasons for withholding the treatment so that the patient can go elsewhere if she chooses. It would seem that abortion-law reform--and better, repeal--is an idea whose time has come. It is more than time that it be supported by all those who want to slow down our population growth rate without resorting to coercion or compulsion. As Secretary-General U Thant and many of the UN agencies have repeatedly said, "The opportunity to decide the number and spacing of children is a basic human right." Until such time as we have a perfect contraceptive universally available and invariably used, voluntary abortion should be infinitely preferred to compulsory sterilization or compulsory birth control, and that may well be the choice. Copyright 1969 by Harriet Pilpel. All rights reserved. [Part 2, Text/HTML 471 lines] [Not Shown. Use the "V" command to view or save this part] -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
[Fwd: Wall Street hails signs of downturn in US]
increases. Whether it's an automobile factory or government bonds, he declared, investors know that the Fed will not allow their investments to be eroded by inflation. Guynn concluded his speech by saying he was encouraged by the June 2 reports of increased unemployment and minimal wage gains. Much has been said about the Federal Reserve's intention of engineering a soft landing of the US economya slower rate of growth which avoids an outright recession. But once deflationary measures are taken, the results are not easily contained. With the US recording record trade and balance of payments deficits every month, the Federal Reserve is in a far weaker position than in past periods to lower interest rates later in order to prevent a slide into a full-scale recession. Were the Fed to initiate a major decrease in interest rates, the result could be a flight of capital out of American markets, a panic on US stock exchanges and a loss of confidence in the American dollar that could whipsaw throughout the international financial system. A recession would have wrenching social and political consequences. Tens of millions of American workers already depend on overtime or a second or third job to support their families. The loss of a jobunder conditions in which personal debt has reached record levelswould be devastating. Moreover, a sharp decline in the stock market would threaten the pensions and savings of large numbers of workers, middle class people and retirees. Over the last two decades the Republicans and Democrats have all but eliminated the social safety net. Alreadyin the midst of supposedly booming economic timestens of millions of workers lack health insurance, and millions more earn poverty-level wages. A significant downturn will raise the specter of destitution before tens of millions of Americans. See Also: US Federal Reserve raises interest rates in preemptive move against wage increases [18 May 2000] US trade deficit hits new monthly record [25 May 2000] Wall Street's crisis and the shattering of illusions [17 April 2000] Top of page -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Crisis of capitalism
of the economic turmoil. Manufacturing is badly hit, and the closure of plants such as Fujitsu shows what happens when the recession bites. Japanese and other overseas investors will simply close plants overseas and concentrate production in their home region where the bulk of expenditure on research and development takes place. Fujitsu won't be the last--Japanese capitalists won't borrow money to build new factories when they know there is a glut of goods on the market. So more closures, or 'restructuring', are inevitable, meaning more unemployment. The policy of the Blair government to put control of interest rates in the hands of the unelected Bank of England and Brown's policy of being tight on inflation have led to high interest rates and a strong pound, meaning British manufacturing exports are expensive to sell. The Blair government has based all its spending plans on the premise that the British economy is doing well. Promises for education, the NHS or Welfare to Work depend on the economy growing. Recession will throw the plans into turmoil. Ideas of raising money from privatisation will be hit by further falls on the stock market. So there is a bumpy ride ahead. The one thing that unites Blair and Brown with other governments is the belief that the market is the best way to solve the problems that exist at the moment. Peter Morgan Return to Contents page: Return to Socialist Review Index Home page -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
[Fwd: Magic thought and wishful thinking]
isn't just a matter of saying things that have no real connection to ordinary reality, but also imposing a logic on the past that simply spirits it away altogether. I first heard this kind of magical thought when young King Abdullah of Jordan made his first visit to the US last year. While acknowledging all of Jordan's political and economic difficulties, the king then shifted gears immediately after saluting Ehud Barak's recent election victory in Israel. Once the peace process is back on track, he said, we can gain the kind of stability that will bring us prosperity and make Jordan a very attractive place for major foreign investment. This is an argument that American policy-makers like to use: once we have "peace," everyone will be happy and we go on to prosper, invest freely and make money, live happily ever after. I call this magic because it denies the weight of the past any role at all in the future, as if all the years of dislocation, suffering, dispossession and distortion imposed on those millions of Arab citizens who lost their families, homes, means of livelihood, who have lived under military occupation, who have been forced to endure states of emergency in Arab countries with scarcely any democracy or social and economic equality -- as if all this with its burden of anger, sorrow, frustration, humiliation and sheer human fatigue would suddenly disappear the moment a peace agreement is signed on Mr Clinton's lawn. It is the essence of magical thinking, therefore, to make light of what is in fact heavy, that keeps a formidable pressure on every one in the Middle East. This is not a matter of vindictive memory, but of living actuality. Israeli and American Middle East experts repeat like a mantra that young people have forgotten 1948 and are more interested in the local Internet caf than they are in recovering or returning to their villages. How can that be so? Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Syria and elsewhere remain stateless aliens and, whether or not they cherish visits to the Internet caf, they are compelled by their intolerably precarious status to recall 1948 and their inalienable right of return. As for Palestinians who live in Palestine itself, of course they want to lead normal lives, send their children to school, get good medical treatment, travel, and enjoy all the benefits of security. The fact that none of these things is really possible therefore compels them to ask why their situation is unlike that of Israelis, whom they see daily in their much greater freedom and prosperity. Palestinians would have to be stones not to feel resentment and anger at why they must give up ancestral land to Russian Jews like Anatol Scharansky, who not only was born and brought up in Russia, but is now challenging Barak not to give up Abu Dis, an Arab town which as a Russian Jew he feels he can dispose of at will. These grotesque, not to say, bizarre inequities and distortions suggest something far graver, more mutilating and wounding to the spirit than can be rectified by an imperfect peace treaty between a nuclear power like Israel and a poorly led, destitute people like the Palestinians. Only a miracle of thought -- a sort of magic trick -- can quickly set things straight, bring back tranquility and peace of mind, restore Arabs to a state of redemptive hope. Unfortunately, the real world affords no such magic and only an occasional miracle. In the meantime, those who suffer must continue to do so -- the mothers whose sons and daughters are in prison, the fathers who cannot cross into Israel for work, the teachers who remain on strike, and thousands more like them -- while those who fantasise about the quick benefits of peace, plan more seminars, give more speeches, embark on new projects. But is there any hope at all that magic and reality can ever be reconciled? Al -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
[Fwd: MidEast movies Human Rights Festival]
GOOD KURDS, BAD KURDS: NO FRIENDS BUT THE MOUNTAINS (NY
Premiere)
Kevin McKiernan, US, 2000, 79m (video, doc) Filmmaker
present.
A war of national liberation or a war against terrorism?
Filmmaker and acclaimed freelance journalist Kevin
McKiernan
poses this question at the outset of this stirring,
provocative
film lensed by legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler.
It's
all in how you define "good" and "bad": "Good Kurds" are
those
in Iraq; they're Saddam Hussein's victims whom we want to
help.
"Bad Kurds" are those waging an armed insurrection against
US
ally Turkey; they're at the receiving end of U.S. weapons.
McKiernan went to northern Iraq to cover the uprising
against
Saddam. Just a few miles away, no one was covering the
hidden
war in Turkey, so he decided to bring out the story. GOOD
KURDS, BAD KURDS brings sharp clarity to a complicated
history
while providing disturbing insight into both U.S.
immigration
and foreign policy.
Preceded by:
ICC: A Call for Justice
EVC's Youth Organizers Television, US, 2000, 15m (video,
doc)
What is the International Criminal Court (ICC)? Who will
benefit? Why won't America ratify the treaty? Through
archival
footage, spoken word poetry and interviews with survivors
of
torture, advocates and diplomats, the Youth Organizers
crew
explores these and other questions surrounding the ICC.
Sat June 24: 1
Wed June 28: 6
Thurs June 29: 1
--
The above events are not organized by Alwan NYC
Hotline at (212)807-9420 or [EMAIL PROTECTED] or
http://alwan.org
Home
--
Mine Aysen Doyran
PhD Student
Department of Political Science
SUNY at Albany
Nelson A. Rockefeller College
135 Western Ave.; Milne 102
Albany, NY 1
[Fwd: the discrete charme of global keynesianism (fwd)]
closet neo-classicals will find this appealing... Mine -- Forwarded message -- Date: Sat, 01 Jul 2000 13:28:08 -0400 From: g kohler [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: the discrete charme of global keynesianism The organization ATTAC (originating in France 1998 and now multinational) is promoting the global-Keynesian idea of a Tobin tax (taxing global rentiers and speculators) as well as other worthwhile initiatives. The well-known author and activist Susan George is on the board of directors. This is one of the organizations which helps moving the global "Spiral" (Boswell/Chase-Dunn) forward in a progressive direction. GK Here is one of their initiatives: *** Subject: rn: World Social Forum in Brazil (Jan. 2001) Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 ## SAND IN THE WHEELS (n°35) ATTAC Weekly newsletter - Wednesday 06/14/00 Content 1- The first World Social Forum 2- ATTAC in South America 3- E Coli __ The first World Social Forum During the parallel social summit in Geneva that will be held from June 22nd to June 24th (on the 25th there will be a demonstration in front the WTO) several proposals will be made according to thematic workshops and continental ones. You can participate to this work by contacting [EMAIL PROTECTED] and or register with the help of the website http://attac/org/geneve2000/ where documents are also available. But we would like to give a special place to this proposal that will be made during the June 24th WORLD SOCIAL FORUM [EMAIL PROTECTED] Porto Alegre, Brazil January 25-30, 2001 The World Social Forum will be a new international arena for organizing against neoliberal policies and for building economic alternatives that prioritize social justice. It will take place every year in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, during the same period as the World Economic Forum, which happens in Davos, Switzerland, at the end of January. Since 1971, The World Economic Forum has played a key role in formulating neoliberal policies throughout the world. It's sponsored by a Swiss organization that serves as a consultant to the United Nations and it's financed by more than one thousand corporations. The World Social Forum will provide a space for building economic alternatives, for exchanging experiences and for strengthening South-North alliances between NGOs, unions and social movements. It will also be an opportunity for developing concrete actions, to educate the public, and to mobilize civil society internationally. The World Social Forum developed as a consequence of a growing international movement that has gained greater visibility since the mobilizations against the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI), which happened in Europe in 1998, the demonstrations in Seattle, during the WTO meeting in 1999, and the recent protests against the IMF and the World Bank in Washington, DC, among others. For decades, these international financial institutions have been making decisions that affect the lives of people all over the world, without being subject to any sort of democratic control. People in Third World countries, as well as the poor and excluded sectors of industrialized countries suffer the devastating effects of economic globalization and the dictatorship of international institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO and the governments that serve their interests. We need to continue pressuring these institutions to be accountable to our societies. Similarly, our governments must be made aware that this oversight will be exercised with increasing intensity over their actions. Many of us have struggled in our own countries, regions, or cities, thinking that we were isolated. Recently, we have begun to realize that together we can constitute a planetary archipelago of resistance. The World Social Forum represents a new opportunity toward the construction of an international counter-power. Brazil is one the countries that has been greatly affected by neoliberal policies. At the same time, different sectors of Brazilian society are resisting these policies, in rural and urban areas, in shantytowns, factories, political parties, churches, schools, etc. The richness of Brazilian grassroots organizations represents a source of inspiration for the development of the World Social Forum. The Brazilian Organizing Committee invites international networks of NGOs, unions and social movements to help us build the World Social Forum. We hope to receive support from organizations in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe with a commitment to contribute with this organizing process and to send delegations to
[Fwd: The Insider - What I learned at the world economic crisis]
http://www.tnr.com/041700/stiglitz041700.html What I learned at the world economic crisis. The Insider By JOSEPH STIGLITZ Issue date: 04.17.00 Post date: 04.06.00 (Copyright 2000, The New Republic) Next week's meeting of the International Monetary Fund will bring to Washington, D.C., many of the same demonstrators who trashed the World Trade Organization in Seattle last fall. They'll say the IMF is arrogant. They'll say the IMF doesn't really listen to the developing countries it is supposed to help. They'll say the IMF is secretive and insulated from democratic accountability. They'll say the IMF's economic "remedies" often make things worse--turning slowdowns into recessions and recessions into depressions. And they'll have a point. I was chief economist at the World Bank from 1996 until last November, during the gravest global economic crisis in a half-century. I saw how the IMF, in tandem with the U.S. Treasury Department, responded. And I was appalled. The global economic crisis began in Thailand, on July 2, 1997. The countries of East Asia were coming off a miraculous three decades: incomes had soared, health had improved, poverty had fallen dramatically. Not only was literacy now universal, but, on international science and math tests, many of these countries outperformed the United States. Some had not suffered a single year of recession in 30 years. But the seeds of calamity had already been planted. In the early '90s, East Asian countries had liberalized their financial and capital markets--not because they needed to attract more funds (savings rates were already 30 percent or more) but because of international pressure, including some from the U.S. Treasury Department. These changes provoked a flood of short-term capital--that is, the kind of capital that looks for the highest return in the next day, week, or month, as opposed to long-term investment in things like factories. In Thailand, this short-term capital helped fuel an unsustainable real estate boom. And, as people around the world (including Americans) have painfully learned, every real estate bubble eventually bursts, often with disastrous consequences. Just as suddenly as capital flowed in, it flowed out. And, when everybody tries to pull their money out at the same time, it causes an economic problem. A big economic problem. The last set of financial crises had occurred in Latin America in the 1980s, when bloated public deficits and loose monetary policies led to runaway inflation. There, the IMF had correctly imposed fiscal austerity (balanced budgets) and tighter monetary policies, demanding that governments pursue those policies as a precondition for receiving aid. So, in 1997 the IMF imposed the same demands on Thailand. Austerity, the fund's leaders said, would restore confidence in the Thai economy. As the crisis spread to other East Asian nations--and even as evidence of the policy's failure mounted--the IMF barely blinked, delivering the same medicine to each ailing nation that showed up on its doorstep. I thought this was a mistake. For one thing, unlike the Latin American nations, the East Asian countries were already running budget surpluses. In Thailand, the government was running such large surpluses that it was actually starving the economy of much-needed investments in education and infrastructure, both essential to economic growth. And the East Asian nations already had tight monetary policies, as well: inflation was low and falling. (In South Korea, for example, inflation stood at a very respectable four percent.) The problem was not imprudent government, as in Latin America; the problem was an imprudent private sector--all those bankers and borrowers, for instance, who'd gambled on the real estate bubble. Under such circumstances, I feared, austerity measures would not revive the economies of East Asia--it would plunge them into recession or even depression. High interest rates might devastate highly indebted East Asian firms, causing more bankruptcies and defaults. Reduced government expenditures would only shrink the economy further. So I began lobbying to change the policy. I talked to Stanley Fischer, a distinguished former Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professor and former chief economist of the World Bank, who had become the IMF's first deputy managing director. I met with fellow economists at the World Bank who might have contacts or influence within the IMF, encouraging them to do everything they could to move the IMF bureaucracy. Convincing people at the World Bank of my analysis proved easy; changing minds at the IMF was virtually impossible. When I talked to senior officials at the IMF--explaining, for instance, how high interest rates might increase bankruptcies, thus making it even harder to restore confidence in East Asian economies--they would at first resist. Then, after failing to come up with an effective counterargument, they would retreat to another response: if
