PPP comparisons
Take a simple example of Japan and the US. Say the market exchange rate is 110 Yens = One US$. Now take an equivalent basket--in quantity and quality--that contains a burger with fries and a drink. It costs 450 Yens in Tokyo and US$ 2.50 in New York. The PPP exchange rate is then 180 Yens = One US$ (450/2.50). There is nothing imaginary about the PPP exchange rate since it gives you the purchasing power of a country's currency vis-a-vis the US dollar. One thing I've never understood about PPP, is it an attempt to measure -what it is like living in a poor country- or is the idea more modest as the above paragraph suggests trying to demonstrate what the market equivalent amount of currency buys in a given country? For example the PPP GDP or GNP per capita of a country is $US 500. Does this mean that living in that country on that given amount of money is like living in the USA on the same amount of money? PPP (and the averaging and aggregating that goes on) can be misleading.A string sampling bias exists. There are no price differences between countries in goods and services that are offered by MNC's. The costs of Mcdonalds,Bechtel water, Enron nat. gas, or a Blockbuster video is the same across geographical space with very limited differential. The IMF and its coat-tailers always (and ,yes, still) say that the most important economic fundamental is getting prices right. The right price or international market price always seems to be what the good or service costs in the USA. How could it be otherwise, inflation always exists and the bulk of demand for the goods and services offered by MNC's is still in the North hemisphere. Ultimately, the WTO project gets more goods and services to cost what they cost in the USA and Europe. And as that happens, people's access to those goods and services becomes more limited, Bechtel water in South Africa for example. The products offered by local or import substituting businesses cost much less. The marlboro, pizza hut or coca-cola knockoff costs %25 as much. The more foreign based products it counts in its basket of goods, the bigger the PPP number will be. As the world becomes globalized and the stricter that gov'ts enforce WTO rules, the Atlas rather than ppp will come closer to the truth especially with imports and exports being priced in US dollars and the ongoing dollarization of world economies. I don't think this is an unimportant quibble, as it represents trends sometimes called combined and uneven development. Sam Pawlett
Liberia: Another Reagan Legacy
South Africa. Ans so on. Yes, really. That ends my memoriam to Reagan. Sam Pawlett
Re: The IMF and Malawi famine
The last paragraph of this article is quite a statement As Marcus de Moraes, Brazil's Minister of Agriculture, puts it: If we eliminated agricultural subsidies for 24 days, we would eliminate hunger in the world. The reasoning in this article doesn't make sense to me. Presumably, the Brazilian means ending subsidies period and not putting that money towards some kind of foreign aid for countries with starvation and malnutrion. The argument ,as usual, is that subsidies distort market signals and leads to efficiency and loss. But the article states that farm subsidies should be given up because they create an unfair advantage for farmers in the North pricing Southern farmers out of the Northern market. There's nothing here about food markets in the South. Lifting farm subsidies would just give Southern farmers access to Northern markets. Fair enough maybe, but who is going to feed the south? You mean Southern farmers are going to sell to their own people when they can now sell at a higher price in the north? The Brazilian should read A.Sen., a pareto optimal situation may be one where millions are starving to death. The slogan should be we could feed the world if we ended market-based export agriculture. The Brazilian seems to think a pareto optimal situation is an egalitarian one. Any thoughts on this? Sam Pawlett
Re: a query on surface appearances
Devine, James wrote: An e-friend asks: By the way, when you have some time, could you please give me some information about this so-called surface relations that I recently saw on PEN-L in a discussion, if I am not wrong, you were involved? Don't waste too much of your time though. Directing me to the appropriate sources is more than enough. If anyone has any good sources on this, it would help further. The appendix to Cohen's Marx's Theory of History has a lengthy discussion of Marx's statement (ch 50, VIII) But all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided. Also Allen Wood's Marx book has a good discussion. The idea I think is that the capitalist system appears (to some at least) as a system of voluntary exchanges between individuals which masks the true reality: a system of exploitation by capital of labor. Marx gives many more examples of how capitalism disguises the true essence of itself in his theories of rent, alienation and fetishism and has a beautiful rhetorical expression of these ideas in the last two paragraphs of Capital I ch 6. Moreover, the appearance of capitalism as a system of voluntary exchange between individuals is created by understanding the whole (society) in terms of the part (individual) i.e. the appearance of capitalism as a just system of competing individuals is created by capitalism itself. Hope that helps. Sam Pawlett
Nozick dies at 63
And hopefully libertarianism with him... http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/01.17/99-nozick.html Title: Harvard Gazette: Philosopher Nozick dies at 63 Search the Gazette HOME : News Prev issues | Contact us | Harvard News Office Current Issue: January 17, 2002 News News, events, features Science/Research Latest scientific findings Profiles The people behind the university Community Harvard and neighbor communities Sports Scores, highlights, upcoming games On Campus Newsmakers, notes, students, police log Arts Museums, concerts, theater Calendar Two-week listing of upcoming events Philosopher Nozick dies at 63University professor was major intellectual figure of 20th century By Ken Gewertz Gazette Staff Professor Robert Nozick University Professor Robert Nozick, one of the late 20th century's most influential thinkers, died on the morning of Jan. 23 at the age of 63. He had been diagnosed with stomach cancer in 1994. Nozick, known for his wide-ranging intellect and engaging style as both writer and teacher, had taught a course on the Russian Revolution during the fall semester and was planning to teach again in the spring. His last major book, "Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World," was published by Harvard University Press in October 2001. According to Alan Dershowitz, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law and a longtime friend, Nozick had been talking with colleagues and critiquing their work until a week before his death. "His mind remained brilliant and sharp to the very end," Dershowitz said. He added that Nozick was "constantly probing, always learning new subjects. He was a University Professor in the best sense of the term. He taught everybody in every discipline. He was a wonderful teacher, constantly rethinking his own views and sharing his new ideas with students and colleagues. His unique philosophy has influenced generations of readers and will continue to influence people for generations to come." Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers said of Nozick's passing, "I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of Robert Nozick. Harvard and the entire world of ideas have lost a brilliant and provocative scholar, profoundly influential within his own field of philosophy and well beyond. All of us will greatly miss his lively mind and spirited presence, but his ideas and example will continue to enrich us for years to come." Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Jeremy R. Knowles said, "Bob Nozick was a luminous and wide-ranging philosopher who engaged students and colleagues from across the University and beyond. The loss to philosophy and to Harvard is grievous." Philosophy Department Chair Christine Korsgaard described Nozick as "a brilliant and fearless thinker, very fast on his feet in discussion, and apparently interested in everything. Both in his teaching and in his writing, he did not stay within the confines of any traditional field, but rather followed his interests into many areas of philosophy. His works throw light on a broad range of philosophical issues, and on their connection with other disciplines. The courage with which he faced the last years of illness, and the irrepressible energy with which he continued to work, made a very deep impression on all of us." Nozick's controversial and challenging views gained him considerable attention and influence in the world beyond the academy. His first book, "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" (1974), transformed him from a young philosophy professor known only within his profession to the reluctant theoretician of a national political movement. He wrote the book as a critique of "Theory of Justice" (1971), by his Harvard colleague John Rawls, the James Bryant Conant University Professor Emeritus. Rawls' book provided a philosophical underpinning for the bureaucratic welfare state, a methodically reasoned argument for why it was right for the state to redistribute wealth in order to help the poor and disadvantaged. Nozick's book argued that the rights of the individual are primary and that nothing more than a minimal state - sufficient to protect against violence and theft, and to ensure the enforcement of contracts - is justified. "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" won the National Book Award and was named by The Times Literary Supplement as one of "The Hundred Most Influential Books Since the War." A former member of
Confessions of a Philosopher
the verdict: professional philosophy is irrelevant, intellectually, morally and aesthetically bankrupt. Consider the following quotation where he is discussing his BBC Radio 3 series on contemporary philosophers: Academic philosophers were on the whole pleased that it was happening...but these reactions were secondary: far and away their most powerful and intense concern was with who was being invited to take part and to what degree this would enhance their personal standing...a question fiercely discussed over quite a few dinner tables in North Oxford was: Who is going to be invited? Will X get the call, or will he find himself passed over in favour of Y? Each time someone was seen as having been picked out there was a certain amount of sniping, but this was as nothing compared with the overflow of joy each time someone was seen as having been passed over–people actually rang up one another to relay the news from freshly copies of the Radio Times...One simple truth that all this brought home to me was that philosophy was the state it was in at least partly because philosophers, by and large, were the sort of people they were 317-8. Magee does much to expose the power mongering, careerism, callousness and intellectual vacuity of contemporary philosophy. He is influenced by Schopenhauer in his condemnation of philosophy-in-the-university and his conception of philosophy in general is Schopenhaurian through and through. Philosophy is about the study of problems and not texts. The texts should only be an aid to one's own original thinking on matters philosophical. Academic philosophy sees conceptual analysis as an end in itself rather than as a means to an end viz. Solving philosophical problems. The problem began with a wrong turn from Moore and Russell early in the 20th century. Magee rightly skewers the common sense philosophers beginning with Thomas Reid, whose philosophy could be summed as 5 billion people can't be wrong. The truth, Magee insists, is often counter-intuitive. Magee lionizes Popper and expresses contempt for Wittgenstein. The latter an overrated sophist in his later work while the early work is derivative of Schopenhauer. Wittgenstein is not worth bothering with despite the fact that his conception of philosophy is similiar to Magees. Magee claims that Popper was the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. While no doubt Sir Karl was a extremely brilliant man who knew and contributed much, Magee is a little too hortatory given that Popper's main insights were derived from J.S. Mill. As for autobiography, Magee is vague and gives no details, probably for the better. Nothing about sexual conquests, successful power struggles, wild parties or gossip of any kind. This is highly salutary as it conveys Magee's intellectual seriousness. As he recounts it, Magees life bears superficial resemblance to one of his idols, Gustav Mahler. Magee's account of his obsession with his own death, the writing of his novel (Facing Death) and his solution (discovering Schopenhauer) seem hackneyed if not downright farcical or hypocritical coming from an upper class aesthete who has led a life of leisure attending the Bayreuth and Salzburg festivals regularly as well as concerts and theatres at least five times a week and who has never worked for a wage. What good is a philosopher who hasn't agonized over the meaning of death and hasn't been driven to despair over the thought of his own death? Ah, the sufferings of the upper classes. Stylistically, the writing is quite good despite a dozen or so very irritating appearances of the word marinate. There are also numerous factual errors; the accusation that Ralph Schoenman was a CIA agent and that Mahler's third symphony was not premiered until 1961 (Magee was,of course, in attendance). Mahler himself gave the premiere of his third symphony in Krefeld in 1902. Finally, Magee has absolutely no sense of humor and takes himself far,far too seriously making himself look like Zelig of the Woody Allen film. Despite the many criticisms one could make of Magee and his book, ( blindspots the size of the Milky Way in science and political economy) it is worth reading to encounter a man who has led a remarkable life, teaching at Oxford and other elite institutions, traversed the globe as BBC foreign affairs correspondent, author of 12 high quality and well received books, radio and TV host of programmes of the highest calibre, elected as Labor M.P. twice and came to know many major figured of 20th century artistic, political and intellectual life. Sam Pawlett
paper on Argentina
http://www.dieoff.com/page229.pdf ~~~ PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Imperialism and Environment
Julio Huato: But my question was, why should we think that poor countries -- as they grow -- won't develop the will and mechanisms to use these additional opportunities and resources in a way that limits environmental damage? Because it isn't happening. The most industrialized of the poor countries (S.Korea, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia) are environmental disasters. I've seen it first hand. There is a strong incentive to dump the costs of industrialization onto the environment. They--as some rich countries are doing-- might try and clean up their act but the environmental damage is in many cases irreversible (e.g. Lake Erie and Ontario). The incentive to pollute is built into capitalism. Even many neoclassical economists would agree. But, important as it is, the relative role of imperialist exploitation in the overall exploitation of workers in the Third World tends to decline as capitalist production proper expands. Whoa, a real Kautskyite. But no, the rate of exploitation rises as productivity (surplus value) increases. For example, auto workers in Mexico work at close to the same level of productivity as Canadians or Americans but are only paid a fraction. They are more exploited and most of that surplus value ends up in the rich countries. A Marxist economist named Geoffrey Kay once suggested that the problem with Africa was that it wasn't exploited enough i.e. there was too little investment and productivity was too low. You seem to agree with him. If you imply that, in the long run, capitalist growth is a necessary condition for the living and working conditions of workers in the Third World to improve, I agree. Of course, things would change if a union of rich socialist countries showed up to assist the poor ones. __ If capitalism--in your view-- is so good for the working class, why bother with socialism? Donald Sassoon in his 100 Years of Socialism, makes the argument that socialism is completely dependent on capitalism (specifically capitalist growth) so all that's left for socialists to do is redistribute the goodies of capitalism. Do you agree? Socialism,for me, is about more than doing capitalism better than the capitalists. Sam Pawlett
Re: Re: : Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
Why should we assume that Third World countries, as they industrialize, will not act to limit environmental damage? How are they to pay for it? World Bank loans? I try not to assume anything, but it's safe to say that LDC countries will follow the path of least resistance (i.e. the cheapest) towards industrialization. That's what has and is happening. I mean, why import natural gas for 'clean' power boilers when you have lots of domestic coal? Most LDC's are already heavily in debt to the North and will (and should) try to keep an independent energy policy. The population of the now rich countries may not have a monopoly over environmental concerns. Hope not but as history has shown the poor countries are willing to make huge sacrifices vis a vis the environment. If the infamous statement that, under capitalism, the country that is more developed industrially only shows to the less developed the image of its own future (Marx) has any bit of validity, Ha. Maybe in the 19th century, but it will not happen as long as imperialism and capitalism are hegemonic in the world system. then we'd expect the newly industrialized countries to take some action -- set environmental standards, and try to enforce them. We would expect the poor countries to pollute like hell as the rich countries have done. Some leftists (Bello,Martin K.K.Peng) argue that rich countries setting environmental standards for poor ones constitutes a form of imperialism since env. standards are a barrier to economic growth. Northern environmentalism is just another means of keeping the South under the boot. I am sensitive to that argument. I'll stop here since I've forgotten what the point of this whole exchange was. Sam Pawlett
Re: Re: : Yet another take on Hubbert's peak
Ken Hanly: Have we any examples from the past of people making 100 year predictions re energy? Are any near the mark? Were they mostly too optimistic or pessimistic? Yeah, well I think Jevons predicted the end of coal. But more to the point, it's time to move beyond 'the boy who cried wolf objection.' I used to make it myself. Besides being an uninteresting conversation stopper, it is an evasion of the issues. Because people were wrong in the past does not mean people will be wrong now or in the future and that people should not go about trying to understand where the world is headed based on contemporary knowledge. It's like sceptical arguments in epistemology but how do you _really_ know that is a dagger you see before you? or what about the problem of induction and the fallibility of human knowledge? or what if a giant meteor hits the earth? Simply assuming that some magical solution will appear in the future that will solve humanity's problems requires a leap of faith that Kierkagaard would not sanction let alone any Marxist supposedly wedded to a scientific conception of the world. The point of trying to track trends into the future is to change things now to give people a guideline of what and where to change , rather than placing faith in magic and mad scientists developing time machines. If you disagree with the analysis and the projections then refute them. Sam Pawlett
energy and wolves
Ken Hanly: Have we any examples from the past of people making 100 year predictions re energy? Are any near the mark? Were they mostly too optimistic or pessimistic? Yeah, well I think Jevons predicted the end of coal. But more to the point, it's time to move beyond 'the boy who cried wolf objection.' I used to make it myself. Besides being an uninteresting conversation stopper, it is an evasion of the issues. Because people were wrong in the past does not mean people will be wrong now or in the future and that people should not go about trying to understand where the world is headed based on contemporary knowledge. It's like sceptical arguments in epistemology but how do you _really_ know that is a dagger you see before you? or what about the problem of induction and the fallibility of human knowledge? or what if a giant meteor hits the earth? Simply assuming that some magical solution will appear in the future that will solve humanity's problems requires a leap of faith that Kierkagaard would not sanction let alone any Marxist supposedly wedded to a scientific conception of the world. The point of trying to track trends into the future is to change things now to give people a guideline of what and where to change , rather than placing faith in magic and mad scientists developing time machines. If you disagree with the analysis and the projections then refute them. Sam Pawlett
Re: Re: Re: Re: 24 Villagers Killed in Colombia.
(posted to the Marxism list in response to my post on Rappaport's ATC article) Not that this is news or anything, but, in my searches for FARC news through mainstream media, I regularly come across reports about 'decapitated peasants' and the like It was and is common practice in 'dirty' wars and violent revolutions for the forces of reaction to wear the uniforms of the insurgents and then go on to commit horrible atrocities, often placing the revolutionaries flag or other symbols over the dead bodies. Very common in El Salvador, Guatemala and Colombia. This does not mean that FARC have not committed atrocites or excuse their sometimes behavior. But, of course, revolution isn't a tea party. Sam Pawlett
Nozick
Is it true that Nozick repudiated Anarchy, State and Utopia? Any references? In his The Examined Life. On the whole a crappy book, full of Buddhist and Hindu nonsense and other grade 'A' bullshit about America being a democracy. Sam Pawlett
Not in Our Genes,after all.
