[PEN-L:8681] Re: Re: Re: Socialism, Social Democracy, Democracy
William S. Lear wrote: Since when is Chomsky a defender of Cartesian dualism? He has stated that since nobody has a definite conception of "body", even posing the problem is impossible. I think you are partly right. What Chomsky means by "Cartesian dualism" is different from the meaning that is ordinarily attributed to it. Consider: "Recall that Cartesian dualism was straight science: postulation of something beyond the bounds of body is right or wrong. In fact, right, though not for Descartes reasons. Rather, for reasons that were considered most distressing, if not outrageous and intolerable by leading scientists of the day-- Leibniz, Huygens, Bernoulli and others, even Newton himself. Newton's trialism is also straight science right or wrong. and the same is true of the 'man-machine' hypothesis of La Mettrie and others, and the various efforts to develop 'Locke's suggestion' " The crucial discovery was that bodies do not exist. It is common to riducule the idea of the 'ghost in the machine'( as in Gilbert Ryle's influential work, for example). But this misses the point. Newton exorcised the machine, leaving the ghost intact. Furthermore, nothing has replace the machine..." in Power and Prospects p42 Kind of puzzling, but the point seems to be that there is no meaningful distinction between mind and body because there is no way of conceiving how something could exist and be non-physical.By definition, when something exists it is physical.Chomsky also says things like: " Newton demonstrated that the mechanical philosophy could not account for the phenomena of nature; the Cartesians only argued--not implausibly , but not conclusively--that aspects of the world fell beyond these limits" Ibid p6 Chomsky's dualism is of the epistemological rather than the ontological variety i.e more about what we can know rather than what exists. I still find Chomsky's philosophical views very confusing. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:8648] Re: Re: Socialism, Social Democracy, Democracy
Michael Keaney wrote: I cannot speak for his stuff on linguistics, however. I wonder if some here would regard these, if read blindly, as lofty and non-judgmental. Chomsky's writings on linguistics and philosophy are even more polemical and controversial than his political writings. Next to nobody except Chom defends Cartesian rationalism and Cartesian dualism anymore. These writings are fairly abstract but that goes with the questions he is addressing. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:7825] Re: Comparing Clinton regime to Hitler regime
michael perelman wrote: So Japan does not have to build large prison complexes to house young Koreans or does not have to contend with a large undeducated Korean or untouchable class who are not give the opportunity to contribute to society. That reminds me, what is a Japanese pachinko parlor? Bruce Cumings says the pachinko parlor business is worth around $250 billion in Japan which is greater than the GNP of S. Korea. He also says that most Japanese pachinko's are owned by Koreans loyal to the North with over 1 billion dollars sent by these Koreans to the North every year.( Korea's Place in the Sun p 336). Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:7806] Maoist Economics
m in the Maoist years was poor efficiency and poor planning leading to, amongst other things, a very high capital/output ratio and low growth in productivity. According to official Chinese stats, the labor productivity growth rate was the same in 1991 as it was in 1958. " If the quality of the plan is low, the costs become very high. The lack of autonomy and the alienation from direct participation in decision making impair initiatives, creativity and the sense of self-responsobilty of enterprises and workers, all vital to improve dynamic efficiency" Ibid. p 81 Mao and especially Kim Il Sung were very much into spectacle (where are the PoMo theorists?). Just the sheer spectacle of having thousands if not millions acting together towards some common goal. Actually, the way Bruce Cumings describes it, N. Korea sounds like an interesting place (to visit!) that does or did have quite a bit going for it despite the people's seemingly bottomless ability for idolatry. Cumings argues that the idolatry of N.Korean leaders is rooted in Korean history and that N.Korea most resembles a Neo-Confucian kingdom. See his *excellent* books -Korea's Place in the Sun- , -War and Television- and the -The Origins of the Korean War-. Cumings is a great writer-- check out his take on the movie Chinatown: "Despotism, water control, nepotism, incest: its the Asiatic Mode of Production in our backyard." Cumings argues that the 3rd world countries the U.S. has gone to war against are portrayed in the mass media the same way chinatown is portrayed in "Chinatown". Instead of "Forget it Jake, its Chinatown" we have, "Forget it Dick, its Vietnam" or "Forget it George, its Iraq" or "Forget it Bill, its Yugoslavia" Anyway, this has been interesting but has gone on far too long. One more: describing the Pentagon's behavior vis a vis the media in the Gulf War "even gung ho Soldier of Fortune scribblers complained about being stuck in briefing rooms with a 'bunch of boobs and dorks'" Cumings, War and Television, p 110. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:8027] Re: RE: Re: Re: Greg Elich: URGENT ACTION REQUIRED
Really? Is 'it' happening again? When the Cambodian resistance shot Imperialist collaborators after the liberation of Phnom Penh, was this a repetition of previous events? In light of the hesitancy to form a judgement on whether the U.S. actions in Cambodia were genocide, half-genocide, normal counter-insurgency, or extremely brutal counter-insurgency, fairness would dictate the Khmer Rouge be given a little space. China obviously has the Khmer Rouge on a leash which entails limits to their range of action. This is perfectly consistent with China's opposition to self-determination for Cambodia. For this reason as well, one ought to exercise some skepticism about press reports on the Khmer Rouge from the bourgeois press, much less from Western intelligence sources. I'd also be skeptical of U.S. e-mail testimony channeled by that well-known defender of organized religion, XX. There will undoubtedly be individual cases of injustice suffered by Imperialist collaboraors at the hands of the Cambodian Comrades. But it is becoming increasingly obvious, if it wasn't before, who is mostly right and who mostly wrong. Translation: Killing innocent people is fine, as long as they hold political views I disagree with. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:8040] Re: RE: Good critiques of MAI, Tobin tax/alternatives
There is a critical book called MAI by Maude Barlow and Bruce Cameron, 2 Canadian activists and writers.It focusses mostly on the MAI as it is applied to Canada but you mind find it useful, though it is too nationalistic and social democratic for me. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has a number of papers on the Tobin tax including a speech and QA by Tobin himself. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:8287] Re: Re: Bengali famine
Brad De Long wrote: Your fight is with Amartya Sen--not me. But my strong impression is that you have lost the argument already. Sen is not dumb, is careful, and rarely makes mistakes... He uses the most amount of footnotes I've seen too. If I remember, didn't Sen point out that India was actually exporting food during its famines? Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:8455] Re: Re: Thomas Friedman an economist?
