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Rakesh Bhandari wrote: is marx's capital nothing but an out of date textbook replete with irrelevant controversializing? Not at all - it's the best thing ever written on the subject! But there are some things missing, and it does lead people into some strange detours. A few years ago, I heard Paul Mattick Jr give a talk on the Asian financial crisis, which he prefaced with the declaration that he was abstracting from financial markets, capital flows, and nation-states. The resulting explanation was...the falling rate of profit. I'd thought the thing to be explained was why the crisis happened when and where it did. But having abstracted from all the interesting questions, he ended up with a truism, true always and everywhere, that explained nothing. Doug
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: textiles
Rakesh Bhandari wrote: is marx's capital nothing but an out of date textbook replete with irrelevant controversializing? Not at all - it's the best thing ever written on the subject! But there are some things missing, and it does lead people into some strange detours. A few years ago, I heard Paul Mattick Jr give a talk on the Asian financial crisis, which he prefaced with the declaration that he was abstracting from financial markets, capital flows, and nation-states. The resulting explanation was...the falling rate of profit. I'd thought the thing to be explained was why the crisis happened when and where it did. But having abstracted from all the interesting questions, he ended up with a truism, true always and everywhere, that explained nothing. Doug, what Paul was getting at is what the physicists call bridge laws, i believe. that is, how do we move from the idealizations on which theoretical reasoning is dependent to empirical phenomena. Nancy Cartwright has written a book titled how the Laws of Physics Lie. I think what Paul was suggesting is that we have to be very careful from moving from the laws of accumulation as Marx develops them theoretically to an explanation of any one particular crisis. This shows just how seriously Paul takes what Marx wrote; that is, we can't just pound on Das Kapital and announce that everything is there to explain any crisis. A lot of thought has to go from moving from the conceptually isolated capitalism Marx analyzed to the dynamics of the world market. His was an argument not only for patient theoretical reasoning but also for the limits thereof. Rakesh
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Classy move On Sat, Dec 29, 2001 at 09:05:32AM -0800, Rakesh Bhandari wrote: After this last post, I retract all criticism of Doug regarding trade issues. He returned my vinegar with honey. He has thought hard and long about the problems that we are facing. And I do benefit from his perspective that begins as always with the class struggle at home. All the best, Rakesh -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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yes, that would certainly help. On Sat, Dec 29, 2001 at 06:33:57AM -0600, William S. Lear wrote: On Friday, December 28, 2001 at 20:35:07 (-0800) Michael Perelman writes: Part of the question seems to be how do you organize in the absence of international solidarity? In short, how do you make Cambodian wages move up instead of US wages moving down? Wouldn't the center of gravity of a competitive international wage be close to China? The intellectually easy, but practically hard strategy -- within the bounds of capitalism -- would be to find ways to create high wage jobs in the US, but in doing that say by building high tech textile equipment would still destroy jobs in the 3rd world. Without getting into rancorous exchanges, what would a progressive strategy be. Of course, socialism would be desirable, but Wouldn't the foundation of this be full employment policies, say, as proposed by Jamie Galbraith? Bill -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Rakesh Bhandari wrote: the timing suggests that the problem is the recession in which us based plants are having difficulty holding market share, no? Yup. But you'd asked, not without a touch of suspcion, where the numbers came from, and I was answering. Doug
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Rakesh Bhandari wrote: Aside from that, don't U.S. textile and apparel workers deserve some sort of attention? My soundbite is protect the worker, not the job, but I'd like to hear what you think should happen to disemployed workers in this sector, who are disproportionally nonwhite and female and generally rather ill-paid. Doug Doug, I have put a lot of thought in my previous attempts to answer this question that you put to me over and over; and i must say that i think you have put very little thought in your replies as is obvious from the above. Which disparity is interesting sociologically. How do you know how much thought I put into this? From what follows, it seems you've paid no attention to anything I've said about this for the last few years. I'm generally opposed to protection; when I said protect the job not the worker it meant favoring generous unemployment and re-employment strategies over trade barriers. I'm completely opposed to the us-against-them mentality common in union circles. It's very hard to argue rationally against such an inherently irrational position, which seems deep down to be yours and Max's and the unions' and perhaps the Labor Party's as well. I can't speak for Max or the Labor Party, but when I was involved in the LP's economic strategizing, I argued strongly against protectionism. But we should recognize it for what it is--irrational nationalist sentiment backed by imperial power. You know, I completely agree with this. Why don't you recognize the sentiment driving your question? Our workers are oppressed; theirs are oppressed. We might as well make sure that our workers get as much of global direct investment and global capital flows as there is to be had in this globally depressed economy. Our capitalist state won't spend for public works and pump up effective demand in general; but alas maybe it'll give us a hypocritical