RE: RE: Turkey

[Hakki Alacakaptan]

This is supposed to be an argument? Everybody has Kurdish friends. I was
married to a wonderful lady who was half Kurdish. I worked for a Kurd, and
it was very inspiring. As a buck private, I had Kurdish sergeants who sat
around in the mess playing a saz and singing Kurdish songs who called us
communists (this was in 1980)! But the PKK was still murdering marxists, the
Iraqi Kurds were still oppressing the Turkomans, and Ocalan was teaming up
with Syria and others to impose the Sevres partition of Turkey which so many
Turks had given their lives to resist.

I'd appreciate if Sabri and others would not resort to provocative language
when they can't come up with arguments.

|| -Original Message-
|| From: Sabri Oncu


||
||
|| Hakki:
||
|| > Are you aware that Barzani wants to occupy a
|| > city that has been demographically Turkoman
|| > for 4 centuries and probably still is
|| > despite Kurdish and Iraqi ethnic cleansing?
||
|| This is where you screw up Hakki.
||
|| Late Mehmet Abi, the doorman of our apartment building back in
|| those good old days when I was a kid, and who was like a son to
|| my late grandmother, and hence a part of the family, was Kurdish
|| and he had nothing to do with that ethnic cleansing you are
|| talking about. Nor the Iraqi attendant at the parking garage
|| where I park my car, who is a singer who is in love with the
|| Turkish music and sings some Turkish songs to me every now and
|| then, had anything to do with it.
||
|| The problem, when formulated in your way, is ill-posed. And
|| ill-posed problems have no solutions.
||
|| This is where you screw up.
||
|| Sabri
||

RE: RE: Re: Turkey

[Hakki Alacakaptan]

|| -Original Message-
|| From: Max B. Sawicky

|| Deciding who is and is not a 'nation' is a dicey business
|| for an outsider.  Some nations are defined by the oppression
|| they suffer at the hands of others.  The Palestinians, for
|| instance.  Or the black "race."  That doesn't invalidate
|| their claims or need for some kind of shelter under a
|| bourgeois nation-state of their own.

Very good point. I'd say the Kurdish proletariat in Diyarbakir and Gaziantep
fit that bill at the moment. They are less bound to the feudal order and
have been systematically repressed for 15 years or more. DEHAP's votes and
perhaps more importantly voter participation, which remains below %30 in the
Southeast, is a good gauge of their frame of mind. Their distinctive voting
behavior is evidence of a collective will. But it does not necessarily
follow that the ya basta feeling they have now about the Turkish republic
will necessarily lead them to better tomorrows, or that a gradual cooling
off and integration as the region develops will be a loss. After all, Kurds
constitute 25% percent of the population and DEHAP only got 6.2% of the
vote. They clearly saw the AKP as a better answer to their problems than
DEHAP's ethnicism. This shows that most Kurds want democracy, the EU, and
traditional populism, not partition.

|| Like the Zionists 100 years ago, the Kurds are likely to side
|| with whoever can offer some protection.  At the same
|| time, it seems clear they would not qualify as any kind
|| of oppressor nation comparable to South Africa or Israel.

I'm not so sure, what's to stop them? What makes Barzani or Talabani so
different from Pasha Khan Zadran or Dostum? Barzani has every intention of
ethnically cleansing Kirkuk. He didn't block the inclusion of the Turkomans
in Khalilzad's opposition get-together for nothing.

|| The status quo -- some kind of protected Kurdish enclave
|| in the North of Iraq -- seems a lot better than invasion
|| or total withdrawal.  The former raises the question of
|| whether they get screwed by the U.S. and/or stomped on
|| by Turkey; the latter means delivering them back to
|| Saddam.

I agree about the status quo. They would be better off integrated, but
that's not going to happen in Iraq, so maybe their rentier economy in the
enclave will one day sprout a bourgeoisie and the sheiks will allow it to
live, or it will finish off the sheiks, who knows? Turkey is all for the
north Iraq Kurds settling down and setting up an administration, just as
long as they don't try to set up an army. It's the tolls paid by Turkish
fleets of trucks carrying contraband fuel from Kirkuk that keeps the Kurds
going, and both the Kurds and the Turks are happy about that arrangement.

RE: Re: Turkey

[Max B. Sawicky]

It's a pretty important question, IMO.  I have no
idea who is right.  I'd like to know more.  The
challenge is for partisans of either side to provide
third-party corroboration for their claims.
Vituperation is not going to persuade anyone here.