Original Message Subject: [evol-psych] The left can celebrate the latest news on genes, but not too much Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 14:02:07 - From: "Ian Pitchford" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: "Ian Pitchford" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Organization: http://www.human-nature.com/darwin/index.html To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] NEW STATESMAN Brotherhood of man and roundworm Ziauddin Sardar Monday 19th February 2001 The left can celebrate the latest news on genes, but not too much. By Ziauddin Sardar Rejoice, my fellow lefties! We were right all along. Human beings, it turns out, are much more than the products of their genes. Now that scientists have actually read and analysed the human genome they completed sequencing last June, biological determinists do not know whether to laugh or cry. But they are definitely turning red all over. The simultaneous publication of the results of the Human Genome Project, by the publicly funded International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium and the private American company Celera Genomics, contains many surprises. The biggest surprise is the actual number of genes in the human genome.For decades, scientists have been predicting there would be between 80,000 and 150,000; the real number turns out to be around 30,000. This is hardly more than the tiny plant thale cress with 25,495 genes, the fruit fly with 13,601 and the roundworm with 19,099. Full text: http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/200102190009.htm News in Brain and Behavioural Sciences http://human-nature.com/nibbs/ To subscribe/unsubscribe/select DIGEST go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/evolutionary-psychology Join the Human Behaviour and Evolution Society http://www.des.ucdavis.edu/hbesrenew/
Hernando de Soto
David Shemano wrote: -- Let me rephrase it this way. De Soto wants to the poor to become "capitalists." The poor aren't capitalists because they have no employees. Schemes for popular entrepeneurship, microcredit, worker-ownership etc. have been used by states and gov'ts to break bonds of solidarity by getting people to compete against each other. Many street vendors and taxi drivers in countries that had a high degree of class consciousness (e.g. Bolivia and Chile) will tell you as much. Scratch a La Paz street hawker and you will find a fire breathing Trotskyist fired miner. Many of the street hawkers are former employees of state industries that lost their jobs in the big privatization pushes that startedwith a vengeance in the early 80's. This story is told in a wonderful book _We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us_ by June Nash. I've seen many street capitalists erupt into fistcuffs, fighting over turf, price wars etc. The black markets are often controlled by thugs and sometimes state and intelligence agencies which use them for money laundering and sources of FX. These markets appear to thrive from an abstract neoclassical point of view but they do nothing to alleviate poverty and contribute to a better quality of life. I mean middle aged men standing beside cheap bathroom scales for 12 hours a day, charging you a peso to take your weight. Is that the future? You have maybe 2 or 3 people selling the exact same goods on one city block. What a pathetic joke. I can only conclude that the sole function of De Soto's ideas are to help spread and legitimate capitalist individualism since they do nothing to help poverty. He sees that they have assets -- homes, personal property, businesses. But they are acting in the black market because their assets are not legally titled and protected. Because they do not have legal title, their ability to turn their assets into "capital" is severely limited. De Soto is saying that to have capitalism you need clear rules of property and contract. One of the problems is that many poor "capitalists" deal in contraband, smuggling goods across the borders and making a measly profit from the differences in exchange rates. Many of these goods are rip-offs from Western companies e.g. fake Levi's, fake Casio watches etc. I once took an (unheated) train across the altiplano from Oroyo, Bolivia to Calama, Chile that was full of such smugglers including a former Trot miner who had taken part in the 1956 Bolivian revolution. You can't assign property rights, licences and formal contracts without first repealing intellectual property rights, copyright and patents. That is not true in the Third World that he discusses -- because the homes are not legally titled, they cannot be used for leverage. But what bank is going to lend money on homes that are poor quality and are made of stolen goods? What would be the difference if the poor were given deeds to their home and business licenses for their black market businesses? Very Difficult. It's analogous to the problems with legalizing drugs. The state will have to take on entrenched mafias and cartels. It may help in the food business where health regulations can be enforced. The poor may have an incentive to get deeds and business licences since state tax collectors and regulators are sometimes less corrupt and violent than mafias and street gangs which control the black market. With respect to increasing social inequality, obviously that is where you and I go our separate ways. In my view, if helping the poor results in some getting richer than others, that doesn't bother me a bit. The kulaks were hated by just about everybody. Sam Pawlett
Re: Hernando de Soto
What would be the difference if the poor were given deeds to their home and business licenses for their black market businesses? I forgot to add that black markets have evolved to _evade_ business licences, deeds and so on (see Patriots and Profiteers by R.T. Naylor). Giving someone a business licence to sell stolen goods is a reduction ad absurdum of property rights. Sam Pawlett
Re: Re: Re: hires
Justin Schwartz wrote: Canada's a different world in many fields. The leading Canadian philosophy journal, CJP, takes Marxism seriously; regularly publishes in radical philosophy; Not anymore now that Kai Nielson and Robert Ware (University of Calgary) no longer edit it. Sam P.
human behavior
Justin Schwartz wrote: Oh, Norm, stop the silly bad sociobiology. Competitive behavior is "programmed" into us, but it is triggered only in certain circumstances. Violent behavior is likewise "programmed: into us, but we don't say, well in that case, let's legalize assault and murder! But sociobiologists and its new and improved version, evolutionary psychology, would say you are committing the naturalistic fallacy here. SOB's are only trying to give causal explanations of behavior and pass no judgement on it morally. Because males are adapted for rape and murder doesn't make it morally right.Indeed, recent authors on the ev-psych of rape like Thornhill/Palmer explicitly say they are trying to explain violence in order to help eliminate it. Or so they say. Besides, suppose you are right that we are hard wired for dominance. Do we want to allow ourselves to indulge in this sort of behavior? We are probablya s hard wired for violence (in a wide variety of circumstances) as we are for anything: so we should indulge this bad propensity? If humans are hard wired for violence it is only among males. Sexual selection confers advantage on males who sire more offspring no matter how it is done. Better fighters have more opportunities for reproductive success. If I can beat the shit out of you then I get the girl, no matter what the girl thinks. That's the argument and I think it is wrong. I'll post on this stuff later. Saying that males should practice violence because we are hard wired for it, confuses "is" and "ought". It's the "is" claim I want to refute and not the normative claim (the latter being so absurd it doesn't merit comment.) Hard wiring doesn't mean "can't': it just means "harder". Yes, and hard wiring is consistent with any number of behaviors (multiple realizability of brain states.) Sam Pawlett
needs
Justin Schwartz wrote: The reason music used to sound like vinyl is that it was on vinyl, pops, scratches, and all. But if you want to listen to final, feel free. Me, I am happy listening to classic jazz that was unavailable in vinyl. AND that sounds lots better than it could on dusty old '78s or LP salvaged from the 50s. Only because the old LP's and SP's were mono and not stereo recordings. Analogue is superior to digital because the digitial coding process loses sound that doesn't fall into the 01-01-01 pattern. Stereo LP's in decent condition with a decent stereo sound better than CD's. Especially in the case of acoustic music where silence between notes is important. Piano roll recordings were in stereo, so LP's like Rachmaninov's, Friedman's, J-R Mortons piano roll recordings sound like they were recorded yesterday even though they were recorded int he 1920's. Do you want to know what a Blue Note LP from 55 sounds like now, if you can find it? Not bad. If you have original Blue Note pressings from the 50's you are rich. Same with the RCA Living Stereo series where even LP's in mediocre shape go for $75. There have been some great re-issues in jazz and many hundreds still crying for re-issue. (Sonny Criss complete Imperial Sessions--those LP's are worth 100's of dollars, Grant Green- Solid, Larry Young- Unity,Brotzmann-Nipples, Andrew Hill and so on), the problem is many are only limited issue and are still very expensive. Same with classical music, though the big companies(EMI,DG,etc. whose classical music divisions are in trouble) are now re-issuing their back catalogues at super cut prices. You can get Marc-Andre Hamelin's Alkan recording for $12.Will everything eventually be re-issued on CD? Maybe. Sam Pawlett
[Fwd: [evol-psych] Gould/Dawkins/Dennett/Blackmore/Behe debate]
Check out this important Gould/Dawkins debate. http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i5/evolutionary-war.jpg Sam Pawlett
Open Letter to Readers Of Kolakowski
Rob Schaap wrote: What do the Penpals think of Leszek Kolakowski's *Main Currents of Marxism* trilogy. Only just got my mits on it, but it reads pretty silkily - especially for a translation. Good on philosophy, poor on economics and politics. His interpretations are questionable and there is a lot of cold-war style anti-communism and unfashionable British Empiricism. K discusses a lot of stuff that hasn't been translated into English such as pre-WWII Polish Marxists and figures like like Otto Bauer who tried to synthesize Kant and Marx. K in general, is very arrogant and his treatments of the Marxist tradition are unduely harsh. To take one example, Mao's writings are dismissed as "infantile" and "childlike" yet the fact that Mao led a successful revolution in the most populated and harshest (climate-wise) countries in the world and the fact that the subsequent system that was set up led to great improvements in the lives of most Chinese receives no attention let alone explanation even though the Chinese system has its intellectual foundation in the writings of Chairman Mao. Mao's military writings receive a lot of attention from a lot of people though I guess that isn't Kolakowski's area. Kolakowski let his dogmatic anti-Stalinism, anti-Marxism and anti-Socialism got in the way of his better intellectual judgement at times I think. There are some fierce criticisms of Kolakowski that contain a lot of ad hominem stuff. Jonathan Ree, Ralph Miliband and E.P Thompson to name a few. Kolakowski's reply to Miliband was "My Correct Views on Everything" (apparently he wasn't being ironic) that appeared in an early 70's Socialist Register, a pretty scathing attack on academic Marxists. Still,IMO,M.C.M. is very much worth reading and a good reference text. The Kolakowski of the 80's and 90's was Jon Elster. Sam Pawlett
Open Letter to Readers Of Kolakowski
Justin Schwartz wrote: Oh, come on, Sam. Elster can't lay a hand on Kolokowski as a scholar or an interpreter of Marx: K's readings are always possible, while Elsters' are often just obtuse or perverse. On the other side, Elster isn't anti-Marxist; he wasn't trying to construct a tombstone, but to do develop and reconstitute the tradition. --jks I agree. I should have said "trying to be the Kolakowski of the 80's." Kolakowski thought that some of the tenets of Marxism (as he defined it) were true but could be integrated into mainstream history and social science. I read Elster much the same way incorporating what he thought was true in Marx into mainstream social science (I would guess that rational choice theory is mainstream in poli sci/sociology and economics nowadays) such that there was no longer a distinct theoretical tradition called "Marxism". Just regular 'nuts'n' bolts' of social science with some Marxian concepts mixed in. Kolakowski's erudition is(was) quite stunning. The complete works of Lenin, Trotsky, Kautsky, Plekhnakov, Luxembourg, Lukacs,Gramsci and on ...in the original languages. Sam Pawlett
query
How long have humans used contraception and abortion? Is it fair to say since humans have had sex other than for procreation? Presumably, said practices have been around before writing was invented but records can only go as far back as the written word. The earliest references are in the Book of Genesis and in Ancient Egyptian records (papyrus paper.) Contraception and abortion must go back before that...but how far? Other mammals rely on "natural" forms of birth control but do any use contraception or abortion? What is some good reading material? Also, is the U.S. Bureau of Justice the best place for stats on violent crime? This stuff is for,you guessed it, an article on biological explanations of violence (i.e. violence as a male reproductive strategy.) Sam Pawlett
Re: Oil Socialism
Mikalac Norman S NSSC wrote: i'm curious how mark arrives at this conclusion. capitalism can't exist w/o fossil fuels? why can't it just switch to other fuels: nuclear, solar, hydrogen, biomass, etc.? I don't think Mark is on Pen-l but I think this is what he would say: there are no alternatives to fossil fuels. Nuclear power is an energy sink. Hydrogen is not a naturally occuring compound (on earth), it has to be manufactured with...fossil fuels. Biomass ethanol might be an energy sink and if it isn't it would take too much land out of food production to grown enough corn to fuel the world's fleet of cars. Ethanol must also be manufactured with fossil fuels. so what if fuel costs become higher in the short run? can't it just pass them along to the consumer? Yes, but fossil fuel is one of the main inputs into modern industrial agriculture. Passing costs on to the consumer will mean higher food prices, perhaps manageable(without massive uprising) in the northern countries but will mean starvation in the south where most countries haveto import their food using FX. in the longer run, alternate fuels might turn out to be cheaper depending on innovations in related science and technology. Waiting for Godot. Sam Pawlett
Re: Jim Blaut
I was shocked to hear of Jim's passing, I didn't know his age or of his health problems. I didn't always agree with him but I,and doubtless many others, learned a lot from Jim both from his published work and exchanges on the internet and was hoping to learn more. His work on Euro-centrism in Marxism and historiography in general is a tremendous contribution that should be widely known and studied by everyone. I was always impressed with how generous Jim was with his time explaining things to us younger scholars and activists. The left has lost a great scholar and activist and will have to work hard to pick up where he left off. I'll never forget him. Sam Pawlett
Canadian Elections
creationism and labelled Jews as genetically evil etc. Their appeal is primarily a reaction to the corruption and arrogence of the Liberals who though elected from a moderate liberal/social democratic platform, have consistently governed from a neo-liberal right position. The difference in the party platforms between the Liberals and the Alliance is quite minimal. The split between the Alliance and the Liberals would correspond to the split between the "family values" Republicans and ,say, the more libertarian wing of that party. Canada is turning (back?) into a raw materials exporter with an educated, low wage workforce to attract foreign companies. As a bonus,foreign companies do not have to pay benefits because they are covered by the various governments. Thoughts anyone? Sam Pawlett
Re: unemployment corruption
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I can't remember any details, but Michael Vickery had a discussion of this topic in a book on Cambodia in which I thought he did a good job of deflating the KR's pretensions to being socialists. I haven't read it in many years, though. There's a new edition of Vickery's book out. The best book on that period in Cambodia. Vickery argues that DK was closest to what Marx,at times, called an "asiatic mode of production." Sam Pawlett
Memory History
Louis Proyect wrote: Actually, all of the greatest American literature seems to be wrapped around this dialectic in one fashion or another. Huck Finn suffers a "loss of innocence" when he abets a runaway slave. Dos Passos' USA trilogy examines the fate of numerous characters who forsake the idealistic dreams of their youth. I find this novel much more compelling than the upbeat narratives of Popular Front novelists like John Steinbeck whose characters are pure and innocent as the day is long. In James T. Farrell's "Studs Lonigan", another against the grain 1930s novel, the rite of passage consists of ever more degrading losses of innocence, including the wrenching climax when Studs is initiated into the Elks or some other fraternal association. One of the great insights of the Beat Generation is that the American Colossus is inimical to purity and innocence, thus the search for a mythical America in "On the Road", Gary Snyder's Zen poems, etc. And one step further there is Dreiser,Hawthorne and Eugene'O'Neill where loss of innnocence leads to tragedy and in O'Neill's case utter despair once the illusions of self and society of 'ordinary' Americans are stripped away; see especially "The Iceman Cometh". Apart from Marx and Engels, one of the only economists with a deep sense of the tragic nature of the human condition is Amartya Sen whose stoic acceptance of the tragic nature of the lives of the poorest under capitalism render him a modern Marcus Aurelius or Senaca. Sam Pawlett
Re: Re: Query on teminology, was Re: . . .labor/gender issues/corpor...
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Micro economics, basically price theory, is so called because it deals with market equilibriations based on small scale interactions--sales, purchases--that are aggregated. Macro economics concerns government economic activities designed to regulate unhappy effects of otherwise unchecked markets--it was due to Keynes in the main. Many (most?) economists don't even believe in macroeconomics or aggregates anymore (that's what I was taught in undergrad economics), thinking that the aggregate categories of the economy have been reduced to individual behavior (microtheory). Microeconomics can and does explain everything without recourse to the woolly-headed, ontologically non-existent categories of macro. However, they, the microeconomists do not apply their reductionism consisently since they still talk about macro entities like "family","firm" and even "individual", they apply it when and where it suits them. I can't remember who said it but there'e the saying you have to accept Keynes before you can accept Marx. Sam Pawlett
pomoistas
Nicole Seibert wrote: Check out James Hillman. You might just like him. He wrote A Blue Fire and The Myth of Analysis. Also, you could read Kristeva, Lacan, Nicholson, McNay, Grosz, Deleuze and of course, David Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity. Check out David Hume: "When we run over our libraries persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." Enquiry Into Human Understanding final paragraph.
Re: AM
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As an intellectual movement, analytical Marxism has run out steam. There remains a body of excellent work, even if the people who produced it are no longer mainly working in the area. Yes. One of the reasons for this was that AM and the debates within it were Marxological i.e. analyzing and debating what Marx "really" ment. Putting quotations from marx together and then proving that Marx was a functionalist, historical determinist or whatever. This is interesting as far as it goes but will always remain attractive mainly to those on the academic side of the fence.Once these debates had kind of worked themselves out and the participants decided they had nothing more to say to each other, that was it. Instead, AM should have taken its formidable intellectual tools combined with Marx's approach and continued Marx's project into areas that he did not and could not have written about. Further, some AMs show little knowledge about any kind of history, victims of the academic division of labor. They didn't know much about what they were trying to explain. In Roemer's case, it seems to me that he was trying to show that the Marxist conceptual vocabulary is consistent with formal modeling in mainstream economics. I remember an article he wrote in the early 80's for the Bell Journal of Economics where he formalizes what he took to be Lenin's theory of revolution. My answer is: well so what? However, the rather silly question was posed, "Is it Marxism?," to which the only sensible answer is, "It calls itself that, and who appointed you to the purity police?" And "Why is thata n interesting question?" Asking "Is it Marxism" is, I think, a way of asking about political allegiance. Gramsci thought that Marxism should contain all the elements necessary to understand the world: "Orthodoxy is not to be looked for in this or that adherent to the philosophy of praxis [Marxism-SP], or in this or that tendency connected with currents extraneous to the original doctrine, but in the fundamental concept that the philosophy of praxis is 'sufficient unto itself', that it contain in itself all the fundamental elements needed to construct a total and integral conception of the world, a total philosophy and theory of natural science, and not only that but everything that is needed to give life to an integral practical organisation of society, that is, a total integrated civilisation." SPN,462. A bit optimistic maybe, but,yes, a totalising theory. Postmodernism eat your heart out! SP
Re: AP
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I will add that the anti-metaphysical animus of logical positivism was wholly gone by then; courses were offered on metaphysics, and "epistemology metaphysics" is one of the core specializations. The anti-metaphysics of the original Logical Positivists was ultimately aimed at destroying bogus reactionary political theories like Nazism which rest on a lot of metaphysics (i.e. empirically unverifiable propositions) Many of the LP's were with the left and their specific target was the old Nazi Heidegger. The situation today is somewhat inverted with many political leftists embracing various post-analytic philosophical theories under the rubric "postmodernism" which has re-introduced a lot of the metaphysics the LP's were trying to disprove or at least discredit. However, 25 years later, things have rather come apart. There are no common doctrines or methods, the territory is pretty well mapped, and while there is a lot of sophistication, there is not much progress or sense of progress. I studied analytic philosophy for many years including,briefly, with some big names Keith Lehrer, Robert Solomon, Martin Davies Kit Fine... Many professional philosophers are themselves dissatisfied with the current situation. Hundreds of journal articles do nothing but clarify a few terms (their real function is to promote careers.) The motto "never a climb a fence unless you can sit on it" fits here. Sam Pawlett
Re: Malthus revisited
Louis Proyect wrote: Mark Jones' alleged raising of the overpopulation question leads us once again into a discussion of the Marxist critique of Malthus. I would refer PEN-L'ers to Michael Perelman's "Marx's Crises Theory: Scarcity, Labor and Finance", specifically chapter two on "Marx, Malthus, and the Concept of Natural Resource Scarcity". It is one of the best things I have ever read on the subject. A useful resource (no pun) is the collection edited by Ronald Meek *MArx and Engels on the Population Bomb* It includes a fine review essay by Meek himself who argues that Keynes was Malthus in modern garb. Marx and Engels both pointed some of their most fiery polemics at Malthus. Malthus was obviously wrong, birth rates decline when absolute poverty is alleviated and food production increased. As Marx argues in "Malthus as Apologist" in volii of TSV, Malthus' MO was in defending the interests of the landed aristocracy. "not a man of science but a bought advocate, a pleader on behalf of their enemies, a shameless sycophant of the ruling classes"The same thing carries on today, with the landed aristocracy being the most forceful advocates of Malthusianism and the Malthusianism of the mainstream environmental movement (Sierra Club etc.) as well as being the main financial backers of said movement. Sam Pawlett
Altruism
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Isn't altruism a dialectical twin of individualism? The concept of "altruism" emerged in the English language in the mid-19th century, according to the OED. The word is used in attempts to explain why an individual cares (or should care) about anyone besides himself at all. Altruism appears to be an individualistic term because meth. individualists use it, but that doesn't necessarily have to be the case. Altruism is a technical term in biology, psychology and philosophy and is used diffently in these areas, making it a thorny subject. In evolutionary biology, an individual is altruisic if it increases the fitness of others at the expense of its own. In psychology it usually has to do with the motives for acting with the goal (as an end in itself) of improving others' welfare. The two uses are seperate and not necessarily congruent. For example, someone in a group who helps everyone else but only because it makes him feel good is an evolutioanry altruist but also a psychological egoist. An interesting book is *Unto Others.The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior* by Elliot Sober and David Sloan Wilson. The authors, I think, are kinds of Marxists but the book is written for a general audience. They argue that altruism requires group selection to evolve because altruists have a low fitness within groups (they sire less offspring) but increase the fitness of their group as a whole. So altruism can only thrive amongst a group of altruists who ,as a group, will thrive compared to other groups because altruists will tend to gravitate towards each other. There are a lot of interesting thigns in the book, including solid refutation of selfish gene theory and discussion of methodological issues. These guys cover a lot of ground. Altruism can be, and presumably is, used in rat choice theory because you just have to enter "concern for others" into a utility function. It would seem hard to build a comprehensive economic model with altruism though. I guess you could argue that altruism is a preference, a preferred outcome that would influence someone's choice. Jim Devine wrote: What the "worst outcome" is depends on your perspective. The "I cooperate, you defect" outcome is the worst only from an individual's (my) perspective, whereas the "you cooperate, I defect" would be the worst from the other individual's (your) perspective. From the _social_ perspective, the worst would be "both defect." The point is amplified in discussion of altruism since altruism decreases individual fitness within groups but increases the fitness of the group as a whole. Groups of altruists do better than groups of exploiters (defectors). Sam Pawlett
GT
Jim Devine wrote: The first part makes sense to me. I think that the concept of altruism (usually meaning self-sacrifice to help others) is impoverished. You are accurate to reject the individualism/altruism duality. People have what Elster calls "mixed motives," though his vision seems limited, too. FWIW, Elster has moved away from rat choice and is now focused on social norms and his latest book is on emotions. He now thinks that RT is limited in what it can explain both on the macro and micro social level. All psychological theory, I think, should be of the mixed motives variety since several motives and desires together may cause a person to act or think in a certain way. One of the problems of trying to bring aspects of rat choice theory into Marxism is that the meth individualism and the more wholistic approach of most Marxists cannot both be true simultaneosly. For example, in MI social outcomes are explained as the effects of by-products of individual action but social wholes are not ontologically real. If social wholes exist then meth individualism is false. Elster used the PD in an interesting way in a Marxian theory of the state arguing, that the goal of the state is to get the capitalist class to co-operate but the working class to defect (as a whole). Sam Pawlett
Re: Re: voting with the feet
Jim Devine wrote: [catching up on posts--SP] When I was in Mexico a few years ago (about 3 years ago), people were talking about the PRI agriculture minister's plan to liquidate the ejido sector, because of its alleged inefficiency (from the point of view of the PRI elite, I would guess), which would have encouraged a massive move of population to the cites and to the maquilas. Yes, that was the PRI's rationale. There already was a massive movement of rural folk into the cities mostly after the '82 crisis when it was estimated that 8000 people a day were moving into Mexico D.F. I haven't kept track, but I would guess that a more moderate version of this plan was implemented. Does anyone know what's happening with respect to that idea? The plan do away with the ejidos was floated in 1991 and passed in 1992 which amended the Mexican constitution (article 27) abolishing all communally held land as well ending the Mexican party-state's constitutionally bound policy of redistributing land to landless agricultural workers. Article 27 was a product of the Mexican revolution and the populist-nationalist regime of Lazaro Cardenas. Amending article 27 was central to the PRI move from ISI to neo-liberalism. The idea was turn the small and many ejidos into large commercial enterprises producing for export by forcing small peasants into bankruptcy thus indeed liquidating them as a class. The extent of the liquidation of the small peasant in Mexico is controversial. I'm not sure how successful the PRI's policies have been in concentrating ownership of the ejido lands and proletarianizing the countryside. Prior to 1992, some 2.7 million Mexicans lived on roughly 30,000 ejidos representing %60 of farmers working %43 of the cropland but producing only %10 of agricultural goods. In any event, as I understand it, the ejidos were not extremely successful, because the Mexican government (unlike, say, the Taiwanese government after WW2) because they didn't provide agricultural credit and the like. The ejidos were units of subsistence agriculture divorced from the market--holders of ejidos were not able to sell or mortgage the land or accept (badly needed) credit or capital investment from private sources, they only had the right of usufruct. The 1992 reforms made it possible to sell or mortgage the land. Prior to '92 cheap credit was provided by the state, especially after 1972 when Mexico began its drive to become self-sufficient in food. However, credit was tied to the PRI machinery making it a huge patronage scheme where votes and support to the PRI would result in credit. The 1992 reforms made it possible for ejido holders to accept private investment and private credit. The result was that many ejido holders became heavily indebted to private banks in turn resulting in the Zapatista movement in Chiapas (where 2/3 of the people lived on ejidos) and the El Barzon debtor movement. Holders of ejidos are divided amongst themselves into individual vs. collective holders, Protestant vs. Catholic and PRI vs PRD. The PRI-state exploited these differences--one of the reasons the MExican left and union movement have made little inroads in rural areas (except parts of Chiapas, Guerrero and Oaxaca-- the most impoverished states). I think The analogy to Stalin's liquidation of Kulaks is accurate except that ejido holders are the poor peasants not the rich. Most ejidos are under 5 acres. David Barkin's book is the best in English on all this but his work is pre-Ezln and pre-El BArzon. Sam Pawlett
[Fwd: China list]
5/23/2000 The US-China Society of Friends is regularly distributing artcles on Chinese Marxism, "socialism with Chinese characteristics," Chinese politics and economics, and similar topics. If you wish to receive these materials, send your e-mail and snail mail addresses to Sidney Gluck at [EMAIL PROTECTED]. A previous distribution included a talk given by a Chinese Marxist scholar at a Socialist Scholars Conference panel earlier this year. Please indicate if you want this distribution included.