Rod Hay wrote: Wow, you must have a good thesaurus. I think it is a mistake to regard your adversaries as idiots. They are not. If neoclassical economics was totally bogus it would soon wither away. No. Stupidity evolves also. Christianity and theism are totally bogus and they have not withered away. Because a majority of people believe something to be true does not make it true. Marxism is withering away, does that mean it is false? It must have some portion of the truth about how capitalist economies work. When Marx attacked the vulgar economists of his day his approach was quite different. He did not say they were simply lying. He instead focused on the superficial and the ahistorical aspects. The techniques of neoclassical eoconomics are benign. No. Underlying neo-classical economics its techniques is the philosophical model(some would say ideology) of subjective individualism. Everything in NE follows from this model ,like for example, exogenously determined preferences and the impossibility of interpersonal comparisons across utility functions. Alternatively, in libertarian philosophy everything follows from self-ownership. If you reject self-ownership the argument falls apart. For the most part calculus or linear algebra. Things that any good marxist economist would want to know. Maybe. It is possible to build intricate and complicated social scientific models using sophisticated mathematics. Is it necessary for understanding the world? No. There are some problems in philosophy and science that require some degree of conceptual abstraction but no more than anyone with a little background and patience can understand. If one enjoys doing mathematical economics, finds it stimulating etc. that's fine but you are not contributing to an understanding of the real world. It is the assumptions and the lack of history that are the problem. For instance the assumption of an utility maximizing completely selfish individual basis for decision making. That in fact makes some sense in a capitalist economy. Ask Doug about the guys down on Wall Street. But in fact there is more to decision making in any society that that. Neoclassical economics can not deal with the decision making of two individuals who care about the other's well-being. And it assumes that this type of behaviour is human nature -- equally true in all societies. But with careful use on small problems neo-classical economics can offer some insights. Like what? It seems to me that those who insist that there is something true about neoclassical theory are trying to have their cake and eat it too. Individualism is either true or false. If you reject individualism you must reject NE in todo. Marxism (to me) starts with the analysis of social relations and the relations of production(a type of social relation). Is it possible to hold individualism and Marxism simultaneously? If not, which is the better theory i.e. gives the best explanation of the real world? Further, NE does not apply reductionism consistently. A consistent reductionist like James Watson only admits that atoms exist. So, if you are going to allow entities larger than atoms to exist, why stop at individuals? more later, Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:8518] Re: Re: Thomas Friedman an economist?
=== RH: The truth that religion holds is this. It reifies the best human qualities abstracts them from people and assigns them to a deity. It exists and flurishes as Marx says because it gives hope and comfort in a world without hope and comfort. Maybe. Religion also gives people comfort and answers to questions they might find discomforting or even terrifying. "There are no atheists in foxholes." Is Marxism withering away or only those distortions of it put forward by the Leninist, Maoist, etc.? The distortions and the pure forms look like they are withering away. I don't know for certain, but there are less Marxists in academia, in unions, in the studentwomen's movements and less subscribers to Marxist periodicals then there ever have been. Of course I would love to be proved wrong. In most cases this has been no fault of Marxism. At my Alma Mater Simon Fraser U., in the 60's and 70's many Marxists were fired simply because of their political views. Many never found jobs in academia ever again. The Taft-Hartley act makes it illegal for Marxists to be involved with unions at a high level. that the threat of the Soviet Union is gone it is more common to see emascualated Marxist explaination in the press that it was before. Perhaps, I was only 16 when the SU went down the tubes. It seems to me that the bourgeois press has always embraced a kind of 'vulger' marxism, they're just on the side of the capitalists. And as the current contradiction of this stage of capitalism work themselves out, I predict it will make a comeback. Let's hope so, it would only be natural since Marxism is the best theory. The conquering of the USSR has made that awful white elephant known as Soviet Marxism obsolete. OTOH, the conquering of the USSR was a tremendous blow to the left world-wide and has been felt by just about everyone who doesn't wear a Rolex. I always like Lev Trotsky's formulation: unconditional military defense of the USSR but working for worker's revolution within it. Unfortunately, many leftists and liberals never read Trotsky or took his analysis to heart. There is no other rational explaination of misery. There are other explanantions, none of them are very good. RH: Subjective idealism is an assumption not a technique. Marginalism is the technique. It can be useful in many situtations. Subjective idealism is a red herring. I meant individualism with a subjective v alue theory. Marginalism and NE are most convincing when used in biology e.g. R.Dawkins The Blind Watchmaker. Depending on how its presented, NE is just differential calculus. In the hands of it best practitioners, NE is a internally consistent deductive system such that marginal analysis follows from philosophical individualism. You can't have marginalism without the individualism. RH: I don't know how anyone could construct a feasible plan without a good knowledge of mathematics. Yes, but a plan isn't a theory. The best mathematical minds the USSR produced worked for GOSPLAN. RH: But individuals exist and they do sometimes act selfishly (in fact in capitalism selfish activity is strongly encouraged. Yes, in capitalism selfish behavior is rewarded. It might be useful to make a distinction between selfish behavior and self-interested behavior. I think it is in the majority's individual self-interest to be for socialism since the majority will,individually, benefit from having it. Classic prisoner's dilemma. The social relations of production would not make any sense if there is not something to relate. I.e., how do individual relate in production. Again we are dealing with a particular distortion of Marxism pushed for political reasons. What we want is a dialectic of the individual and the group. Yes. Sartre's *Critique of Dialectical Reason* is the best work here but by no means is it easy going. Neither is prior to the other and neither makes any sense without the other. I agree, but how do you square this with marginal analysis? The denial of the individual is just the sort of philosophy that would allow the sacrifice of the individual to the "necesities of history". I would imagine that most of us would want to avoid that. Yes. Analysis that are too structural leave out human agency. Incidentally, that is another serious flaw of NE, its crude and false theory of human agency. best, Sam Pawlett note to Mike L. in lurker-land: Resub! Matthew Shipp was awesome!