We understand LP's inclination to support indigenous
persons over more powerful intruders, and there is
something to be said for that.  I don't know Hakki
myself, but he seems knowledgeable in his own right.

It is plausible that some Kurds would practice violence
against other ethnic groups associated with Turkey.  That
in and of itself does not invalidate their national claims.

Obviously sorting out who is and isn't a cop is pretty
close to impossible in this setting.  Whatever we decide
is not very important either.

Deciding who is and is not a 'nation' is a dicey business
for an outsider.  Some nations are defined by the oppression
they suffer at the hands of others.  The Palestinians, for
instance.  Or the black "race."  That doesn't invalidate
their claims or need for some kind of shelter under a
bourgeois nation-state of their own.

Like the Zionists 100 years ago, the Kurds are likely to side
with whoever can offer some protection.  At the same
time, it seems clear they would not qualify as any kind
of oppressor nation comparable to South Africa or Israel.

The status quo -- some kind of protected Kurdish enclave
in the North of Iraq -- seems a lot better than invasion
or total withdrawal.  The former raises the question of
whether they get screwed by the U.S. and/or stomped on
by Turkey; the latter means delivering them back to
Saddam.

mbs


Michael Perelman wrote:

>I think that the detailed debates about the intricacies of Turkish
>politics might be far afield of the focus of this list right now.

I.e., one of the parties to this debate is volatile, so let's move on 
to something else?

Doug

Re: RE: Re: Turkey: War protocol

[Michael Perelman]

Almost $300,000 per soldier.


On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 09:47:12PM -0800, Sabri Oncu wrote:
> 
> $14,000,000,000 in return for the passage of 50,000 US troops
> from Turkey.
-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

RE: Re: Turkey: War protocol

[Sabri Oncu]

> So what was Turkey's price? Debt forgiveness?
> Or just another IMF program?
>
> Doug

Hey!

Just read it in an article by Korkut Boratav, a member of the
Independent Social Scientists- Economists group Ahmet Tonak
mentioned a while ago. That is, he is one of us.

Quoting from the corporate media, he says:

$14,000,000,000 in return for the passage of 50,000 US troops
from Turkey.

Whether this is what is on the table and whether the US will pay
it or not is not known.

I did not know that the rulers of my country were this cheap.

Shame on these fucking cowards, shame on them.

Sabri

+++

It's This Way

I stand in the advancing light,
my hands hungry, the world beautiful.

My eyes can't get enough of the trees—
they're so hopeful, so green.

A sunny road runs through the mulberries,
I'm at the window of the prison infirmary.

I can't smell the medicines—
carnations must be blooming nearby.

It's this way:
being captured is beside the point,
the point is not to surrender

Nazim Hikmet

Re: RE: Turkey, again.......

[Doug Henwood]

Devine, James wrote:


My statement was too weak. The IMF is not simply a collection 
agency. Like its masters at the US Treasury, it's also a 
highly-ideological crusader for extending the power of the financial 
interests. Like the crusaders of old, it has the power to burn 
Constantinople.

Well not exactly - that's what the Pentagon is for. As Noam Chomsky 
told me once, "Most of the time, the IMF can do the work, but every 
now and then you need the Marines."

Doug

RE: Re: Re: Re: Turkey, again.......

[Devine, James]

Title: RE: [PEN-L:34167] Re: Re: Re: Turkey, again...





[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >the
IMF cannot be considered to be a development
institution of any kind, not even on the most
charitable interpretation of its work.<


has the IMF -- as opposed to the WB -- _ever_ been considered a "development" institution? in the original Bretton Woods system, its job was to help with short-term liquidity problems that threatened to undermine the fixed exchange-rate system. Nowadays, it's the collection agent who enforces the creditors' rights.


Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

Re: Re: Re: Turkey, again.......

[dsquared]

On Mon, 27 Jan 2003, Louis Proyect wrote:

---
We observe that what lies behind the colourful jargon
of “effective and 
transparent government”, “good governance”, and
“credibility” is a set 
of structural transformations to ultimately satisfy the
needs and 
demands of the foreign capital centers, rather than the
strategic 
requirements of the domestic economy. 
---

This point cannot be emphasised enough.  The case of
Argentina underlines the fact that the IMF would far
rather see a vigorous privatisation programme combined
with macroeconomic policies that are actively stupid,
even on the IMF's own analysis, than genuinely "sound"
macro policies and no privatisation.  It is this point
more than anything else which has convinced me that the
IMF cannot be considered to be a development
institution of any kind, not even on the most
charitable interpretation of its work.

dd

Re: Re: Turkey, again.......