Resolution of the Information Bureau Concerning the Situation on Pen-L and Certain Individuals Associated With It
Carrol Cox wrote: Sam, look it. You fucked up, and you fucked up royally. Admit it, and go on from there. " The Information Bureau notes that recently the leadership of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia had pursued an incorrect line on the main questions of home and foreign policy, a line which departs from Marxism-Leninism." "Instead of honestly accepting this criticism and taking the Bolshevist path of correcting these mistakes, the leaders of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, suffering from boundless ambition, arrogance and conceit met this criticisms with belligerence and hostility. They took the anti-party path of indiscriminately denying all their mistakes, violated the doctrine of Marxism-Leninism regarding the attitude of a political party to its mistakes." When someone solemnly pronounces a tautology, it is quite reasonable for others to look for an ulterior motive of some sort. "On the other hand, the exposures of the Yugoslav General Popivoda have revealed in in its true light the compromising attitude of Tito, Rankovic and others towards the Nazi invaders and the Gestapo, and also their dastardly betrayal of the Yugoslav partisans at the most serious moment of the war." And when in as deeply sexist a social order as ours, and in as deeply sexist a leftist movement as ours, the pompous tautology is on women's *place* -- in the maternity ward, that is -- the motive one looks for is a sexist motive. Not the obvious one. I'm not saying that Sam Pawlett really wants to keep women in the nursery. What I am saying, however, is that Sam has give his comrades reason to fear his trustworthiness. "When the Information Bureau published its resolution, the Belgrade fascist fiends began to complain that they were the victims of injustice. But their sole idea was to conceal their shady past and their connections with Anglo-American imperialism. The Budapest trial came as a thunderbolt to Tito and his fascist clique. The facts proved that it was not a case of blunders, but of a deliberate counter-revolutionary, anti-Soviet, anti-Communist policy conducted by a gang of spies and agents provocateurs with a long record of collaboration with the police and bourgeois secret services. " A trustworthy leftist in the year 2000 has some awareness of the manners of the women's movement. In the same way that a trustworthy caterer would would not pick his nose as he passes the cocktails around. "All these and similar facts show the leaders of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia had taken a stand unworthy of Communists...The Information Bureau denounces this anti-Soviet attitude of the CPY as being incompatible with Marxism-Leninism." What your casual use of the word "penetrate" indicates, until you can demonstrate otherwise, is that you belong to that overwhelming majority of leftist men in the 19th and 20th centuries who were perfectly sincere in believing that women should be equal but who simply didn't thing that the issues were all that important. But someone in the year 2000 who does not recognize the centrality to working class struggle of the struggle against male supremacy and sexism is not a comrade who can be trusted to have a sense of proportion on other issues. "We must put our house in Bolshevik order. The principal means for this is the verification of party members...The Information Bureau considers it one of the most important tasks of the Communist and worker's parties to enhance revolutionary vigilance in their ranks to the utmost, to expose and eject bourgeois-nationalist elements and agents of imperialism, under whatever flag they may disguise themselves." A failure in this respect simply distorts anyone's political thinking on *all* subjects. "The moral face of these criminals has been shown to us in all its horror. We are aware of the peril we have been in. The crimes that have been revealed have made us realize the real causes of the serious defects in numerous sections of our party, economy and country. Like octopi with a thousand tentacles they clutched at the body of our republic to suck its blood and marrow." "The Information Bureau considers that,in view of all this, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia has placed itself and the Yugoslav Party outside the family of the fraternal Communist parties, outside the united Communist front and consequently outside the ranks of the Information Bureau." Comrade Gheorghiu-Dej
Re: oviet Arts Policy
Brad De Long wrote: I think that the line between Sweezy's attitude toward rock-and-roll and the suppression of the Czechoslovakian Jazz Section, or the bulldozing of Moscow modern art exhibits, is pretty clear. The point is not the "discrediting" of Sweezy, but how it came to be that people who claimed to be committed to a tradition that extolled human freedom, potential, and development could be so hostile to... ...jazz ...modern art ...rock and roll That is an interesting historical puzzle; I would like to have a sense of why it happened. The Soviet bureacracy may have been hostile to these art forms but they thrived in the USSR and some of E.Europe in quasi-samizdat. The Soviet label Melodiya recorded many jazz groups. Many of the jazzers were students and teachers at the various Soviet conservatories who were often fired from the arch-classicist Soviet musical system like the great pianist Kuryokin was for musical non-conformity. There were numerous great jazz groups in the USSR: the Ganelin Trio, Sergey Kuryokin, Anatoly Vapirov, Boris Grebenshchikov (an amazing saxophonist who played 3 horns simultaneously Rolan Kirk style whose acknowledged hero was Brian Eno) In Poland there is the late great Krystof Komeda a pianist, Tomasz Stanko and many others, there's Croatian trumpeter Dusko Goykovich... Most of these groups are stunning and up there with the finest the West offered at the time: Cecil Taylor, Evan Parker, von Schlippenbach etc. The Warsaw Jazz festival was considered among the best in Europe during the years of the regime. Jazz was surpressed during the Stalin years with slogans like "first a saxophonist then a knife" and "Today he plays jazz, tomorrow he betrays his country". This attitude was gone by the time of President Kosygin who it is said was a great jazz fan and collector of records who would turn up unannounced at various Soviet jazz festivals. The post-Stalin policy towards jazz was confused. The commissars couldn't decide whether jazz was a bourgeois western propaganda or an example of Marxist-Leninist art. They did miss out on a great propaganda opportunity in not letting the free musicians tour very often: the USSR was the avant of the jazz avant garde during the 80's. Free jazz is thriving in the USSR! I don't much of rock'n'roll but there was a scene in these countries and most of it was above ground. I friend told me of going to state-run punk rock clubs in Poland, the USSR and especially Yugoslavia(whose cultural policy was fairly laissez faire)during the 80's. Hopefully someday the history of this music will be written if hasn't been already. As for classical music, the Soviets were untouched in instrumental and chamber music from Rachmaninov and Scriabin's time to Pletnev's. A couple of good books: *Russian Jazz, New Identity* ed. Leo Feigin (owner of Leo records which smuggled out and distributed most of the recordings we have of Soviet jazz) Quartet Books 1985. S.Frederick Starr *Red and Hot. The Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union* Oxford U Press 1983 614pgs. The premier Soviet jazz critic was Alexey Batashev who authored many books and taught thousands of students jazz history. Sam Pawlett
Genderization (fwd)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sorry! Sam Pawlett's definition of sex is sexist. I think I would say this thread is dead here, but I have to reply to false accusations. Mention the word "penetrate" and you get labelled an August Strindberg! Please. I wasn't putting forward a complete definition of sex but just noting that there is a biological aspect to it. Maybe a distinction between sex and reproduction is in order. It is not simply sexist because of the "penetration" thing (since intercourse is necessary). so why is it sexist then? first, sexual activity is constructed in his language as an activity "initiated" by men, so women are presented as powerless and relegated to the level of sexual insignifigance. I didn't say this, please. Sexual activity doesn't have to be initiated by men (and it often isn't) in order for penetration to occur. If you don't like the word "penetration" use another expression as Carroll and Eric have suggested. You should also be careful of the naturalistic fallacy: because reproduction occurs in such and such a fashion does not mean it _ought_ to occur that way. Just because you acknowledge that sexual activity has a biological aspect doesn't mean you support patriarchy or trad. gender roles. second, the sole purpose of sexual activity is reduced to getting women pregnant and injecting male sperm into women's bodies. I didn't say this either but that is -like it or not- how our species reproduces itself. This is not to say that reproduction should or necessarily take place this way, but it will take a long time to undo thousands of years of evolution. Unless you think Darwin was wrong? as i said before, there is no reason to assume biological motherhood. There is no reason to assume it, it is possible through sophisticated surgery for men to give birth but our organs have not evolved that function. Men giving birth is risky and is it fair to the child to make him/her a guinea pig? We are not living hunting gathering societies where reproduction was somewhat necessary for small bands to maintain their species. So you are arguing that reproduction is not necessary to maintain the species at all in any social system? Can you explain this contradiction? Time has changed; sexual roles have changed. We are not living in stone ages. I reject to see the sole purpose of sex as reproduction. I agree with this statement but I didn't say that the sole role of sex is reproduction but it is an important role. Any number of gender roles are consistent with women giving birth. Many women prefer not to have children, and I don't see the reason why they should!!! Many women prefer not to have children and have excellent reasons for their choice. That's fine but some will have to to keep the human race from going extinct. What would happen if all women stopped giving birth? THE SPECIES WOULD DIE OUT. Are you arguing that the human race should become extinct? Malthusianism maybe? Most women who choose not to have children are often upper class. So, as you _seem_ to think, that having children is a bad thing for most women, then who has to bear the burden of reproducing the species? The poor? Those not talented enough to pursue Phd studies? Further, maybe it is better for the children if they are raised by women? I don't know. Mine Sam Pawlett wrote:Well, it is necessary that the male penetrate the female or the species will fail to reproduce itself. ...except for the occasional turkey-baster. or canoe paddler. Why not say "it is necessary for the female to engulf the male sperm . . ."? Sure, why not?
Genderization
Doug Henwood wrote: Even if you don't take the whole Butler dose, I think it's always important to ask what is happening ideologically when biology - or "nature" - is invoked. Yes. When people start talking about hormones, there's some invocation of physical necessity against whose judgment there's no appeal. Well, it is necessary that the male penetrate the female or the species will fail to reproduce itself. This is a physical necessity given that humans reproduce sexually -with all its evolutionary benefits e.g. against disease-- rather than asexually. It is possible now for the species to reproduce through artificial insemination and even it were desirable I don't see it making much of a difference in the socialization/genderization process. As for 'gender' there are enormous cross-cultural differences in how children are reared and the sexual division of labor they are placed in. There are (were?) matrilineal(sp) societies, all suggesting that most if not all differences in gender are socially constructed. Of course sociobiologists try to explain (away)these cross cultural differences (as well as everything else) through adaptationism but the sob's aren't convincing. I still don't understand the hostility towards essentialism. Essentialism is just the idea that an object has a property that it cannot do without and still be the same object. You might say that an essential property of a car is that it have wheels; if doesn't have wheels then it is something else. Anti-essentialism comes from Wittgenstein who argued (his example was 'games') that no class of objects or concepts have a common property essential to each. Here's how sociobiologists talk: "The human mating system is not like any other's. BUt that does not mean it escapes the laws governing mating systems, which have been documented in hundreds of species. Any gene predisposing a male to be cuckolded or a female to receive less paternal help than her neighbors, would quickly be tossed from the gene pool. Any gene that allowed a male to impregnate all the females, or a female to bear the most indulged offspring of the best male, would quickly take over. These selection pressures are not small. For human sexuality to be "socially constructed" and independent of biology, as the popular academic view has it, not only must have miraculously escaped these powerful pressures of a different kind. If a person played out a socially constructed role, other people could shape the role to prosper at his or her expense. Powerful men could brainwash the others to enjoy being celibate or cuckolded, leaving the women for them. Any willingness to accept socially constructed gender roles would be selected out and genes for resisting the roles would take over." Steven Pinker *How the Mind Works* p467. Sam P
China
Brad De Long wrote: So why not go with David Ricardo on this one? Depends on what your objectives are. Yes, if you want to preserve the current lopsided trading regime, reproduce imperialism and the growing polarisation betwen nations. Ricardo believed that capital was immobile, for one. And for two, his example countries, Britain and Portugal, and his example commodities, cloth and wine, were perfect examples of uneven development. Ricardo did anticipate factor mobility but thought that capital would stay in the home country for patriotic reasons. A similiar fantasy to calling on the American capitalist class to protect American jobs. Ricardo is wrong and irrelevant. Comparative advantage evolves not because of shifting productivity differentials but from Malthusianism. Ricardo was a Malthusian and thought that agriculture was subject to diminishing returns. As population grew, less and less fertile land would have to be sown leading to higher (above market) prices for food. Production will have to move into higher cost soils leading to prices that are above the marginal cost of production which leads to economic rents or superprofits. Thus the so called developing countries should not industrialize and remain exporters of food and raw materials and importers of manufactured goods from the core. Over time as the peripheral countries became fully populated (!) they too would experience diminishing returns to agriculture. Comparative costs with the core would equalize forcing the country to industrialize as it can no longer export its food to pay for manufactures. Ricardo failed to see that increasing returns of investment in industry and "human capital" is the rule. Sam Pawlett
Marx and Malleability
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I do not think that much can be read into the "dictatorship of the proletariat," and certainly not that it is a temporary "dictatorship" in the modern sense of unrestrained lawless repressive rule. I've always thought that Marx viewed all societies as dictatorships: dictatorships of one class over another. The dictatorship of the proletariat just means the working class becomes a ruling class. If I remember this is what Draper argued. Engels commented famously in 1891 "Do you want to know what the dictatorship of the proletariat looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the dictatorship of the proletariat." There's also a 'two Lenin's' thesis too, the radical democrat of State and Revolution: "Socialism is not created by orders from on high. Its spirit is alien to state-bureaucratic automatism. Socialism is vital and creative, it is the creation of the popular masses themselves." (written in 1919 to counter the authoritarian-bureaucratic degeneration of the war communism period) and the dictator of the Red Terror. This myth has been demolished in two books "Leninism Under Lenin" by Marcel Liebman and "Lenin and the Revolutionary Party" by Paul Leblanc, though there are residues of it in Liebman. "Lenin's Last Struggle" by Moshe Levin is good too. Marx and Engels' anti-utopianism was contrary to their theory of historical development. Socialism is not an abstract ethical ideal drawn up in someone's head then imposed onto society but is rather a product of historical process. As Engels said "you cannot decree the development of the masses. This is conditioned by the development of the conditions in which the masses live and hence evolves gradually."Socialism Utopian and Scientific, 34. sam Pawlett
contradictions of capitalism
Doug Henwood wrote: Look, I agree it's no bowl of cherries. But there is a tendency among Western liberals and leftists to romanticize peasant life. Just a few thoughts on this thread. There isn't much peasant life left anymore anywhere. Is that a good thing? After the rev. in Vietnam there was little traditional,subsistence farming and more collective farms and co-operatives set up by the state and regional cadre committees. Subsistence farming is going the way of the dinosaur with farmworkers becoming proletarianized and massive rural-urban migration. The peasantry now exists in the slums and sidewalks of major cities where 75% of the pop lives. The problem is that as capitalism dissolves subsistence farming (or more accurately as peasants are forced off their land at gunpoint) it doesn't provide jobs for those thrown off the land. A pseudo-metamorphesis. Hence Shining Path, FARC etc. If capitalism is such a liberating force why is there such fierce resistance to it? Fear of the unknown? Or is just peasant men fearing that their women will get uppity once they have capitalism? Is the destruction of the peasantry a good thing.If people want to live the life of subsistence farming then I think they should be able to. Not everyone likes urban areas. My friend who was stationed in Vietnam pointed out just how awfully gendered farm work is there - women do a disproportionate share of the work, and the really crappy jobs (chasing and trapping rats - the four-legged kind - was one she mentioned) are reserved for them. There's also a tendency for some to look down at people who live in rural areas, ignoring the seminal role that agriculture plays in the economy of a place like Vietnam. A classic Maoist tactic that works is to surround and starve out the cities. If the rice paddies lose their best hands to the factories, productivity will decline and the country will have to use the export earnings to import food. Patriarchy is everywhere, it is not strictly a rural phenomenon.So-called 'honor killings' are legal in some countries e.g. Colombia.The export/assembly sector is also gendered with young women doing the dirty jobs like sitting at a sewing machine for 12 hours, 6 days a week. The young men hold the whips or otherwise get the better jobs like the Ford,GM, Toyota assembly plants in,say, Chihuahua or Hermosillo. The patriarchy of the rural areas is reproduced in the urban context.The young factory employees do not make enough money for rural-urban migration to make much of a difference to them or to partake in what an urban area has to offer (whatever that is, Mcdonalds, nightclubs, movie theaters.) A lot of young people migrate to the cities to earn money to support family in the rural areas and sometimes move back. This is rooted in the crisis in the countryside. Some folks may remember Zeynep, the renegade daughter of a Turkish general, from the old Spoons Marxism list. Zeynep made a long visit to Chiapas back in 1996, I think. She said the women weren't allowed to speak if there were men present unless they were first spoken to. I've been Chiapas a few times and also to the Maquila belt in the North and that is an extreme case. Conditions differ from place to place and from generation to generation and ultimately from family to family. Indigenous people in Chiapas were not allowed to walk on the sidewalks in San Cristobal until the 1970's. They worked nonstop from dawn 'til dusk. That's true for most everyone. That women do the majority of the work gives them certain power and independence over the men. In some places ( I think in a West African country) women have even gone on strike against the men. You can imagine how working in an electronics plant up north might hold some allure. Maybe. The real allure is the USA. The turnover rate in the Maquilas is very high, most don't stick with it that long. There are many barriers to organizing there not least the severe repression meted out to those who try it. The patriarchal family and the church play a role in the conservatism too. And to anyone who might feel inclined to call me an apologist for imperialism, I'd say that this is a pretty classically Marxist view of capitalism. If its true that capitalism breaks all fast fixed relations and all that solid melts into air, then (re-)introducing wage labor into the countryside would improve gender relations right? That has been what's happening in Vietnam as land is being privatized (in a very corrupt fashion). Has it improved the gender relations? I don't know. It hasn't helped much in other places. Further,the conditions that led to the initial wars in Vietnam are being reproduced. Sam Pawlett
Muzsikás and Bela Bartok
Louis Proyect wrote: In an act that amounted to charity, Bartok was appointed a research fellow in anthropology without teaching duties at Columbia University. According to an article by Paul Hume in the March 22, 1981 Washington Post, "Unhappily the funds, limited at best, that paid Bartok's stipend at Columbia gave out by 1942; and in the face of wartime privations, the university felt unable to continue its grant to a non-teaching composer. It was also a time when, although he has some concert appearances and some of his music was being played, the income from both of these sources was minute." [the following has little to do with politics or pol economy but oh well.] This post-1942 period was Bartok's worst in terms of poverty and health but his best in terms of creativity. Many of his friends came to his aid commissioning works from him. The famous bassist-conductor Serge Koussivitsky commissioned the Concerto For Orchestra which was debuted by Koussivitsky and the BSO in 1943 (there is a recording of this concert, I'm not sure if it is on CD. Still one of the best interpretations. Played real fast and with extravagance.Bartok was there and liked it.) Y.Menuhin commissioned the Sonata for Solo Violin in 1943, another extravagant work that became the longest work for solo violin next to the chaconne from Bach's partita in Dm. During this period he composed other great works including the 3rd piano concerto. The folk rhythms in Bartok make his instrumental music very difficult to play. Only Hungarian interpreters of Bartok like Zoltan Kocsis, Gyorgy Sandor or Zoltan Szekely can, I think, get the full measure of it. The best recordings are the ones made by Bartok himself. In the early 40's, Bartok was commissioned by a native band in Washington State (forget which one) to make field recordings and transcribe their musical traditions. Bartok accepted knowing that recording and transcribing the band's music was crucial to its survival as a coherent entity. He died before he could make the trip depriving the band of a chance to ensure its traditions would survive and perhaps depriving music fans of a chance to hear Western Classical music based on Native American rhythm and harmony (the only serious attempt that I know of to base music on Native American harmonies and rhthym was by the late great jazz saxophonist Jim Pepper.) Bartok was one of the greatest ethnomusicologists. Like others before him such as Liszt and to a lesser extent Brahms and Dvorak he took a lot of heat from the cesspool known as the classical music establishment who accused him of "vulgarity" and "crudity". You could maybe level these accusations at Liszt who used the folk tunes to create vehicles for his flamboyant virtuosity at the piano. Bartok never used the folk harmonies and rhythms as a means. Bartok was influenced by the Viennese school and this can be seen in some of his work most notably the 2nd violin concerto a cross between Viennese dodecaphony, traditional western harmonies and folkish harmonies. As always with Bartok, no style dominates suggesting that various cultures and traditions could live the same way. Sam Pawlett
Re: Vietnam teach-in