[Fwd: The burghers of Wall St stand accused]
After some work I managed to aquire this interview with Stiglitz that leaves Summers naked. Arno Mong DaastølPh: (prefix 47) 6680 6523Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The burghers of Wall St stand accused Joanne GrayPage 15 ( 1631 words ) Thursday, 25 May 2000From section: News FEATURES Publication: Australian Financial Review When Joseph Stiglitz attacked the World Bank and IMF for adopting policies that added to some countries' economic burden, he made bitter enemies. But, ashe tells Joanne Gray in Washington, he doesn't resile from his criticism of them, or of Wall Street. As World Bank chief economist and former top adviser to United States President Bill Clinton, Joseph Stiglitz was the consummate Washington insider.But since his incendiary attack on the International Monetary Fund, which heaccused of being arrogant, secretive and undemocratic, he's very much on theouter. Stiglitz alleges the US Treasury and the IMF acted as handmaidens for Wall Street, setting the scene for the Asian economic crisis by pushing developing countries to quickly open up their markets to the hot flood of foreign money. When that money was abruptly pulled out, the IMF's multibillion-dollar bailouts gave sick patients medicine that made their illnesses worse and spreadthe financial epidemic further. The IMF's loan conditions forced governments toslash spending and pushed interest rates sky high to halt currency devaluations.Stiglitz says that despite warnings from the World Bank, social and politicalinstability and economic ruin inevitably ensued. The root of the problem is that ``broad economic policy is being determined by special interests", he told The Australian Financial Review. ``When the Treasury pushes for Wall Street, [people] sometimes think it'sthis high-minded, good policy, and they don't see it for what it is, which is financial markets' interests, which may or may not be good policy." Such a jaundiced perspective of the motives of Washington's economic establishment has pitted the frenetic 56-year-old Stanford professor against Treasury secretary Larry Summers, one of the nation's most powerful economicpolicy makers. As Treasury undersecretary for international affairs and laterdeputy to secretary Robert Rubin, Summers was deeply involved in the formulationof the IMF bailout plans in Mexico, Asia and Brazil, and in Russia policy. The stoush is undermining the decade-old Washington consensus which underpinspost-Cold War global economic policy, and which has pushed untrammelled marketsand privatisation onto emerging economies. Many of the policy wonks in Treasury, the IMF and in Washington's rarefied think-tanks don't just disagree with Stiglitz's arguments they also find the passion behind his attacks unfair and a little unseemly. ``He's blaming people for death," said Catherine Mann, senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics. ``He says, `If you had listened to me, these people in Indonesia wouldn't have died, and the middle class wouldn't havebeen ravaged in South Korea'. And policy groups around here who very much wantto be doing the right thing feel very responsible for the outcome. And to saythey did it on purpose almost, really is offensive." It's true Stiglitz's critique sounds like wisdom with hindsight. But he sayshe was fighting the same fights in the early days of the Clinton Administration.As a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers in 1993, Stiglitz clashed with Summers, then Treasury undersecretary for international economicaffairs, over the pace at which South Korea should lift capital controls.Stiglitz maintains he and the other Council members had urged gradualliberalisation, while Summers and Treasury wanted it speeded up. ``Most people now agree it was rapid capital-market liberalisation that wasat the root of the [Asian economic] problem and Larry and I had a very big fight in 1993, when I was in the White House," says Stiglitz. ``The council argued it wasn't US national interest to push Korea to open up faster. This was not No1on our priorities ... this was not going to create a lot of jobs for Americans. ``Second, it was simply bad policy. This is pursuing special interests over national interests. And Larry pushed this through, reflecting the interests of Wall Street." The recent messy appointment of the IMF's new managing director, Horst Koehler, is another example of how the rich countries run the IMF as a fiefdom,to the exclusion of its major clients, poor and developing countries. Koehler was given the IMF top job after Frenchman Michel Camdessus resigned,and only after a squabble between the US and Europe that served to highlight theout-of-date governing structure of the IMF and the World Bank. In 1944, when the Bretton Woods lending agencies were formed, the US got theright to appoint the World Bank's president and Europe won the right to choosethe IMF managing
[Fwd: Bank report points to financial storms]
. But the global nature of capital investment and competition could see the flow of investment funds change direction. This possibility was raised in a comment published in the Financial Times of June 5: America's supremacy in the new economy has supported both the stock market and the dollar over the past five years as international money has poured into the US to finance an investment boom. This is about to change. The success of the US economy has not gone unnoticed and Europe and Japan are embarking on increasingly serious efforts to catch up. While the US will continue to retain its preeminent position, its relative supremacy over the rest of the world will tend to decline. This has two big, long-run implications for financial markets. The first is that most of the untapped investment potential lies outside the US. The second is dollar weakness. Despite a rising current account deficit, the greenback has been to date buoyed by massive foreign direct investment and portfolio inflows. As investors seek more profitable growth opportunities elsewhere, the dollar will enter a period of structural decline. Cognisant of the possibility of such shifts, and the devastating impact they could have on the US and other major economies, the BIS notes that in the future, the biggest policy challenge could be coping with a sudden reversal in the fortunes of the dollar. But what program could be set in place? Here, the BIS, like Marx's over-powered sorcerer, admits that the financial authorities, supposedly in control of global markets, have none. As for contributions by market overseers to better market functioning, the report states in its conclusion, there is evidence that markets are becoming less atomistic, and potentially more subject to herding behaviour particularly at times of stress. Growing concentration among market participants, common risk management and regulatory schemes, increasing use of benchmarks and index tracking, and the exploitation of common and instantaneously available information may all be contributing to this. However, what supervisory authorities might do about these underlying structural trends is significantly less obvious. Finally, there is the most fundamental issue of all. Why do markets overshoot, in effect failing to discipline themselves? In an ideal world, those who pushed prices away from equilibrium' levels would quickly lose money as prices reverted to the mean. However, in the real world, this often does not happen. ... it may be that market failures of this sort are simply one of the costs to be borne when reaping the overall benefits of a market-based economic system. Coming from one of the major institutions supposedly in control of the global capitalist economy, there could hardly be a clearer admission of the historical bankruptcy and utter irrationality of the profit system and its modus operandi, the free market. See Also: Globalisation: The Socialist Perspective A lecture by Nick Beams [5 June 2000] Marxist internationalism vs. the perspective of radical protest A reply to Professor Chossudovsky's critique of globalization [21 February 2000] -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Crisis of capitalism
Doug Henwood wrote: Hmm, guess things didn't quite work out as predicted. Maybe next year. Doug People who don't want to see the *crisis* of capitalism are by definition unwilling to see the social and human *costs* of capitalism. They want to see capitalism _saved_ not _abolished_. btw, you are wrong: "Corporate indebtedness had increased dramatically during the 1980s.The debt burden was at around 20% of the capital stock with 8% in 1980-1 (see Smith, 1992, p. 193).Maufacturing investment fell sharply by 1990-1 (Smith, 1992, p.193). Profits did not stand with high interest rates and so started to dip seriously. The banking system was on the 'brink of collapse under the weight of corporate failures and personal bankrupties' (Smith, 1993, p.244). Banks sought to support their accounts by higher debt provisions and to socialize their debt problems through redundancies , higher fees, and wider interest rate margins on loans. Credit became more expensive and more difficult to obtain. At the same time, consumers and companies were reluctant to barrow and endavoured to service their debt (See steward, 1993, p.102)" Warner Bonefeld, "Monetarism and Crisis". References: Steward , M. (1993) _Keynes in the 1990s: A return to Economic Sanity_. (London:MacMillan) Smith, D. _From Boom to Bust_ (London:Penguin). -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Re: Nader-Greens- Labor
I think Neil's analogy was appropriate. What is your point anyway? Mine What kind of analogy was yours anyway ? Comparing the AFL's Labor fakers Party corral in 2000 to the Bolsheviks clever mass tactics of 1917? On July 4, a lot of people do get tanked up. So we'll forgive you today. Doug H. NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
Re: Question about the submission of articles to pen-l
So let's not post articles, Michael Mine Michael Perelman wrote: I see that a good number of posts are articles from elsewhere -- especially from Mine. What do the rest of you think about this material? I know that some people unsub because of the volume. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 NetZero Free Internet Access and Email_ Download Now http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html Request a CDROM 1-800-333-3633 ___
[Fwd: 2000]
A MINHA LUTA E OS MEUS ANSEIOS DE EMANCIPAÇÃO DO HOMEM. QUE EM 2000 CONTINUEMOS NOSSAS LUTAS COM REDOBRADA VONTADE. pongo.jpg
Re: Re: Re: [weisbrot-columns] (fwd)
Brad, this sentence does not belong to me. My post was a reply to Ricardo's post about Indian film producers. please, read Ricardo's entire response, then you will make the connection. merci, Mine I did not write: Why this extraordinary desire to keep Africa from exporting textiles to the U.S.--to keep Africa poor and keep Roger Milliken rich? Brad De Long wrote: I wrote: Besides the problems with the article (which i have not read in details), the fact that Indians make "commercial movies" should not lead you to normalize the brutality of western imperialism and epidemic violence done to third world people. did you ever attempt to think why Indian directors shift to producing commercial movies? Actually, you don't need to go to third world.Indians were killed here. African Americans were used as slave labor, and they are still treated as non-humans. Criticizing this has nothing to do with "returning to the innocence and purity" of the third world. On the contrary, white men wanted to create this "purity" by _actually_ eliminating people. It was not so long ago-- eugenic laws were practiced here till 1965. Mine Somebody wrote (NOT ME) Why this extraordinary desire to keep Africa from exporting textiles to the U.S.--to keep Africa poor and keep Roger Milliken rich? Brad replied: If I understand what you are saying, it is that (a) eugenic laws were practiced here in the U.S. until 1965, and so (b) African textile businesses should be prohibited from exporting more than a narrowly-limited quota of goods to the U.S. I'm missing something here... Brad DeLong -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Darwin's dilemma (fwd)
I strongly think so too, but i spying on him. there is something fishy there.. Mine Michael Perelman wrote: I think that Gould is wrong. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I know that the letter was from Aveling.What about Gould's claim that there was a correpondence between Marx and Darwin? Is this another correpondence? or is Gould making up? Mine Margaret Fay wrote about the letter to Darwin. It was from Aveling, not Marx. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You are misreading the point. The point was not about Marxists' sympathy with Darwin's rejection of the offer. Of course, it was a nice behavior that Darwin did not want to popularize himself, so let's give credit to him. However, this was not simply an ethical concern or political correctness for Darwin. Regarding the letter, we are not hundred percent sure if Marx really wanted to dedicate second volume of Capital to fellow Darwin. Unlike Gould's story, some suggest this letter was sent under the influence of Aveling (son in law), so it was beyond Marx's intention. Even if we assume that Marx was sincere, Darwin rejected the offer on the grounds that he did not want to cause a reaction or bad reputation among religious circles/ruling classes. Darwin was just a scientist. Certainly, he did many big things to overcome religious convictions, but he was not a political activist as Marx was. Despite the revolutionary nature of his theory, some of Dawrin's investigations (brain size differences between whites and blacks, men and women), were, sincerely or insincerely, designed to fit the ruling class ideology and colonial policies in Britain at that time. Actually, Hobson, in _Imperialism_ goes into details of explaining how the evolutionary theory in Britain at the turn of the century was promoting scientific and cultural imperialism besides economic imperialism. Mine Doyran Phd Student Political Science SUNY/Albany Dear Sir, - I thank you for your friendly letter and the enclosure. The publication of your observations on my writings, in whatever form they may appear, really does not need any consent on my part, and it would be ridiculous for me to grant my permission for something which does not require it. I should prefer the part of the volume not to be dedicated to me (although I thank you for the intended honour), as that would to a certain extent suggest my approval of the whole work, with which I am not acquainted" (taken from a science list serv, Robert Young) As one of the most boring books ever written, one which 99% of Marxist do not have the patience or even temper to read, should we not but sympathize with poor Darwin's rejection of this offer? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [weisbrot-columns] Not Exactly FreeTrade
actually, there is hardly any opposition to neo-liberal program in the US. United Steel Workers already allied with big steel industry to protect US jobs, thanks to bourgeois unions. Free trade and protectionism are the sides of the same coin=imperialism, capitalism and core hegemony, which is part of the US strategy of "divide and rule" for centuries. I think US liberal acedemics, especially of the pro-free trade kind, should stop idealizing what they don't have.. or they should seriously think about why socialism does not work in this part of the universe. Mine Jim Devine wrote: -- If the US capitalist class and its government thinks that free trade (and more importantly, free mobility of capital) is so all-fired important why don't they pay US workers to compensate for the inevitable costs of freeing up trade? This would undermine the opposition to their neo-liberal program. Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
[Fwd: imperialism or globalism?]