trade regime--no so-called restrictive business practices for them, MFA and susidies for us; may as well go for it; let's make a bunch of noise in seattle and through such ritual reinforce our in group identity; next target China. This is just slanderously innacurate. There's a reason that Nader trade honcho Lori Wallach denounced me as not progressive on trade issues. well as i said we should begin by getting the facts straight; how much of the loss of employment in this sector should be attributed to imports in the first instance? how much employment is there to be lost in heavily automated factories, anwyay (correlatively, how much employment is there to be gained in the exporting countries)? how much do imports really only compete with each other? if textile or steel imports were curtailed, would the decrease in the supply of the dollars abroad raise the dollar and thus cost jobs in other export sectors (e.g., aircraft, speciality machine tools, etc)? how many of the net jobs which americans lost result from imports or an open global economy anyway? I've said many of these things - though more about NAFTA than textiles. I've said that the UAW's biggest problem is nonunion parts plants in Ohio, not Mexico - adding that it's always easier to blame the foreign worker than organize at home. Your argument is with someone else, not me. second, i don't see how the above justifies the Nation's (double meaning meant) lack of consideration of the consequences of actions taken to protect the American worker. I have no influence over Nation editorial policy. I can give you the editor's email address offlist if you like. I think we should start with recognition that there are no good immediate solutions to the problems at hand. At least one can be honest and report the truth. No good solutions until the revo? third, perhaps we should be asking why there aren't some monies available for something other than huge tax cuts for the rich. You know, transition programs, public employment, etc. No kidding. That's exactly the questions I'd ask - which brings me back to the soundbite, protect the job not the worker. Doug
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Rakesh Bhandari wrote: Aside from that, don't U.S. textile and apparel workers deserve some sort of attention? that's not the question; they get attention embodied in protective law. And, excuse me, is that a question at all or is it an accusation? Are you implying that I (with that foreign born name written on my CT birth certificate) am not concerned with american workers and thus unpatriotic? Not at all. You're as American as I am, but even if you weren't, it wouldn't matter a bit. And I don't consider patriotism a virtue, so that question is irrelevant. what is *your* unit of analytical concern: US workers, non ruling class Americans, the global worker? From whose perspective do you see things? The global working class. I do notice, however, that sometimes non-working class leftists in the First World don't consider the American worker as part of it. Kind of like Engels dismissing the English w.c. as paid stooges of imperialism. Doug
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After this last post, I retract all criticism of Doug regarding trade issues. He returned my vinegar with honey. He has thought hard and long about the problems that we are facing. And I do benefit from his perspective that begins as always with the class struggle at home. All the best, Rakesh
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Doug writes: Your argument is with someone else, not me. Just to say it again: you are right, and I am wrong. Rakesh
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Rakesh Bhandari wrote: After this last post, I retract all criticism of Doug regarding trade issues. He returned my vinegar with honey. He has thought hard and long about the problems that we are facing. Thank you. A seasonally appropriate bit of peacemaking is always gratifying. And I do benefit from his perspective that begins as always with the class struggle at home. Only because it's right at hand and what I know best. In the larger picture, proximity carries no moral weight. Doug
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Bill L writes: Wouldn't the foundation of this be full employment policies, say, as proposed by Jamie Galbraith? But what if the available full employment policy is the export of unemployment? galbraith has got his accomodating fed but deficits perhaps only 1/5th as big as he would like. If we begin with capital as a global relation, then we can enquire into the size of the global reserve army of labor and surplus population as they are products of on-going primitive accumulations, the concentration and centralization of capital on a global scale, and the slow down in the rate of accumulation (remember there are no nation states in Marx's theory; he begins with capital as a global social relation purified of any relation with any non capitalist mode of production); then going from the macro to the micro or from the more abstract to the more concrete we can investigate whether these populations are non randomly distributed across nations (just as long term unemployment is non randomly distributed according to race in the US). And then we can make the determination of whether a national employment policy is solving the problem (e.g., taxing capital for the expansion of good public sector employment as Mat F often recommends) or just pushing it on to others. That is, making sure that the losses fall as much as possible on the other. That is, we eliminate their excess capacity, not ours or our firms abroad are allowed to circumvent local content rules and the like but we don't accept their competitive imports or their non competitive imports if they don't use say our fibre; or we silently benefit from the capital inflow that we enjoy while we wail about how much aid we imagine that we give to them. The problem of course is that a working class which is imprisoned by these us/them terms may not be able to protect itself in the long term. Rakesh