[Louis Proyect]

In conclusion, it is observed that the 2000/2001 crisis administration 
in Turkey primarily works as a debt-management program. In this sense, 
it is understood that the main purpose of the IMF-led salvation packages 
that are hailed as big successes in the international media is actually 
an operation of foreign debt roll-over, aiming at gaining the confidence 
of the international arbiters and financial speculators.

We observe that what lies behind the colourful jargon of “effective and 
transparent government”, “good governance”, and “credibility” is a set 
of structural transformations to ultimately satisfy the needs and 
demands of the foreign capital centers, rather than the strategic 
requirements of the domestic economy. In essence, this model depends on 
the contractionary monetary and finance policies, and assumes an open 
(i.e. dependent on foreign capital) economic structure ensuring the 
liberalization of the international capital flows. In this model what is 
really meant by the concept of “stabilization” is to establish an 
exchange rate system purified from devaluation risk, and to maintain a 
high real return in the national financial markets to attract the inflow 
of foreign capital.

Under this structure, the central banks are set to be “autonomous” and 
all their instruments of intervention are restricted, so that hey could 
not undertake any role apart from “maintaining price stabilization”. 
Fiscal policies, on the other hand, are to be directly focused on the 
objective of “budget with a primary surplus”. As result of these 
policies, boundaries of the public space are severely restricted, and 
all traditional economic and social infrastructural facilities of the 
public sector are being left to the strategic interest area of foreign 
capital at the cost of extraordinary cuts in public spending and 
investments.

The neo-liberal thought dictates that in order to take advantage of the 
benefits of “globalization”, national central banks with autonomous 
monetary, interest and exchange rate policies should not be a hindrance 
to international capital flows. The real objective of this philosophy is 
to make the central banks to be in charge of maintenance of price 
stability and to sustain the level of high real returns in the national 
financial markets. In so doing, rents allocated to the rent owners would 
be secured. Public finance, on the other hand, is limited to take all 
measures directly to enlarge the interest area of international capital. 
Departing from all these observations, it is clearly seen that the 
IMF-led adjustment program that is implemented in Turkey with a media 
propaganda that portrays it as “having no alternatives”, is actually 
part of a larger project defining Turkey’s role in the new international 
division of labor as a peripheral economy wherein industrialization and 
development targets are abandoned; domestic commodity and asset markets 
are integrated with the global markets under marginalized conditions; 
and where the domestic economy has been left unprotected and open to 
external shocks. Turkey is increasingly surrendered to the ordinances of 
global capital…

full: http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~yeldane/Chennai_Yeldan2002.pdf

--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

RE: Re: Turkey

[[EMAIL PROTECTED]]

Original Message:
-
From: Sabri Oncu [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2003 19:25:21 -0800
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:34048] Re: Turkey


More than that. I read somewhere a while ago that Turkey has the
third largest military on earth, although I don't know which
country is the second. I also find it unbelievable. It is very
sad but it is true.

Sabri

Here is a source
 
The following report from the US State Department is not a very recent one,
but contains a lot of comparative data

http://www.state.gov/t/vc/rls/rpt/wmeat/99_00/

Another staggering fact, based on this report, Turkey is the second largest
armament importer ($3.2 billions) after S. Arabia ($7.7 billions), the
third is unexpectedly Japan ($3 billions) as of 1999.  Turkey's
unacceptable ranking becomes more intolarable when you compare its GNP per
capita with the other two countries' figures --2.3 times less than SA, and
12 times less than Japan.  S. Arabia is hard to beat, it is spending 36% of
its GNP for arms imports whereas Turkey and Japan are spending 32% and 7%,
respectively.

As to the sizes of the armies, I checked China first, expecting to have the
largest.  According to this document, China's army is 2.4 million, wheras
the US, Russia, and Turkey have 1.49, 0.9, and 0.79 million,
respectively(as of 1999). 

Greetings from Porto Alegre...  As you might have heard this, the Social
Forum will be in Delhi in 2004!

Ahmet 




mail2web - Check your email from the web at
http://mail2web.com/ .