[PEN-L:9439] Re: Re: Re: Let's slow down here
Michael Yates wrote: The section of the Taft-Hartley law which forced union officers to sign oaths that they were not communists was struck down finally by the courts many years ago. Thanks to Michael E and Michael Y for corrections on Taft-Hartley. Are there still political provisions in American labor law or law in general? The anti-communist charter of T-H was an appendage to the Smith Act, no? If I was John Sweeney I would call Justin Schwartz and some of those lawyers and get Taft-Hartley thrown in the dust bin of history where it belongs. Who was Archie Brown? Sounds like a character. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:8872] Corporate Welfare
The Financial Post [house organ of Canadian bankers] ran a review of some recent studies by far right think tanks[Cato, John Locke institute(that's a new one)] on corporate welfare. While the analysis is predicatable: corporate welfare should be abolished because it does not reflect 'market signals' -gov'ts should lower taxes to woo FDI- the numbers are interesting. In these studies, I don't kow how much indirect subsidies like lower than average energy costs[a favorite of Canadian gov'ts] have been taken into account.Anyway: Canadian Gov't Subsidies to Business 1994-5 $3.6 billion 1995-6 $2.2 billion 1996-7 $1.7 billion 1997-8 $2.6 billion 1998-9 2.7 billion 1999-00 $2.1 billion(forecast) (ministry of Finance) -- $11 billion between 1982-97 to 200 companies. Half of these funds to the wealthiest Canadian companies. -- $250 million in 1999-00 to Bombardier Inc.--one of Canada's largest companies. -- $1.5 billion to be doled out by argiculture and fisheries ministries during 1999-2000. United States --$75 billion a year in total grants and loans to companies (Cato inst.) -- $125 billion a year " " " "" "" (Time Mag.) --Beneficieries of Federal subsidies: Amoco Corp., ATT, CitiCorp, DuPont, General Electric, General Motors, IBM, Motorola, Time Warner Inc (Public Citizen) Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:8873] Re: Althusser
Carrol Cox wrote: The impenetrable prose might be due to bipolar illness also. On occasion when a bipolar friend (especially what is called a "rapid cycler") is sinking (or rising) into the manic phrase their discourse becomes steadily more disjointed and incoherent, though sometimes they can parenthetically note that fact themselves. Yes. People in the upstage of mania often have a feeling of great [sometimes intellectual] power, grandeur and invincibility, sort of like A cocaine high. Having a conversation [well, listening] to an unmedicated bipolar intellectual in the upstage is quite an experience..often making unconventional associations and giving monologues for hours at end making it very difficult to discern an overall pattern. When in university,I once listened to a bipolar for 11 hours straight pontificating on everything from Plato to pornography. Althusser's writing does have some of this in it. Mania is very dangerous and can manifest itself in different ways. A woman I used to know had intercourse with 7 different men in one night. The most common symptom is partying and spending money, rarely violence.If you suspect someone is going through the upstage, immediately hide their bank book etc. Many bipolar's end up in the streets for this reason. Another friend got committed in Indonesia after spending every penny he had in a few days. Some spend tens of thousands of dollars in a week. The scariest thing is that when someone is going through mania they don't know it. You all of a sudden have this feeling of grandiosity and power. I got labelled a biopolar when I was in university after telling my doctor that I hadn't slept in about 5 days, was reading about a dozen books and writing 4 papers simultaneously. I've since rejected the title after finding out Idi Amin was a bipolar:-) Also, most of the drugs given to bipolar's result in substantial weight gain. Psychosis is different and much more complex. Paranoiacs are usually the ones who get violent towards others or themselves. Paranoia often comes from being isolated and being alone too much. Psychotics cannot differentiate reality from phantasy. Someone in psychosis might attack another with a knife on the belief that that person is the devil persecuting them etc. I don't think Althusser was that out of it. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:8878] Re: Re: racism
Rod Hay wrote: Okey Chigbo is not right wing. He is a left wing activist in Toronto--an immigrant from Nigeria who is turned off by the "black" activists in Toronto. And althought he cites the things you say he does, his primary concern is the damage done by separationist Afro-centric theorists. I know nothing about the magazine. The finest Marxist work on racism is done by Barbara Field. Criticising Afro-centric theory is one thing, citing Thomas Sowell and George Gilder approvingly and publishing your stuff in a libertarian mouth piece is another. I'm not sure theory as such has done much damage , its the reality that has done the damage. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:8891] [Fwd: REUTERS: Colombia rebel chief warns against U.S. invasion]
[NOTE: The "United States" is lying through its rotting teeth! Not only are there swarms of "advisers" in Colombia, but special units of the U.S. military have been operating there at least for the past year. Mind you, I am not even counting the number of CIA agents! For more info visit the following webpages: http://www.prairienet.org/clm/980819DMN.html http://www.prairienet.org/clm/980713WP.html -DG] == But the United States has denied repeated rebel claims that it has military advisers in Colombia, and insists that it has no direct involvement in the country's long-running internal conflict. ___ == REUTERS Monday, 5 July 1999 Colombia rebel chief warns against U.S. invasion BOGOTA -- A top Marxist rebel leader has warned against a broader U.S. role in Colombia's civil conflict, saying it could get sucked into a Vietnam-style war that it would have no chance of winning. ``This isn't Yugoslavia for them (U.S. troops) to just come in and do whatever they want,'' said Jorge Briceno, the No. 2 leader and chief military strategist of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). ``Those kind of troops wouldn't last long here, given all the discomforts and the harshness of the tropical climate,'' he said in a television interview broadcast on Sunday night. Briceno's comments come against the backdrop of full-fledged peace talks with the government, which are due to get under way on Wednesday. The talks will be held in a Switzerland-sized area of south and southeast Colombia, which the government has granted the FARC control of since November as an inducement to enter into negotiations. The FARC is the largest and oldest guerrilla army in the Americas. The conflict in Colombia has taken more than 35,000 lives in the last decade alone. ``If they (the United States) invade they'll have to take the consequences,'' Briceno said, adding a direct U.S. role in Colombia's war could cause it to spill over into neighbouring countries and ignite a region-wide conflict. ``If you're attacked at home what do you do?'' Briceno, known by the alias Mono Jojoy, asked his TV interviewer. ``You have to go where your neighbour is,'' he said. In a separate interview, published in Monday's editions of Bogota's El Espectador newspaper, Briceno reiterated his charge that the United States, which accuses the FARC of drug trafficking, was gearing up for direct military intervention in Colombia. ``The North Americans have been intervening here for more than 50 years, but now they want to do it more directly,'' he said. ``We're alerting world public opinion to oppose this, because it's no good,'' he said. ``Look what happened in Yugoslavia. The North Americans talk about human rights while they bomb a nation and destroy it. They're the world's worst terrorists,'' Briceno said. Political analysts have long accused Washington of taking a hand in anti-guerrilla operations in Colombia, by deliberately blurring the lines between counternarcotics and counterinsurgency. But the United States has denied repeated rebel claims that it has military advisers in Colombia, and insists that it has no direct involvement in the country's long-running internal conflict. The FARC, founded as a pro-Soviet, Marxist group in the mid-1960s, prompted international outrage in March when it abducted and murdered three U.S. activists campaigning for the rights of a local Indian tribe. A warrant for the arrest of Briceno's brother, a regional FARC commander known by the alias Grannobles, has been issued in connection with the murders. In his remarks to El Espectador, Briceno called the killings ``an error'' but conceded he has little sympathy for the United States, which he accuses of covertly running Colombia's counterinsurgency effort. ``The tricky thing is that three gringos die and they make a whole damn song and dance about it, but 200 Colombians are killed on orders from them (the U.S.) and it's as if nothing happened here,'' he said. Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited ___ *** * COLOMBIA SUPPORT NETWORK: To subscribe to CSN-L send request to * * [EMAIL PROTECTED] SUB CSN-L Firstname Lastname * * (Direct questions or comments about CSN-L to [EMAIL PROTECTED]) * * Visit the website of CSN's Champaign-Urbana (Illinois) chapter at * * http://www.prairienet.org/csncu Subscribe to the COLOMBIA BULLETIN * * For free copy and info contact CSN, P.O. Box 1505, Madison WI 53701 * * or call (608)