The following is excerpted from an article in the Christian Science Monitor. In an era where Marx and Lenin were declared irrelevant a few years ago, it is interesting to see how even mainstream commentators are grappling with the debates and concepts today. Readers are encouraged to go to the original site of the CSM for more information. We can find lots of useful information in the mainstream press if we read with a critical eye Published in the Christian Science Monitor: "Lenin and Globalization", CSM Lenin and globalization or Yes Virginia, there is such a thing as imperialist rivalry and war Lenin and globalizationBenjamin SchwarzPage: OPINION, Page 9As delegates to the World Trade Organization celebrated, and protestersvilified the global economy, both groups could have used a historylesson. For better or worse, today's international market didn't simplyemerge. It was deliberately constructed. Understanding this illuminatesboth the challenges posed by the world economy and the threats to it.Too many economists and business leaders neglect historian E.H. Carr'smaxim: "The science of economics presupposes a given political order andcannot be properly studied in isolation from politics." Though theycorrectly emphasize the unprecedented economic growth the global economyhas engendered, they fail to emphasize America's equally unprecedentedpower, which made growth possible.Several years ago a Pentagon planning document asserted that America'sgreatest post- World War II achievement is the creation of a"market-oriented zone of peace and prosperity encompassing two-thirds ofthe globe." To appreciate this achievement, it's helpful to recall theonce-famous debate between V.I. Lenin and Karl Kautsky. Lenin held thatany international capitalist order was inherently temporary because thepolitical order among competing states on which he believed it would bebased would shift over time.Whereas Lenin argued that international capitalism could not transcendthe Hobbesian reality of international politics, Kautsky maintained thatcapitalists were much too rational to destroy themselves in internecineconflicts. An international class of enlightened capitalists,recognizing that international political and military competition wouldupset the orderly processes of world finance and trade, would insteadseek peace and free trade.But Lenin and Kautsky were talking past each other. Kautsky believed thecommon interest of an international capitalist class determinedinternational relations, whereas in Lenin's analysis internationalrelations were driven by competition among states. Lenin argued thatthere was an irreconcilable contradiction between capitalism and theanarchic international system; Kautsky didn't recognize the division inthe first place.US foreign policy has been based in essence on a hybrid of Lenin's andKautsky's analyses. It has aimed at the unified international capitalistcommunity Kautsky envisioned. But the US effort to build and sustainthat community is determined by a worldview not far from Lenin's. ToWashington, today's global economy hasn't been maintained by the commoninterests of an international economic elite, but by US preponderance.So, the Pentagon asserts that the global market requires the "stability"that only American "leadership" can provide. Ultimately, of course,Lenin and US policymakers diverge. While Lenin recognized that any giveninternational order was inherently impermanent, America's foreign policystrategists have hoped to keep that reality of international relationspermanently at bay. Since World War II, the US has created a new kind ofinternational politics among the advanced capitalist states. Whereasthese states had formerly sought to protect their national economiesfrom outside influences and to enhance their national power in relationto their rivals, they would now seek security as members of theUS-dominated alliance system and their economic growth as participantsin the US-secured world economy, adjusting their national economics asdictated by world market tendencies.But at the close of the 20th century, global capitalism's contradictionsare becoming apparent, as the international economy's very successbegetspotentially lethal challenges to it. Just as "war made the state," sothe world market's unprecedented autonomy, power, and pervasiveness isprecisely the sort of challenge that could provoke the expansion of thestate's capabilities and prestige (which, of course, raises the specterof totalitarianism). In short, as the global economy goes from strengthto strength, the state must subdue it or be destroyed by it.Even more important, it is precisely because capitalism has reached itshighest stage that the state may have a chance against it. As the globaleconomy has become more interdependent, it has become more fragile. Forinstance, the emergent technology industries are the most powerfulengines of
A VERY SMALL WORLD-SYSTEM
http://www.jhu.edu/~soc/pcid/papers/7 Program In Comparative International Development Department of Sociology Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD. 21218 USA Working Paper #7 A VERY SMALL WORLD-SYSTEM IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA: THE WINTU AND THEIR NEIGHBORS Christopher Chase-Dunn, S. Edward Clewett, and Elaine Sundahl This is an examination of late prehistoric local and regional interaction networks in Northern California. What role did intervillage, intertribelet and interlinguistic group relations play in social reproduction and change? How important were warfare, trade, intermarriage and communications for local group structures? Were there interregional (core/periphery) hierarchies in formation and, if so, how might these have been related to processes of incipient hierarchy formation within the linked groups? The Wintu linguistic group's relations with Hokan speakers (Okwanuchu, Achomawi, and Yana) are the main focus of our research. We also discuss the nature of a larger trading system in Northern California which linked the Pomo/Patwin towns of the south with Wintu and surrounding groups in the north. Archaeological, ethnographic and documentary evidence are used to investigate the geography and sociology of intergroup relations in this small world-system. We tentatively conclude that the local Wintu/Yana interaction was a mild core/periphery hierarchy, and that the larger Northern California trade network was an incipient core/periphery hierarchy in which the southern (Pomo/Patwin) region was gaining more from trade than other participants in the network. Draft: July 14, 1992 Please contact Chase-Dunn at Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. 21218; Clewett and Sundahl at Archaeology Lab, Shasta College, Redding, CA. 96049. An earlier version presented at the 57th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Pittsburgh, April 8-12, 1992, Session on Small Scale World-Systems in North America. This research has been partially supported by National Science Foundation Grant #SES-9110853. This paper applies the comparative world-systems perspective to a small scale prehistoric system in Northern California. Our project is to map intervillage, intertribelet and inter-linguistic group networks of interaction. We study the geography of production, exchange, intermarriage and warfare in order to ascertain how these interactions were related to the reproduction or transformation of local social structures. Before describing and analyzing prehistoric Northern California we present a brief overview of some of the main theoretical debates which have emerged in the application of the world-system perspective to premodern systems. The world-systems perspective was developed mainly by sociologists who are trying to explain the development of national societies and changing global patterns in the modern world. This theoretical perspective analyzes the expansion of capitalist production as an intersocietal phenomenon in connection with geopolitical competition in the multicentric interstate system. The "developed" countries are understood as occupying the top positions in the core/periphery hierarchy, a socially structured international stratification order in which peripheral countries are dominated and exploited. What has been called national development in other theories is understood in the world-system perspective as upward mobility in the core/periphery hierarchy. The world-system perspective has found great success as an orienting theoretical perspective and many social scientists have sought to extend its application to ancient or prehistoric socio-economic systems. The focus on intersocietal networks holds the promise of being the basis of a more powerful theory of social evolution. In order to produce such a theory it is important to reformulate world-system concepts in a way which makes systematic comparisons of different world-systems possible. Because these concepts were developed to explain the modern system they need to be reformulated so that comparative studies do not project features which are unique to the modern system on earlier, smaller systems. All intersocietal networks need not exhibit the same features as the modern world-system. If we can agree that intersocietal networks were once small local systems of interaction (but see below), and that world-systems got larger with the development of long distance interaction, then we can abstract from system size and compare the structures of small scale systems with those of larger scale or even global ones. Indeed, a comparative study of world-systems should enable us to sort out structural similarities and differences and to explain why structures change.
Frank:PREFACE to REORIENT
d Frank 1994). Alas, this work was then interrupted, largely due to illness on my part. Only in late 1995 did it become possible again for me to pursue and now to expand this work; but now, after my retirement from the University of Amsterdam, on my own here in Toronto. Not really on my own! For Nancy Howell and I were married in Toronto in 1995, and she has given me untold emotional and moral support to resume this project and carry it further as the present book. It would and could not ever have undertaken, let alone completed, without Nancy. Moreover, she also provided me with the physical facilities to do so in a beautiful study in our home and access as her husband [to compensate my lack of any other institutional support] to the library facilities of the University of Toronto. That also allows me the use of its e-mail to communicate about issues in and sources for this book with colleagues all over the world. There have been so many, in addition to those already acknowledged elsewhere in this preface, that I can here only name and thank a few of the many whom I have consulted who have helped me most, alas some still by snail-mail: Bob Adams in California, Jim Blaut in Chicago, Greg Blue in British Columbia, Terry Boswell in Georgia, Tim Brook in Toronto, Linda Darling in Arizona, Richard Eaton in Arizona, Dennys Flynn in California, Steve Fuller in England, Paulo Frank in Geneva, Jack Goldstone in California, Takeshi Hamashita in Tokyo, Satoshi Ikeda in Binghamton, Huricihan Inan in Ankara, Martin Lewis in North Carolina, Victor Lieberman in Michigan, Angus Maddison in Holland, Pat Manning in Boston, Bob Marks in California, Joya Misra in Georgia, Brian Moloughene in New Zealand, John Munro in Toronto, Rila Mukherjee in Calcutta, Jack Owens in Idaho, Frank Perlin in France, Ken Pomeranz in California, Anthony Reid in Australia, John Richards in North Carolina, Morris Rossabi in New York, Mark Selden in Ithica, David Smith in California, Graeme Snooks in Australia, Burton and Dorothy Stein in London, Sun Laichen in Michigan, and Richard von Glahn, John Wills and Bin Wong all in California. The attentive reader will find that most of these names reappear in the text in connection with my use of their own work and/or that used or recommended by them. Before proceeding to publish especially my disputes with them [eg. about estimates and other issues regarding population, trade, production, income, money, cycles and institutions in China, Europe, India, Central-, Southeast-, and West-Asia, as well as Africa], I submitted my relevant text to their personal review and acceptance. I then amended my text in accordance with their return e-mailed collegial comments, for which I wish to express my gratitude here. Alas, similar communication was not possible or was interrupted about my disputes with some colleagues in India. Last but not least, I am thankful to Paul De Grace, cartographer at the Department of Geography of Simon Fraser University, for converting my hand schetched designs into his computer generated maps; to the World Society Foundation of Zurich in Switzerland for financial aid to pay for them and other expenses; to my long time friend Stan Holwitz and now also my editor at the University of California Press in Los Angeles for humoring me through the travails of the book's production in Berkeley; and to the ever active production editor there Juliane Brand. My special and greatest thanks in this department go to Kathleen MacDougall. Her good substantive help far beyond thecall of duty as copy- editor strengthened this book's content and argument, while her professional expertise combined with endless patience and good cheer much improved its form and comunicability to the reader, in whose name I therefore thank her as well. To conclude, I hope I may be excused if I repeat something from the preface of my previous book on World Accumulation The very attempt to examine and relate the simultaneity of different events in the whole historical process or in the transformation of the whole system - even if for want of empirical information or theoretical adequacy it may be full of holes in its factual coverage of space and time - is a significant step in the right direction (particularly at a time in which this generation must "rewrite history" to meet its need for historical perspective and understanding of the single historical process in the one world today). (Frank 1978a: 21). To end this already too long preface, I would like to continue my quotation from and agreement still with John King Fairbank: The result can only be an imperfect approximation. Fortunately, no one has to regard it as the last word. Once and author looks back at what he thought he was trying to do, many perspectives emerge. Foremost is that of ignorance, at least in my case. A book that to its author is a mere antechamber to a whole unwritten library, bursting *with problems awaiting exploration, may seem to his readers to have a solidity which shunts their research elsewhere. It is useless to assure them that the book is really full of holes (Fairbank 1969: xii). Unlike Fairbank, at least I need not fear that any of my readers may be fooled into seeing a non-existent solidity here. Surely, they will note that this book is full of holes. I do hope however not to shunt all of their research elsewhere, and I invite them to use at least some of it to help fill these holes -- and to dig up new ones of their own. Andre Gunder Frank Toronto, January 26, August 8, and December 25, 1996 -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
The United States as Nuclear Champion
my independent of NATO. What seems almost certain is that neither a Gore policy nor a Bush policy is likely to slow down significantly nuclear proliferation. And the possible Bush policy might actually intensify the process. By 2010, we may have a world in which U.S. nuclear capacity is much more advanced, Western Europe much more unhappy with the U.S., and many more avowed and secret nuclear powers in the world. East Asia may become an area of intensive nuclear armaments (over and above whatever the U.S. maintains in the region). Will U.S. relative power be greater or less? I would guess less, and if not less in 2010, then almost certainly by 2020. For the cost of the nuclear race, which now weighs so heavily on everyone except the U.S., will by then have had a seriously negative impact on the U.S. budget as well. Will however all this nuclear proliferation mean that the weapons will actually be used? Here too we must be cautious in our assessments. Frankly, I have never thought that so-called rogue states were more likely to use nuclear weapons than the other states (what shall we call them - virtuous states?). They have the same worry about retaliation. Indeed, it is almost the other way around. A wealthy state like the U.S. may be the first to elaborate the kind of tactical weapons that will seem "restrained" enough to use, but actually extremely dangerous in terms of their long-run radiation effects. In any case, the political discussion has returned to being one between machismo and sanity. And one can never be sure that the sane prevail, especially as the world-system flounders amidst its long-run structural crisis. Immanuel Wallerstein [These commentaries may be downloaded, forwarded electronically or e-mailed to others, but may not be reproduced in any print medium without permission of copyright holder ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
DARWINISM AND THE DIVISION OF LABOUR