Re: Re: Turkey

[Ian Murray]

- Original Message - 
From: "Sabri Oncu" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>



> Louis:
> 
> > God-damned right. The first thing Turkey should do
> > is cut it's military budget by 50 percent and reallocate
> > the money for desperately needed social spending. I was
> > surprised to read somewhere today that Turkey has the
> > second largest military in NATO next to the USA.
> > Unbelievable.
> 
> More than that. I read somewhere a while ago that Turkey has the
> third largest military on earth, although I don't know which
> country is the second. I also find it unbelievable. It is very
> sad but it is true.
> 
> Sabri

==

Well, they'd better disarm before they piss off the emperor!

Ian

Re: Re: Turkey and the rest of the world

[Michael Perelman]

I should have added that the people who participate actively are certainly
predominately doing so from the Anglo Saxon world.
-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: Re: Turkey and the rest of the world

[Michael Perelman]

It was not criticism of the Turks, but of the others who don't emulate
them.  I cannot tell because some people use hotmail or yahoo addresses
even though they are elsewhere.

On Fri, Jan 10, 2003 at 02:11:58PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > I think that learning about Turkey and the Turkish situation is
> > important, but we also have people here from many other parts of the
> > world.  I wish that our representatives in Argentina, Mexico, Korea,
> > and Japan, for example, would let us know more about the economic and
> > political conditions there.
> >
> 
> Is this a subtle criticism for the excessive (?) participation of the
> Turks to the list?
> 
> > This is a largely American list ...
> 
> Is this a fact?  I am really curious about the distribution of the
> nationalities of the PEN-L participants.  Is it available anywhere?  I
> remember that I saw a kind of list once and was very surprised by a large
> number of Turkish names.
> Ahmet Tonak
> 
> 

-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

RE: Re: Re: Re: Turkey-Iraq

[Devine, James]

Title: RE: [PEN-L:31755] Re: Re: Re: Turkey-Iraq





On the other hand, if Turkey has a weak unemployment insurance system (and a weak welfare state in general), it's extremely hard for anyone to survive while being unemployed. So they are driven to the informal sector or agriculture to survive. So if unemployment is measured as in the US (without a job but actively seeking one), that official unemployment rate would be very low. That means that an 11% official unemployment rate is very bad. 

how's my font?


Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine 


-Original Message-
From: e. ahmet tonak [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Friday, November 01, 2002 10:06 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:31755] Re: Re: Re: Turkey-Iraq



Mostly in the informal sector, which is huge, and agriculture.  Regarding the informal sector we all know that there are some many measurement related problems.  However, one of my former students from Middle East Technical University is currently writing his thesis on this topic at UMass and I am sure it will add many new insights to our understanding of  the real extent of unemployment in Turkey.  I would never take the figures that Sabri used, i.e. 11% unemployment rate or the labor force, seriously.  They are literally harmful! 

Doug Henwood wrote:


Sabri Oncu wrote: 



The official unemployment is around 11% as far as I know. It is 
based on a work force of roughly 25 million and which means that 
officialy the rest of the nation are not actively seeking work. 
So, officially we have about 2.8 or so million unemployed in a 
population of 68 million. Not bad at all I would say. 



What about the rest? Working in the informal sector? Not working in the informal sector? In agriculture? 


Doug 







-- 
E. Ahmet Tonak
Professor of Economics


Simon's Rock College of Bard
84 Alford Road
Great Barrington, MA 01230


Tel:  413 528 7488
Fax: 413 528 7365
www.simons-rock.edu/~eatonak

Re: Re: Re: Turkey-Iraq

[e. ahmet tonak]

Mostly in the informal sector, which is huge, and agriculture.  Regarding
the informal sector we all know that there are some many measurement related
problems.  However, one of my former students from Middle East Technical
University is currently writing his thesis on this topic at UMass and I am
sure it will add many new insights to our understanding of  the real extent
of unemployment in Turkey.  I would never take the figures that Sabri used,
i.e. 11% unemployment rate or the labor force, seriously.  They are literally
harmful! 

Doug Henwood wrote:
Sabri Oncu wrote: 
 
  The official unemployment is around 11% as far
as I know. It is 
based on a work force of roughly 25 million and which means that 
officialy the rest of the nation are not actively seeking work. 
So, officially we have about 2.8 or so million unemployed in a 
population of 68 million. Not bad at all I would say. 
  
 
What about the rest? Working in the informal sector? Not working in  the
informal sector? In agriculture? 
 