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Rakesh Bhandari wrote: remember there are no nation states in Marx's theory; he begins with capital as a global social relation Which is a bit of a problem, because currencies are national, states are national, and markets in the larger countries are still largely national (around 90% in the case of the U.S., Japan, and the EU taken as a whole). The whole set-up is designed to foment an us-vs.-them consciousness. Doug
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Rakesh Bhandari wrote: remember there are no nation states in Marx's theory; he begins with capital as a global social relation Which is a bit of a problem, because currencies are national, states are national, and markets in the larger countries are still largely national (around 90% in the case of the U.S., Japan, and the EU taken as a whole). The whole set-up is designed to foment an us-vs.-them consciousness. Doug i may be wrong that marx begins with capital as a global social relation; however, i certainly don't think his is a theory of the early stages of british capitalism. His work is not simply empirical descriptive. Marx is clear that he uses british data only because the uk was at the time the most highly developed and purified (so to speak) capitalism--that is, closet to the purified, self contained capitalism on which he conducts his thought experiment in Das Kapital. What is Marx's Capital a theory of? Or what kind of object has the theory itself created? the ontological status of that object? and what do the althusserians and leswak nowak have to say about this? Perhaps inspired by Sismondi's abstract theorizing--so says Grossmann, as Rick Kuhn shows--Marx seems to have made of his magnum opus a rather highly abstract--nay, positively unreal--thought experiment (in vol 1 there's no foreign trade despite brief mention of an industrial division of labor suited to the industrial countries, no on going relation with non capitalist modes of production the decimation of which is recorded in part 8 , only two classes; moreover, we have commodity money that is simply assumed to have constant value!!! so all changes in price are due to changes on the commodity, rather than money, side of equation--so no fiat money either; in fact no state; no credit for that matter, etc.) what then does marx's theory illuminate about the real history of capitalism in which there has been foreign trade, starts and stutters in the development of a global division of labor; there has been violent relations with non capitalist modes and primitive accumulation through land reform to the present day, there have always been more than two classes each of which are highly internally variegated, the link to gold has been broken, credit monies proliferate, and there is international monetary chaos. is marx's capital nothing but an out of date textbook replete with irrelevant controversializing? rakesh
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This is a very relevant question for New Zealand. Our textile, clothing and footwear (TCF) industry has been reduced from 40,000 to 20,000 workers over a decade, largely as a result of tariff cuts. Many of the remainder are at risk of being sacrificed to a FTA currently being negotiated with Hong Kong. This is jobs issue, but more than that: most of those employed are women, Maori and Pacific Islanders, and people in small provincial towns, for whom there is little hope of other employment (leave alone relatively skilled employment) if/when the TCF manufacturers close down. On the other hand the unions representing those workers - among them one the best organising unions in the country - recognise the significance of TCF to developing countries, and maintain strong relationships with representatives of workers in many of those countries. So their advocacy of continued tariff protection is not one-eyed. (Incidentally, TCF tariffs are for practical purposes about the only remaining tariffs New Zealand has.) What would a progressive strategy be? While, as Bill Lear suggests, general economic policies to reclaim full employment (which New Zealand had until the mid-70's) are of course the basis for any sensible social policy, isn't that begging the question? For example, I suggest that a full employment policy must include (at least for New Zealand) some mechanism to ensure current account balance, such as by use of tariffs, quotas and foreign investment controls. Otherwise the deficit is managed by means that translate into reducing wages or employment. But to take particular industries, such as the TCF industry, even a full employment policy won't assure those workers of jobs of the right kind in the right places. Don't we need an active industrial development strategy that addresses both such particulars as well as general development needs - even in developed economies? Bill Michael Perelman wrote: Part of the question seems to be how do you organize in the absence of international solidarity? In short, how do you make Cambodian wages move up instead of US wages moving down? Wouldn't the center of gravity of a competitive international wage be close to China? The intellectually easy, but practically hard strategy -- within the bounds of capitalism -- would be to find ways to create high wage jobs in the US, but in doing that say by building high tech textile equipment would still destroy jobs in the 3rd world. Without getting into rancorous exchanges, what would a progressive strategy be. Of course, socialism would be desirable, but -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Rakesh Bhandari wrote: michael pugliese wrote: Yesterday on NPR it was said that 75,000 textile jobs have been lost in the last yr. lost due to national and global recession? loss of jobs that would have been added if not for recession? lost due to automation? lost to specifically defensive automation in the face of imports? lost due to surge of imports? how was this number arrived at? what is it an estimate of? Total employment, from the BLS establishment survey (thousands) 11/00 11/01 change Textile mill products... 514447 - 67 Apparel and other textile products.. 611532 - 79 total textile apparel -146 Doug