e division of labour. It is, and always has been, about power. As a British industrial manager recently said, the movement for greater participation in industrial decision-making is 'not for the sake of humanity but because it pays'. Most of the literature on the division of labour ignores the central question of power. The conflict between workers and management is ultimately a structural one, and efforts on the part of the intellectual 'servants of power' to palliate this are in the service of domestication or taming of genuine class and political differences the rationalization of hegemony on one side and deference on the other. Greater participation and looser structures of communication and decision-making are a form of co-option. The simple truth is that work in most existing societies is alienating. The division of labour on behalf of the system in which bosses are basically in control of the fundamental decisions is authoritarian. Any other way of telling the story is a form of deception. Current debates on the biological basis of modified forms of the organization of work are in the service of even more refined and civilized methods of control. Ideas for decentralizing communication without eliminating the hierarchical aspect of the division of labour and of profits are an extension of the bad bargain with which we began. Of course, people have different talents, propensities and tastes. And of course different people will fancy doing different things. The division of labour is sensible, and is efficient. But expertise all too easily gets mixed up with domination and with deference. Our problem is not to make people all the same or to make everyone a Jack or Jane of all trades. Rather, it is to disentangle co-operation from competition, to separate the sharing out of jobs on an equal basis from hierarchical and authoritarian social and industrial organization. The indirect path to human happiness by concentrating on science, technology and the hierarchical division of labour, while holding out the promise of generous fruits if only people will allow their bodies and latterly their minds to be treated as things, has been trod long enough. Biological theory has played and continues to play an important role in justifying this. If we want to begin to give priority to human values and attempt to move towards organizing our work and our lives in order directly to serve those values, we can usefully begin by declaring a person a person, a machine a machine. We should also declare biological, or any other, justifications for the hierarchical division of labour an irrelevance. Machines, on closer inspection, turn out to be embodiments of the relations between people, and the same can be said of biological justifications of the division of labour. The machines were designed by people and they crystallize authoritarian human relationships. Similarly, accepting and deferring to the theories I have been discussing makes authoritarianism seem natural. The machines and the theories are therefore themselves forms of power. This was originally broadcast on the BBC Radio 3 series, 'Are Hierarchies Necessary?' It was subsequently published in The Listener, 17 August 1972, pp. 202-5 and in Science as Culture no. 9: 110-24, 1990. Copyright: The Author -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
DARWINIAN EVOLUTION AND HUMAN HISTORY
sm but in very different terms with very different social resonances and consequences. A marxist analysis, as I say, also points to the role of human labour in transforming nature and human nature. It points to the relative autonomy of the social realm to second nature and the different degrees of refractoriness we face in the project of creating a fair and generous society. One of the most refractory aspects of current culture is deference to scientific experts in setting our social priorities. People, not natural selection, make history, and the educators need educating about this. The people need to set their own priorities through treating values and politics on their own terms and not as expressions or mediations of Darwinian evolution. I want, in concluding, to refer back to Engels's remarks at Marxs graveside where he said that Darwin had discovered the law of development of organic nature while Marx had discovered the law of development of human nature. The relationship between organic nature and human nature is neither of one providing the basis for the other, nor is the way we look at nature merely the result of a confidence trick. Marx wrote quite early in his career, 'We know only a single science the science of history. History can be contemplated from two sides it can be divided into the history of nature and the history of mankind. However the two sides are not to be divided off: as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned.' 3555 words This is the text (with some modifications and the restoration of cuts) of a radio talk given in an Open University course on Darwin to Einstein: Historical Studies on Science and Belief, 1980. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Re: Grover Furr's Politics and Social Issues Page (http://www.shss.montclair.edu/en
Some important info! Mine Spectors wrote: A professor (of English) at Montclair State has put up a web page with links to a number of interesting topics, including some articles about the history of the USSR and the role of Stalin that take issue with standard, mainstream liberal, conservative, social democratic, and trotskyist opinions on this topic. I've attached the link to his web page in this email posting. You might not agree with everything on that page, but you'll probably find something useful. Alan Spector http://www.shss.montclair.edu/english/furr/politics.html Name: Grover Furr's Politics and Social Issues Page (2).url Grover Furr's Politics and Social Issues Page (2).url Type: Internet Shortcut (application/x-unknown-content-type-InternetShortcut) Encoding: 7bit -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Re: Re: unsubscribing
you can send your command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] unsubscribe pen-l if i am not mistaken, btw. Brick Menz wrote: HELP -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
[Fwd: on the anti-globalization movement (fwd)]
ops,his last name is Spector.. Spector is a wsn fellow who forwarded article.. From Alan Sceptor: The debates on the Fair Trade list over China and Global Exchange reflect an even deeper debate over the anti-globalization movement: should it be anti-capitalist or liberal reformist? The following article attempts to dissect and articulate this debate from an anti-capitalist perspective. It is based on an earlier article which appeared in the Feb. 2000 issue of From the Left, the newsletter of the Marxist Section of the American Sociological Association. As long as credits are retained, there are no restrictions on the article's reproduction or redistribution. UNDERSTANDING THE BATTLES OF SEATTLE AND WASHINGTON By Dick Platkin and Chuck O'Connell* In November 1999, when the "Battle of Seattle" grabbed headlines around the world, it also excited grizzled activists from the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements. They had renewed hopes that politically energized students and workers would form new left-wing movements. Several months have now passed, and it is time to carefully examine the anti-globalization movement which organized most of the anti-WTO events in Seattle and anti-IMF and World Bank actions in Washington, D.C. The profound contradictions of this movement are reflected by the basic facts. Tens of thousands of demonstrators, with sophisticated messages and media outreach, drawn from dozens of countries, appeared at hundreds of venues within a period of several days. On one hand, anti-globalization forces roused tens of thousands of students and workers into political activism over questions of economic justice, and many may eventually develop into revolutionary anti-capitalist activists. On the other hand, as carefully documented by University of Ottawa economics professor, Michael Chossudovsky, in Seattle and Beyond: Disarming the New World Order (posted on the Internet, November 25, 1999, at www.emperors-clothes.com) the leadership of much of the anti-WTO movement is not only discreetly linked to the WTO, but enjoys political and financial connections to well-funded corporate, AFL-CIO, and foundation-based organizations emphasizing "Fair Trade." This is a slogan whose humane appearance and demands for corporate responsibility cloaks calls for protectionism, patriotism, and the production and exchange of consumer goods for profit (i.e, capitalism). The anti-globalization movement, not surprisingly, presents arguments which are questionable and politically suspect. A careful look at them reveals the movement's class outlook and shows why as demonstrated by Chossudovsky it has received careful nurturing from ruling class think tanks, corporate-funded foundations, and management- oriented unions, such as the Steelworkers (USWA). FAIR TRADE ARGUMENT 1: STUDENTS AND WORKERS SHOULD OPPOSE THE WTO BECAUSE IT WILL DRAG DOWN THE STELLAR CONDITIONS OF WORKERS IN THE UNITED STATES. As articulated by such labor leaders as USWA President George Becker at anti-WTO rallies in Seattle and Washington, this argument is amazingly unpersuasive. The sad truth is that workers in all other industrialized countries fear being dragged down to the second-rate working conditions of the American companies with whom Becker is allied. If he looked around, he would see that tens of millions of US workers are paid the minimum wage or even below, and hundreds of thousands have been forced to accept the compulsory sub-minimum wages of the workfare program. Only 11 percent of the U.S. working class are represented by unions, and most of these unions are lead by pro-management officers and staff. Over 40 million U.S. workers do not have health insurance, and most of the rest are stuck with mediocre HMO's. US workers have no guaranteed vacation, and those who do get vacations usually get two weeks, unlike Germany's six weeks and France's five weeks. American workers also have no paid maternity or paternity leave, and must endure a legal 40-hour workweek unchanged since 1939, while reality is much worse. According to Harvard economist Juliet Schore, the U.S. workweek has been rising continuously over the past two decades, while that of Europeans has been declining, along with their additional holidays and vacations. The result is that, on average, Americans now work approximately two months more per year than Europeans. Moreover, while anti-globalization/Fair Trade leaders in Seattle and Washington criticized sweatshops and other deplorable working conditions in Third World countries, especially China, they conveniently skimmed over their increasing prevalence in the United States. For example, Seattle's Boeing company, whose union leadership has vigorously denounced China's use of prison labor, contracts out work to the Washington State prison system without any protests from
Globalization by Samir Amin
Al-Ahram Weekly, 20 - 26 April 2000 Issue No. 478 http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2000/478/in4.htm Democratising globalisation By Samir Amin The European Union and the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) had two different agendas prepared for the Africa-Europe summit held in Cairo on 3-4 April. The European agenda was almost restricted to political issues formulated in their usual wording -- "human rights", "good governance" -- while the African agenda focused on conditions for relaunching meaningful development in the region -- including, of course, the debt issue. The final communiqué shows how some of the views of the weaker partner have been watered down in order to reach a formal consensus. The summit was not considered the proper place to deal with the crucial debt issue since the problem involves "other partners" -- the United States, that is. But Africans were quick to point out that this position is hypocritical of Europe, as Europeans have no less weight in the international institutions responsible (the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank) than the US. Instead of ignoring their voting power within the IMF and the WB, Europeans could express views different from those of Washington if they felt strongly enough. Nonetheless, Africans were still able to impart some of their views on the summit -- positive steps that were no doubt achieved thanks to the fact that Africa, represented through the OAU, could speak with a single voice. One has to recall here that the major European powers were not favourable to a summit format focusing on an "EU-OAU" meeting and tried, rather, to impose the usual format of "Africa" being represented by the "head of states and governments of Africa," the existence of the OAU being forgotten. The usual rhetoric on "globalisation" (never qualified as it should be) reads through the final communiqué, but four aspects of globalisation nevertheless made their way to the table. First, the principle of differential treatment for developing countries. Second, the need for Africa to industrialise. Third, the legitimacy of regulatory actions aimed at stemming the flow of capital out of Africa. Fourth, the fundamental need to relaunch basic social expenditures (education, health, infrastructure) -- in itself an indirect critique of the policies pursued in the frame of so-called structural adjustment. More important, perhaps, on political issues the communiqué has adopted the African point of view that peace and security on the continent remain the responsibility of the United Nations and the OAU. This view directly conflicts with the decision adopted by NATO after the Kosovo war at the end of April 1999, which expanded the "responsibility" of the Western military alliance beyond Europe to include Asia and Africa. This conflict in views was clearly spelled out by the African contingent. Will this document remain simply ink on paper? Or does it announce the beginning of an evolution toward meaningful cooperation between Europe and Africa? The answer depends on how Europe and Africa choose to move beyond the present neo-liberal concept of globalisation, which in its turn assumes acceptance of US hegemony. Until now, the EU has not questioned this pattern of globalisation and seems to accept its consequences; for example, the double dilution of Europe's political autonomy into NATO and the European common market into a globalised open market. This choice leaves little room, if any, for meaningful Euro-African cooperation. The alternative -- pluricentric, regulated globalisation -- makes possible the building of organised regions in Europe, Africa and elsewhere that empower economic development and social progress. The only way forward is to build partnerships in a negotiated process aimed at regulating globalisation to the benefit of all peoples. We are still quite far from starting to move in that direction. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Re: Re: Re: PK on A16
Brad, you are not missing anything! I was making a critical comment on Bates' approach to development. I am assuming we are talking about the same Bates here (Robert). Regarding his _Markets and States_, I don't completely disagree with the fact that state-led development had biases towards small agricultural producers in Africa. This is evident. What I don't agree is that Bates treats this problem as if it is simply state's choice to promote export strategy or behave in certain ways to disbenefit rural producers. Bates' method is methodologically individualistic. He treats states as individuals. Accordingly, he disregards world systemic dynamics, or the question of why Africa was left with promoting a "certain" type of development strategy. I think this methodological problem is more evident in his later book _Toward a political economy of development: a rational choice perspective_ that is what i meant... Mine Brad De Long wrote: Brad DeLong wrote: A strong bias against relatively small-scale rural producers has been one of the worst things about African state-led development over the past generation (see Robert Bates's _Markets and States in Tropical Africa_, or Dumont's _False Start in Africa_). And it does look like this Mozambiquan export tax is a remnant of that bias. which is why, probably, Prof. Bates wrote the book _ Toward a political economy of development: a rational choice perspective _ Publisher: Berkeley :University of California Press,c1988. -- Mine Aysen Doyran I'm missing something... -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Re: PK on A16
Brad DeLong wrote: A strong bias against relatively small-scale rural producers has been one of the worst things about African state-led development over the past generation (see Robert Bates's _Markets and States in Tropical Africa_, or Dumont's _False Start in Africa_). And it does look like this Mozambiquan export tax is a remnant of that bias. which is why, probably, Prof. Bates wrote the book _ Toward a political economy of development: a rational choice perspective _ Publisher: Berkeley :University of California Press,c1988. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
A Left Politics for the 21st Century? or, Theory and Praxis Once Again*