Doug 
 
 
 


-- 
card


  E. Ahmet Tonak
 Professor of Economics
 
 Simon's Rock College of Bard
 84 Alford Road
 Great Barrington, MA 01230
 
 Tel:  413 528 7488
 Fax: 413 528 7365
 www.simons-rock.edu/~eatonak
 

Re: Re: Turkey-Iraq

[Doug Henwood]

Sabri Oncu wrote:


The official unemployment is around 11% as far as I know. It is
based on a work force of roughly 25 million and which means that
officialy the rest of the nation are not actively seeking work.
So, officially we have about 2.8 or so million unemployed in a
population of 68 million. Not bad at all I would say.


What about the rest? Working in the informal sector? Not working in 
the informal sector? In agriculture?

Doug

Re: Re: Turkey: Prime Minister's illness

[Robert Scott Gassler]

Okay. I have an article which outlines my approach to teaching in all my
courses (though I am sorry to say it is mostly micro): 

Robert Scott Gassler, "The Theory of Political and Social Economics: Beyond
the Neoclassical Perspective," Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics, Vol.
9, No.2, 1998, pp.93-124. 

The trick is to make a list of the assumptions of what I call the
"neoclassical default model" (perfect competition) and then treat them as
jumping-off places by relaxing the assumptions. By the time you are done,
you have systematically analysed a problem and destroyed students' interest
in the default model. 

I think this will do a reasonably good job until we agree on a better
paradigm. 

Robert Scott Gassler
Vesalius College 
Vrije Universiteit Brussel


At 22:00 22/05/02 -0700, you wrote:
>I appreciate the reports that we get from people with expertise outside of
>the US.  I wish that some of you lurkers would step in.
>-- 
>Michael Perelman
>Economics Department
>California State University
>Chico, CA 95929
>
>Tel. 530-898-5321
>E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>

Re: Re: Turkey

[Ignacio Perrotini Hernández]

Sabri,
Here in Mexico we also said, a few years back, "we still have a few state 
enterprises to sell", and there came the infamous "Tequila effect". We were 
also too big to fail.
Cheers,
ignacio

t 03:47 p.m. 08/04/02 -0700, you wrote:
>Michael writes:
>
> > With Turkey qualify as "too big to fail" within the
> > context of the war on terrorism?
>
>Michael,
>
>If I am not wrong, this is a response to my statement about the
>nearing collapse of Turkey. Who knows maybe I am overly
>pessimistic but I don't see any other way out and think that the
>collapse will most likely be followed by a military coup to hold
>the country together with severe repression. We still have a few
>state enterprises to sell but what will happen after they are
>gone? If the Turkish military engages in a military operation, it
>will cost money too. Who is going to pay all these bills? However
>big Turkey is to fail, will/can US pick up the entire tab? If
>not, will EU agree to share?
>
>Sabri

Re: Re: Re: Turkey and Argentina

[Ian Murray]

 I agree with Sabri. My own interest in models of socialism is due to the the
 fact that in my own twenty years of organizing, whenever I engage with
 ordinary people in a way where my socialism is more than a quaint fact about
 me, a religious quirk to be tolerated in a useful (hopefully) co-worker, the
 question arises: what have you got that is better? It didn't work in Russia!
 So, I felt impelled to inquire. Obviously we can't dictate to the future.
 But if all we have to say is Timed Will Tell, I don't think we'll have much
 of an audience. --jks
*

Didn't some old socialist write that "imagination is more important than knowledge"?
We need to hurl all sorts of counterfactuals at the laws/theories that are
constitutive of the capitalist system, simply to exercise our abilities to think
outside the iron cage...What would a national health care system look like [Vincente
Navarro], what would worker "ownership" look like [insert whoever], what would bring
about better education systems for the least fortunate look like, what would civic
forums for deliberating over land use policies look like and on and on we could
go...This list has the six degrees of separation going for it too so while maybe
email isn't the best forum for dreaming of a better world, it at least should be a
place whereby we can figure out that it is worthwhile to believe in the absolute need
to imagine different institutions etc and connect with those who are working on the
issues we care about in their nitty gritty details... Otherwise, what good is an
egalitarian sensibility without a sense of the possible and [an albeit difficult to
achieve sometimes] sense of benificence.