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Total employment, from the BLS establishment survey (thousands) 11/00 11/01 change Textile mill products... 514447 - 67 Apparel and other textile products.. 611532 - 79 total textile apparel -146 Doug the timing suggests that the problem is the recession in which us based plants are having difficulty holding market share, no? Rakesh
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Rakesh, I have enjoyed your posts on pen-l and elesewhere, but it is necessary that you avoid provocative, personal statements like this On Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 04:47:19PM -0800, Rakesh Bhandari wrote: Doug, I have put a lot of thought in my previous attempts to answer this question that you put to me over and over; and i must say that i think you have put very little thought in your replies as is obvious from the above. Which disparity is interesting sociologically. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Aside from that, don't U.S. textile and apparel workers deserve some sort of attention? that's not the question; they get attention embodied in protective law. And, excuse me, is that a question at all or is it an accusation? Are you implying that I (with that foreign born name written on my CT birth certificate) am not concerned with american workers and thus unpatriotic? what is *your* unit of analytical concern: US workers, non ruling class Americans, the global worker? From whose perspective do you see things? look again at your question; tell me what is implicit in it. My soundbite is protect the worker, not the job, but your published work on globalization has hardly delved into the double standards in the trade regime. Which seems to imply to me that your unit of analytical concern is the American worker. but I'd like to hear what you think should happen to disemployed workers in this sector, who are disproportionally nonwhite and female and generally rather ill-paid. what is the question? what do i think should happen *to* them? or what do i think those permanently unemployed by this system should do themselves? Rakesh
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Part of the question seems to be how do you organize in the absence of international solidarity? In short, how do you make Cambodian wages move up instead of US wages moving down? Wouldn't the center of gravity of a competitive international wage be close to China? The intellectually easy, but practically hard strategy -- within the bounds of capitalism -- would be to find ways to create high wage jobs in the US, but in doing that say by building high tech textile equipment would still destroy jobs in the 3rd world. Without getting into rancorous exchanges, what would a progressive strategy be. Of course, socialism would be desirable, but -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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michael pugliese wrote: Yesterday on NPR it was said that 75,000 textile jobs have been lost in the last yr. lost due to national and global recession? loss of jobs that would have been added if not for recession? lost due to automation? lost to specifically defensive automation in the face of imports? lost due to surge of imports? how was this number arrived at? what is it an estimate of? is it reliable? why we should we be concerned only with job loss in one sector, not net job gain or loss due to globalization or regional markets (i.e., why not include jobs gained directly and indirectly from capital inflow, including foreign direct investment; jobs gained from exports)? why not estimate how successful the 'North' has been in slowing down the loss of industries in which they have no comparative advantage as well as the human consequences that this had on poor countries? Michael, I remember when you were sending around *very* low estimates of the human destruction wrought by the us sanctions on iraq, while suggesting that they were authoritative because some person with impeccable leftist credentials had made them. It did not seem to me to be a very credible way of proceeding. Rakesh
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Rakesh, the speaker was not identified but he did not sound like someone with academic credentials, probably got the stat from his shop steward in UNITE! On the Iraq #ers, that was from The Nation and the background stuff I added about David Cortright was a fyi in the interests of just saying in effect this not some guy like Anthony Cordesman from the Georgetown CSIS or some such. Plus those numbers came from Lancet, the UK medical journal. I get so tired of (others, not you!) exaggerated figures on the deaths due to sanctions. When the truth is horrible why inflate? Anyway, good questions below, maybe I'll track down the NPR reporter that did the story and send her a e-mail. Michael Pugliese --- Original Message --- From: Rakesh Bhandari [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: 12/27/01 11:22:48 AM michael pugliese wrote: Yesterday on NPR it was said that 75,000 textile jobs have been lost in the last yr. lost due to national and global recession? loss of jobs that would have been added if not for recession? lost due to automation? lost to specifically defensive automation in the face of imports? lost due to surge of imports? how was this number arrived at? what is it an estimate of? is it reliable? why we should we be concerned only with job loss in one sector, not net job gain or loss due to globalization or regional markets (i.e., why not include jobs gained directly and indirectly from capital inflow, including foreign direct investment; jobs gained from exports)? why not estimate how successful the 'North' has been in slowing down the loss of industries in which they have no comparative advantage as well as the human consequences that this had on poor countries? Michael, I remember when you were sending around *very* low estimates of the human destruction wrought by the us sanctions on iraq, while suggesting that they were authoritative because some person with impeccable leftist credentials had made them. It did not seem to me to be a very credible way of proceeding. Rakesh