http://fbc.binghamton.edu/iwleftpol.htm "A Left Politics for the 21st Century? or, Theory and Praxis Once Again"* by Immanuel Wallerstein Fernand Braudel Center 1999 There is said to be a Yugoslav aphorism that goes like this: "The only absolutely certain thing is the future, since the past is constantly changing."1 The world left is living today with two pasts that have almost totally disappeared, and rather suddenly at that. This is very unsettling. The first past that has disappeared is the trajectory of the French Revolution. The second past that has disappeared is the trajectory of the Russian Revolution. They both disappeared more or less simultaneously and jointly, in the 1980s. Let me carefully explain what I mean by this. The French Revolution is of course a symbol. It symbolizes a theory of history that has been very widely shared for two centuries, and shared far beyond the confines of the world left. Most of the world's liberal center also shared this theory of history, and today even part of the world's right. It could be said to have been the dominant view within the world-system throughout most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its premise was the belief in progress and the essential rationality of humanity. The theory was that history could be seen as a linear upward process. The world was en route to the good society, and the French Revolution constituted and symbolized a major leap forward in this process. There were many variants on this theory. Some persons, especially in the United States, wished to substitute the American for the French Revolution in this story. Others, especially in Great Britain, were in favor of substituting the English Revolution. Some persons wished to eliminate all political revolutions from the story, and make this theory of history the story of the steady commercialization of the world's economic processes, or the steady expansion of its electoral processes, or the fulfillment of a purported historic mission of the State (with a capital S). But whatever the details, all these variants shared the sense of the inevitability and the irreversibility of the historical process. This was a hopeful theory of history since it offered a happy ending. No matter how terrible the present (as for example when the fortunes of Nazi Germany seemed to be riding high, or when racist colonialism seemed at its most oppressive), believers (and most of us were believers) took solace in the knowledge we claimed to have, that "history was on our side." It was an encouraging theory even for those who were privileged in the present, since it offered the expectation that eventually everyone else would share the privileges (without the present beneficiaries losing any) and that therefore the oppressed would cease annoying the oppressors with their complaints. The only problem with this theory of history is that it did not seem to survive the test of empirical experience very well. This is where the Russian Revolution came in. It was a sort of codicil to the French Revolution. Its message was that the theory of history symbolized by the French Revolution was incomplete because it held true only insofar as the proletariat (or the popular masses) were energized under the aegis of a dedicated group of cadres organized as a party or party/state. This codicil we came to call Leninism. Leninism was a theory of history espoused only by the world left, and in fact by only a part of it at most. Still, it would be fatuous to deny that Leninism came to have a hold on a significant portion of the world's populations, especially in the years 1945-1970. The Leninist version of history was, if anything, more resolutely optimistic than the standard French Revolution model. This was because Leninism insisted that there was a simple piece of material evidence one could locate if one wanted to verify that history was evolving as planned. Leninists insisted that wherever a Leninist party was in undisputed power in a state, that state was self-evidently on the road to historical progress, and furthermore could never turn back. The problem is that Leninist parties tended to be in power only in economically less well-off zones of the world, and conditions were not always brilliant in such countries. Still, the belief in Leninism was a powerful antidote to any anxieties caused by the fact that immediate conditions or events within a country governed by a Leninist party were dismaying. I do not need to rehearse for you the degree to which all theories of progress have become suspect in the last two decades, and the Leninist variant in particular. I do not say that there are no believers left, since that would be untrue, but they no longer represent a substantial percentage of the world's populations. This constitutes a geocultural shift of no small proportion and, as I have said, has been particularly unsettling for the world left, which had placed most of its chips (if not all of them) on the
Re: Braudel-Brenner-Skocpol-Wallerstein Debates
Arrighi's point is not about Braudel's disapproval of Wallerstein. The point he wants to make is about the "emergence of world system as a research program" in the Fernand Braudel Center and PEWS section of ASA-- in other words, the academic and institutional underpinnings of the world system theory started by Wallerstein. That is what Arrighi means below as a world system theorist. btw, Braudel disagreed with Wallerstein _as much as_ Wallerstein disagreed with Braudel. Braudel was not a Marxist to begin with. Wallerstein went beyond Braudel, and orthodox marxist theory, with a new theory of modern capitalism as a "structurally differentiated" world system whose parts related to each other through a hierarchy chain: core-semiperiphery-periphery model as opposed to nation-state centric model. Such a systemic outlook was significantly lacking in previous acccounts. Mine _Giovanni Arrighi_ wrote in his article: 1. The World-System Perspective and Wallerstein's Theory of the Capitalist World-Economy. As Harriet Friedmann (1996: 321) has pointed out, the emergence of the world-system perspective as research program is inseparable from the influence of Immanuel Wallerstein's The Modern World System, Vol.I (henceforth TMWS) and from the new institutions formed in its wake, most notably the PEWS Section of the ASA, the journal Review, and the Fernand Braudel Center. Ricardo replied: Why the Fernand Braudel Center? - the only book by Braudel that can be placed - and only indirectly - within the WS tradition is Vol 3, The Perspective of the World, of Civilization and Capitalism. Even in this volume, one detects that Braudel was not impressed by Wallerstein's approach to history volume is quite critical of Wallesrstein Braudel was too sophisticated a historian to accept the functional narrowness of a Wallerstein. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Re: Rhetorical questions about Marx
to his memory. This brings us back to basics. Look how Darwin, Marx and Freud are mutually constitutive. Darwin brings historicity to the heart of the sciences linking life to the earth and our humanity to both. Teleolgical and anthropromorphic concepts lie at the basis of his concept of natural selection. Marx teaches us the historicity of all - including scientific - concepts and points out that there is only one science, the science of history. Freud teaches us that all of history and culture continue to be mediated by basic human drives and that no matter how high we reach into abstractions, our thought remains rooted in primitive psychic mechanisms. It would seem, then, that our conception of a human science must always draw on these three dimensions of what Marx calls our species being. The historical, conceptual and practical tasks that follow from this will surely occupy all of at least to the retiring age. We have in these three thinkers - at first glance -biology, economics and the psyche, but looked at more closely each takes us to history and historicity, to culture and its roots and to the question of the nature and extent of what is distinctly human - the limits, the realities, the visions, aspirations and achievements now and in the future. As I read them, each offers us a conception of the disciplined study of humanity which always retains a notion of human values in action as the central guiding conception. None will do alone, while the task of integrating them in historical studies and in theory has hardly begun. Their writings span the century between about 1840 and 1940. Darwin (1809-82) and Marx (1818-83) were - how easily we forget this - near contemporaries and published their main works almost simultaneously. They died within a year of each other just over a hundred years ago. (Indeed 1986 was the centenary year of Darwin's Life and Letters.) Freud was a toddler of three years when The Origin of Species and An Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy appeared in 1859. The problematic of his life's work makes little sense without seeing both Darwin and Marx as providing the framework of ideas and aspirations about nature and human nature which he addresses. All three are very much alive today - vivid - providing us with the terms of reference for both a realistic and a cautiously hopeful view of our humanity. This is the text of a talk delivered to CHEIRON, the international society for the history of the human sciences, Brighton. It appeared in the newsletter of the society, Spring 1988, pp. 7-12. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Re: worm on pen-l????
so, are we infected? which post please? was it an attachment? Mine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I just found this warning. The message with the worm seems to calm from pen-l. Should I/we be concerned? The (Win95/Happy99.Worm) virus was detected in (Perelman, Michael\Happy99.exe) and was sent by ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). Action: (File was not Cured, Renaming.). -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Heroism and Humanism
believes in the power bestowed on the human mind of investigating the human mind." (Linguistics, p. 24). The late Isaac Deutscher was right, I believe, to ascribe such sentiments of defiance and intellectual daring to a tradition that links not only Freud, but also Spinoza, Marx and Heine to each other and to himself, the tradition of being a non-Jewish Jew or, for us to expand it beyond Judaism, a secular intellectual tradition that sees in unafraid and unapologetic critique the path to human freedom. Perhaps we can go so far as to imagine paradoxically a non-humanistic humanist, someone given neither to piety nor to tiresome and inconsequential word-spinning. I think we can expand Deutscher's designation still more so as to include what is a real choice for the modern humanist at the threshold of the 21st century facing a major seismic shift in the conditions for humanistic practices, and for whom the ideas of tradition, sect, ethnicity and religion are neither adequate as guides nor useful as modes of making sense of human history. And what a complex new situation we face. Those of us who grew up intellectually in the United States framed by the Cold War are now citizens of the last remaining superpower, with a global reach often put at the service of awful destruction and inhumane practices such as the genocidal sanctions policy against the people of Iraq. We face a world no longer under the unopposed thrall of Eurocentrism, and in which a whole panoply of literatures and civilisations that have emerged from the blight of colonialism can be seen to furnish challenges to ours. Regressively, we can speak of the clash of civilisations or it might be possible and, in my opinion, certainly better to expand our understanding of human history to include all those Others constructed as dehumanised, demonised opponents by imperial knowledges and a will to rule. Civilisations have never occurred or survived for long simply by fighting off all the others: beneath a superficial level of defensive propaganda every great civilisation is made up of endless traffic with others. Today, globalisation has introduced and imposed the concept of a single market economy, which has in turn produced new disparities in wealth, entitlement, and the distribution of goods that bedevil the very idea of human development and provoke complex struggles of resistance against injustice. Intellectually, however, a search for new alternatives -- one thinks of Amartya Sen's pioneering work -- is mercifully under way. C P Snow's 40-year-old theory of the two cultures has been given a new lease on life, for which recourse to religious fundamentalism, ethnic assertion and profligate militarism (not least in the Middle East) produces all kinds of rabid convictions on the one hand, and dialectically, major occasions for vitalising the humanities on the other hand, making them, in the deepest sense of what they should mean, a re-engagement with knowledge, critique and freedom... In short, a new and in many ways unfamiliar landscape stretches out before us, offering no end of an opportunity to exercise our intellectual energies with the heroism and personal stake that has distinguished the best work in the humanities for so many years. Would that our critical models for the years ahead can combine the richness of the past with the sceptical excitement of the new. One must not only hope, but also do. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Re:racism, eurocentrism
an and American imperialism with an attempt to strengthen the positions of the khans, landowners, mullahs," "the Communist International should support bourgeois-democratic national movements in colonial and backward countries only on condition that, in these countries, the elements of future proletarian parties, which will be communist not only in name, are brought together and trained to understand their special tasks, i.e., those of the struggle against the bourgeois-democratic movements within their own nations. The Communist International must enter into a temporary alliance with bourgeois democracy in the colonial and backward countries, but should not merge with it, and should under all circumstances uphold the independence of the proletarian movement even if it is in its most embryonic form" -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Braudel-Brenner-Skocpol-Wallerstein Debates and Non-Debates by Arrighi
as been a constant and distinguishing feature of the Eurocentric world- system, also originated in the Italian system of city-states. In this account the competitive pressures that have promoted and sustained the capitalist transformation and the "endless" expansion of the European world-economy are structural and systemic rather than local and conjunctural. Moreover, their strength constantly increases over time provoking the recurrent systemic crises and developmental breakthroughs that have enabled the Eurocentric world system to globalize itself. In my view, the account meets the most important and valid criticism of Wallerstein's theory of the modern world system without making any concession to the detractors of the world-system perspective. My only hope is that it will not become the object of yet another non-debate. REFERENCES Abu-Lughod, Janet (1989). Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350. New York: Oxford University Press. Arrighi, Giovanni (1994). The Long Twentieth Century. Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times. London: Verso. Arrighi, Giovanni and Fortunata Piselli (1987). "Capitalism Development in Hostile Environments: Feuds, Class Struggles, and Migrations in a Peripheral Region of Southern Italy." Review (Fernand Braudel Center), 10, 4: 648-751. Braudel, Fernand (1982). The Wheels of Commerce. New York: Harper Row. __ (1984). The Perspective of the World. New York: Harper Row. Brenner, Robert (1976). "Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-industrial Europe." Past and Present, 70: 30- 75. __ (1977). "The Origins of Capitalist Development: a Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism." New Left Review, 104: 25-92. __ (1981). "World System Theory and the Transition to Capitalism: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives." Unpublished English version of a paper published in Jochen Blaschke, ed., Perspectiven des Weltsystems. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag 1983. Chase-Dunn, Christopher and Peter Grimes (1995). "World-Systems Analysis." Annual Review of Sociology, 21: 387-417. Friedmann, Harriet (1996). "Prometheus Rebound." Contemporary Sociology, 25, 3: 319-322. McNeill, William (1982). The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Mattingly, Garrett (1988). Renaissance Diplomacy. New York: Dover. Schneider, Jane (1995). "Introduction: The Analytic Strategies of Eric R. Wolf." In J. Schneider and R. Rapp, eds., Articulating Hidden Histories: Exploring the Influence of Eric Wolf. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Skocpol, Theda (1977). "Wallerstein's World Capitalist System: A Theoretical and Historical Critique." American Journal of Sociology, 82, 5: 1075-90. Wallerstein, Immanuel (1974). The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World- Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press. __ (1979 [1974]). "The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist System: Concepts for Comparative Analysis." In I. Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. __ (1992). "The West, Capitalism, and the Modern World- System." Review (Fernand Braudel Center), 15, 4: 561-619. __ (1995). "Evolution of the Modern World-System." Proto-Soziologie, 7: 4-10.9-2. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Imaginary Maps, Gayatri Spivak: Marxist-feminist approach to post-coloniality