Whenever I get asked what's your alternative by pompous apologists I simply  respond
that at least after James Clerk Maxwell and Michelson-Morley, the Newtonians realized
and admitted that something was wrong with their theories

Ian


 >
 > >The reason why I am writing this is that back home, we, the left (not
 >only
 >the
 > >socialists but also the social democrats, excluding third-wayers, and
 >even
 >the
 > >tiny groups anarchists, ecologists and the like), are being challenged by
 >the
 > >counter party to offer an alternative in these days.
 > >
 > >Wouldn't it have been nicer if we were better prepared?
 > >
 > >Best,
 > >Sabri
 >
 >Sabri, the people demonstrating in the streets are not really interested in
 >a discussion about the feasibilty of socialism versus capitalism, I would
 >surmise. The single event that seems to have energized the recent posts was
 >a florist hurling an empty cash register at Ecevit. For the intelligentsia
 >there will always be intense debates around the tables at American
 >University in Istanbul and other places where the left has a presence. But
 >from my standpoint as a Marxist, it seems to me that the challenge is the
 >same as it is in any society entering a deep social crisis: how to move the
 >mass movement forward. I would urge you to visit the archives at
 >www.marxmail.org and review the contributions of Nestor Gorojovsky who was
 >subbed to PEN-L until certain kinds of static forced him to unsub.
 >Gorojovsky is an Argentinian socialist who has been active for over 30
 >years, about the same time as me. Argentina is going through the exact kind
 >of crisis as Turkey and for many of the same reasons. Nestor's posts to the
 >list have mostly to do with problems facing the labor movement, which is
 >key to the Argentinian revolution. A rebel by the name of Moyano has taken
 >on the bourgeoisie and has attracted support from the clergy and middle
 >class, which is being impoverished as the same rate as Turkey's
 >shopkeepers. Socialism will come about only through the consolidation of a
 >series of success in the mass movement and through bitter struggle. I doubt
 >that Argentinians in the labor and social movements have much time or
 >energy to wrestle over market socialism, what went wrong in the USSR, etc.
 >Unless the workers come to power there, no future is possible. Everything
 >has to be focused on achieving victories by the trade unions and its
 >allies. That is the path to a better future.
 >
 >Louis Proyect
 >Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
 >

Re: Re: Turkey and Argentina

[Justin Schwartz]

I agree with Sabri. My own interest in models of socialism is due to the the 
fact that in my own twenty years of organizing, whenever I engage with 
ordinary people in a way where my socialism is more than a quaint fact about 
me, a religious quirk to be tolerated in a useful (hopefully) co-worker, the 
question arises: what have you got that is better? It didn't work in Russia! 
So, I felt impelled to inquire. Obviously we can't dictate to the future. 
But if all we have to say is Timed Will Tell, I don't think we'll have much 
of an audience. --jks


>
> >The reason why I am writing this is that back home, we, the left (not 
>only
>the
> >socialists but also the social democrats, excluding third-wayers, and 
>even
>the
> >tiny groups anarchists, ecologists and the like), are being challenged by 
>the
> >counter party to offer an alternative in these days.
> >
> >Wouldn't it have been nicer if we were better prepared?
> >
> >Best,
> >Sabri
>
>Sabri, the people demonstrating in the streets are not really interested in
>a discussion about the feasibilty of socialism versus capitalism, I would
>surmise. The single event that seems to have energized the recent posts was
>a florist hurling an empty cash register at Ecevit. For the intelligentsia
>there will always be intense debates around the tables at American
>University in Istanbul and other places where the left has a presence. But
>from my standpoint as a Marxist, it seems to me that the challenge is the
>same as it is in any society entering a deep social crisis: how to move the
>mass movement forward. I would urge you to visit the archives at
>www.marxmail.org and review the contributions of Nestor Gorojovsky who was
>subbed to PEN-L until certain kinds of static forced him to unsub.
>Gorojovsky is an Argentinian socialist who has been active for over 30
>years, about the same time as me. Argentina is going through the exact kind
>of crisis as Turkey and for many of the same reasons. Nestor's posts to the
>list have mostly to do with problems facing the labor movement, which is
>key to the Argentinian revolution. A rebel by the name of Moyano has taken
>on the bourgeoisie and has attracted support from the clergy and middle
>class, which is being impoverished as the same rate as Turkey's
>shopkeepers. Socialism will come about only through the consolidation of a
>series of success in the mass movement and through bitter struggle. I doubt
>that Argentinians in the labor and social movements have much time or
>energy to wrestle over market socialism, what went wrong in the USSR, etc.
>Unless the workers come to power there, no future is possible. Everything
>has to be focused on achieving victories by the trade unions and its
>allies. That is the path to a better future.
>
>Louis Proyect
>Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
>

_
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Re: Re: Turkey and Argentina (correction)

[Louis Proyect]

>Sabri, the people demonstrating in the streets are not really interested in
>a discussion about the feasibilty of socialism versus capitalism, I would
>surmise. The single event that seems to have energized the recent PROTESTS
was
>a florist hurling an empty cash register at Ecevit.