[PEN-L:9074] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hanns Eisler
Peter Dorman wrote: By going back to the 18th c. we are adding new layers to the question. Mozart did not have strong political views in the conventional sense, although he clearly identified with the main themes of the enlightenment (much trashed on this list). Within the confines of a society stratified by birth he favored greater social leveling, and he treats servants and other low-born persons in his operas with respect. (Even women get some respect.) But it would be wrong to say that he ever put forward a strong political statement, and his music -- as music -- was unaffected by politics. Interestingly, Haydn's *music* is intrinsically progressive within the context of his era. He was the first composer in the classical tradition to use folk and folk-like music as an essential component of his work, rather than as a novelty element. (Compare any landler from the third movement of a Haydn symphony to, say, Bach's peasant cantata.) Moreover, the sonata form (which he more or less invented) mirrors the novel as a formal expression of the transformation of individual consciousness as it makes its way through the world. (Here I am arguing by homology, but in music I think it makes more sense.) Music passes definitively from decoration to narrative. The irony is that Haydn wrote the anthem that became "Deutschland Uber Alles". Beethoven is known for having responded positively to the French Revolution, but there is little actual politics in his music. (Yes, there is the ode to brotherhood in the 9th symphony and the prisoners' hymn to freedom in Fidelio.) For the most part he was pursuing the same inner/other-worldliness that German romanticism fled to. There was a practical radicalism, however, in works like the late piano sonatas, the Grosse Fuge, etc., that broke with music as entertainment (for either the castle chamber or the bourgeois drawing room) and looked forward to a different socioeconomic model. Yes, all the more remarkable considering Beethoven was totally deaf when he wrote them. Beethoven's string quartet's starting with the op 59 building up to his masterpiece the C# minor op 131 are the most radical in the sense that they make a clean break with the Haydn/Mozart style and introduce harmonies that are far more sophisiticated than had even been imagined before. The s.q's also make the break between classicism and romanticism where musical composition is less something composed for pleasant background music in the drawing room than complete expression of the artists thoughts and psychological states. How does all this translate into politics? Does musical radicalism directly map onto political radicalism? The problem is whether music can represent anything, let alone something as complex as political ideas and ideology. Music can certainly express things but can it represent states of affairs in the world? I would say no except in some limiting circumstances. Music, like all art, I think, is meant to be enjoyed. Art doesn't need to have political or philosophical messages/meanings to be enjoyable and great. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:9177] Re: On Footnotes Was Re: Re: query
Carrol Cox wrote: Pioneers as it were in the disuse of footnotes were British scholars who liked to pretend that only readers who knew the source without a footnote were worthy readers. Footnotes were regarded as catering to the great unwashed who were too ignorant to recognize a quotation and its source at sight. Same with languages. Marx quoted ancient Greek[he was trained as classical scholar after all] without translating them. Old school Oxford scholars like Gibert Ryle used to do this too. Richard Rorty is the only contemporary I can think of who still does this. Your supposed to know these languages! As Jon Elster says: " Capital I is a work written for the happy few, by one of them. It makes no concessions whatsoever to the uneducated reader. Marx assumes that *his* readers know Latin, Greek and the main European languages. They should be as well versed in philosophy as in political economy, with a firm grasp of world history and current political affairs. Moreover, they should be able to recognize literary allusions even in fairly disguised forms. It is a book that stretches the reader's mind to its limits, as it had no doubt stretched the author's capacities. It is ,in other word, an extreme feat of creativity. In the future communist society, everyone will be capable of understanding works of this stature. Indeed, everyone will be capable of writing comparable works, and will devote most of their time to doing so. This may sound like an exaggeration, and on some interpretations of Marx it is. Yet in one sense it contains an undeniable truth. Marx was appalled by the miserable, passive existence led mid nineteenth century workers. At work they were mere appendages of the machines they operated;at home they were too exhausted to lead any sort of active life. At best they could enjoy the passive pleasures of consumption. Marx, bursting with energy, consistently creative and innovative, even despite himself when he had a work to finish, was at the extreme opposite pole. He knew the profound pleasures of creation, of difficulties overcome, of tensions set up and then resolves. He *knew* that this was the good life for man. And he strived for a society in which it would no longer be reserved for small privileged minority. Self-realization through creative work is the essence of Marx's communism." Making Sense of Marx p521. Extreme perfectionism! Sam Pawlett Radical writers who refuse to give detailed footnotes show an utter contempt for practical use of their work. In talking with people, in writing a leaflet, in letters to the local paper, it gives one little margin to quote "the leading marxist scholar, Paul Sweezy" or "Karl Marx." Luckily both of those writers consistently give their *bourgeois sources*, so one may quote a parliamentary committee or the WSJ, which is much more convincing in agitational work. And there are of course still people out there in the world who want to learn on their own -- college drop-outs, ph.d.'s in literature who want to learn some economics, what have you. Footnotes are then like links on a web page. Five Bronx Cheers for all Footnote despisers. Carrol
[PEN-L:9219] Re: Re: Re: Kant on Pain Moral Worth
Jim Devine wrote: However, I find the readings on "Marxism and Morality" that I've done to be interesting and useful. Marxism may not be (or incorporate) an ethical system, but it does not contradict all ethical systems. Allen Wood developed the interesting argument that Marx's critique of political economy had nothing to do with justice and that the capitalist class does exploit the working class but this exploitation is just. Wood explains: "He (Marx SP) equally scorned those concerned themselves with formulating principles of distributive justice and condemning capitalism in their name. Marx conceives that justice of economic transactions as their correspondence to or functionality for the prevailing mode of production. Given this conception of justice, Marx very consistently concluded that the inhuman exploitation practiced by capitalism against the workers is not unjust, and does not violate the worker's rights; this conclusion constitutes no defense of capitalism, only an attack on the use of moral conceptions within the proletarian movement. Marx saw the task of the proletarian movement in his time as one of self-definition, discipline and self-criticism based on scientific self-understanding. He left for later stages of the movement the task of planning the future society which it is the historic mission of the movement to bring forth." To summarize, law and justice are judicial concepts. Judicial concepts belong to the superstructure which is determined by the mode of production. A society will thus have a conception of justice that fits and grows naturally out of its mode of production. Capitalist exploitation is just in capitalist mode of production but unjust in a socialist mode. It is wrong therefore, to ascribe some universal form of justice applicable to all modes of production. A future communist society will not be 'more just' than capitalist capitalism, it will simply have a conception of justice that fits its mode of production; a mode of production where capitalist exploitation doesn't exist. Wood fleshes out his argument in his book _Karl Marx_ and his article "Marx and the Critique of Justice", Philosophy and Public Affairs, VI no. 3 1972. Seems to me that Wood's main goal is to avoid pigeonholing Marx as a utilitarian or as a partisan of a deontological(Kantian) form of ethics. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:9214] Re: Re: Kant, Reason, Armed Forces (was Re: Kant on Debt)
Michael Hoover wrote: Kant wrote in "What Is Enlightenment?": 'Argue as much as you will, and about what you will, only obey!' Yoshie didn't Kant also write somewhere that government must suppress criticism that does not show 'respect and devotion towards the existing constitution'... Michael Hoover Kant also wrote: "When universal injustice stands firm, teh natural rights of the lowly cease. They are therfore only debtors; the superiors owe them nothing. Therefore these superiors are called gracious lords. He who needs nothing from them but justice and can hold them to their debts does not need this submissiveness." cited in J.B. Scheewind *Autonomy, Obligation and Virtue*. The dependence of the debtors on the creditors threatens autonomy. Sam P.