rld becoming a "signifier that allows us to forget that 'worlding'" resembles in many ways Marx's notion of the commodity fetish that he describes in volume one of Kapital. In "The Fetishism of the Commodity and its Secret," Marx suggests that commodity products become part of an obfuscating network of signs that obscure the history of labour that went into their production. Spivak suggests that the Third World, like the commodity fetish, becomes a sign that obscures its mode of production, thus making Western dominance appear somehow given or natural. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Re:racism,eurocentrism
Here is some specific historical information on the relationship between latin american revolutionaries to Comintern and Sandino. Mine - Revolutionary Triangle: Sandino, Martí and the Comintern. I. Introduction Augusto C. Sandino (1895-1934) fought against the American troops occupying Nicaragua in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He was acclaimed in revolutionary circles and volunteers from many countries rushed to join him in his fight. One such a man was Salvadorean-born Augustín Farabundo Martí (1893-1932), a persuasive law-school drop-out who became a trusted advisors and Sandinos personal secretary. He joined Sandinos armed peasant band (The Defending Army of the National Sovereignty of Nicaragua -EDSN) in June of 1928, shortly after becoming a Communist Party member in the spring. Two diverging sets of expectations were placed on Martí . In Sandinos eyes, he would help recruit more foreign volunteers for his war; in the Communist Internationals (Comintern) eyes, he would win the rebel chief over to the Communist cause. Martís biographer described him as an unrelenting agitator. [1] He was very successful in winning Sandinos trust and in linking him with the Mexican branch of the Comintern organization but irreparably damaged their relationship, which they terminated in early 1930 in Mexico. In light of previously unknown evidence, this paper presents further arguments to sustain the assertion, which has partly been advanced elsewhere, that the relationship between the two influential Central American revolutionaries, Sandino and Martí, was strained by their personal ideological allegiances. [2] Specifically, it examines Sandinos understanding of his association with Martí and the Comintern. Though known, the unpublished letters we use have been left out of several editions of Sandinos collected documents edited by Sergio Ramírez [3] but they do elicit challenging questions about their seemingly brotherly relationship , the subsequent break up, and about Sandinos involvement with the Comintern, They also provide insights into the last few weeks of Sandinos second sojourn in Mexico and into the operations and squabbles of the Mexican Communist Party of the time. An account of the circumstances surrounding Sandinos trip to, and stay in, Mexico between 1929 and 1930, and his confused dealings with Martí and the Comintern will follow the presentation of the new documents and their authors. A brief discussion of their impact will conclude the paper. 1.The Documents The first of the letters was written by Augusto Sandino to Mexican national Francisco Vera, Secretary of the Provincial Chapter of the Magnetic-Spiritual School of the Universal Commune (EMECU), a school of theosophy Sandino joined while in Mexico. [4] This letter was reproduced in the Spanish cartoon publication of Rius, El hermano Sandino but the full implications of its content are yet to be addressed. It was written shortly after Sandino left Merida, in Yucatan, bound for Mexico City to meet with ex-president Portes Gil. Sandino uses this letter to report of an incident on board the on which he travelled with his trusted friend Farabundo Marti. The following two letters have never been made public and they shed some light into the relationship of the two revolutionaries and their entanglement with the Comintern branch in Mexico. The second letter was written by Nicaraguan physician exiled in Mexico Dr. Pedro José Zepeda, then Sandinos official international representative and spokesman. It is addressed to Mexican Colonel Enrique Rivera Bertrán, who was at the time Sandinos representative in the Mexican port city of Veracruz. The third and last letter is Rivera Bertráns long but unfortunately incomplete response to Zepeda. The two men corresponded in June, 1930, soon after Sandinos departure for the northern hills of Nicaragua. Both wish to come to grips with some of the events that led to Sandinos
GANG OF 3 REVIEWs of ReORIENT
all over the world in European financial markets." Well, bully for Giovanni's suspicion and also for my demonstration of how the use of the Europeans political-military power in Africa and the Americas - for in Asia they were scarcely able to exercise any - were vital for European capacity to amass capital also from Asia. But of course the capital they concentrated to Europe still remained an only very small part of all world capital. Giovanni also charges that I cannot see the politico-military origins of the industrial revolution itself. Well, that depends on whether its origin did or did not lie there. If that means the highly touted state formation and the inter-state system within Western Europe, there is plenty of evidence that it did not generate the industrial revolution, and there is also plenty of evidence that world economic factors did, which ReORIENT is the first book to examine. THE BOTTOM LINE The bottom line and read thread of these three friends' and also other critiques is CAPITALISM. None of the three is willing to contemplate or even examine the evidence that the theoretical concept - indeed terminology - of "capitalism" may be an ideological construct that is out of synch with world historical reality. That very suggestion is so intellectually and even personally threatening to them that they have to - among friends -- resort to Giovanni's relatively begnign distortions of my argument, Immanuel's biting sarcasm and grotesque and even counter-factual charicatures also of me personally, and Samir's complete neglect of the book and its argument altogether. Alas, their use of these tactics and deployment of such weapons on a muddied capitalist battleground of their own choosing only displays their own weakness. Each for his own reasons as well for the albeit be it anti-capitalist ideological reason they share simply will not allow them to confront reality or face the issue posed by real world history. That even these themselves pioneering scholars, former co-authors of mine, and long time friends are so paralyzed and hamstrung is further evidence of how sorely we need a new departure to ReORIENT -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Re: Fwd: Edward Said : Law and order (fwd)
s by the situation worsens and for reasons that should make each of us profoundly ashamed the Arab world is the only part of the globe to appear as if it existed outside time and space in the ordinary sense. I said in an earlier article here, Godot will not come and it is no use waiting for a saviour. The problem of law and order, like all other problems, is one of our own making, and its only solution must be ours as well. http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2000/476/op1.htm __ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Advertisement: Workstation with Monitor under $800! So, you just heard that you need to add how many new workstations by the end of next week? Check out the bundle below. It includes everything you need to get everyone up and running quickly. http://www.listbot.com/links/cdw5 -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Re: it's good news week! (fwd)
udging in his praise of the Al-Masru seizure, US State Department spokesman James P. Rubin declared, We're pleased to see that Iran is taking measures against this illegal traffic. As part of the apparent ongoing rapprochement, Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, on Wednesday welcomed US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's recent diplomatic overture. In a March 17 speech, in which she announced elimination of a US ban on imports of Iranian luxury goods, Albright called for the need to reverse decades of mistrust. She said that the US wanted a new relationship with Iran. Kharrazi stated that the Secretary's comments contained some positive points. During the bloody Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s the US warmed its hands on the flames, while generally favoring Iraq. Today Washington seems bent on once again stirring the pot in the area, while tilted toward Iran. For its part, the Tehran regime is content to trot out anti-American and anti-imperialist rhetoric if this suits its purposes, particularly when billions of dollars in oil money is at issuefor example at the recent OPEC meeting in Viennawhile steadily pursuing a new course in relation to the US. The Iranians are also apparently intent on creating closer ties to the ultra-reactionary Saudi regime. The two governments stood shoulder to shoulder at the OPEC gathering, and there are other indications of their new intimacy. The Saudi regime expressed support for the Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon after recent Israeli raids and Crown Prince Abdullah, increasingly in charge of the Saudi government, met with a delegation from the guerrilla groupthe first official meeting between Hezbollah and a senior Saudi leader. In a surprise move, Iran was also invited to attend a meeting of Arab foreign ministers at which the latest developments in Lebanon were discussed. Turkey, a US proxy of long standing in the region, has launched a new incursion into Iraqi territory. On Thursday the Hussein regime demanded that Turkish troops, pursuing Kurdish rebels, withdraw from its northern province. Baghdad has had no control over the area since the Gulf War in 1991. Up to 7,000 Turkish soldiers, backed by helicopter gunships, crossed into northern Iraq last Saturday in the first offensive against Kurdish forces of the spring. Some 50,000 troops are gathered on the Turkish-Iraqi border, ready to take part in a large-scale operation, according to Turkish and Kurdish sources. In a further development, Hans Blix, the new chief weapons inspector for Iraq, issued a report last week. He outlined plans for a new agency which he claims will not be under any government's thumb. Blix is responding to revelations that the old weapons inspection agency, UNSCOM, was little more than a front for the CIA and other Western intelligence services. He stressed in his report that arms inspectors for UNMOVIC (UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission) will work only for the UN and not for any country's government. The inspectors shall neither seek nor receive instructions from any government and member states shall not seek to influence them in the discharge of their responsibilities, the report said. Blix also indicated that he would not be appointing a deputy, a position traditionally held by an American. The provocative behavior of the UNSCOM inspectors helped provide the pretext for the bombing of Iraq in December 1998. Certain high-ranking Iraqi officials have stated that they will not accept new UN weapons inspectors, while others have hinted at a compromise. The failure of the Iraqis to prove the nonexistence of weapons of mass destruction or even of any capability to make theman impossible taskis still advanced by the US and Britain as an argument for keeping the murderous sanctions in place. -- Mine Aysen Doyran Ph
Re: genome news
or to defend the postmodernist view that everything is relative. We should oppose Wilson's "consilience," because it is an attempt to unify the academic world under a fascist pseudo-science. Marxists strive to unify and expand our understanding of the world. In contrast to Wilson's reductionist, mechanical materialist approach to science, dialectical materialism is the Marxist scientific method based on the reality that everything in the world is interconnected and in the process of changing. In universities today capitalist control over science has been tightened up. Biotech, pharmaceutical, and military interests control public and private research funding, and pressures to obtain grants preoccupy most scientists. In the social sciences and the humanities, however, there are more minority and women faculty and students, and there is more critical and Marxist oriented thinking about society. Wilson wants to use "consilience" to whip the rest of the academic world into line for the ruling class. His sharpest ideological attacks are directed at Marxists. Italian communist leader Antonio Gramsci, writing about the rise of fascism in Italy during the 1920s, called those who played a major role in helping the ruling class build ideological support for fascism "organic intellectuals." E.O. Wilson is an organic intellectual, a "loyalist" who has dedicated his career to assisting the growth of fascism in the United States. Marxists led the anti-fascist struggle to defeat the engenics movement that was the "crown jewel" of fascist pseudo-science during the first half of this century. Today we must organize to defeat Wilson's attempts to make "sociobiological consilience" the academic centerpiece of a new period of fascism. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Re: Re: Re: Re: genome news (fwd)
Steve wrote: Because of these sharp critiques, Wilson reinvented himself as an environmentalist concerned about bio-diversity. Brad replied: If it is an excellent piece of Marxian sociology, why does it make false claims about Wilson's intellectual development? Either Steve does not know enough about E.O. Wilson to know that he was always *both* a sociobiologist and an environmentalist--in which I have better things to spend my time reading, things written by people who have done their homework--or Steve knows that he is lying when he claims that Wilson's environmentalism is an intellectual re-make--in which case I have better things to spend my time reading, things written by people who don't lie to me. Brad, please know what you are saying. Nobody is a lier about Wilson's intellectual development here. Steve is DOCUMENTING passages from Wilson's book. Accordingly, he CITES Wilson who says that human nature "is the_hereditary regularities of mental development that bias cultural evolution in one direction_and thus connect the genes to culture" (p. 164). well, how do you interpret this? just a naive bio-diversity or an objective scientific statement?If you agree with what Wilson says, there is no point in continuing this debate because my reading of him is that he is obviously racist. This is because Wilson is reducing cultural and other social differences to genes, and then reconstructing and universalizing an hypothetical theory of human nature, which is completely false and ideological. Human beings are *not* determined by their genes. They are shaped by the social, cultural, ideological and political-economic environment they live in. As cross-cultural anthropological studies further proves that many societies such as tribal bands, small communities, ancient groupings did not have the same perceptions of masculinity and feminity that we have today. these are socio-historical constructions, sex roles, broadly defined, not genetic givens. the socio-biological claim that people differ because they differ genetically is called RACISM, which is what Wilson does eventually. thus, i don't understand why you support the man! -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Re: Re: Current (heterodox) thinking on interest rates?
the analytical framework of Keynes's "General Theory" is a
comparison of capitalism in terms of risks and consequent rates of interest,
rates of investment, and capital accumulation, and levels of employment and
output. Keynes's social philosophy and corresponding vision of macroeconomic
reality biases his comparison in favor of socialism, or, more precisely, in favor
of "a comprehensive socialization of investment." Recognizing the significant
influence of Keynes's early social philosophy on his subsequent
macroeconomics--which is
firmly established by Allan Meltzer's "different" interpretation of
Keynes--refocuses criticism of Keynes's analytics, provides a basis for assessing
other interpretations of the "General Theory," and helps account for the absence
of reconciliation among the modern recastings of Keynesian macroeconomy.
Kalecki,-Michal. Money and Real Wages,Collected works of Michal Kalecki. Volume
2. Capitalism: Economic dynamics. Edited by Jerzy Osiatynski. Translated by
Chester Adam Kisiel, Oxford; New York; Toronto and Melbourne: Oxford University
Press, Clarendon Press, 1991, pages 21-50. Previously published: [1939]..
Rotheim,-Roy-J.."Marx, Keynes, and the Theory of a Monetary Economy" ,
Caravale,-G.-A., ed. Marx and modern economic analysis. Volume 2. The future of
capitalism and the history of thought. Aldershot, U.K. and Brookfield,
Vt:Elgar, 1991, pages 240-63..