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/

Re: Re: Turkey, Argentina and the IMF

[Chris Burford]

At 02:38 11/12/00 -0800, Colin wrote:

Thanks for comments

>I don't know what Lenin had in mind -- these were typically colonial
>institutions, but might be a quick expedient before something else could
>be set up.  Curiously, J.M. Keynes wrote a memo in 1918, while he was at
>the British Treasury, proposing a currency board for the region then
>controlled by the White Russians.


Keynes's idea was accepted and proved briefly very successful in white 
Russia. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence that the Soviet Union 
took over the system as it came out of war communism as a result of being 
able to see its effects close at hand.

Direct quotes from Lenin have not been published but IMO probably exist.

Certainly it is clear that Lenin approved stabilisation through the New 
Economic Policy. A tight control of trade to permit exchange with the rest 
of the world was part of that system. That system was consistent with the 
currency board system that their white opponents had used.

Hence the adoption of a typical colonial mechanism by the new Soviet state. 
It allowed a weaker region to trade with a very much stronger one. At a 
cost of course.

In the broadest terms today, one of the key questions is how can weaker 
regions of the capitalist world economy trade with much stronger regions 
without suffering a continual unequal exchange of value.

I do not know the answer, but I think it is an important question. It has 
implications for anything that we might eventually think of as global 
socialism.

Chris Burford

London

Re: Re: Re: Turkey, Argentina and the IMF

[Chris Burford]

At 09:01 10/12/00 -0500, Louis Proyect quoted:

> >From Robin Hahnel, "Capitalist Globalism in Crisis, Part III: Understanding
>the IMF"



>So IMF bailouts are not bailouts of debtor countries and their economies at
>all. That’s just a popular misconception that some find convenient to let
>pass uncorrected. IMF bailouts are bailouts of international investors
>because that is who gets the money. It is the great sucker play of the
>wealthy in the late 20th century where international lenders enjoy the high
>yields while taxpayers ultimately assume the risk. Of course, in broad
>terms it is just one more case of privatizing the benefits of an economic
>activity—in this case international lending—and socializing the burdens
>associated with that activity—risk of international default. Through IMF
>bailouts taxpayers of member nations provide underwriting services to
>international investors, for no fee, and provide insurance for
>international investors, for no fee. A sweet deal when you can get it.
>
>Complete article at: http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/feb99hahnel.htm


Yes, a valuable article fleshing out the concrete detail of the mechanisms 
by which what happens is quite different from what appears to happen.

Another example of the fetishistic nature of capital which Yoshie drew 
attention to under the Bachelor machines thread:

"Now, the concept of capital as a fetish reaches its
height in interest-bearing capital, being a conception which
attributes to the accumulated product of labour, and at that in the
fixed form of money, the inherent secret power, as an automaton, of
creating surplus-value in geometrical progression, so that the
accumulated product of labour, as the Economist thinks, has long
discounted all the wealth of the world for all time as belonging to
it and rightfully coming to it.  The product of past labour, the past
labour itself, is here pregnant in itself with a portion of present
or future living surplus-labour.  We know, however, that in reality
the preservation, and to that extent also the reproduction of the
value of products of past labour is only the result of their contact
with living labour; and secondly, that the domination of the products
of past labour over living surplus-labour lasts only as long as the
relations of capital, which rest on those particular social relations
in which past labour independently and overwhelmingly dominates over
living labour" (Karl Marx, _Capital_ Vol. 3, at
)

My recollection was at the time of the Asian financial crisis there was a 
lot of argument that inward investors should not be protected from risk. 
This came to nothing.

I see that Robert Hahnel addresses this argument, that risk has not gone 
away, and concedes that finance capital still bears some risk.

I find his argument effective. As almost always in the capitalist system, 
living labour is expected to bail out dead labour in a crisis. And does so.

There is much to be done to demystify the fetishistic nature of 
international finance capital. Both demonstrations and effective 
progressive critiques have their part to play.