[PEN-L:9215] How Imperialism Works
"Objectivity, a sense of justice and sentimentality would only hinder the Germans in their world mission. This mission does not consist in extending culture and education throughout the world but in taking wheat and oil away." --Joseph Goebbels *Monologe im Fuhrerhauptquartier 1941-1944 p 362.* cited in E.Mandel The Meaning of the Second World War p177
[PEN-L:9399] Re: Re: Capitalist waste
Doug Dowd wrote an interesting and short book called *The Waste of Nations*. There is also a fascinating and very original book called The World's Wasted Wealth by J.W. Smith a non-academic, Montana ranchhand and arch left populist. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:9557] Re: INDONESIA 1965
From "Am I PKI or Non-PKI" by Pipit Kartawidjaja, Indonesia 40, 1985 p37-56. "Usually the corpses were no longer recognizable as human. Headless. Stomachs torn open. The smell was unimaginable. To make sure they didn't sink, the carcasses were deliberately tied to, or impaled on, bamboo stakes. and the departure of the corpses from the Kediri region down the Brantas river achieved its golden age when bodies were stacked together on rafts over which the PKI banner grandly flew" "Once the purge of Communist elements got under way, clients stopped coming for sexual satisfaction. The reason: most clients-and prostitutes- were too frightened, for, hanging up in front of the whorehouses were a lot of male Communist genitals--like bananas hung out for sale." cited in Benedict Anderson *Spectre of Comparisons* p294, Verso,1999. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:9558] Indonesia: More Massacres?
ASIET News Updates - July 21, 1999 == * Top generals laugh off report of deal with Megawati * Indonesia is preparing for massive post-ballot slaughter * Indonesia expects Timor poll loss, plans evacuations * Martial law may be called in Aceh, Irian: Minister - Top generals laugh off report of deal with Megawati === Straits Times - July 20 1999 Susan Sim, Jakarta -- Indonesia's top generals are laughing off a report in an international magazine which alleged that they had cut a deal to support opposition leader Megawati Soekarnoputri for the presidency. Business Week, a New York-based magazine, had reported in its latest issue that at a "commanders call" early this month, military chief General Wiranto had obtained the support of certain top generals to put together a coalition government that would be led by Ms Megawati as President and himself as "the truly powerful Vice-President". Of the incumbent's fate under this deal, the magazine said: "He's out at the end of his term. Wiranto, according to the sources, even secured the blessing of ex-President Suharto." Asked about the report, TNI spokesman Brigadier-General Sudrajat told The Straits Times: "It is false ... misleading, baseless. We haven't discussed it internally, but at coffee this morning, everybody was just laughing at it." The facts, he said, were wrong. The only "commanders call" -- which involves all regional commanders and chiefs of the various departments and units -- held recently was in early June, when Gen Wiranto reviewed security preparations for the election and issued reminders to his subordinates to remain politically neutral but stay alert to any sign of trouble. The military chief, he said, did chair weekly routine meetings involving many of his generals, but the presidential contest had never been on the agenda. "In fact, he's told us several times that if any of us were ever asked by whoever what his stand was regarding his nomination by certain groups to be President, we were to say that he was not paying any attention to it, but concentrating on his job of promoting peace and stability," he said, adding: "That doesn't mean he has no interest in the presidency, only that he is not paying any attention to it now because the publicity will destroy his concentration on security matters." Two sources in regular contact with Gen Wiranto said that whatever his inclinations, a key consideration would be President Habibie's reaction. "He has to be very careful in dealing with Habibie, because Habibie can sack him," said one source. "If he has decided to back Megawati, you can be sure the Islamic groups would have heard of it by now and ... pressing for his removal." Indonesia is preparing for massive post-ballot slaughter CNRT press release - July 20, 1999 Sydney -- Indonesia is preparing for a massive post-ballot slaughter in East Timor -- exacting retribution in blood on East Timorese for refusing to bow to the reign of terror and vote for the integration of their country into Indonesia. The Head of CNRT (National Council for Timorese Resistance) in Australia, Joco Carrascalco, said today this is the real meaning of leaked Indonesian plans for the hurried evacuation of its public servants and "transmigrasi" from East Timor when East Timorese vote against integration in the UN-supervised ballot. "We had news of this about two months ago. We distributed it at the time, but apart from the media in Portugal, the world took no notice. "The important thing is that our people have seen both halves of the plan. The evacuation is the first half. The second half is that having cleared Indonesian civilians out of the way, the Indonesian army and its militia thugs plan to go on the rampage. "They are planning a massacre of such magnitude that the killings of the past few months -- in which they have killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of East Timorese -- will look, like a mere beginning. "We have warned before and will warn again now -- Indonesia has cached huge stocks of weapons within East Timor. Their reinforced army will be on full combat alert within minutes of the border. They have put hundreds of Kopassus and army officers and men into East Timor posing as civilians and police. They have taken direct control of the militias on the ground. They are actively training their few supporters to kill and preparing them to bring out their hidden arms and start shooting immediately Indonesia gives the order after the ballot." Mr Carrascalco said the Indonesian claim that they were concerned about East Timorese revenge against Indonesian nationals was "complete rubbish; the usual Indonesian disinformation". "They massacre independence supporters and try to blame the pro- independence groups for that. They plan a massacre, so
[PEN-L:9612] Re: L-I: Revolution in Colombia, part one: historical background
Louis Proyect wrote: The two parties saw each other as rivals, but their real rival were the popular classes. The Liberals sought to modernize the state and reduce the influence of the Catholic Church, while the Conservatives sought to maintain the status quo. No matter how much they disagreed with each other, even to the point of resorting to arms, they agreed on the big question, which was how to exploit Colombia's agricultural wealth without allowing the mass of peasants ownership or control over the land, or the right to share in its benefits. The Conservatives and Liberals ruled and still rule to some extent like the PRI in Mexico as corporatist parties aiming to unify all classes in society under their umbrella through a mixture of corruption, intimidation, violence and patronage. I would view the Colombian Liberal and Conservative parties as different but no necessarily opposing wings of the ruling class; the conservatives being the party of the aristocracy and old elite and the Liberals being the neo-liberals. The fundamental contradiction in Latin American capitalism is this: Capitalist agriculture for the export market requires preservation of the hacienda system, which provides the social base for the Conservative Party and semifeudal reaction. On the other hand, the modern state requires tax revenues and democratic participation from a mass social base of small proprietors, such as the shopkeepers and peasants who provided the shock troops of the French Revolution. Since Colombia, and no other Latin American country, can resolve this contradiction, tensions persist and periodically erupt in bloody conflicts where the two bourgeois parties become surrogates for deeper class antagonisms. The other important factor was the growth of suburbs and the increased separation between workplace and home. Restaurants cropped up in factory and downtown financial districts, where coffee drinking became part of an everyday ritual to get the depressed and alienated worker through the day, just as cocaine use became widespread on lunch breaks in the Wall Street area during the 1980s. Very much so.You can see street vendors with broomsticks with coffee pots hanging off of them walking around downtown Bogota at lunch. This counter-revolution resulted in the murder of 300,000 people, one of the great bloodbaths of Latin American history. Was this bloodbath necessary? One of the things that is difficult to gauge in Colombia is the extent to which such excesses are a function of bourgeois "over-corrections" such as the kind that ideological frenzy often leads to. Would Colombia have been better off if the Conservatives had been open to the idea of