Louis Proyect wrote: Despite the ignorance about Vietnam and what we did to it, there are hopeful signs as indicated by protests in Seattle and Washington that Chomsky embraced fully. He says that the 70 percent of Americans who think the war was immoral or wrong This presents a problem for the powers-that-be. If there is a new Vietnam, it will be much more difficult to manage public opinion. Another lesson of Vietnam was that ruling class USA will not engage in direct fashion in imperialist adventures where they are certain the enemy can and will fight back. They prefer to hire mercenaries according to the principle "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". Public opinion against such direct overseas imperialist adventures is another reason US troops were not sent to fight in Afghanistan or Nicaragua. Sometimes it is uncertain if the enemy can fight back like in Somalia. The hiring of mercenaries to fight imperialist battles has come home to roost, with former US patrons Usama bin Laden and the Afghan holy warriors the root cause behind the brutal Islamic insurgencies in Egypt, Algeria, Central Asia, Kashmir,Philippines (Mindanao),Palestine-Israel, Jordan, S.Africa and the USA itself among many other places. Former US patrons in these countries have carried brutal massacres and destruction which the people and economies (e.g. Egypt's tourist industry) of these countries will never recover. Further, former US mercenaries now carry out the drugarms trade in the "Golden Triangle" and "Golden Crescent". Way to go guys! Just wait until the Taliban fully takes over the Pakistani military. Then we will have some real anti-communists on our hands! Sam Pawlett
Regulation theory
"Christian A. Gregory" wrote: Bob Jessop has a fairly easy to read and very good intro to regulation theory in Michael Storper and Allen Scott, "Pathways to Industrialization and Regional Development." I'd also reccommend Alice Amsden's (dead-on) rejoinder to Lipietz about ten years ago in New Left Review. Also Robert Brenner And MArk Glick's lengthy critique of regulation theory in NLR 8-10 years ago. There's the Social Structures of Accumulation theory too which is similiar to Aglietta, Boyer et.al., there's a good anthology edited by David Gordon and two others whose names I forget. Amsden in the article mentioned above argues that the experience of the Asian NIC's refutes both dependency theory and some theories of imperialism though I would argue (with Bello and Tabb) that the NIC's are more a confirmation of a dependency theory. sam
Nafta again
Michael Perelman wrote: The New York Times April 24, 2000 UPS Sues Canada Over Postal System ATLANTA (AP) -- United Parcel Service is suing Canada, alleging that the country's postal service has been allowed to use its mail monopoly to expand into the courier business and compete unfairly. So when is Bertelsmann going to start bringing public libraries before the WTO for unfair competition and loss of market share? Sam P
1900 [restored]
1900
Italy 1976. Director: Bernardo Bertolucci. Cast: Gerald Depardieu,
Robert Dinero, Burt Lancaster, Sterling Hayden, Donald Sutherland,
Dominique Sanda, Sandra Sandrelli, Laura Betti, Stefania Casini.
English. 311 minutes.
1900 is Bernardo Bertolucci's melodramatic, baroque, operatic,
sentimental yet brilliant Marxist epic history of the Italian class
struggle during the first half of the twentieth century, running from
Verdi's death to the liberation of Italy in 1943. It charts the course
of Italian communism and fascism through the lives of two intertwined
character Alfredo Berlingueti (Robert Dinero) and Olmo Dalco (Gerald
Depardieu). Alfredo is born into a bourgeois family the son of a wealthy
landowner (Burt Lancaster) while Olmo is born a peasant and becomes a
communist peasant leader/organizer, the illegitimate grandson of Leo
Dalco (Sterling Hayden) the communist patriach of the Dalco peasant clan
who live and work on the Berlingueti estate. Alfredo and Olmo grow up
best friends despite being on opposite sides of the barricades and being
raised in two different cultures; Alfredo raised as the bourgeois
aristocrat bred to continue management of the estate and Olmo raised as
the peasant who is taught that everything must be owned in common and
that the peasants should have no illusions about who they are and what
they do. Depardieu's is a stellar and convincing performance and this
time, unlike his outing in the film version of Zola's Germinal, he is on
the winning side–sort of. Deniro is good too as the pathetic, weak and
failed liberal landowner though Deniro's oh-so-American mannerisms are
oft putting in a social realist film about Italian history. This was
probably Deniro's most complex role and he does well. The real heroes
of the film both as actors and as subjects are the nameless peasants.
The film encompasses, in an Italian context, the demise of feudalism,
the rise of capitalism, wage labor, modern machinery, the emergence of
the Italian Communist Party as a force in the countryside and
concomitant rise of the Fascisti as a movement of landowners reacting to
the growing militancy, consciousness and organization of the peasantry
and working class.
1900 was originally released in North America in a butchered 4-hour
version designed to rob the film of its pro-communist political
didacticism and European art house sensibilities (full male frontal
nudity-- in 1992 a Littleton, Colorado high school teacher was fired for
showing the censored version of this film to his senior English class.
He was then reinstated after a passionate plea from Bertolucci himself).
The restored 5 hour version makes the film as a whole more hard hitting
both politically and aesthetically as at least a third of the film's
sets contain hammer and sickles and other communist symbols. The
inclusion of the peasants attitudes to and frank discussions of sex
contribute much to a more complete understanding of them. Viewers should
be aware that this is above all else, a political film with a mission
that establishes its thesis early and spends five hours hammering it
home. Viewers with no knowledge of twentieth century history will have a
hard time with it as will those with no sympathy for socialism.A
stunning and chilling perfomance is given by Donald Sutherland as the
fascist leader/foreman of the estate. Only an old Marxist like
Sutherland could play a fascist leader so convincingly, bringing out in
hideous detail the psychopathic nature of that particular movement and
the personalities that constitute it. Sutherland's performance grows
more satirical and ironic each time I see this film.
There are many unforgettable scenes in 1900. A communist funeral
procession through the middle of town singing the "Internationale" and
Depardieu screaming "wake up"in front of fascist goon squads who had
just finished murdering several of their number, is one. The workers
successfully defying an attempt by the landowners to violently suppress
a strike, is another.
1900 is, of course, beautifully shot by Bertolucci's long
time cinematographer Vittorio Stororo. The viewer can feel the blood,
sweat and anger of the workers as well as the horrible stench of
bourgeois hypocrisy. Simultaneously, it is a five hour Diego Rivera
fresco and Daumier satire.
Alfredo becomes padrone ("master") vowing to lead a more liberal
regime. Yet he is weak giving in to his debtors and failing to stand up
to the fascists. His turning a blind eye to the violence and murderous
rampage of the fascists destroys him personally as he loses his wife , a
flamboyant upper class 1920's Parisian bohemian whose heart ultimately
lies with the workers. On Liberation Day, Alfredo is found guilty by the
People's Tribunal and sentenced to death for being a parasite landowner.
Alfredo pleads innocent on grounds that "he has never hurt anyone".But
Alfredo fails to understand the nature of class, he doesn't understand
that
racism, eurocentrism
Bill Burgess wrote: If I understood Sam's comments correctly, he argues 1) it was Eurocentric to expect a revolution in Germany in 1918-19, No, it wasn't euro-centric to expect a revolution there and then, it was eurocentric to presume that such a revolution was a necessary and maybe even a sufficient condition to lead world socialism. This is the view I was arguing against. Right up until his death Trotsky maintained that the survival of the USSR and world socialism depended on revolution in the imperialist countries. that 2) Lenin rejected Roy's emphasis on the importance of the revolutions in colonial countries, Not really. Lenin and Roy had similiar views but Roy took Lenin's reasoning a bit differently. Roy accepted the importance and centrality of revolution in the imperialist countries and accepted that the docility of the Western proletariat was ,to a large extent, the result of the surplus value generated in the colonies with which the Western bosses could pay off or bribe the worknig class into reformism rather revolution. Roy believed that since no revolution in Germany or elsewhere was forthcoming this surplus value would have to be cut off at the source i.e. through revolutions in the south and east in order to press the western working class into revolutionary agency. And maybe give them some confidence and an example (this was also Marx's argument that I cited previously). Lenin didn't go this far into proto Maoism. and that 3) the Eurocentric policy of the Comintern led to disasterous alliances with the bourgeoisie in countries like China, Turkey and Indonesia. The alliances were disastrous and it was partly because of eurocentrism-- socialism wasn't possible in such backward places independent of European revolution. It was a conundrum. The bourgeosie in said countries was acting in important anti-imperialist ways but at the same time repressing (usually savagely) domestic revolutionaries. Kemal asked Lenin for aid to kick out the Greeks and got it, despite the situation in Russia in 1918-1920. Russia signed all sorts of treaties with governments who were murdering communists including the Treaty of Rapallo (1922) with Germany and it was Russia that called the shots at the comintern. 2) In fact, at the Third Congress (or the Second?) Lenin changed his original position and endorsed part of Roy's approach on the colonial revolution. Right, at the second congress, this was later reversed at the 3rd and subsequent congresses. Roy was given 5 minutes to speak at the third congress (!) I have the second congress resolution around here somewhere but can't find it right now. There was also the view that the peoples of the south and east must liberate themselves. I think that part of the shift in the Lenin's position was to accept Roy's sharper formulation of how unreliable allies the colonial bourgeoise classes were, and to clarify that the class struggle in these countries had a different strategic framework than in the imperialist countries. How is it Eurocentric to programitically codify the rejection of the Second International's 'socialist colonial policy'? I don't understand your question. Roy and other southern delegates to the 3rd congress did compare the Comintern's policy to the Second int'l. I can't find the documentation right now. Tomorrow. 3) I'm sure Sam is well aware of it, so I wonder why he ignores the cardinal differences between the Stalinist policy of the Comintern in China, Turkey and Indonesia and the 'Lenin-Roy' approach adopted by the Third Congress? There were important theoretical differences between the Lenin and Stalin-Zinoviev comintern but these differences came to nothing in practice. The Comintern blew it for many reasons, one of them being eurocentrism. Sam Pawlett
racism, eurocentrism
Rod Hay wrote: Mat. How do you identify eurocentrism? In my experience, in most cases, all it indicates is that the person throwing the epithet, doesn't like what is being said but can't articulate a rational argument against it. Eurocentrism does not racism make. Eurocentrism is a set of beliefs derived from empirical facts, some of which are true. Racism is not based on any empirical evidence and writers who attempt to give it empirical foundations write clear and obvious rubbish. Eurocentrism is above all a type of scholarship science that says, to put it crudely, everything good about the world starts in Europe and flows to the outside (this includes socialism). Societies outside Europe which are successful, to the extent that they are successful, are only successful in so far as they have been able to ape Europe. I'd say the locus classicus here is W.W. Rostow. Was he racist? Probably. Was Weber racist? Highly contentious.OTOH, Eurocentric theories such as environmental or geographic determinism are not racist because they put the crucial determinants into things that are independent of consciousness like soil and weather, implying that if non-European areas had the same environent and climate they would have "taken off" too, albeit in a different way. Jim Blaut in his book *The Colonizer's Model of the World* gives a partial list of what he takes to be core eurocentric theories. I hope he doesn't mind me reproducing it here. 1. The Neolithic Revolution-- the invention of agriculture and the beginnings of a settled way of life for humanity-- occurred in the Middle East (or bible lands). This view was unopposed before 1930, and is still the majority view. 2. The second major step in cultural evolution towards modern civilization, the emergence of the earliest states, cities, organized religions, writing sytems, division of labor and the like, was taken in the Middle East. 3. The Age of Metals began in the Middle East. Ironworking was invented in the Middle East or eastern Europe and the "Iron Age" first appeared in Europe. 4.Monotheism appeared first in the MIddle East. 5. Democracy was invented in Europe (in ancient Greece). 6. Likewise most of pure science, mathematics, philosophy, history and geography. 7. Class society and class struggle emerged first in the Greco-Roman region. 8. The Roman Empire was the first great imperial state. Romans invented bureacracy, law and so on. 9. The next great stage in social evolution, feudalism, was developed in Europe, with Frenchmen taking the lead. 10.Europeans invented a host of technological traits in the Middle Ages which gave them superiority over non-europeans. 11. Europeans invented the modern state. 12. Europeans invented capitalism. 13. Europeans, uniquely "venturesome", were the great explorers "discoverers" etc. 14. Europeans invented industry and created the Industrial revolution. p7-8. Sam Pawlett
guns, germs, steel
Jim Devine wrote: The fact that the Europeans conquered Africa and Asia ( which had had agriculture and the diseases you mention), as well as America ( the Central Americans and Peruvian/Colombian etc. Indians had agriculture too) seems to imply that there was something beyond agriculture and diseases that differentiated the Europeans from all the rest in the last 500 years. He argues that because of the ecological/geographical disunity of the Americas (mostly because of the North-South axis), the opportunities for developing a variety of different seeds was higher in Eurasia. Having more variety, there's a better chance of getting really good crops. I haven't read Diamond but his theory, if one can call it that, seems like a more sophistacted variant of the old Euro-centric theories that Europe advanced over the rest of the world because Africa and Asia lacked the physical resources necessary to build capitalist civilization e.g. tropical soils are inferior hence lower productivity agriculture, arid cultures require irrigation and such societies are necessarily stagnant. But other climates are not necessarrily inferior though they are different. There seems nothing new about Diamond. William Mcneil in his *Plagues and Peoples* defends the idea that mass demographic disasters are the prime mover in social change. For example, he argues that the black plague diffused out of inner China into central Asia and finally into Western Europe. The mass die off created a labor shortage that greatly strengthed the hand of the the Eurpean yeomanry in their struggle against the upper classes.(Brenner?) Further, Diamond seems to fall into the trap of using China as a test case for a theory about Europe. In assessing why China and other societies lacked dynamism and failed to develop,he is offering a theory about Europe yet what makes China China and Africa Africa cannot be learned from a theory about Europe. These societies need to be explained in their own right as Mao (ReporT From Hunan) and Mariategui (Seven Theses on Peru)realized early on. As for defences against disease, that is a matter of natural selection and played one of the primary causal roles in the destruction and conquest of indigenous cultures by Europeans though the spread of diseases was more often unconscious than conscious. The Europeans didn't want to destroy the natives(which they ended up doing), they needed christian converts and cheap labor. On a more abstract level, Diamond's ideas bear a prima facie similarity to a type of historical materialism defended by Alan Carling built on an analogy to natural selection (i don't think actual natural selection plays a role in Carling)where societies with lower development of productive forces are selected out by societies with higher development of pf's through a variety of causal mechanisms like superior weapons. I wonder of Diamond has read Carling. Sam Pawlett
Re: guns, germs, steel
Sam Pawlett wrote: On a more abstract level, Diamond's ideas bear a prima facie similarity to a type of historical materialism defended by Alan Carling built on an analogy to natural selection (i don't think actual natural selection plays a role in Carling)where societies with lower development of productive forces are selected out by societies with higher development of pf's through a variety of causal mechanisms like superior weapons. I wonder of Diamond has read Carling. I forgot to add that the Carling theory seems to beg the question since some societies have a higher level of pf's because they select out others without explaining how theses socities became that way in the first place. Sam Pawlett
Keynesians and Post Keynesians and growth
Jim Devine wrote: Sam Pawlett wrote: It looks to me like interest rates are important vis a vis the business cycle witness Volker's rate hike in the early 80's which had profound effects on the U.S. and world economy Louis Proyect writes: I agree that this sort of action can tighten the money supply and create a recession. But I am referring to the opposite problem, one in which lowering of interest rates can not end a recession. This fits with Marx's perspective in vol. III of CAPITAL. He sees monetary management schemes -- his example is the English Bank legislation of 1846 -- as potentially screwing up the operation of capitalism. But he doesn't see it as _solving_ the system's problems. It's too bad that he never finished his argument here, though I think Marxist political economists can do so (especially if they are willing to learn from Keynes and his followers). When Japan's interest rates are zero, this did not have any effect on the business cycle. Unless I am missing something about Keynsian economics, this seems to invalidate it ... Keynesians such as Paul Krugman take the Japanese case in stride. He argues that the Japanese are in what Keynesians call a "liquidity trap." The original version was that financial investors grab up all available money because they want to get out of bonds, stocks, etc. because they fear capital losses. By hoarding money this way, it prevents the central bank from pumping money into the system in order to drive interest rates down. (This makes the LM curve horizontal.) Keynes himself didn't see the liquidity trap as likely. The Krugman version simply is based on the fact that nominal interest rates can't go below zero (plus the benefits of holding liquid assets, I would add). In any event, he suggests that the Japanese central bank simply pump a lot of money into their system, so that inflation results (or is expected). Thanks for this Jim, it was helpful. I was looking over a book by Makoto Itoh the other day, he says this (25 years ago) suggesting what would happen today if the central bank opened the flood gates: "Excess capital accumulation with the rate of profit declining consequently led to the disruption and contraction of capitalist reproduction. This crisis was characterized by a superabundance of money as inflatioanry currency, together with a shortage of commodities--in contrast to the classical typeof crisis in which excess capital accumulation caused a superabundance of commmodities through absolute shortages in money markets. Japanese capitalism recorded a negative growth in GNP, with a fall of more than 20% in mining and manufacturing in 1974, the first such slump in the post war period. Recovery in economic activity has been slow and bankruptcies have remained at high levels. Industrial investment has not yet been activated because of excess of fixed capital, despite the government's attempts to stimulate it through Keynesian policies..." (Marxian Economics in Japan p25-6) Sam Pawlett
Re: Keynesians and Post Keynesians and growth
Louis Proyect wrote: In dismissing Hilferding's "Finance Capital", you state that among some of the more erroneous conclusions found there is that interest rates can impact the business cycle. In fairness to Hilferding, he wrote that book when he was 27 years old. He was executed by the Gestapo in France in 1941. It looks to me like interest rates are important vis a vis the business cycle witness Volker's rate hike in the early 80's which had profound effects on the U.S. and world economy Sam Pawlett
Re: Underdevelopment
Louis Proyect wrote: From Arghiri Emmanuel's "Myths of Development versus Myths of Underdevelopment" in the New Left Review, 1974, Vol. 85, which is a reply to Bill Warren's article "Imperialism and Capitalist Industrialization" that had appeared 4 issues earlier. The chart is meant to illustrate the point that "What development presupposes is not industrialization but, first and foremost, an increase of productivity in agriculture such that those who remain in agriculture can feed those who leave it." This is not much different than the Arthur Lewis model where 'modernity' or 'development' just equals how fast the industrial/urban sector can absorb peasants being thrown off the land i.e. becoming proletarianized. Historically, this proletarianization or 'primitive accumulation' has been a brutal affair often taking place through force of arms as in colonial and neo-colonial Africa which had significant negative consequences later, in terms of the economic structure (workers i.e. former peasants were stuck in urban areas and couldn't grow food for domestic needs.cf. Basil Davidson) It's an important point as one can see the huge shantytowns that ring southern cities comprised of former peasants who have not been integrated into the industrial/urban economy except marginally as street vendors and the occasional maquila. This failure to employ former peasants has led to third world revolutions, this being the part of the population that becomes the most radicalized. So, in this situation the country is stuck in a transition which becomes a pseudo-metamorphesis. This is the point Bettelheim takes up at length in the appendix to Emmanuel's book. What is the solution? Socialism, of course. Sam Pawlett
[Fwd: LE DIPLO: Privatisation becomes Pillage]