I do not see the taxpayers of the big capitalist countries being the main 
sufferers under this system. However I accept the implication of Hahnel's 
argument that it may be useful to highlight their position to build some 
alliance between the working people of the big capitalist countries and the 
working people of the world.

Chris Burford

London

Re: Re: Turkey, Argentina and the IMF

[Louis Proyect]

Chris Burford:
>The overt agenda however is why the hell is the IMF once again "bailing 
>out" a major intermediate economy in such a mucky fashion? Why not let them 
>rot in the name of freedom?

>From Robin Hahnel, "Capitalist Globalism in Crisis, Part III: Understanding
the IMF"

But when the IMF intervenes in a crisis, monetary and fiscal austerity is
not sufficient to get all the creditors paid back—particularly the ones
whose loans are coming due immediately. That is where the second part of
the IMF agreement comes in. The IMF loans the debtor country enough money
to pay off what it calculates will be the unpayable portion of the
outstanding loans coming due. In other words, they provide a "tide over"
loan to avoid defaults, which will supposedly be repaid once the beneficial
effects of the austerity measures—that is the effects beneficial to
creditors—kick in. This bailout of international investors whose loans had
become unpayable is designed to spare them losses from their "risky"
investments, and also to prevent panic that defaults might trigger from
spreading to other parts of the international credit system. The IMF also
tries to convince private investors to make new loans as well, since this
reduces the amount the IMF has to come up with. The easiest private
investors to convince, of course, are the very ones who made the loans that
are in danger of not being repaid. Essentially the IMF threatens them that
if they do not participate in the debt restructuring plan and cough up new
loans, the IMF will abandon the salvage operation and they will go unpaid.
But a sizable commitment of IMF money is necessary to convince these
lenders that the waters will now be safe for new loans and they will not be
throwing good money after bad.

But where did the IMF get the money to loan $17.2 billion to Thailand,
$58.2 billion to Indonesia, $22 billion to Russia, and $42.3 billion to
South Korea? Where will it get the $41.5 billion it has just promised to
loan Brazil? After all, the IMF is not an international central bank, like
the central banks of countries, who truly are "lenders of last resort" for
their national banking systems because they do have an unlimited capacity
to make new loans in their national currencies. The answer is the IMF gets
its budget from "assessments" of member governments—like the $18 billion
supplemental assessment the Clinton administration lobbied Congress to
approve in light of the Asian crisis, and well-heeled Republicans, after
months of populist bluster on Capital Hill, finally signed off on in the
last minute budget deal before the election recess. In other words, the IMF
budget comes from the taxpayers of member nations, and any interest the IMF
receives from loaning those taxpayers’ money. 

Notice the not so subtle shift in risk bearing buried in IMF rescue
packages. International investors make loans and collect high yields in
part because there is risk of default. But when danger of actual default
rears its ugly head, the IMF makes the loans necessary to avoid default, at
which point the creditors are paid back in full, after having enjoyed the
high yields. But if the IMF can always be counted on to ride to the rescue,
it turns out there is no risk for the international investors. Does this
mean the risk disappears? Hardly. First of all, even when the IMF rides to
the rescue, there is no guarantee the cavalry will arrive in time with
enough fire power. Russia did default despite IMF attempts to shield the
international credit system from such a shock. But even when an IMF
intervention prevents default on loans coming due immediately, there is
still a risk that despite the best efforts of the IMF to turn the troubled
economy into a debt repayment machine, it may still fail to pay off all it
owes farther down the line—including all it now owes to the IMF. So the IMF
has arranged a full payoff for the original investors—including interest
payments enlarged by riskiness—and then assumed the risk of default itself.
We have re-found the risk, but who is the IMF who now bears the risk?
Suddenly the IMF is the taxpayers of its member countries who pay
assessments. Of course, if the IMF loans eventually get repaid, then member
country taxpayers who made the loans through the IMF will also be repaid,
and one can argue—as the IMF and its supporters certainly do—that the IMF
bailout never actually ended up costing the taxpayers a penny. But that is
hardly the point. In cases where the IMF loans themselves are not repaid,
the taxpayer has paid off the international lenders by assuming their risk
and getting stiffed in their stead. Even in cases where the IMF loans are
repaid, taxpayers of member countries subsidize international lenders who
receive a risk inflated rate of return when in fact it is the taxpayers who
end up assuming the risk. 

So IMF bailouts are not bailouts of debtor countries and their economies at
all. That’s just a popular misconception that some find convenie