allowing Gaitán's populism to prevail? Certainly he did not intend to abolish the capitalist system, but only to eradicate some of the more glaring injustices. In this, he was no different than Guatemala's Arbenz, or any other middle-class reformer who has emerged in the past half-century. Suffice it to say that right-wing anticommunism involves a level of fanaticism that once unleashed is difficult to bottle back up like a genie. When the history of this barbarian epoch is finally written, anticommunist fundamentalism will be recorded as much more demonic and violent than anything ever encountered in the middle ages. I would argue that the La Violencia period has never really ended. To some extent La Violencia was a product of conditions such as agrarian problems, family and caste rivalries and disputes,private armies, banditry, that made Colombia ripe for a social explosion. Most of the violence was plain looting and lacked political content. La Violencia strengthened the hand of the dominant parties as they were able to play the peasants off against one another; Liberals killing Conservatives and vice versa. There are few examples of cross-class violence e.g.Liberal peasants attacking Liberal landlords. The main cause and consequence of La Violencia was a lack of organization among the peasantry. The peasantry was weak and divided as a class and this played itself out during La Violencia. Most of the violence was rural and didn't really disrupt the national economy. Wealthy landowners remained safe in the cities. In setting the context for Colombian politics today, we must point out that today's most powerful guerrilla group in Colombia, the FARC, is a product of this period. Yes, but it grew during the National Front(1955-74) period when the two parties had an absolute monopoly on all aspects of political life. All other parties were banned, thus dissidents had to resort to armed and clandestine struggle to press their demands. This situation is very much alive today as any group such as the UP or M-19 trying to insert itself into Colombian political life is immediately wiped out through violence making violence the only means of pressing the class struggle. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:9397] Re: Let's slow down here
*is* what that hammer and sickle symbolizes. The president of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions is also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee. Indeed. In other words, he is a member of the Chinese ruling class and carries out his orders faithfully. All the attempts to start illegal capitalist unions have been supported by Western anti-China forces with special political agneda and destabilization objectives. Yes, they are called Marxists and Trotskyists. Marxists almost always champion the working class whether the workers are employed by the state or by capitalist firms. IMO, that is the only difference between China and the USA. The two of three of these self-styled "activists" have been jailed for receiving foreign funds to carry out anti-China activities on Chinese soil. These inviduals have nothing to do with labor issues in China. OK. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:9076] Re: Re: Re: Hanns Eisler
Peter Dorman wrote: in my opinion, Hans Werner Henze's Raft of the Medusa will be listened to for a long time to come. (People who care about political art owe it to themselves to check this one out.) Yes, not to mention the recording of his 6 symphonies on DG with Henze himself conducting the BPO. BTW, the 6th was composed and premiered by Henze when he was composer in residence in Havana during the late 60's.There was an interesting article on Henze in a recent issue of the Times Literary Supplement. Every once and awhile the TLS runs something interesting instead of the usual half-baked drivel about 3rd rate poets and novelists. Many of the writers of TLS excel at that particular skill of going on and on about absolutely nothing. Back in the USA, Frederick Rzewski has produced the finest piano music in recent years, especially his Variations on The People United Will Never Be Defeated. But on the other side of the ledger, Erwin Schulhoff's political ambitions interfered with his output, and Aaron Copland's pop-frontish stuff (e.g. Lincoln Portrait) is his least successful. My guess is that in "classical" music, political goals complicate the problem of music-making in a way that they don't in popular music. Most popular music is "about" something (love, sex, anger, politics) that can be expressed fairly well with words alone; politics fixes the subject but doesn't otherwise change the job that music sets out to do. Classical music, however, focuses on the forms of expression for which words are not adequate. (Is opera an exception?) Opera is an exception because it has a libretto that can express anything the written word can. There are some very political operas out there like the N.Korean "Let's Dismember the U.S. Imperialists" rumored to be co-written by you-know-who. It may not tingle the spines of music fans but it's interesting to a student of propaganda. And what about jazz? Mingus, for instance, was deeply political in just about everything he did, and he was one of the great jazz minds of all time. Did his politics feed his music, feed from it, or was something else going on? I'd say politics played a part of it simply because of the time and cultural mileau in which Mingus composed. The music of people like Coltrane, Shepp and Pharoah Sanders used to be referred to as "angry" music because it was intense, at times ferocious and dissonant. Yet these artists claimed they were doing the opposite, creating a music of peace and harmony. But of course a work of art can have meaning outside of the artist's intention. Sam Pawlett Peter
[PEN-L:8871] Re: Re: racism
Rod Hay wrote: I would ask those who are interested in the question of racism to look at the following article. I would appreciate comments. Rod, The Next City is an extreme right wing publication. I used to get it free when I subscribed the the GlobeMail. The author of the article cites Sowell, George Gilder and many other reactionaries while mentioning only one progressive source: BowlesGintis. His thesis is the tired old one that blames failure in the formal education system on poor 'culture', lack of family cohesion, poor family structure, single parents and a general 'culture of underachievement' and 'lack of motivation'. This is the same argument used by diffusionists and imperialists in explaining why the southern hemisphere is impoverished. Its a blaming-the-victim argument. If only those dumb colored people were smart like us white people and valued education and had 'achievement motivation' and 'entrepeneurial values'. Why is there a lack of family cohesion and so many single parents? If groups who 'underachieve' in school were raised in the same socioeconomic environment as 'overachievers' what would be the result? Further, the author gives a crude caricature of Marxist explanations saying they are purely structural leaving out agency. The author gives no evidence that he is familiar with the finest Marxist work on race e.g. David Roediger, Theodore Allen and many others. He uses an equally crude meth. individualism to refute his Marxist strawman. I will just say that given the crap that is taught in public schools no wonder students drop out and don't do their homework. I dropped out of highschool twice. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:9774] Re: Re: Re: Hayek on Keynes
Doug Henwood wrote: Michael Perelman wrote: Keynes was not in favor of planning at all. He wanted all microeconomic desisions left to the market. He dd want to give more discresion to public/private organizations let by elite figures. Well yes, Keynes was quite the anti-Bolshevik and anti-Marxist. But Hayek wouldn't have approved of even elite directive planning of the sort Keynes favored. It would have been a step on the road to serfdom. Any activist policy is oppressive and treacherous. Of course Hayek, on looking at this book I hadn't looked at in 25 years, is just nuts on the subject of planning: the choice is a "liberal" society or totalitarianism. To a Hayekian, Keynes, who admired indiscreetly the early Nazi economic policies, falls in the wicked camp. I'm mystified by what Keynes read in the book. Keynes doesn't seem like a very reliable reader. The blurb from Keynes on *The Road to Serfdom* is from his June 28th, 1944 letter to Hayek. He goes on to say in the same letter; "...I should therefore conclude your theme rather differently. I should say that what we want is not no planning, or even less planning, indeed I should say that we certainly want more. But the planning should take place in a community in which as many people as possible, both leaders and followers wholly share your moral position." cited in The Life of J.M. Keynes by Roy Harrod p436. Planning is fine...as long as the aristocrats and ruling class are the ones doing it... Harrod cites Keynes as saying of Hayek's *Prices and Production* "The book, as it stands, seems to me to be one of the most frightful muddles I have ever read.." Harrod p435. By von Misesians, Hayek is sometimes called a social democrat for his support of a National Health Service and other macro measures. The Von Misesians truly hate Schumpeter. I think Keynes was just being a gentleman after the heated polemics when Hayek arrived at the LSE. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:9797] Re: Hayek on Keynes