[NOTE: Break out a bottle of Tres Esquinas (Colombian rum) and sit back to read this one. As this is not from the lobotomized U.S. media, you will actually be called upon to think! -DG] ___ LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE [Paris] February 2000 Privatisation becomes Pillage Fishing for gold in Colombia - By Maurice LeMoine Latin America is rich in examples of corruption associated with the privatisation of the more promising state-run industries. In Colombia it has led, with the active connivance of the politicians, to the biggest white-collar hold-up in the country's history. This has not prevented the International Monetary Fund, called in by Bogota, from dictating a fresh round of restructuring - to be paid for by the people - and recommending further privatisations. Time was when the skull and crossbones fluttered over the Caribbean. In those days, gold, silver, crowns and pieces of eight all found their way into the capacious pockets of corsairs, pirates and buccaneers. They were the scourge of these troubled waters, intercepting galleons and sacking the jewels of those far-off, warm and wealthy lands - Maracaibo, Puerto Bello, or lovely Cartagena de Indias, the flower of New Granada (later to become Colombia). A Frenchman, Robert Baal, took the governor of Cartagena by surprise in the middle of a banquet and made off with 310 kilos of gold. He was the first of a long line of buccaneers and adventurers, English and French: John Hawkins (1567), Francis Drake (1586), Jean-Bernard Desjeans and Jean Ducasse (1697), and Admiral Edward Vernon (1741). After Vernon, this pearl of the Caribbean, safe within its walls, thought it had done with the host of pirates intent on plundering it. But at the end of the 20th century, a man called Cesar Gaviria Trujillo came along. Going for a song A member of the Liberal Party and elected president on 27 May 1990, Gaviria opted for neo-liberalism, opening up the markets, and globalisation. At the time Colombia had five nationalised ports - Cartagena, Barranquilla, Santa Marta (on the Caribbean coast), Buenaventura and Tumaco (on the Pacific) - all run by a single organisation, Colpuertos (1). Very skilfully, the president drummed up a press campaign claiming the ports were in a mess and needed to be privatised. So privatised they were, by Law No. 1 of 1991 (Ley primera de 1991). In the grand tradition of state sell-offs, assets and machinery vanished into thin air, no inventories of the dock installations were made, no calls for tenders issued. The business of awarding contracts was left to the discretion of a civil servant, the superintendente portuario, who placed them where he saw fit. Article 12 of the law allowed this: "Within five months of the date of the application [for the concession] the general superintendent of ports shall publish a decision indicating the terms under which the concession is to be granted." That was all. And it was pure coincidence that behind the front men who rushed to land this lucrative deal were all the top brass of the liberal and conservative parties, political leaders like Vidas Lacouture and Davilas, powerful families from the coastal strip, like that of Francisco Villas Cos , cronies of those in power and people to whom the president owed a favour. The port installations were handed over, for a song, to companies that had sprung up out of nowhere and private individuals with no experience in this kind of activity. Article 30 of the law had made provision for this contingency: "Companies running the ports may engage subcontractors ...". So all these happy incompetents would be able to become instant multimillionaires. The ports invoice their services in US dollars, so it is a good line to be in. So far, nothing out of the ordinary in the vast game of Monopoly known as the market economy. "But," as Senator Ingrid Betancourt was to declare in Bogota eight years later, "it doesn't stop there. This privatisation has in fact been no more than a diversionary tactic to open the way for the biggest hold-up in the history of Colombia." At the time, the five ports run by Colpuertos had more than 15,000 workers. They belonged to eight trade unions, and a federation that had won major privileges and, it was said, had been leading one government after the other by the nose. So President Gaviria had to find some way to avoid any violent reaction from the workforce when the privatisation was announced. The solution was simply to sack them and, to everyone's amazement, this didn't cause a riot. While the Ley primera transferred the state's assets to private business, it provided, quite rightly, that all the liabilities should be shouldered by the national exchequer. "The nation shall," Article 35 ran, "be responsible for paying retirement pensions of whatever
reparations
Doug Henwood wrote: But capitalism made possible the wealth and scientific knowledge that people struggled over, and the partial socialization of production that made socialism possible. This ambivalent attitude towards capitalism seems to me one of the distinctive features of Marxism - as opposed to romantic, moralizing, or utopian critiques of the sort that Marx savaged. I disagree with this reading of Marx. His ambivalent attitude towards capitalism was only in relation to feudalism and capitalism's ability to overcome feudal social relations, laying the foundation for collective ownership of the economy. As Louis P. has pointed out, Marx's views changed when he considered Russia (and the U.S.) after reading Chernevskii and corresponding with the People's Will. Marx came to view capitalism as a sufficient and not a necessary condition for socialism. Capitalism is only progressive in the sense that it lays the foundations for collective ownership but the collective ownership of socialism doesn't necessarily have to be built on capitalism. See the volume *Late Marx and the Russian Road* ed. Shanin. If you're going to embrace a romantic, moralizing, or utopian critique, you might as well say so, instead of doing it in the name of a purer Marxism - purer than Marx himself. If you are going to have a critique of a social system it has to have a basis. That basis can be a moral or ethical basis e.g. socialism will maximize human happiness or lead to more egalitarian distribution of resources or allow the free development of each person. It can be economic -a socialist economy will be more stable and grow faster with minimal negative externalities.If you are a socialist and you don't want to criticize capitalism then you have to rely on Cohen-Pleknakov arguments that socialism is inevitable and that is just the way it is. Marx himself is often criticized for being romantic and utopian. Being romantic and utopian is ok by me , but then I'm young and foolish. Sam Pawlett
reparations
"William S. Lear" wrote: Second, this rather pathetic belief that Capitalism is Evil, and not a highly complex intertwined mix of variegated Good and Bad. What is pathetic about believing capitalism is evil if you can demonstrate it? It seems that we have different experiences and a different understanding of this system. I believe it is completely evil largely because I experience it that way. I'm a lifelong blue collar worker from a family of life long blue collar workers. My parents are approaching 40 years apiece as wage laborers. I've worked for piece wages, shiftwork, 18 hour shifts in factories in 120 decibel noise. I could go on about people I've known who have died on or because of the job, been maimed on the job or who have had the life sucked right out of them after a lifetime of wage labor in the progressive capitalist system. The point is not an appeal to emotion or a holier-than-thou workerism but to show that my daily experience -subjective and intersubjective- and the experience of other working class people is of an evil system that *forces* wage laborers to live the crappy lives they do and kills the creative side of people reducing them to a quasi-vegetative existence. Your class position influences the beliefs you have about the system you live in. Sam's Manichean view that only "anti-capitalist elements ... within capitalism ... bring about social benefits" simply does not square with the facts. I happen to think slavery is a bad idea, but slavery was not destroyed in this society by "anti-capitalist elements". It was in other societies e.g. Portuguese Africa in the 1950's and 60's. The Civil Rights movement was not driven by "anti-capitalist elements". Yes it was. Socialists and Communists of all types played crucial roles in the civil rights and peace/anti-imperilism movements, especially in the early years when it was really tough going. Ask Ken Lawrence about this. Or health care system is not a product of such foes of the system, and as flawed and unfair as it is, it has brought great strides in understanding of how diseases work, how the human body breaks down, how to better treat injury, disease, and disability. The Canadian health system certainly is, as it is in many other countries. The Internet --- again, flawed though it is --- was not built by "anti-capitalist elements". OK. It shows too. The internet increasingly resembles the neighborhood lush singing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" as he staggers home. Human beings working within an unjust social system are still capable of great creativity and can, despite the fetters, produce things of great human value. The benefits of such exertions are often acquired through transaction (not to forget crucial concomitant externality benefits) but that does not make them any less real. I agree with this but it might be better to say that great creative works exist not _because_ but _in spite_ of capitalism. Its not the profit motive, incentives, or capitalist social relations that allowed Schubert to write his quartets, Coltrane to play or "A Love Supreme" or Wittgenstein to write the Investigations. The working class doesn't do much in the way of creative activity because it is too busy working. Sam Pawlett
Re: is our text project dead?
Michael Perelman wrote: Nobody has yet volunteered to write any of the subsections. Is our project dead? I think we would need only a page or two for an initial draft just to get things started. -- I would be willing to write something on Mexico or Latin America generally, if noone else will. I think a text should have a section on 'development theory', just a general overview of the major theories and a decent bibliography. I wrote a long post on development theory which I sent a few months ago. If you feel it is good enough, you can use some of that or modify it or whatever. There's also an good bibliography for beginners which might be useful.Didn't the URPE publish a macro text with Monthly Review some time ago? Sam Pawlett
Airplanes falling out of the sky
The airline industry is strange. Wild price fluctuations, bucket shop seats, open jaws, student fares, standby etc. I once bought an open ended ticket from Vancouver to LA return for $C50. Another flight over from Asuncion Paraguay to Leticia in Colombia was $US800 even though it is a shorter flight [Aero-Paraguay, look out below!] I think the idea of sunk costs and the low marginal costs of adding more customers may have something to do with it. I once read something about planned obsolescence in the airline industry but don't believe it, they have to crash a certain amount of planes to be profitable. SP
[PEN-L:15947 2000-02-01 Statement by the Vice President on AlaskaAirlines Flight 261
Doug Henwood wrote: [Gore has the answer to airplane safety - prayer!] Look Tinkerbell! We Can Fly! Thinking will make it so! SP
[Fwd: The SuperBowl]
Sunday's Superbowl was one of the best I've seen...in terms of its raw drama the last quarter of play. Today, Monday, a good many of your students will return from watching it and thinking about it only in terms of that raw drama...with maybe a bit of enthusiasm for the home team... There are much more sociological ways to understand football and major sports in their 21st century incarnation. There are two mini-lectures and one article on the Red Feather website to which you may want to refer your students if you want to add critical dimensions to their understanding. The first mini-lecture looks at the Superbowl in terms of five different theoretical approaches: Structural functional, Freud, Marx, psychological renewal for stressed-out workers and, as well, a postmodern sociology of Religion approach which sees the deep interest in sports in terms of their mythic answers to fundamental problems of life. It is at: http://www.tryoung.com/lectures/043suprbowl.htm The second reference looks at the wages of sports figures in terms of the Davis/Moore thesis and in terms of a Cultural Marxist perspective...one in which players are paid not for their great functional contribution to society as a whole but one in which their wages are understood in terms of the usefulness of their grace, skill and endurance to the colonization of consciousness of the sports fan. A structural marxist analysis understands the wages paid to such players as central to the re-unification of production and distribution...that is, it helps capitalists get rid of production surplus to the basic needs of buyers. The mini-lecture on Michael Jordan and Wage Theory is at: http://www.tryoung.com/lectures/054wages.html Then there is an full length article for your more dedicated students which expand on the first mini-lecture above. It is at: http://www.tryoung.com/archives/108sports.html The first mini-lecture is fun...Freud always plays well in the class room but it is the marxist approach which yeilds the most profound insights, I believe. have fun, don't buy too much, TR TR Young, 8085 Essex Weidman, Mi., 48893 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Visit the Red Feather website: http://www.tryoung.com
Newish Book on Mexico
The History of Mexico is the History of Class Struggle. Mexico's Hope. James Cockroft. MR Press.1999.435 pgs. This is the best general introduction to Mexican history and political economy available in English. Cockroft's book is a sweeping history of Mexico from the pre-colonial era to the present. Clearly written, the book does not suffer from the immense time span that it covers as Cockroft displays masterful knowledge of all aspects and periods of Mexican history, weaving them together in a highly coherent narrative. He proves adept at showing the continuity of Mexican history as well as the processes involved in the making and growth of Mexican capitalism and the Mexican state. The central thesis is that the history of Mexico has been one of class struggle and subsequent co-optation of the working class and peasantry by the party/state or PRI , repression of working class and peasants struggles and organizations and in some cases ,outright intervention of U.S. imperialism. The power of imperialism is discussed for the seminal role it plays in all aspects of Mexico. The book will be useful to activists and others working in and around Mexico as Cockroft details the many front organizations of the PRI and the tactics used in co-optation. The author places special emphasis on political economy, chapter 5 titled the State, Foreign Capital and Monopoly Capitalism being the heart of the book, explaining the structures of Mexican political economy as they have evolved over the last century. Further, the author displays an excellent working knowledge of Marxian historiography and political economy though sometimes he uses Marxist concepts like "relative surplus population" and "constant and variable capital" which may baffle newcomer to the genre. Cockroft supplies statistics and data where necessary. Most of the book (the latter 2/3) is devoted to contemporary post-1982 (debt crisis) political and economic developments in Mexico emphasizing the ups and downs of the labor movement as well as the re-emergence of militant indigenous movements. He goes through the myriad of Communist, anarchist and Trotskyist groups, detailing the sometimes periodic influence they have had on various strikes, organizations and demonstrations. Newer gay and feminist groups as well as NGO's, environmental groups and anti-nuclear groups are also discussed. Cockroft argues that through the struggles of the labor movement, the women's and student movements and armed guerrilla movements have created openings in Mexican society as well as the Mexican state. Openings through which people can act collectively to change their lives for the better and better effect the international forces, especially from the U.S., which play an enormous role in the direction of Mexican politics, economy and society. These various struggles have caused a breakdown in the hegemony of the PRI machine as it is no longer able to control all aspects of Mexican society like it used to through fraud, repression and co-optation. Accompanying this opening of Mexican society has been the catastrophic decline of the economy which has seen purchasing power sink to the level of 1960 leading to an estimated 50% living below the official poverty line and a real unemployment rate of 25%. Mexico in August 1982 announced it could longer make the interest payments on its foreign debt. This signaled the end of import substitution in Mexico and brought in the new era of neo-liberalism and privatization. Mexico joined GATT(now the WTO) in 1986 and amended its foreign investment laws making legal for foreign interests to own more than 50% of Mexican companies. In exchange for financial bailout, Mexico was forced to adopt the monetarist austerity package forced on it by the World Bank, IMF and U.S. Government. Cockroft goes into the details surrounding the 1982 crisis as well as the later and equally catastrophic 1994 crisis where the government was forced into a massive devaluation of the currency and accepted a huge 45$ billion bailout package arranged by Bill Clinton (who bypassed the U.S. Congress to pass it) cutting purchasing power once again for the masses. The post-1982 Mexican economy has been marked by a drive for foreign investment. While some foreign investment has taken place in the low wage environmentally destructive maquila sector, a good deal of the investment has been portfolio investment. The pulling out of this investment by foreign owners caused the 1995 crisis and arguably the 1982 one as well. Cockroft details some of the massive and disgusting corruption that the Mexican ruling class has engaged in since 1982. Shunning the grand conspiracism, favored among many Mexicans, he shows - in class terms- how corruption has grown into the political economy. Some of the more serious corruption has come through privatization, President Salinas giving companies to friends and to win influence. Further, many of the elite Mexican
U.S Aid to Colombia
__ A C T I O NA L E R T : C O L O M B I A, JANUARY 2000 CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES AND SENATORS NOW! __ +PRODUCED BY: LATIN AMERICA WORKING GROUP+ +TIMEOUT DATE: FEBRUARY 10, 2000+ STOP U.S. MILITARY AID TO COLOMBIA NOW! SUPPORT PEACE AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN COLOMBIA The Clinton Administration has just proposed a $1.3 billion aid package to Colombia. This new aid combined with funds already directed toward Colombia will amount to $1.6 billion over the next two years. The majority of aid will go to the most abusive military in the Western Hemisphere and pull the United States into an un-winnable counterinsurgency war. Act now to oppose military assistance and support funds that strengthen democracy and encourage peace. __ C L I N T O N ' S A I D P A C K A G E, A D I S A S T R O U S A P P R O A C H __ Major components of Clinton's aid package include: · helping the Colombian government push into the coca-growing regions of southern Colombia, the very same areas where Colombia is battling the counter-insurgency war; · training new special counter-narcotics battalions to clear the Southern area of insurgency; · purchasing 30 Blackhawk and 33 Huey helicopters; · upgrading Colombian capability to aggressively interdict cocaine and cocaine traffickers as well as support radar, aircraft and airfield upgrades, and improved anti-narcotics intelligence gathering; · increasing coca crop eradication through questionable aerial fumigation tactics that have failed to reduce the amount of coca production in the past and damage the environment. Every day, at least 250 to 300 U.S. military personnel and advisors counsel, train, and share intelligence with Colombia's security forces in ways that support counterinsurgency efforts. Our government has already funded the creation of a 950-troop counternarcotics battalion that is being trained to operate in Southern Colombia in a territory under dispute between Colombia's leftwing guerrillas and rightwing paramilitaries. Two more battalions are in the works. After many years during which the United States focused on police aid due to concerns over the Colombian army's human rights record, this marks a growing collaboration with the Colombian army. Clinton's proposed aid increase will make the United States a major actor in Colombia's three-decade old internal conflict. The Clinton Administration claims that this aid package is directed at counter-narcotics operations and won't mean further involvement in Colombia's dirty counter-insurgency war. They claim increased assistance will only support positive investment in Colombia's economic development and future. However, if Congress and the Administration don't hear from you, the vast majority of the aid package will go to support the Colombian military and police, not economic development or peace. Only a small portion of Clinton's aid package provides for non-military aid in an attempt to support peace, human rights, and economic assistance. The White House says it will propose $145 million over the next two years to provide economic alternatives for Colombian farmers who now grow coca and poppy plants and $93 million for new programs that will help the judicial system, crack down on money laundering and drug kingpins, increase protection of human rights, expand the rule of law, and promote the peace process. Your call to encourage policy makers to increase these positive alternatives and oppose military assistance may tip the balance between war and peace in Colombia. _ A C T N O W! _ Contact your representative and senators and oppose military aid to Colombia. The United States can and should help Colombians in their hour of need, with long-term, peaceful solutions to civil conflict and drug violence. 1. Find out who your representative and senators are and how to contact them on the web: Locate your congressional representative at: http://www.house.gov/writerep/ Locate your Senator at: http://www.senate.gov/ 2. Call your Congressional representative and senators in three easy steps: A. Call the U.S. Capitol switchboard 202-224-3121 and ask to be connected with your member B. once you are connected ask to speak with the foreign policy aide C. tell them to oppose military aid (see talking points below). If the aide is not there, leave a voice-mail message expressing your opinion and try back later. 3. Write to your members of Congress: Name of representative, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515 Name of Senator, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC 20510
[Fwd: BBC: Coup declared in Ecuador]
[NOTE: Obviously, the work of narco-Indians! -DG] President Mahuad's grip on power has been faltering in the face of the growing protests. BBC Saturday, 22 January 2000 Coup declared in Ecuador The head of the armed forces in Ecuador has announced the formation of a three-man council to take over the running of the country from President Jamil Mahuad. The military chief, General Carlos Mendoza said it would be made up of himself, indigenous Indian leader Antonio Vargas, and former supreme court judge Carlos Solorzano. He made the announcement at a news conference in the capital, Quito, after holding talks with indigenous protesters at the presidential palace. General Mendoza said: "We will work to help the country, we will work against corruption and so that we are less poor." He said he had the full support of the armed forces and promised full freedom for the country of 12.4 million people. At the same time, he said he did not know the whereabouts of President Mahuad, who has not officially resigned and was last reported to have taken refuge at a military base with his ministers. One report, quoting Antonio Vargas, said the president had been detained at Quito international airport. There has been no confirmation of this. The junta says it plans to remove the state of emergency imposed by President Mahuad and hold elections as soon as possible. Mr Mahuad had earlier left the palace after announcing that he would not bow to demands for his resignation. Thousands of Indian protesters surrounded the building as calls intensified for him to step down. Indians draped in Ecuadoran flags held a candlelit vigil outside the palace, which was being guarded by heavily armed troops. Stormed parliament -- Indian protesters sparked the power struggle by storming parliament on Friday and declaring a new government. They say they have no faith in President Mahuad's ability to turn around the country's worst recession in decades. A military unit that joined the protesters stood aside to allow some 1,500 demonstrators into the empty building before joining the demonstration. Salvador Quishpe, president of an Indian group that has been part of the protest, said: "We believe the armed forces' role has been crucial for this process of purification." President Mahuad left the presidential palace - reportedly in an ambulance and with an armed escort - insisting he would not be forced from power. He was driven to a military base and was reported to be under the protection of soldiers loyal to his administration. In a speech to the nation, he insisted that he remained in control and he challenged his opponents to stage a coup if they want power. He said: "In their ambition and lack of respect for democracy in Ecuador, the armed forces are trying to mount a coup d'etat. I call on the people to oppose this coup." Looting and burning --- Violence broke out in other parts of Ecuador as the protests spread. An Ecuadoran radio station reported that one person was killed and three others were injured in clashes in Portoviejo, about 240km (160 miles) southwest of the capital Quito. And in Guayaquil, the country's business capital, looters fought with police and set fire to cars. Television pictures showed a rampaging crowd of about 300 people raiding shops as outnumbered police looked on helplessly. President Mahuad's grip on power has been faltering in the face of the growing protests. Indigenous Indians, who make up nearly half the population of Ecuador, have been particularly hard hit by the recession. In recent months, the economy has floundered with runaway inflation, a currency crisis and falling exports. A plan by President Mahuad to replace the Ecuadoran sucre with the US dollar has been rejected by Indian groups. The Indians have also ruled out Vice President Gustavo Noboa as a replacement for Mr Mahuad. Mr Noboa, who travelled to Quito from Guayaquil late on Friday, said he was ready to assume the country's presidency. He vowed to defend democracy and civil order. Countries across Latin America are watching the uprising in Ecuador with concern. Many governments in the region have publicly supported President Mahuad, while the United States warned that a successful coup attempt would mean economic and political isolation for Ecuador. The Organization of American States gave its "full and determined backing" to Mr Mahuad and "firmly" condemned efforts to oust him. Mahuad's presidency --- Aug 1998 Mr Mahuad takes office Sept: Sucre devalued by 15% against US
[PEN-L:13003] I, David Stoll, Liar.