Steindl,-Josef "Capital Gains in Economic Theory and National Accounting"
Banca-Nazionale-del-Lavoro-Quarterly-Review; 51(207), December 1998, pages
435-49.. This paper discusses the place of capital gains in the Keynes-Kalecki
paradigm, arming their relevance in the analysis of saving and spending
decisions. A national accounts scheme is then illustrated, where capital gains
are explicitly considered. The analysis is then briefly extended to consider
the links to the theory of inflation, the effects on interest rates and
stability, the capital gains tax.
Pollin,-Robert, "Marxian and Post Keynesian Developments in the Sphere of
Money, Credit and Finance: Building Alternative Perspectives in Monetary
Macroeconomics" Lippit,-Victor-D., ed. _Radical political economy:
Explorations in alternative economic analysis_. Armonk, N.Y. and London:
Sharpe, 1996, pages 205-25..
Sawyer,-Malcolm, "Money, Finance and Interest Rates: Some Post Keynesian
Reflections", Arestis,-Philip, ed. _Essays in honour of Paul Davidson_. Volume
1. _Keynes, money and the open economy_. Cheltenham, U.K. and Lyme, N.H.: Elgar;
distributed by American International Distribution Corporation Williston, Vt.,
1996,
pages 50-67..
Moore,-Basil-J."Marx, Keynes, Kalecki and Kaldor on the Rate of Interest as a
Monetary Phenomenon", Nell,-Edward-J.; Semmler,-Willi, eds. _Nicholas Kaldor and
mainstream economics: Confrontation or convergence?_. New York: St. Martin's
Press, 1991, pages 225-42..
Samuels,-Warren-J.."Beyond Neoclassical Economics: Heterodox Approaches to
Economic Theory: Foreword" Foldvary,-Fred-E., ed. _Beyond neoclassical
economics: Heterodox approaches to economic theory_. Cheltenham, U.K. and Lyme,
N.H.: Elgar; distributed by American International Distribution Corporation
Williston, Vt., 1996, pages x-xix..Lapavitsas,-Costas, "The Banking School and
the Monetary Thought of Karl Marx" , Cambridge-Journal-of-Economics; 18(5),
October 1994, pages 447-61.. Karl Marx's opposition to the quantity theory of
money, the distinction he drew between fiat and credit money, and the emphasis he
laid on money hoard formation all reveal the influence of the Banking School. His
own monetary work, however, provided important theoretical foundations, which the
anti-quantity theory tradition lacked. First, Marx elaborated the close
connection between forms and functions of money. Second, his analysis of
capitalist reproduction provided a model for the continuous redivision of the
money stock into a circulating and a hoarded part. This work supported the claim
that determination runs from prices to money and not vice versa. (c) 1994
Academic Press, Inc.
Panico,-Carlo, "Marx on the Banking Sector and the Interest Rate: Some Notes for
a Discussion", Science-and-Society; 52(3), Fall 1988, pages 310-25..), Fall 1988,
pages 310-25..
Lianos,-Theodore-P.."Marx on the Rate of Interest"
Review-of-Radical-Political-Economics; 19(3), Fall 1987, pages 34-55..
Spahn,-H.-Peter. "Marx-Schumpeter-Keynes: Drei Fragmente uber Geld, Zins und
Profit" ("Marx-Schumpeter-Keynes: Three Approaches to Money, Interest, and
Profit". With English summary). Jahrbucher-fur-Nationalokonomie-und-Statistik;
199(3), May 1984, pages 237-55
--
Mine Aysen Doyran
PhD Student
Department of Political Science
SUNY at Albany
Nelson A. Rockefeller College
135 Western Ave.; Milne 102
Albany, NY 1
The U.S. and China: Enemies or Allies? by Wallerstein
next 20-30 years? China has learned from its history that it can only be respected in the world if it is a unified state. The underlying political strength of the Chinese Communist Party resides in the fact that it restored such unification in 1949 after a long period of disintegration. Priority number one for the Chinese leadership is thus simply holding the country together. This explains both the firm political hand internally and the emphasis the Chinese government places on reintegrating Taiwan into the Chinese state. This also explains the effort and expenditure they are putting into building a powerful and modern armed forces. It is not that Beijing wishes to expand its zone of sovereignty. Rather it wishes to expand its zone of suzerainty, to revive an old expression long used in accounts of Chinese empires. The goal of political strength is pursued primarily in order to achieve economic strength. The Chinese leadership understands quite well how the capitalist world-economy works. They know that there are different ways in which a weak economic zone can be integrated into the commodity chains of the world-economy. The Chinese can be peripheral exporters who keep very little of the surplus-value they create. And this is precisely their great fear about the future. Or they can put in place various political mechanisms which will enable them to get and keep a larger slice of the world economic pie. This is their middle-run objective. So what is the noise of the last few years, the renewed rattling of swords, the heightened rhetoric of conflict? In a word, it is bargaining. The United States wants China to "open up" more and thereby be included in the World Trade Organization (WTO). China wants to get into the WTO, but on terms that will protect some of its nascent competitive industries. And this debate on economic terms takes place in multiple arenas and under many guises. Naval maneuvers in the China Sea or U.S. congressmen berating the China's record on human rights may be seen as part of the bargaining. Observe two things. China clearly seeks to maintain and expand ties with a number of middle-range powers around the world that are seeking to improve their nuclear arsenal. This annoys the United States, and China has been careful each time to go so far, and no further, or better put, to go so fast, and no faster. It fights U.S. resolutions in the Security Council, but in the end it abstains and does not veto them. And on the other hand, look at the current presidential race in the United States. As of now, there are four serious candidates: Bush and McCain as the possible Republican candidates, Gore and Bradley as the Democratic. These four candidates seek to differentiate themselves from each other. There is only one major geopolitical issue on which there seems to be tacit agreement - maintaining the approach to China that has been pursued by every U.S. president from Nixon to Clinton. So no war, only hard bargaining. Immanuel Wallerstein [These commentaries may be downloaded, forwarded electronically or e-mailed to others, but may not be reproduced in any print medium without permission of copyright holder ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.] ____ Go to List of Commentaries Go to Fernand Braudel Center Home page -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Commentary by Wallerstein: What Are Communist Parties Today? April 1, 2000
ot; ethnic groups, the women, or some combination of these. And once again, there are arguments between those who insist on making priorities among these groups and those who wish to be "ecumenical." We may not know for another decade how these debates, which are now quite active everywhere, will sort out. And therefore we may not know for another decade whether there is, or can be, any role for parties that call themselves "Communist" distinctive from that played by parties that eschew this name. At the present time, to be a Communist is almost a matter of historical sentiment, the embrace of a tradition of combat. And this embrace is exactly the reason why others refuse the appellation, because they associate it with Stalinist terror and Leninist centralized party structures. What being or not being a Communist today does not indicate is a particular political program, either in the short run or even in the long run. It may once again mean that, although for the moment there are no signs of it. But if being a Communist party does not come to represent more than a memory of the past (positive or negative), then there will not be much point to it. Immanuel Wallerstein [These commentaries may be downloaded, forwarded electronically or e-mailed to others, but may not be reproduced in any print medium without permission of copyright holder ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.] __ Go to List of Commentaries Got to Fernand Braudel Center Homepage -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
[Fwd: [Fwd: Trade union statement to IMF/World Bank Spring meetings (ICFTUWebsite)]]
http://www2.icftu.org/displaydocument.asp?DocType=StatementsIndex=991209416Language=EN Title: Trade union statement to IMF/World Bank Spring meetings (ICFTU Website) INTERNATIONAL CONFEDERATION OF FREE TRADE UNIONS (ICFTU) INTERNATIONAL TRADE SECRETARIATS (ITS) TRADE UNION ADVISORY COMMITTEE TO THE OECD (TUAC) SECURING THE CONDITIONS FOR REDUCING POVERTY AND ACHIEVING SUSTAINABLE GROWTH Statement by the ICFTU, TUAC and the ITS to the Spring 2000 Meetings of the IMF and the World Bank (Washington, 16-17 April 2000) Introduction: Prosperity that is Unevenly Shared and Fragile An unprecedented era of world prosperity? 1. Some observers of the international economic situation heralded the beginning of the new millennium with declarations that the world economy was experiencing an unprecedented era of prosperity that promised to continue unabated for the foreseeable future. This prognosis appeared to be based on the fact that the economies of the United States and some other industrialized countries have experienced strong growth in past years, while a few of the Asian countries affected by the 1997 crisis have recently started to show positive growth. In addition, the extension of the economic crisis to other regions of the world, notably Latin America, was neither as extensive nor as deep as some forecasters predicted a year ago. But developing and transition countries caught in poverty trap 2. In actual fact, many regions of the world continue to be caught in a trap of poverty, with no foreseeable prospect of growth. What meagre resources are available are going towards paying off external debt burdens. Such is the case in most of sub-Saharan Africa, much of Asia and Central and Eastern Europe, and many countries of Latin America. And while some East Asian economies are showing signs of growth for the first time in two years, other countries that were among the hardest hit by economic and monetary collapse, such as Indonesia and Russia, have yet to come out of the situations of severe chaos in which their economies found themselves. Economic collapse in some countries of Latin American region 3. The condition of Brazil and some other Latin American economies may not be as bad as the international financial community expected in early 1999, having experienced stagnation rather than negative growth. However other economies in the region have experienced virtual economic collapse, notably some Central American countries and Ecuador. In the latter country, economic depression has led to social and subsequently political crisis. No foreseeable Prospect for growth in many regions of the world 4. The world financial crisis had its greatest impact on working people and the poor. Unfortunately, much of the recovery has been visible in stock prices and other market indicators, but has been slow to affect the lives of those most affected by the crisis. In fact, the recovery that has taken place in many countries affected by financial crisis in recent years, ranging from Mexico to Southeast Asia and the CIS, has seen a remarkable accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, often those benefiting from privatization, while workers standard of living has decreased, unemployment remains high and the number of those living below the poverty level has grown. The misery index remains at an unacceptably high level. Job creation in industrialized Countries may Have peaked 5. Even the industrialized world has not experienced unabated growth. In Japan, for example, after a brief period of positive growth in early 1999, the economy went back into recession in the second half of the year. There are some indications that the period of employment growth experienced in several other industrialized countries may be levelling off. Recent increases in interest rates in the United States, which are spreading to other regions, could lead to slower growth or even recession in those areas of the world currently experiencing some degree of prosperity while worsening the situation in those countries that have experienced crisis or stagnation. It should also not be forgotten that the current locomotive of economic expansion, the United States, is running a huge and growing current account deficit which could provoke sudden international financial instability and a resulting economic downturn. Growing inequity in industrialized countries 6. In addition, US growth has been particularly inequitable in its effects, accompanied
[Fwd: IAFFE in Istanbul/TURKEY]
"fellow" economists should pay attention to this.. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 forthcoming event! http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/jshackel/iaffe/ International Association for Feminist Economics will be metting in Istanbul/TURKEY, Bogazici University, August 15-17, this year!! -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 12222 -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Re: Notes on a talk I will give on Wed.