Doug Henwood wrote: Hayek has a lovely chapter on how socialism would lead to rule by the worst, since good taste and respect for diversity are features of the educated, while cretinous homogeneity characterizes the masses. To win votes, politicians would have to pander to the lowest common denominator. This is an argument against democracy, not planning. The relation between economic planning and political freedom has struck me as an empirical question yet what impressed me the most about Hayek and his progeny like Israel Kirzner is the utter lack of empirical evidence and argumentation in their work. But on this, Hayek had his match in Keynes, who said of Marxism: "How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeois and the intelligentsia who, with whatever faults, are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement? Even if we need a religion how can we find it in the turbid rubbish of the Red bookshops? It is hard for an educated, decent, intelligent son of western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first suffered some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values." And, "I do not mean that Russian Communism alters, or even seeks to alter, human nature, that it makes Jews less avaricious or Russians less extravagant than they were before." And "the class war will find me on the side of the educated bourgeoisie." Classic. Noone puts it quite in these terms anymore, maybe because the steep and precipitous decline of bourgeois culture has left the elite with nothing to brag about. I doubt Keynes would say the same if he were to stroll through today's bookshops, red or otherwise. These days it seems, the hallmark of upper classness is not cultural in the sense that Keynes ment, but merely a matter of owning more stuff than others. Note the deep and pervasive racism and ethnocentrism embedded in the quotation. I can imagine someone writing this sort of thing while sitting on the porch of their mansion overlooking a slave plantation. Of course Keynes does not mention just what makes it possible for members of the aristocracy such as himself to enjoy a life of leisure and the pleasures of the mind: the unforgiving labor of the toiling masses (a great stalinist phrase:). Underlying it all is a deep fear of democracy, a fear that one might lose his life of leisure, power and privilege. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:9796] Re: Re: RE: Hayek on Keynes
Doug Henwood wrote: Planning is ok if it promotes competition. Planning is bad if it stifles it. Hayek makes a great deal out of how statist systems smother diversity, and lead to rulers imposing their preferences on the populace. A good description of what has been happening in capitalism. Different cities and even rural areas throughout the world come to resemble each other more and more. There isn't much cultural difference between Chicago and any other metropolitan areas and this will become less and less so. Those with the most money are able to impose their preferences on every else (assuming markets accurately reveal preferences). The rich have the most "votes" in the market. But his preference for competitive individualism is taken as the supreme virtue in itself: no hint that he's imposing his preferences on the populace at all. No mention that those with the most money prefer to see a large portion of society suffer. I've always wondered just how much the rich think they are envied and how much they enjoy being envied by those of a lower socio-economic station. The signs of envy-enjoyment are all there: conspicuous consumption, a desire to drive others into the ground and extreme aversion of egalitarianism. Yet the hatred of the lower orders is such that one wonders if their envy is even worth having? Envy usually plays a part in right wing ideologies i.e. the progressive tax systems of some countries are labeled a "product of pure envy". I see no evidence that this is the case or that the rich are actually envied by the poor. Maybe the rich wish they were envied. Conservatives always give an ad hominem reply when confronted with anti-capitalist arguments "well that's because you are not rich" or "you hate freedom" "have you ever met a payroll?". Then again, envy may not be such a bad thing since it presupposes a certain feeling of undeserved inferiority and the actions spawned by envy tend to lead to destruction of the envied object or the possessor of it. Of course people have different abilities and capacities but that is something to be celebrated. Conservatives can't seem to acknowedge this fact. I know I will never be able to play like Horowitz or Jarrett or write like Isaac Deutscher but I take pleasure in that fact. sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:9981] Re: Campus Area Gentrification
In light of recent Pen-L threads on urban questions, I'd would highly recommend an excellent new book called *Lockdown America* by Christian Parenti which I've just finished. It reminded me a lot of *City of Quartz * by Mike Davis except it covers all of America and has a bit different scope. Parenti touches on the political economy of US urban decay and gives a detailed,scathing and frightening account of "Zero-tolerance policing", the social control of "quality of life" campaigns, "Business Improvement Districts", disastrous urban "renaissance" projects like convention centers, stadiums and theme parks as well as the "broken window" criminology of James Q. Wilson and others. Parenti goes into the policies of Giuliani and the effects they have had throughout the nation. He also gives detailed case studies of San Francisco, Indianapolis and Baltimore. Perhaps most frightening is his account of the rise of private prison industry and paramilitary policing. He argues that, basically, poor urban neighborhoods have become police states. The urban poor and homeless are obstacles in the path of developers seeking to create "urban hip" areas of the kind so effectively lampooned by The Baffler. Further, poor whites are the shock troops for the creation of these neighborhoods who eventually become the victims of them. The "scene" is created by poor students and "counter-culture" types who are then forced to leave because of rising costs (property values.) SeattlitesPortlanders: Recently spent a couple of days in Seattle and Portland and was surprised at how gentrified the downtown areas have become, especially Pike Place and Belltown (site of the original "grunge" scene) in Seattle and the area around the bus station in Portland. Very few people on the street compared to a few years ago. Have Seattle and Portland become targets for zero-tolerance/quality of life police campaigns or has the low unemployment rate decreased homelessness etc.? The old grunge bars like Crocodile and Lava Lounge in Seattle were looking very tacky. I didn't have the guts to ask whether this was a deliberate strategy to keep the rich out. Exit the tattoos and nose rings and enter the power suits strutting along proudly displaying their Nordstrom's shopping bags. Seattle still has an awesome transit system and a great jazz scene. sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:9961] Re: RE: TINAF Special on Washington Nazi Demo --
Craven, Jim wrote: See Mike Levine's books (he infiltrated one of the early nazi organizations as an AFT agent), see "The Secret War Against the Jews" by John Loftus and Mark Aarons, "Blowback" and "The Splendid Blond Beast" by Christopher Simpson, "Trading With the Enemy" by Charles Higham and a whole host of sources that thoroughly document that the U.S. Government has no problem with using and supporting self-avowed and very dangerous nazis; Jim, I was really disappointed with the LoftusAarons book, especially after reading Loftus' early work. They rely heavily on "the old spies" for their information, there is no way of verifying their claims. They also make the case the U.S. government or powerful forces therein are really out to destroy Israel. Yet the use of Nazi's and Fascists is compatible with support for the Israeli state. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:10030] Re: Free Speech and Opportunity Cost
Jim Devine wrote: it's true that it's often difficult to draw the line between speech and action. But it's usually much easier between those who simply talk or write (like my brother the philosopher, who equates abortion with murder in his treatise on the ethics of homicide) Murder, by definition, is morally wrong, so calling abortion wrong because it amounts to murder begs the question. Speech is an act and should be treated like all other acts. One may find certain speech acts offensive (yelling "fuck" in St.Mark's Cathedral) but it is really stretching it to argue that speech causes harm. Sam P.