"Percentages of land poor and landless among the peasantry are almost surely responsible for the falling levels per capita food consumption among the peasantry... Using the U.N. minimum of 2,236 calories daily, 45% of the Guatemalan people fell below the subsistence level in 1965, a proportion that increased sharply in the period under consideration: to 70% below minimum in 1975 and 805 by 1980. Brockett has also linked such conditions "backward' to decreased peasant access to land and "forward" to increased levels of malnutrition among the Guatemalan peasantry... The authors also link the increased level of exploitation to increased support of the Indian populace for the highlands insurgency." Wickham-Crowley p239-40. These are but a few of the inconsistencies and contradictions in Stoll's account. No doubt readers will find more. His book is a slapdash affair full of unsubstantiated assertions and opinions. His evidence consists of rumors and a handful of conversations with locals made around 1995. His evidence in no way supports any of his conclusions. Stoll gets a D for effort and an F for content. Sam Pawlett Sources: David Stoll. *Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans* Westview,1999 . George Black with Norma Chinchella and Milton Jamail. *Garrison Guatemala*,MR Press,1984 William Blum. *Killing Hope*. Common Courage,1995 Timothy Wickham-Crowley. *Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America*, Princeton U Press,1992. Elizebeth Burgos ed. *I,Rigoberta Menchu*, Verso 1984. James Petras Critical Persepectives on the Central American Peace Accords: A Class Analysis. Critique 30-1 p71-89 Guatemala Report. Various Issues.
[PEN-L:12831] The Big Clock
Louis Proyect wrote: Defining the noir style has been a preoccupation of many leftwing cultural historians. This is not surprising since noir not only reflects the hard-boiled depression-era sensibility but the sense of disillusionment that followed it during the post-WWII period. Yes, but there is a lot more going on in noir. Themes of the existentialist philosophers are evident in most film noir, fate, angst, condemned to freedom, etc. The use of the atomic bomb in Japan created a sense that the world could end at any moment creating an atmosphere of doom. This theme plays out clearly in the most cynical and doom laden noir "Criss-Cross" with Burt Lancaster. All this was laid out in Mailer's essay "The White Negro." While much of noir art was produced by left-wingers, it very rarely captured the sense of optimism and group solidarity that defined the Popular Front cultural ethos. While many of the CP'ers who wrote noir screenplays obviously believed that Ben Shahn and Mike Gold were doing the right thing, they either were prevented from producing such work in Hollywood or--more interestingly--consciously chose to depict shady and economically marginal characters cut off from society instead. So defining the link between such works as "Blue Gardenia", "Force of Evil" and "The Big Clock"--all written by CP'ers--and the politics of their creators becomes a real challenge, Sometimes the marginal characters in noir are seen as a kind of lumpen proletariat waging a class struggle through crime. For example, the solidarity and friendship between Richard Widmark and the snitch in "Pickup on Southstreet" despite the fact that Widmark knows the snitch had ratted on him. The typical view in noir is that the cops and the crooks are really the same people who use the same methods, they're just on opposite sides-- there's a line to this effect at the end of "The Naked City." Another device is to show 'honor among thieves' like in Asphalt Jungle (Marilyn Monroe's first feature and starring the incomparable Sterling Hayden) and Kubrick's great neo-noir The Killing(also with Hayden). There are the traditional themes too like redemtion; where Alan Ladd (my favorite)is redeemed at the end of "This Gun For Hire." The theme of the pervasive evil and corruption that lurks beneath the surface would influence later film directors like David Lynch. "Laura" consumed much of her energies in this period, which she felt was a necessary escape valve from the intense feelings of disillusionment the pact brought on. The movie, best known now for its haunting title melody, depicts a strong-willed woman trying to carve out an identity for herself. After she is murdered, a working class detective tracks down the perpetrator in a decadent and morally-corrupt group of upper-class society types. Laura is not actually murdered in "Laura." She appears about half way through the film. That plot device so common in American entertainment the 'mistaken identity.' Close to two other left-wing émigrés Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler, When Eisler was called before the idiots at HUAC, he was accused of being the "Karl Marx of music." Eisler replied that he was "flattered." Lang eventually moved to Hollywood where his German expressionist esthetics helped to influence film noir, often perceived--incorrectly in my opinion--as a specifically American phenomenon. Although Lang adapted to the Hollywood prejudices against overtly political films with messages, he never was happy with these constrictions. Lang himself made some great quasi-film noirs in his Hollywood period. I don't think Noir is a specifically American phenomenon since some directors like Godard in "Breathless" attempted the noir aesthetic (though in Godard's case its hard to tell whether he is parodying it or not.) Noir is still the greatest film genre to come out of America doing for american film what neo-realism did for Italian and the New Cinema did for French. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:12761] Note on Neo-Liberalism
Beginning in the 1970's and continuing today, Latin American countries have undertaken reforms and restructuring in the mining sectors of their economies. This process is part of a wholesale restructuring of the Latin American economies, which in turn, is part of a continuing global restructuring process. There are several reasons why these changes have taken place. The standard explanation is that the previous economic "model" in Latin America, often referred to as import-substitution or macroeconomic populism, failed or simply exhausted its potential, leaving Latin America mired in debt,stagnation and various other economic maladies. In contrast to the orthodox explanation, I shall argue that the neo-liberal restructuring was a response or counter-offensive by the dominant classes to the growing power of the working class through the 1970's. The working class in Latin America, as elsewhere, had gotten too powerful and needed to be weakened in order to continually increase capital accumulation. The dominant classes have, so far, been all too successful in this endeavor. Beginning in the 1970's and continuing today, Latin American countries have undertaken reforms and restructuring in the mining sectors of their economies or have no minimum wage, no welfare benefits, no unions, no legal protection, and no security. The labor market has also changed socio-demographically as internal migration increases with unemployment. People thrown out of their regular jobs must migrate to where they can find work if they cannot find work in their current place of residence. This is evident in the huge sprawling shantytowns of Bolivian cities , the depletion of the population in the mining centers and the increase in population in the coca producing areas. The economic restructuring ,sometimes called neo-liberalism, consists of trade liberalization( i.e. the reduction or elimination of import and foreign investment controls), privatization of state enterprises, deregulation( elimination of price controls and subsidies.) The purpose of these reforms was to control inflation, meet debt servicing requirements, and open the economy up to international investment and market forces. As concerns the mining sector, privatization is the most important of these reforms. Privatization is often undertaken simultaneously with other reforms( e.g.. legal) to maximize the desired effect. Most mines in Latin America were nationalized in the post-world war two period through to the mid-1970's. The reasons for the nationalizations are numerous yet outside the scope of this essay. Privatization contains a strong political-ideological dimension alongside the pure economic motives. Partisans and advocates of privatization usually hold that private enterprise is a priori superior to public or state enterprise. Private firms are everywhere and always more efficient, productive, profitable and hence more competitive than are public firms. Thus, making as many public firms private, as possible, will enhance the general efficiency and competitiveness of the economy as a whole. Increased profitability means greater capital accumulation and a greater surplus to reinvest into the economy. Advocates of privatization often overlook the fact that public firms are created and exist for different reasons than do private firms. Judging public firms by the same standards one would judge private firms( i.e. profitability) is therefore irrelevant. In the last twenty years, privatization in Latin America has taken place during or as a result of economic crisis. The most acute of these crisis' has come to be known as the debt crisis which started in 1982 when Mexico announced it no longer had the foreign exchange necessary to pay the service on its foreign debt. The international banks and lending agencies, including most prominently the IMF demanded privatization as a means of procuring the necessary funds to help the debt service. It should also be noted that privatization takes place in the extremely corrupt atmosphere of Latin American politics. The process of privatization has oftentimes been simply a means by which certain families and their friends enrich themselves through pilfering publicly owned wealth. Moreover, privatization's are done to gain favor with national or international elites, to gain political influence, as political pay offs etc. The effect of privatization has often been to strengthen the position of the socio-economic elite.State owned companies are often sold at below their real value. To my mind, the most important cause ( and effect) of privatization has been to strengthen the position of the dominant classes vis-Ã -vis the working classes. Privatizations are associated with mass layoffs and a corresponding boost in the unemployment rate. Bolivia began its structural adjustment program or "New Economic Policy" in 1985/6 which included the closing of all state-owned mines which were in
[PEN-L:12648] materialism
Jim Devine wrote: Marx would reject Platonic epistemology, instead seeing ideas as a function of social practice and also the physical brain, though he doesn't talk much about physiology. Ideas can be functions of social practice and still be just chemicals in the brain. The philosopher Wilfred Sellars defended this view (and so do I-- I have a paper on it if I can find it somewhere in the attic behind the stacks of half-read Henry James novels.) If ideas are not physical matter then they must be Platonic universals of some kind. There probably have been attempts to marry Marx and a weak Platonism but I can't think of any. The closest I can think of is the work of Scott Meickle on Aristotle and Marx though aristotle was of course Plato's opposite number (recall that famous painting by Raphael with Plato pointing to the sky meaning the answers lie in the 'forms' and Aristotle pointing to the ground meaning the answers lie in material forces.) Just as chemistry can't be reduced to physics and biology can't be reduced to chemistry, sociology can't be reduced to biology, chemistry, or physics. Different "levels of aggregation" (to use econ-speak) have different "laws of motion" based on the complex of relationships between the "atoms" so that these laws of motion can't be reduced simply to those of the atoms alone. Putting a bunch of carbon atoms together to make graphite produces results that cannot be simply explained by looking at the carbon atoms as individuals. This can be seen because one can see those atoms combined to form a diamond, which has quite different characteristics than graphite. The relationships among the atoms adds something to the mix that cannot be understood simply by looking at the atoms themselves. The carbon atoms' characteristics do put limits on the kinds of molecules and crystals that can be formed (there are only a limited number of pure-carbon type molecules) but this is a _limit_, not a matter of pure determinism. I agree with this, though there are some good arguments to the contrary. Some people argue that Crick and Watson successfully reduced biology to chemistry. Non-reductionist materialists rely on somewhat wooly concepts like "supervienence" and "anomolous monism" to show how ideas and "mental" things are physical matter but can't be reduced to brain science in an explanation. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:12647] Re: Re:Moore
Ricardo Duchesne wrote: Moore's *Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy* is as Marxist as they come - unless you just want paraphrasing of Marx's work. His whole analysis centers around the role of classes. That was my impression too. Moore really focuses in on social relations. His work on India, China and Japan is valuable because there is so little of it in english (as far as I'm aware.) Of course it is somewhat dated and open to interpretation. Didn't Moore co-author(co-edit?)a work with Marcuse and R.Paul Wolff *The Critique of Pure Tolerance*? Michael Hoover will know. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:12583] cuban organic agriculture
michael perelman wrote: Peripheral countries have two choices in development. Either they can try to emulate the technologies of the powerful capitalist countries or they can develop their own indigenous technologies. But doesn't this amount to the same thing? Import-substitution? By indigenous, do you mean along the lines of "Small is Beautiful"? I think "small is beautiful" and Gandhi type development ideas are very worthwhile provided that they are not imposed by dictatorship and by fiat. India might be in a better state today if had followed some of Gandhi's economic ideas rather than the big Stalinist style industrialization plans. However, with cultural imperialism and the Big Mac, it might be hard to convince a majority to go with lower productivity indigenous technology. There's a lot of "we want everything Americans have and we want it now" in the third world today. But rising expectations can lead to serious political change. I don't know. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:12579] The Brenner Thesis: part one, historical background
Jim Devine wrote: BTW, RB's critique of Frank links up with the broader "orthodox" Marxist critique of the dependency and Monthly Review schools. One of the basic critiques here is that many dependistas ignored the role of class conflict within the periphery, which eventually linked up with popular frontism in those countries. Jim,which dependentista's? Where? A lot of critics of dependency theory make criticisms without mentioning who and what they are criticizing. C.Leys is one of the worst perpetrators here. For example, in one of his papers (in the collection The Rise and Fall of Development Theory) he presents a sweeping critique of dependency theory yet only cites 1 paper by Cardoso, 1 book by Norman Girvan and 2 books by Frank. No mention of the Cardoso-Rey, Cardoso-Marini debates etc etc. That is terrible. Most of the dependency theorists have never been translated into english. Many lost their lives in Latin American political struggle. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:12578] Wilson
Rod Hay wrote: I think this confuses things. An idea is not matter. It seems as if someone has made an ideological committment to "materialism" and then decides that racism exists and is important therefore it must be matter. Racism is an ideology (i.e., a system of ideas). Electricity is a material force. Human labour is a material force. It is important to keep the two concepts separate. I think Jim D. was trying to show that ideas and material forces exist in a dialectical relation. I wouldn't argue with that. But an idea is not matter! Technically, ideas occur or are originated in brains and brains are physical things. In principle it is possible to identify ideas as certain neurophysiological and chemical processes and argue that these processes do not fully explain the content of the idea so that there is room for ideas to be, at least partially, determined by social/historical forces. If you are a materialist, there is only physical matter and nothing else. If you are a Platonist then ideas exist in the "forms" or in universals whose ontological status is kind of fuzzy. The question is: will the laws of physical matter, ultimately, explain everything? Is sociology just physics and engineering? Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:12509] Notes on Development Theory Ms.