Michael Parelman wrote: Today, United States depends on the sale of goods protected from competition by intellectual property rights. Not surprisingly, three of the four richest people in this country are associated with one of these companies. Intellectual property rights, however, are monopolies that violate the principles of the free market. michael, i thought intellectual property rights were central to the principles of the free market. what makes capitalism capitalism is the recognition of property rights as inalienable individual rights, the notion of private possession, so to speak. Am i wrong? i don't see how they constitute a monopoly in the free market or violate the principles of the free market. well, capitalism is a monopoly regime of property owners to begin with. what is equally interesting is that monopoly seems to be intrinsic to capitalism, rather than accidental. there are capitalist regimes without intellectual property rights fully established or somewhat established, like those economies in the periphery or semi periphery of the world system (i.e.., Turkey). they are nonetheless still capitalist by virtue of their integration into the world capitalist system. The state often justifies monopolies on the grounds that they are necessary for achieving economics of scale in order to privilege corporate interests, i.e, private sector monopoly or public sector monopoly. how does this differ in the US? In addition to the "formal freedom" market, is there a monopoly capitalism? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Re: Re: CFP -- Deadline is 1 June -- MARXISM 2000 (fwd)
At 16:25 28/03/00 -0800, you wrote: RETHINKING MARXISM announces its fourth International Gala Conference MARXISM 2000 21-24 September (Thursday-Sunday) 2000 University of Massachusetts at Amherst Can I ask within the strict etiquette that Michael imposes on this list, and acknowledging that the announcement of a conference needs to sound as broad as possible, what focus is the "Rethinking Marxism" movement developing? Chris, here is a brief summary of the structure and theoretical focus of the conference. I am sure it will clarify your question. The editors of RETHINKING MARXISM intend "Marxism 2000" to explore and engender fresh insights and hopes, struggles and pleasures, and to (re)claim utopian visions for just and humane global alternatives. There will be a performance of Howard Zinn's nationally acclaimed play, "Marx in Soho," as well as plenary sessions on Global (Dis)Orders, (Re)Turns to Class, and (Re)Claiming Utopia. STRUCTURE: The conference will be held over four days, beginning at noon on Thursday 21 September and ending in early afternoon on Sunday 24 September. In addition to the three plenary sessions and the play, there will be concurrent panels and art/cultural events. We invite the submission of pre-organized sessions that follow traditional or non-traditional formats (such as workshops, roundtables, and dialogue among and between presenters and audience). We encourage those working in areas that intersect with Marxism, such as feminism, political economy, cultural and literary studies, queer theory, working class and labor studies, postcolonial studies, geography and urban studies, social and natural sciences, philosophy, and around the issues of class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and disability, to submit paper and panel proposals. We welcome video, poetry, performance, and all other modes of presentation. Indeed, we encourage paper or panel submissions from those working on any and all subjects of interest for a world without exploitation and oppression. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Voices, periphery, Edward Said: [Fwd: (To POS 787)Fwd: A truly fragile identity]
you can ignore the first two sentences. I tried to reply it directly, but it went through strangely. i am forwarding it now. peace, Mine A very interesting piece by Edward Said. As we discussed in the Ajami book, note the centrality of poetry. See you tonight. Note: forwarded message attached. __ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com MENA Info - http://www.mena.net A truly fragile identity By Edward Said The Knesset debate over whether or not to include a poem by Mahmoud Darwish as an option (not a requirement) in the Israeli Hebrew school curriculum was about as peculiar and unreal an occasion as can be imagined. That a government could be threatened with a no-confidence motion simply because a poem by a non-Israeli poet might or might not be included in what is an overwhelmingly Hebrew-Jewish-Israeli intellectual diet is a bizarre occurrence. For what after all was being threatened if one poem by a Palestinian was to be read? The first thing that comes to mind of course is some sort of mental or spiritual pollution (remember Shimon Peres's recent Davos remark that Israel is a clean island in a sea of pollution) which is very much an obsession in the Israeli collective consciousness, as it was in classical Zionist ideology. "We are pure and they are disturbers of our purity," is the way one can put this astonishingly profound feeling of revulsion and fear towards the Other. Polls taken subsequent to the Knesset debate revealed that a majority of Israelis absolutely reject the idea of accepting any Palestinian literature, or any formal awareness of the Palestinian as a human being with a history and a narrative, within the narrow enclosure of the official Zionist mentality sanctioned by education. I cannot imagine nor do I know of any other situation resembling this one anywhere else in the contemporary world. One hears a lot about Islamic orthodoxy and the excesses of Taliban ideology; but while most Western liberals -- Jewish or not, as the case may be -- assume a certain openness of attitude towards the Other everywhere else on earth, for some reason Israel's peculiar attitude, as embodied in its Basic Laws, its punitive attitudes towards non-Jews (regarding return and land-holding, for example), and its hysterical theories of "security," is mysteriously exempt from comment. All the Western liberals, Jewish as well as non-Jewish, who had so much to say about Islamic intolerance during the debate over the Salman Rushdie fatwa have not opened their mouths today about the attacks on Yossi Sarid and Mahmoud Darwish. I read no commentary in the New York Times suggesting that the notion of reading a poem by a "different" author was tantamount to catastrophe, nor any sage advice to Israeli extremists to mo derate their furor. To the best of my knowledge, the totally bizarre debate itself was reported without any comment, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for the citizens and legislators of a supposedly advanced Western democracy to treat a mere poem by someone not belonging to the minority as a supreme existential threat to the majority identity. We live after all in the 21st century, with e-mails, newspapers, faxes and innumerable communications bombarding our awareness on a second-by-second basis. Why this hysterical reaction by Israelis, and what kind of fragile identity is in question here that it cannot tolerate even the notion -- only the notion -- of a poem by a Palestinian? What first comes to mind of course is not the famous insecurity that generations of onlookers in the Arab world and elsewhere have been taught by Israeli and American policy makers lies at the core of the Israeli identity. Real insecurity would have bred curiosity, a willingness at least to explore and look into the possibility suggested by Yossi Sarid's idea that it might be a good idea for Israeli schoolchildren to read a poem by a Palestinian, if only because after almost 50 years of denying the existence of a Palestinian people official Zionism has finally come round to accepting the possibility. Why not then read a mere poem as a gesture of understanding, if not quite accepting? The vehement rejection of Sarid's notion in the Knesset was hysterical anger, not insecurity, as if for the first time an Israeli had dared open what had been decided years and years ago was a closed book, never to be examined, read, or even talked about. Such rejectionism is hysterical: there can be no other word. What did Darwish's poem in fact threaten? Basically, it allowed the possibility that for an Israeli consciousness maybe the actual existence of a Palestinian was an admissible thing, not as a terrorist, nor as a "peace partner" but as a real human being with a history, presence and language that had an existence independent of Israel, that is, independent of the various mental barriers that official
[Fwd: book about past and future of world revolutions]
at the risk of seeming to push my own cookie, i would suggest that participants in the April 16 demo might benefit from having a look a new book that puts this movement in world historical perspective. Terry Boswell and I have written _The Spiral of Capitalism and Socialism_ in order to explain the evolution of capitalist globalization and to provide direction for establishing a democratic and collectively rational global commonwealth based on an understanding of what we can learn from peoples efforts to do this in the past. no point in finding yourself in DC with nothing to read. check it out at http://www.rienner.com/viewbook.cfm?BOOKID=460search=boswell chriscd
[Fwd: (Fwd) (Fwd) Rushton booklet sent to scholars nationwide]
Some of you have already known this before. I am posting it since I have not heard from ASA yet about the appropriate action taken against Rushton's publisher, so you can still join the struggle to protest this book. Three months ago Transaction sent an abridged version of Rushton's book _ Race, Evolution and Behavior_ to all ASA members without the authorization of ASA. Thus, the book was sent to scholars nation wide. I am attaching a copy of the statement protesting Transaction publishers and Rushton. You can also see wsn archives for this. Just as I was deleting my messages, I thought this group might be interested in the specifics of this relatively recent event. You can still protest it by sending your comments to necessary places. ASA meeting will take place in August 2000, so there is still sometime to protest this Nazi academic. Mine - I had a reaction similar to that of Alan Spector. I posted the message below on PSN and the Association of Black Sociologists list. Steve Rosenthal ** --- Forwarded Message Follows --- Priority: normal Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1999 21:51:22 + Reply-to: Association of Black Sociologists [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Steve Rosenthal [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: (Fwd) Rushton booklet sent to scholars nationwide To:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Transaction Publishers (Somerset, NJ) obtained the mailing lists of the ASA, the APA, and other professional societies and sent out thousands of free copies of a special abridged edition of J. Philippe Rushton's "Race, Evolution, and Behavior." This information comes from a letter sent out to ASA section officers from Felice Levine, executive officer of the ASA. Here is the letter: Dear ASA Members: I learned at the end of last week that Transaction Publishers have used a mailing list rented from the American Sociological Association to send to ASA members an abridged version of the book, Race, Evolution and Behavior, by J. Philippe Rushton. ASA processed a mailing list rental request from Transaction Publishers for mailing a promotional flyer. Such requests for mailing list rentals are processed routinely from well known publishers of scholarly products. ASA did not authorize rental of its mailing list to distribute this book and has written a letter to the President of Transaction expressing grave concerns with this unauthorized use. Apparently a large number of members of the American Psychological Association (APA) also received this book distributed on APA mailing labels. Other societies too may have been used by Transaction to facilitate this distribution. As we learn more, I will keep you informed. Sincerely, Felice J. Levine Executive Officer American Sociological Association ** Several ABS members have posted messages reporting that they received this ugly hate mail. I also received a copy. Members of other sociology lists have also posted messages about receiving the book. This is not an ordinary event. When was the last time a publisher sent out tens of thousands of free copies of a special edition of a monograph? And in a unmarked envelope with no return address? Rushton is part of the Pioneer Fund financed group of Nazi academics whose lies were extensively cited by Murray and Herrnstein in "The Bell Curve." Most of the statements of "acclaim" for the book come from other Pioneer Fund financed fascists. (Bob Newby and I and others published articles on this subject several years ago in a special issue of "The American Behavioral Scientist" that Bob edited.) We should develop some organized responses to this vile mass mailing. For one thing, we should demand that Transaction Publishers reveal who gave them the money to distribute this book. We should further insist that Transaction Publishers be denied permission to set up a booth at any academic conferences. If the ASA and other associations do not bar them, we should picket and leaflet demanding their removal. Any publisher that would distribute such racist garbage has surely forfeited its right to peddle its books at our meetings. Felice Levine's response is grossly inadequate. We should demand that the ASA take much stronger action. Any other suggestions? I'm going to forward this to ASA President Joe Feagin. Steve Rosenthal -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
capitalist benefactors of Rushton's book
Rushton and Pioneer Fund by Steve Rosenthal 07 December 1999 03:34 UTC Below are excerpts of a review I wrote of "The Bell Curve" with information about the Pioneer Fund, Rushton's benefactor. The full text of the review can be found at: http://www.shss.montclair.edu/english/furr/steverbc.html Steve Rosenthal ** Because there is no scientific basis for the claims they make in The Bell Curve, HM rely primarily on some highly "tainted" sources for most of their arguments. In "The Tainted Sources of The Bell Curve," an article in the New York Review of Books, (12/1/94), Charles Lane painstakingly analyzes the sources of HM's claims of inherited racial and class differences in intelligence. Lane demonstrates that the authors of The Bell Curve are closely tied to a group of writers who have edited and contributed to a journal called The Mankind Quarterly and received research money from the Pioneer Fund. What are The Mankind Quarterly and the Pioneer Fund? The Mankind Quarterly is a journal founded in the late 1950's by opponents of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement to publish articles asserting the inferiority of Blacks. Its authors defended the racial policies of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, championed apartheid in South Africa and opposed independence for African countries. Since 1978 the editor of the journal has been Roger Pearson, an organizer of neo-Nazi groups both in Europe and the U.S. In 1982 President Reagan wrote a letter to Pearson to thank him for publishing the works of "scholars" who uphold the "ideals and principles that we value at home and abroad." (The letter is reproduced in Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, by Russ Bellant. "HE WHO PAYS THE PIPER CALLS THE TUNE" The Pioneer Fund, as Lane points out in "The Tainted Sources of The Bell Curve," is a New York foundation established in 1937 with the money of Wycliffe Draper, a textile magnate who admired Nazi Germany and favored sending U.S. Blacks back to Africa. The Pioneer Fund is committed to eugenics, that is, policies of selective breeding for purposes of "race betterment." In the late 1930's the Pioneer Fund gave financial support to both U.S. and German "scientists" who advocated and carried out forced sterilization and later outright genocide against populations deemed to be genetically inferior. The Pioneer Fund bankrolls the journal The Mankind Quarterly. Even more importantly, it has provided millions of dollars in research grants to all the "scholars" in the U.S. since the 1930's who have asserted that there are inherited racial differences in intelligence and who have called for "eugenics" policies to decrease the numbers of "inferior" groups and increase the numbers of "superior" groups. Recent and current recipients of Pioneer Fund grants include Arthur Jensen and William Shockley who a quarter century ago revived racist arguments against Black intelligence; Philippe Rushton, South African born Canadian racist who claims that Blacks have smaller brains and larger penises than whites in order to breed larger numbers of inferior children; Thomas Bouchard, U. of Minnesota professor who studies twins in order to claim that IQ is mainly inherited; Richard Lynn, from Northern Ireland, who asserts that Africans have lower intelligence than African Americans; Robert Gordon, Johns Hopkins sociologist who blames low IQ Blacks for crime; and Linda Gottfredson, U. of Delaware professor who opposes affirmative action for low IQ Blacks. (For further information on the Pioneer Fund, see Adolph Reed's column in the Progressive (December, 1994), and Stefan Kuhl's The Nazi Connection. HM cite no fewer than thirteen such "scholars" supported by the Pioneer Fund. Lynn's work alone is cited twenty-four times in the Bibliography of The Bell Curve. Virtually every important claim HM make is based on citations of works by Pioneer Fund supported, Mankind Quarterly published authors. What this means is that The Bell Curve is a vehicle of Nazi propaganda wrapped in a cover of pseudo-scientific respectability. It is an academic version of Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Re: Left Approach to China Trade: A Critical View
e state monopoly on soy oil. *China will stop state support of exports. *US firms will have new access to banks, insurance companies and telecommunications. *US exporters to China have the right to control distribution of their goods. *Concerning textiles, the USA and China agreed to take measures to prevent disorder on the markets after the elimination of quotas -- which Washington takes to mean that China should erect no barriers to the free flow of USA made products, while the US has the right to stop made in China products coming into the US. This is an unequal treaty in the most elementary sense of the term. If workers in China organize to oppose these terms, we should give them all-out support. But such workers would not be demanding that China not be allowed to trade with the US, but that the terms of trade be more equal. Our demand on the U.S. government should be exactly the opposite of what the AFL-CIO is saying. Instead of trying to block Chinese goods from entering the U.S., we should be for ending all trade barriers for such goods. Instead of opposing trade with China, we should attack the unequal terms of trade Washington seeks to impose on China. As against Washingtons demands on China to further open its markets to US goods -- which is the other side of the protectionist coin -- we should defend the right of China and all over-exploited countries to protect their own industries. The "dont trade with China!" slogan is not just wrong, it is reactionary. It pits US workers against Chinese workers. It cuts across the only road forward for those who want to oppose imperialist globilization -- the international solidarity of all the workers and oppressed. Globilization is here to stay. The only question to be decided in struggle is globalization by whom and for whom. Barry Sheppard is member and steward in IAM at SFO _ Enlighten your in-box. http://www.topica.com/t/15 -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
Re: Some info on women, CATO and discrimination
National Organization for Women; Kilolo Kijakazi, Senior Research Analyst, Center on Budget and Priorities and Lisa Witter, Director, National Council of Women's Organizations' Task Force on Women and Social Security. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session from the audience. Complimentary copies of the report will be available for the press. -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1 -- Mine Aysen Doyran PhD Student Department of Political Science SUNY at Albany Nelson A. Rockefeller College 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102 Albany, NY 1