[from a work in progress.SP] Notes on Development Theory Sam Pawlett Introduction Development theory took off after WWII with the first wave of decolonization. The problems facing the newly independent countries became of concern to intellectuals who wanted to understand the plight of the newly independent countries as well as rationalize imperialism. Such problems had in the past really only been the preserve of those working in the Marxist tradition because of the events and issues raised by the 1917 Russian revolution. Because of the small size of the Russian industrial working class and the agrarian nature of the economy, the Russian revolutionaries were concerned with problems of underdevelopment and the problem of building socialism in a backward country where Marx and his followers said that socialism would (not could) take place in advanced industrialized capitalist countries. Russian and German Marxists like Pleknakov and Kautsky argued that socialism could only be built on nations that had developed capitalist economies. Only a high level of productivity could support socialist social relations . . . The central concern of the U.S. and British governments and their intellectual servants were that the newly independent countries might fall into the Soviet sphere of influence. The USSR presented an alternative model of development since in 1917 it was in a similar position with a poor, technologically backward, mostly agricultural peasant society. The USSR had industrialized quickly through a period of "socialist primitive accumulation," had raised standard of living, advanced technologically and maintained a high degree of economic self-sufficiency. The hope for leaders of newly independent countries was that these countries could repeat the Soviet experience with a minimum of the immense costs suffered by the peoples of the USSR. The newly independent countries were to be kept out of the Soviet sphere so the raw materials, oil and cheap labor supply could come to benefit the U.S. and Britain. This was to be done through a mix of covert action, military intervention, a range of macroeconomic instruments especially including the World Bank and IMF. What is Development? Development theories are closely bound to the development of capitalism itself. The content of the theories themselves, reflect the degree of development of the productive forces and the state of the class struggle. The theory itself emerges as something to be explained, i.e. development theories are both the cause and effect of the reality they purport to explain. As Marx and Engels explained: "The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, consequently, also control the means of mental production, so that the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are on the whole subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relations, the dominant material relations grasped as ideas; hence of the relations which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance."(GI,59) The classical economists including Marx had no conception of "development" as we speak of today, they only sought to understand pre-capitalistic economic formations as they led eventually to capitalism. At the time there were only capitalist societies and non or pre-capitalist societies. The issue was to explain how pre-capitalist societies became capitalist. Marx ridiculed the traditional notion of ‘original sin' in primitive accumulation where capitalist relations arise from frugal and hardworking individuals(the capitalist class) and lazy individuals (the proletariat.)(Capital V.1p873ff.) In Marx's view capitalism came into being through the seperation of workers from the means of production such that all they has to sell was their own labor. The full title of Adam Smith's most famous book "The Wealth of Nations" is "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations". A concept of development is inherent in the title. Smith is interested in how nations become wealthy and stay that way. For Smith, the development of society occurs through the division of labor and the application of technology leading to an increase in the productivity of labor. Smith held a theory of value where he believed that the wealth of a nation is equal to what it produces each year. To increase wealth, one must increase production. Economic activity is the physical production of material goods. Further, productive work is such that allows only for the accumulation of material wealth and hence material wealth has value only in so far as it embodie
[PEN-L:12363] Some observations on leadership
Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: Carroll, let's keep separate things separated. There is a difference between a genuine social movement -- i.e. one that has real support in a population or its segment -- and one that exists mostly in the imagination of moral entrepreneurs striving for a recognition. It is my opinion that Louis Proyect not only is an example of the latter, but a very unscrupulous one the top of it. He seems to specialize in inquisitorial personal attacks and smear campaigns against people to whom he imputes inferior motives. See for example his posting [PEN-L:11948] Open letter to NACLA, Susan Lowes and Jack Hammond to which nobody except myself bothered to respond. I am quite surprised that this snitch, his provocations and character assassinations are taken seriously or even tolerated on this listserv. I guess it is a sad testimony to the state of mind of many "Leftists" in this country who cannot tell shit from an argument anymore. From *On Bullshit* by Harry Frankfurt. "Why is there so much bullshit? Of course it is impossible to be sure that there is more of it nowadays than at other times...The notion of carefully wrought bullshit involves,then, a certain inner strain. Thoughtful attention to detail requires discipline and objectivity. It entails accepting standards and limitations that forbid the indulgence of impulse or whim. It is this selflessness the, in connection with bullshit, strikes us as inapposite. But in fact it is not out of the question at all. The realms of advertising, and of public relations, and the nowadays closely interelated realm of politics, are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve among the indisputable and classic paradigms of the concept. And in these realms there are exquisitely sophisticated craftsmen who--with the help of advanced and demanding techniques of market research, of public opinion polling, of psychological testing and so forth-- dedicate themselves tirelessly to getting every image and word they produce exactly right. "What bullshit essentially misrepresents is neither the state of affairs to which it refers nor the beliefs of the speaker concerning the state of affairs. Those are what lies misrepresent, by virtue of being false. Since bullshit need not be false, it differs from lies in its misrepresentational intent. The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the facts to be. What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to. "This is the crux of the distinction between him and the liar. Both he and the liar represent themselves falsely as endeavoring to communicate the truth. The success of each depends upon deceiving us about that. But the fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor to conceal it...For the bullshitter, he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose." *The Importance of What we Care About* Harry Frankfurt, p130-2. Cambridge U PRess, 1994. Odysseus Abercrombie Research Director Product Development Swenson's Fine TV Dinners 103, Friedlard Way, Des Moines, Iowa.
[PEN-L:12231] Jim Petras on Imperialism and NGO's
On Stephen P's question re Petras and Brenner here's the best I could come with: "The histroical fact is that the U.s., Africa, Asia and Latin america have a long history of several centuries of ties to overseas markets, exchanges and investments. Moreover, in the case of North america and Latin America, capitalism was "born globalized" in the sense that mosat of its early growth was based on overseas exchanges and investmnets. From the 15th to the 19th centuries Latin america's external trade and investment had greater significance than in the 20th century. Similarly, one-thrid of English capital formation int he 17th century was based on the international slave trade. Born globalized, it is only in the middle of the 19th century that the internal market began to gain in importance, thanks to the growth of wage labor, local manufactures and most significantly a state which altered the balance of class forces between the domestic and overseas investors and producers." James Petras "Globalization:A Critical Analysis", Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol 29 no 1,1999,p3-37. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:12075] Re: Re: standard of living debate
Ricardo Duchesne wrote: I should remind readers that this debate is connected to the colonial trade because, as I pointed out earlier, Hobsbawm thinks that there was, in the early phase of the industrial revolution in Britain, a lack of demand by the home market, due to the low living standards of workers, which was dealt with by exporting goods to the colonies. Frank in his *World Accumulation 1492-1790* argues that the contribution of colonial trade to primitive accumulation and industrialization fluctutated with the business cycle. External factors (trade) was important during recessions like the 17th century recession and internal class struggle important during boom and expansion like during the 16th century. I think Brenner's criticism of Frank is sound, F locates all dynamism in the sphere of circulation rather than the sphere of production though F pays lip service to a "dialectical unity" between internal and external factors. In *World Accumulation* its Smith, Smith, Smith. Frank even has his chapter headers with quotes from Smith. I'm about halfway through Dobb's *Studies in the Development of Capitalism" where he argues, like Frank, that mercantile capital grew stronger during recession and famine. Dobb really takes the bull by the horns and answers the tough question of: where did the capitalists come from? Essentially the capitalist class grew out of merchant capital together with the upper crust of the gilds and the burghers. more later, Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:11983] Re: Provisional reactions to the Brenner thesis
Ricardo Duchesne wrote: Alan Carling's synthesis of Cohen and Brenner, which Wood completely rejects as an imposible mix (not everything mixes, try putting car oil in your soup) can be found in his book, Analytical Marxism. I'm afraid I'm going to have to endorse Ricardo's observations here. In my years as a line cook I've found that 10w30 motor oil is not a good garnish for soups though higher viscosity oil works quite well as a replacement for Italian salad dressing. Tommy Udo
[PEN-L:11817] olonialism
Doug Henwood wrote: Yes, why was it that all that plunder didn't do much for Spanish and Portuguese industry, while England exploded? Poor Portugal, reduced to an exporter of processed agricultural goods in Ricardo's famous example. [I posted this here a while back.] There's an interesting argument that the accumulation of gold and natural riches was a hindrance vis a vis national economic development,for countries "blessed" with gold and silver mines would: "certainly drop their Cultivation and Manufactures; since Men will not easily be induced to labor and toil, for what they can get with much less Trouble, by exchanging some of the Excess of their Gold and Silver for what they want. Amd if they should be supposed, as is natural enoughin this case, to drop their Cultivation, and especially of Manufactures,which are much the slowest and most laborious Way of supplyingthemselves with what they couls so easily and readily procure byexchanging GOld and Silver, which they too much abound in, they would certainly, in a great measure, by so doing lose the Arts ofCultivation, and especially of Manufatures; as it's thought Spain hath done, merely by the Accession of the Wealth which teh West Indies have produced them;whence they are become a poor Nation, and the Conduit-Pipes to disperseteh Gold and Silver over the world, which other Nations, by making Goodscheaper than they do, are fetching for them, to such a Degree, as thatthe Mines ae scarcely sufficient to answer their occasions; and though they are sensible of this, yet they find by Experience they can'tprevent it." Jacob Vanderlint *Money Answers All Things",52-4, 1737. All this is not to deny the importance of the precious metals in domestic class formation. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:11705] Empiricism
Mathew Forstater wrote: Norwood Hanson's work, mentioned in your post, is cited in the paper, Hanson was quite a character. A teacher of mine who was a student of his said he hated walking through the department each morning so he would park his harley davidson and climb through his office window. He taught at the University of Iowa for a time and gave public forums on atheism vs. theism. He and his family were hounded out of Iowa by the Klan and other religious fanatics for his efforts. He considered himself a failure if any one of his students left his philosophy of religion class a theist. He died when he crashed his own plane on his way to work. Sam
[PEN-L:11696] Re: Role of Total Foreign Trade
Ricardo Duchesne wrote: All this talk about whether trade was a necessary or a sufficient condition is meaningless unless we make a distinction between slave profits, the colonial trade, and total foreign trade. My conclusion, given the findings and arguments I have forwarded so far, is that *slave profits* played an insignificant role. Not only were such profits *not* a sufficient cause; they were not necessary either: Europe would have industrialized anyways. Now, the *colonial trade* played a statistically moderate, not too significant, role. Europe would also have industrialized without it - although at a lower rate, and at a later date. Total foreign trade was significant but was not the major cause. You haven't mentioned what exactly the colonial trade consisted in. England brought in raw materials necessary for manufacturing from the colonies. It was thus able to decrease its dependence on the the continent for raw materials. Raw materials may have been, on the whole, statically small but was a very important factor in "take off" and industrialization. here's some more of Michael Hudson's analysis (which I think will support Jim B too): "Europe was catapulted out of its medieval epoch. The massive influx of silver and gold after 1492 inflated its prices, greatly accelerated the monetisation of its economic life and transformed its land tenure systems. These processes in turn catalyzed enclosure movements, a rural exodus and urbanization... Meanwhile, colonialism and foreign trade laid the foundation for a vast credit expansion, of which governments were the first beneficiaries. A fund of capital developed which was invested domestically and abroad the epoch's great public trading and investment companies led by the East and West Indies Companies of Holland, Britain and France. The growth of commerce, the argicultural-urban revolution and the associated monetary revolution were associated with wars, national debts, the growth of private sector banking and credit, inflation and taxes. This was the essence of the Reformation in its economic aspect.(p17) "Secure supplies of raw materials were critical to achieving industrial advantage. Many such materials could not be economically produced ar home for they required tropical climates or mineral rich ores. The acquisition of the colonies having these resources therefore spurred an international rivalry among the European nations. A wise management of foreign trade would draw gold into the domestic monetary system while colonization would become a major means of supporting this trade.(p25) "Only a political theory can explain how England rose from a comparatively less developed country to one surpassing Holland and France by endowing itself with much of their skilled labor, Iberian gold and other international economic resources. England certainly did not start out with a particularly high ratio of capital relative to its labor force. (p30) "...India at the outset ot its contact with Europe had a far superior accumulation of labor skills and tools, gold and other capital. It outstripped all European countries in textile production, the major industry of the 16th and 17th centuries... Colonial lands and resources were burdened with quasi-feudal institutions of land tenure that impede their subsequent agricultural and social development, most conspicuously in Latin America. IN this manner Europe's mother countries established the specialization patterns that have steered world commerce for many centuries, persisting even after the colonies won their nominal political freedom (p31)" Trade, Development and Foreign Debt Vol.1. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:11676] Empiricism
I don't think there is another way of proceeding other than what is being called 'empiricism' here.Outside of math and logic, you can only look at the facts or evidence and try and draw inductive inferences from them building up to explanation of causal patterns. You need a certain amount of empirical evidence before you can even formulate a hypothesis let alone test it. All theories to some extent must be based on empirical observation. Even if one believes in knowledge a priori, such knowledge would only account for a miniscule amount of what we do or can know. It is a mistake to counterpose theory and facts since all observation of the facts depends on already assimilated theory. The famous example by N.R. Hanson was an x-ray. When I look at an x-ray I see gray and white bloches, a doctor looks at an x-ray and sees a fractured tibula. Same with data and causal patterns in the world. Much of "theory" in the social sciences is not theory in the same sense that evolution by natural selection is a theory because you cannot predict anything from "theories" in the social sciences-- its just too complicated with too many variables. The best one can do is ex post causal explanation. Further, theories in social science will always be underdetermined i.e. multiple explanations are true of the same hypothesis. Much of social sciences consists of starting with your conclusion and working backwards trying to get the 'facts' to fit into your theory. Especially in economics, theorists start with what they are trying to prove and then go to work. The political conclusions are drawn at the outset. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:11577] colonialism
Louis Proyect wrote: The question that needs addressing is not how and why feudalism in Europe evolved into capitalism, The problem for Marxists is how to evaluate the spread of EUROPEAN capitalism into NON-EUROPEAN pre-capitalist societies. These two statements amount to much the same thing: the evolution of the modes of production. That evolution was (as Marx and Jim D have argued) from both internal and external causes. The export of capital capitalism from England can be traced to the usual causes in the classic theory of imperialism; a way of avoiding confrontation with the working class at home, the need to cheapen constant capital because of the falling profit rate and need to create markets (i.e. realize surplus value.) Pre-capitalist societies like feudalism or "asiatic"/"tributary" modes remained stagnant because of low productivity. The surplus that was created, through extra-economic coercion, was squandered by the ruling class on temples, palaces and churches instead of being plowed back into creating more productive capacity. Thus the relations of production acted as a fetter on the productive forces. This is where Brenner comes in I think-explaining how the whole process of capitalist capital accumulation got going in the first place. I don't see why one couldn't combine the rape of the colonies and changing relations of production internally in an explanation. Dissolution of pre-capitalist formations can be explained by the greater productive capacity of capitalism and the class struggle of the bourgeoise against landowners. Interestingly, Bettelheim argues that capitalism leads to the simultaneous preservation and destruction of pre-capitalist modes. Re-reading Brenner's NLR 'critique of neo-smithian approaches' paper last night, I was struck by the theoretical nature of the argument. Not too much about agriculture in England. He argues that Sweezy, Wallerstein and Frank are in essence repeating Smith's argument that the growth of international capitalism is based on the growth of the int'l division of labor and trade relations but failed to analyze the class basis of the spread of K. The upshot is that the solution for 3rd world countries is autarky and not socialism. I find Brenner quite convincing. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:11541] Re: globalisation's influences on mentality
Hiroto Tsukada wrote: Dear Penners, My name if Hiroto Tsukada, a Professor of Economics at Yamaguchi University, Japan. (Visiting UK till next January, at University of Kent at Canterbury.) I am studying now on globalisation's influences on mentality of people. Hi Hiroto, I would look at the rise in suicide, especially teen suicide, rates with structural adjustment programs as well as mental health and things like alcoholism (traditional stress relievers) The suicide rate in N.Zealand skyrocketed after the SAP began in the 80's. Same with Russia. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:11405] Person work hours at the dawn of capitalism
James M. Blaut wrote: I'm inclined to think that capitalism in its first, crude stage (after gaining power over labor in Europe and power to seize slaves in Africa and work slaves in the colonies) could not exploit wage workers efficiently enough so that they would be able to survive and reproduce themselves. So the main industrial capitalist enterprises were in the colonies, exploiting mainly slave labor. (Slaves did not reproduce themselves -- the average life expectancy of a slavbe in 17th-century Brazil was 8 years -- and this happened because they were worked to death: it was cheaper to do that and then buy more slaves in their place). Has anyone here read Robin Blackburn's histories of slavery? He argues that slavery was seminal in the development of Europe. Any comments? Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:11389] more mercantilists
Mathew Forstater wrote: Every line of this section in Darity is crucial, and unfortunately I can't type every line in. Please see how Darity puts this into political and economic-theoretical context (Darity, 1992) Key here (Sam P. if you are reading this!!) is the two paragraphs on Smith!!! I think Smith was the pivot point in the shift from Mercantalism/Physiocracy towards laissez-faire (traces of both can be found in his work). This shift represented a continuity in British Nationalism as Smith thought that Britain would be better off moving from Mercantilist policies to laissez-faire i.e. once it had built up its comparative advantages. Found this gem from one of my favorites Bernard Mandeville supposedly the originator of laissez-faire but who was really a Mercantilist. "Every Government ought to be thoroughly acquainted with, and stedfastly pursue the Interest of the country. Good Politicians by dextrous Management, laying heavy impositions on some Goods, or totally prohibiting them, and lowering the Duties on others, may always turn and divert the Course of Trade which way they please...But above all, they'll keep a watchful Eye over the Balance of Trade in general and never suffer that all the Foreign Commodities together, that are imported in one Year, shall exceed in value what of their own Growth or Manufactures is in the same exported to others. Note that I speak now ofthe Interest of those Nations that have no Gold or Silver of their own Growth." Mandeville, Fable of the Bees,p115,1714 Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:11388] Early economists and the origin of capitalism
Rod Hay wrote: Many of the so-called early economists were in fact merchants, writing phamplets in order to influence government policy in their favour. This is a bias in the records that remain. Quotes on trade from the mercantilists can easily be matched by quotes from the likes of Petty and other emphasising the importance of agriculture. The significance of the mercantalist literature lies in its opposition to laissez-faire, its emphasis on the mechanisms of international trade in growth and development. F.List and subsequent protectionists grew out of it. The motives and class position of the mercantalists themselves is not evidence for the falsity or intellectual flimsiness of their doctrines. Rather, they showed how countries could run a positive balance of trade to provide funds for additional investment and employment by monopolizing on the gains of trade under increasing returns. This was and is to be done by doing the opposite of what the free traders prescribed. The mercantalists (and physiocrats) also believed that the origins of capitalism and economic evolution was agrarian. How could anyone believe otherwise? The important question they address is how foreign trade and domestic development interact with each other in the industrial core vis a vis the raw materials producing periphery -once capitalism has been established-. As Marx says; "There can be no doubt that the great revolutions that took place in trade in the 16th and 17th centuries, along with the geographical discoveries of that epoch, and which rapidly advanced the development of commercial capital, were a major moment in promoting the transition from feudal to the capitalist mode of production. The sudden expansion of the world market, the multiplication of commodities in circulation, the competition among the European nations for the seizure of Asiatic and American treasures, the colonial system, all made a fundamental contribution towards shattering the feudal barriers to production. And yet the modern mode of production in its first period, that of manufacture, developed only where the conditions for it had been created in the MIddle Ages. Compare Holland with Portugal. And whereas in the 16th century, and partly still in the 17th the sudden expansion of trade and the creation of a new world market had an overwhelming influence on the defeat of the old mode of production and the rise of the capitalist mode, this happened in reverse on the basis of the capitalist mode of production, *once it had been created*" [K3,ch 20,451-2,Vint.] Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:11282] Re: Early economists and the origin of capitalism
michael perelman wrote: When I look at the literature of mercantilist thought, I see that the early economists believed that the accumulation of gold was the key to development, until the London fire of 1670 (?) when the idea that domestic demand could also spur development. Also, profit meant the sale of a good for more than it cost, suggesting that Third World trade was important, since domestic trade could not add value through profit upon alienation. Finally, this literature put great emphasis upon keeping people working for his little as possible. Marx always suggested that the early economists were on to something. I agree. The early economists, as I read them, argued that both domestic and colonial exploitation were central to economic growth and the development of early capitalism. The pre-Smithians had a lot of insights, they were much more sensitive to the way the world actually works. This flows from their methodology which does not divorce economics from history and politics. As Schumpeter says in his History of Economic Analysis, the Mercantilists knew their power politics. He also says "If Smith and his followers had refined and developed the 'mercantilist' propositions instead of throwing them away, a much truer and much richer theory of international economic relations could have been developed by 1848..." Hollander says "These kinds of arguments (the mercantilists) may reflect aspects of 'under-development', they imply that without metallic inflows from abroad, or direct stimulation of particular industries coupled with the encouragement of raw materials imports, it would be impossible to maintain full employment." *Classical Economics*,22. The problem with Hollander is that he sees everything through the lense of vulgar political economy. Classical and pre-classical political economy only has value in so far as it anticipates what the neo-classicals have to say. He says the only contribution of the physiocrats was that the first instances of marginal analysis could be found in their work. Well, so what? Isn't that a dubious honor? The Mercantilists knew that the world economy tends to polarisation rather than convergence.They gave the first 'infant industry' arguments. They described *exactly* how countries like Japan, S.Korea and Taiwan would later develop. Here's some quotations I culled from Hudson. "The richer country is not only in Possession of the Things already made and settled, but also of superior skill and Knowledge (acquired by long Habit and Experience) for inventing and making more...Now,if so, the poorer Country, however willing to learn, cannot be supposed to be capable of making the same Progress in Learning with the Rich, for want of equal Means of Instruction, equally good MOdels and Examples;-- and therefore, tho' both may be improving every Day, yet the practical Knowledge of the poorer in Agriculture and Manufatures will always be found to keep at a respectful Distance behind that of the richer country." J.Tucker, *Four Tracts* p24 "Infant trade, taken in a general acceptation, may be understood to be that species, which has for its object the supplying the necessities of the inhabitants of a country; because it is commonly antecendent to supplying the wants of strangers... A considerable time must of necessity be required to bring a people to a dexterity in manufactures. The branches of these are many;People do not perceive this inconveniency, in countries where they are already introduced; and many a projector has been ruined for want of attention to it. "if he intends to supply foreign markets, he must multiply hands; set them in competition; bring down the price both of subsistence and work; and when the luxury of his people render this difficult, he must attacke the manners of rich, and give a check to the domestic consumption of superfluity, in order to have the more hands for the supply of strangers." James Steuart *Principles of Political Economy*424,(1767) Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:11234] Re: Back to Smith
Mathew Forstater wrote: But Smith, contrary to much popular misconception clearly stated the many advantages that came to the colonizers as well as the disadvantages to the colonized. Great post, Mat. To what extent do you think Smith's vigorous opposition to any form of interference in the market led him to be less eurocentric than his contemporaries like the raving bigot Say and Ricardo and the Mill family? I have in mind passages like this; "the savage injustice of the Europeans rendered an event, which ought to have been beneficial to all, ruinous and destructive to several of those unfortunate countries." Smith WON,book IV,ch IX,p307. His opposition to colonial monopoly on trade: "depresses the industry of all other countries, but chiefly that of the colonies without in the least increasing, but on the contrary, diminishing that of the country in whose favor it was established." Ibid. Smith may have been opposed to the economic nature of colonialism but accepted political colonialism. I think Smith was just a free-trade imperialist. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:11139] Re: Re: Back to Smith, Bentham, Cobden Bright? (was Re: Role of theColonial Trade)
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Why do they insist on going back before Keynes Marx??? Heck, lets go back to the Bronze Age. "...Sumerians took the lead in developing their raw materials periphery from Asia Minor to the Iranian highlands. Even in these Bronze Age millenia it was the industrial centre that took the lead in developing a foreign raw materials producing capacity to supply needed metals, stone, wood and other geographically specific products not founs at home. It is also significant that Bronze Age Mesopotamian industry was developed initially in public hands (the temples and palaces) only later passing into private hands. The implication is that the privatisation of industry and policy tends to follow its public inception, being introduced only when public enterprise and policy have done their jobs successfully." *Trade, Development and Foreign Debt*, MIchael HUdson,460. sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:11098] Re: Re: imperialism
Jim Devine wrote: Whatever one thinks of the details of the classical Marxist theories of imperialism (Lenin, Bukharin, Luxemburg, etc.) one of the valid lessons is that imperialism does not refer to a _policy_ of the capitalist elite. (It's the "policy view" of imperialism that opens one up to conspiracy theories.) Rather, modern imperialism is a _social system)_, a kind of social relation that arises from capitalism. I agree but the post-WWII order was to a great extent planned by U.S. UK government officials. These plans made it quite clear that the third world was to be used for its raw materials and cheap labor, that third world economies were to be subordinated to the core. The social and economic structures of third world have been shaped by the needs of the core economies, both consciously and unconsciously. The post-WWII imperialist plans, to a great degree, have been realized. I think Chomsky, Kolko, Mark Curtis and Bruce Cumings have done the best work showing the nature and extent of government planning for imperialist order. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:11014] Re: Why China Failed to Become Capitalist
Louis Proyect wrote: The absence of foreign investment today is not so much a sign of "benign neglect", but rather that the bones have been already been picked clean. Colin Leys, on the Socialist Register editorial board, has written an analysis of underdevelopment in Africa that elaborates on these points. Titled "Rise and Fall of Development Theory", it attempts to skirt the dialectical poles of the sort of stagist Marxism represented by James Heartfield and the late Bill Zimmer, That's Bill Warren. He begins with Marx's famous statement in the preface to the first edition of Kapital "The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future." Warren was different from the LM crowd in that his argument was empirical and LM's is a priori. Capitalism will industrialize the third world because it *is* industrializing the third world. This was written in the early and mid 70's. Warren could not see the extent to which most foreign investment would go to a select few countries and a select few areas within those countries. Like classical imperialism and orthodox economics he does not consider how capitalism and foreign investment retards economic development. No country has ever made into the rich boys club by foreign investment. Economic history suggests that development can only be had through each country seizing control of its own destiny, shaping its market relations to its own advantage and upgrading its land, labor and capital. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:11013] Re: Why China Failed to Become Capitalist
Rod Hay wrote: But the question is how dependent was the development of capitalism on the exploitation of the peripheral countries. I think you pose the question in a misleading way. Development of capitalism where? The question should be; why has capitalism resulted in polarisation rather than convergence in the world economy and why have some countries and areas within some countries failed to achieve parity with the core countries. The answer, I think, begins with the Mercantilist idea that one nations gains from trade are another nation's loss. Capitalism has always resulted in polarisation and the world continues to polarise between a minority of rich countries and the rest. The key is understanding the mechanisms by which this polarisation occurs and most importantly how to rectify the situation. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:10927] Report on the Chilean Copper Industry (long)
the end of 1964, Chile purchased 51% of Kennecott $81.6 million. Anaconda reused to sell to the government but signed a contract to increase production. In return the government promised to reduce taxes. The Frei policy was a failure. Chile controlled none of the mines of the Gran Mineria, production stagnated and profit remittances abroad tripled. The complete nationalization of the mines took place under the left-wing Unidad Popular government. This took place through constitutional amendment. The policy had broad popular support and passed unanimously in the Senate. The state became the sole owner of all mineral deposits in Chile. Most controversial was the introduction of the concept of "excess profits" (i.e. exploitation) a form of deduction from the compensation to be paid to the companies. This was fixed at 12% since 1955. The companies were also responsible for depreciation. Chile bore responsibility for the debt racked up by the companies since 1960. The nationalizations were part of UP strategy of achieving political independence through economic independence. Conflict ensued between the companies and Chile and the U.S. government and the Chilean government. The nationalization was carried out against the wishes of the companies. The U.S. responded by cutting Chile off from credit and setting up an unofficial trade blockade making it difficult for Chile to import the necessary capital goods for the mines. Various other forms of retaliation such as sabotage were carried out by the companies and their right-wing supporters in Chile. Many analysts believe the nationalizations were one of the main reasons for the 1973 coup. The punitive measures taken by the U.S. were a penalty paid by the Chileans for electing a democratic socialist government. The result of the UP's copper policy were mixed. Between 1970 and 1973 production decreased in all mines except El Teniente. This was part of trend that had been occurring since 1946. However, the drop in production was largely a result of what was going on inside the mines. After the nationalizations many technicians left the mines. Labor unrest escalated as dozens and dozens of strikes took place. Many of the problems were political, a result of the fierce infighting between the Socialist, Communist, Christian Democratic and MIR party miners. The conflict in the mines was a microcosm of what was going on in all sectors of Chile. A majority of miners wanted to seize the mines and run them themselves while a minority wanted the status quo. Declining copper prices and the enormous pressure put on Chile by U.S. imperialism were contributing factors. The history of the copper industry in Chile is the history of U.S. imperialism. Conclusion The short and medium term outlook for the Chilean copper industry is fair. Despite a drop in world copper prices, CODELCO and some of the private mines have managed to increase productivity and their profit margins in recent years. A big worry is the development of the super conductor industry which would gradually or even sharply cut world demand for copper as superconductors phase out copper. This could would be disastrous for the copper industry. In Chile, copper and the mining industry continue to attract the most foreign investment. This is because of the low wages, harsh labor code and the well developed infrastructure in Chile as well as the incentives given to investors by the Chilean government. From the point of view of labor, things are less sanguine. In the face of the still growing world capitalist offensive, the labor movement in Chile like labor movements around the world is on the defensive. This, despite many recent positive developments. In the state sector at least, the copper miners continue to be well organized and militant in their demands and actions (and also the highest paid and most exploited sector.). The Chilean working class still labors under much of the harsh Pinochet era labor code(open shops, strike limits, sectors forbidden to organize etc.) The Communist Party is back in control of the CUT (the main trade union federation) as well as other unions in health, coal and education. The growth of party influence has occurred because it is now the only party in Chile, outside sectarian groups, that defends the working class, supports autonomous working class action from the comprador union officials and believes in socialism. A rejuvenated and more democratic Communist Party and a more confident labor movement could signal a comeback for the Left in Chile. by Sam Pawlett Sources Norman Girvan *Copper in Chile*, Unwin,1972 William Sater and Simon Collier *A History of Chile. 1808-1994.* Cambridge University Press. 1996. James Petras, "Latin America: The Resurgence of the Left". New Left Review.223 p17-48.1997. Petras, Leiva, Veltmayer. *Democracy and Poverty
[PEN-L:10867] More on Timor
[Please let me know if you want me to stop clogging your mailbox with these reports--SP] ASIET News Updates - September 12, 1999 === * News vacuum as reporters go missing * Victims 'left to die' on streets where they fell * UN team visits Timor as Jakarta feels heat * Death invades a church * "Absurd" dialogue between UN, Wiranto over Timor * Thousands take to the streets over East Timor - News vacuum as reporters go missing === South China Morning Post - September 11, 1999 Vaudine England, Jakarta -- Indonesia's Alliance of Independent Journalists has issued an "urgent action" statement listing several Indonesian journalists missing in East Timor, as concerns grow about the difficulty of finding out what is happening in the territory. Peter Rohe, a journalist with the Jakarta-based Suara Bangsa daily, last made contact with his editor on Tuesday morning. Two freelance reporters are also missing in the territory: Joaquim Rohi and Mindho Rajagoekgoek, who reports for Radio Netherlands. Tri Agus Siswowohardjo, a journalist, former political prisoner and member of the local ballot monitoring group, Kiper, is in hiding somewhere in East Timor. Reports filtering through from the handful of foreign journalists left in the besieged United Nations compound in Dili, and statements from church groups, refugees and independence activists, suggest a devastating pattern of atrocities committed across the territory. East Timorese who have escaped speak of scores of people being rounded up, the men separated and presumed killed. No independent witnesses are available. Experienced journalists in Jakarta are reminded of the time lag and the stages of disbelief suffered when they tried to report on the early stages of Cambodia's tragedy from 1975 to 1979, during which time the Khmer Rouge instituted their "Ground Zero" policy of mass extermination. "In our case, it was the volume of evidence from refugees," said John MacBeth, now bureau chief for the Far Eastern Economic Review in Indonesia. "We were not surprised when the killing fields were later discovered. "Lots of the people coming out had never actually witnessed the killing, they spoke of people who had disappeared, or the sight of Khmer Rouge returning with blood on their shoes after taking people away. "But the most credible reports were from those who were only hours out. Once people get into refugee camps, the danger is they're repeating stories from other refugees." Indonesian military and militias active in West Timor are severely restricting the ability of journalists to obtain those first-hand reports. Journalists remaining in Dili are subject to the pressures of the lengthy and frightening siege of the UN compound and a growing anger at the Indonesian military's behaviour "It now appears that the forced removal of the press corps from East Timor is part of a deliberate strategy by the pro-Jakarta militias, and perhaps their allies in the Indonesian military itself, to deny the world access to the story of East Timor," said the Bangkok-based Southeast Asian Press Alliance. Four Indonesian activists are also missing, said Ging Ginanjar, head of advocacy for the Alliance of Independent Journalists. His statement named Yeni Rosa Damayanti, Adi Pratomo, Anthony Listianto and Yakob Rumbiak, all of whom worked for Kiper and have student activist or political prisoner backgrounds. Australia's state-run broadcaster has extended its "Radio Australia" service to East Timor, and plans to reach parts of central and western Indonesia from today, an official said.but simply a chaos produced by the actions of the militias and the plots of some officers, compounded by the cowardice of decision makers, military and civilian. The Indonesian establishment has to grasp that its foolishness is profoundly damaging to Indonesia as well as East Timor. It is time to live up to the responsibilities that the word "Merdeka" implies. Victims 'left to die' on streets where they fell South China Morning Post - September 11, 1999 Most of the East Timorese killed in the violence that has swept the capital, Dili, were left to die where they fell on the street, a French doctor who treated hundreds of wounded in a city clinic said yesterday. The Medecins du Monde doctor, who fled the territory on Wednesday, said he had treated 200 wounded, including 30 children, in the past five weeks. "It was mainly gunshot wounds, both homemade guns and automatic weapons. We also had a lot of machete wounds and stabbings," he said in Darwin. "I only saw a small amount of the total number of wounded. It was so dangerous to come to the clinic that people often didn't even try. "The bodies were left where they were." The doctor asked not to be named as
[PEN-L:10675] More Articles on Timor
ASIET News Updates - September 7, 1999 == * Race against genocide! * Bishop attacked as army take over Timor * Surge of nationalistic, anti-foreigner posturing * Australian unions imposes sanctions on Indonesia * Timor's political cleansing * Army conspires with militias to force out foreigners * Indonesia imposes marshall law in East Timor - Race against genocide! == Sydney Morning Herald - September 7, 1999 Lindsay Murdoch, Bernard Lagan and Peter Cole-Adams -- Australia said last night it was prepared to "play the leadership role" in an international peacekeeping force in East Timor as Indonesia's military continued to watch over worsening violence and the disappearance of thousands of independence supporters. As pressure mounted on the Government to act, the Prime Minister, key Cabinet ministers and senior security advisers met in an emergency session of the national security committee. The Foreign Minister, Mr Downer, said before the meeting: "It would not take long to put together a very basic force because Australia, for its part, is prepared to make a very major contribution." Meanwhile, thousands of Timorese refugees -- many rounded up from churches, schools and United Nations offices that have been havens for the past month -- were being taken from Dili by truck or bus to unknown destinations. East Timorese sources fear they are being removed to military holding camps well away from international eyes -- possibly in Indonesian controlled West Timor. RAAF aircraft evacuated 300 foreigners -- including Australians -- from Dili to Darwin in five flights yesterday as the militias stepped up their indiscriminate shootings and attacks. In Dili, entire suburbs were deserted and bodies were reported to be decomposing in streets blockaded by militia. Pro-independence leaders have fled into the mountains. The car of Australia's Ambassador to Indonesia, Mr John McCarthy, was fired at as he was driven through the beleaguered capital. In Jakarta, youths burnt a home-made Australian flag outside the embassy. An Australian Defence Force spokesman in Darwin said that the evacuation would continue today. The Navy's high-speed catamaran, HMAS Jervis Bay, which can carry 500 people, remainedon standby in Darwin. All eyes turned to Australia yesterday, with at least two urgent calls to the Prime Minister from the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan. Indonesia's President Habibie said last night that Mr Annan had also called him, asking him "about how we are going to solve it". Only the UN or Indonesia can clear the way for intervention by an armed peacekeeping force -- and only Australia has the forces and equipment capable of moving in at short notice. Mr Downer said last night that the only way to fulfil his promise that Australia would stand by the people of East Timor was to get an international force into the territory as quickly as possible. But he added that this would depend ultimately on decisions made in Jakarta and at UN headquarters in New York. He said the Government was "absolutely outraged" that Mr McCarthy's car had been shot at and that the Australian consulate had also come under fire. Mr Downer indicated that several countries had expressed a readiness to join an international force, and that numbers were not a problem. "We are prepared to play the leadership role in such a force." Malaysia and Thailand said last night they were prepared to send troops to East Timor as part of a peacekeeping force if asked by the UN. The Howard Government is under increasing pressure to act, with a groundswell yesterday for some form of intervention. The Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal Clancy, called on Mr Howard to send in armed troops, warning that a failure to do so would leave a scar on Australia's reputation. Angry and sometimes violent demonstrations were held in capital cities. In Darwin, the Indonesian consulate was stoned and windows were broken. In Sydney, outside the Garuda airlines office, unions told other protesters a trade boycott was planned. In Jakarta, demonstrators -- mostly students -- gathered to denounce Australia's criticism of Indonesia over security before and after the UN supervised vote which saw Timorese opt for independence. The mock Australian flag was burnt and the Australian crest defaced on the embassy. Armed militia, watched by Indonesian police and troops, attacked the home of Bishop Carlos Belo, the spiritual leader of East Timor, and a nearby International Committee of the Red Cross compound where about 4,000 East Timorese had sought refuge. The former Australian consul to East Timor Mr James Dunn, who was evacuated by the RAAF from Dili to Darwin yesterday, said there was no question that in the past 24 hours the militias had expanded their activities because they felt
[PEN-L:10677] Re: prisons
Mr P.A. Van Heusden wrote: Marx for Beginners is a disgrace, if you ask me. It's a badly written, confusing account of Marxism. At least the version I read. I was thinking of "Trotsky for Beginners" by Tariq Ali which is quite good. Sam P.
[PEN-L:10663] Re: prisons
Eric Cumins reports that anyone in Tennessee prisons declaring him/herself a Marxist was automatically given the death sentence. Is this law still on the books? Sam
[PEN-L:10662] Re: prisons
Michael Yates wrote: Next month I will begin teaching a class at a maximum security state prison in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Be careful. Short, clearly writtten articles that illustrate features of the political econmy might be especially useful. Thanks. I would recommend *The Profit System* by Francis Green and Bob Sutcliffe. Those illustrated books *Marx For Beginners* etc. are good for people with low literacy. There's a lot of excellent literature on prisons including _Lockdown America_ by Christian Parenti [don't know if this is on shelves yet] and _Rise and Fall of California's Radical Prison Movement_ by Eric Cumins with a couple of good chapters on the prison education movement. The favorite amongst radical prisoners was always *The Communist Manifesto*. Cumins goes into the interesting detail about the construction of E. Cleaver and George Jackson as icons of the Bay Area left and how this turned out to be a disaster. The romantisization of crime and prisoners as anti-establishment led certain left groups into the ground. People like Cleaver and Jackson had been lifelong criminals [in and out], socialized in prison and saw the outside through the prison subculture. Cleaver in particular sees all of society as composed of two classes. Obviously he had internalized and accepted the prison subculture. Cumins mentions that the analytical Marxist Erik Olin Wright was a chaplain in San Quentin in the early 70's. The group Stop Prisoner Rape http://www.igc.apc.org/spr/ has some interesting and truly horrific stuff on their webpage about how patriarchy is reproduced in male prisons when there are no women around, especially see The Amicus Brief, A Punk's Song and the poem The Seventh Rapist [these writings are raw and graphic]. Books by Hans Toch _Ecology of Survival. Surviving Prison._ and _Mosaics of Despair. Human Breakdown in Prison_ are interesting. There's also Parker and Wooden _Men Behind Bars. Sexual Exploitation in Prison._ I underatand habeas corpus is being eliminated for American prisoners. Yikes. Sam P.