[PEN-L:10294] Re: Asian recovery...
michael wrote: Sam, you are correct about the low level corruption, but not about the corruption that is typical in the upper echelons. How would you evaluate the comparative importance of the two? I don't think there is much of a distinction between crimanality/corruption and capitalism as a whole so I wouldn't assign much weight to corruption per se. No doubt above ground policies, like the credit squeeze of the early 80's, create demand and thus supply for dirty money and other forms of corruption/criminality. Corruption critiques are like conspiracy theories, the problem is not systemic but the fault of a few immoral individuals. Get rid of these individuals and everything will be hunky-dory. At the lower level engaging in corruption may be risky for individuals and may hurt the reputation and demand of a firm. But beyond that I don't see a threat to the existence of a firm. At the higher, executive levels it is sometimes hard to distinguish corruption from the usual deal-making and from the sub-rosa economy. Corruption, as in Russia, just becomes part of ordinary business practice, of ordinary business culture, escalating costs to a point where it may become a threat to the overall viability of the company. The distinction between capitalist/gangster/government official becomes blurred to the point where no qualitative distinction can be made. This has occurred because of the vertical integration of criminal enterprises and above ground business e.g. a drug dealer/capitalist owns an export/import firm that does legitimate deals who also donates money to political parties and bribes officials. Because of the billion dollar illegal drug industry, some banks have become dependent on these cash flows and now plan their operations in expectation that such flows will continue. The Salinas regime was a good example of how corruption/criminality and politics/capitalism coagulate in ruling class circles. The press is or was full of stories of Western businessmen going to Russia (and Asia) only to encounter corruption, lax enforcement and non-existant regulatory bodies and having to pay off everyone to get something done. The result was some firms could not cut deals and make the investments they had planned on. In Russia,this was a result of the integration of the government, foreigndomestic capitalist class, state bank and gangsters into one entity with its own practices and way of doing business. A culture of corruption because normal and those firms that can't deal with it don't survive Like the old film noir line "Who rules the world?" "The cops, the crooks and the big rich." That's how it looks to me. It might be helpful to lay out what we mean by corruption here too. Michael P., what is your take on the importance of corruption vis-a-vis the economy? I don't know of many good books except R.T. Naylor *Hot Money*. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:10295] Re: deology/consciousness and material/social
Carrol Cox wrote: This is an essential point. Nearly the whole of the metaphysical argument over "free will" is grounded in this idealist assumption of such a mysterious "will." The Will, in this context, is always a euphemism for "The Soul" and hauls in religion by the back door. No. Everyone has a will. For example, if someone wants to quit smoking they must will it to happen or they must have the will to overcome the urges to smoke a cigarette. Having a will is compatible with materialism and physicalism in the same way that emotions are. The will is physically embodied in the brain. There is the well known problem of "weakness of the will" where someone knows a particular action is bad for them e.g. smoking, yet the person engages in it anyway. Is such behavior irrational or just a sacrifice of long term self interest for short term? Some theorists regard the failure of the working class to carry out revolution as an instance of weakness of the will. Some philosphers, notably Schopenhauer, did make the will into an idealistic concept. The question of free will is not metaphysical rubbish but simply asks was someone free to act otherwise? Belief in free will underlies many forms of right wing ideology. Someone is poor or unsuccessful because of the free choices they have made. A person chooses to sleep in the street rather than get a job etc. etc. However, if one denies free will and argues that all events have causes and actions are events then this form of blaming the victim is taken away. One can go further. Rod's metaphysics of the "will" is self-refuting, since if you wish to begin a causal chain (while adhering to even a mechanical materialist premise) that chain is older than humanity. Perhaps. This a very strong form of causal determinism. If my actions are the result of a causal chain older than humanity there is no way I can be responsible for my actions since there is no way I could have done otherwise. And if I remember correctly, at some point in the debate he asked the question, which he intended as merely rhetorical: Is society older than humanity? But of course human society is older than humanity, just as human thought is older than language and language must be older than consciousness of language. I disagree. Thought is language. And of course Rod's assertion of the causal force of "the will" is just another way of saying that ideas are prior to action -- another way of denying materialism. Why draw a distinction? Ideas can only be expressed in language and speaking or writing a language is an act. An action must be originated. For example what is it that causes someone to get out of bed? Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:10309] Corruption in Russia
[Apologies for the poor formatting. Articles like this appear everyday on JRL] --SP. Johnson's Russia List #3456 22 August 1999 [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** #4 New York Times August 22, 1999 [for personal use only] Russian Money-Laundering Investigation Finds Familiar Swiss Banker in the By TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN with RAYMOND BONNER At the intersection of illicit Russian money and the Bank of New York is Bruce Rappaport, a Swiss banker who has had brushes with governmental investigators in the past and who has long had an important connection to the bank. Together with the Bank of New York, Rappaport owns a bank in Switzerland that helped provide the American bank with important business contacts in Russia, according to Western bankers familiar with the operation. And millions of dollars that were channeled through the Swiss bank, known as Bank of New York-Inter Maritime, are linked to what Federal investigators describe as possibly one of the biggest money-laundering schemes in the United States, according to a person close to the investigation. The Bank of New York, which for years aggressively sought business in Russia, is currently engulfed in a Federal money-laundering investigation that led to the suspension last week of two senior officers who oversaw the bank's Russian business. Federal investigators are also looking into the activities of their husbands, both of whom are involved in businesses that have ties to either Rappaport or his Swiss bank. The money moving through the Bank of New York-Inter Maritime raises the question of why the Bank of New York, a conservative institution that is one of the nation's oldest banks, worked closely with a man who has frequently drawn the attention of government regulators and law-enforcement officials worldwide. Most recently, Rappaport's bank was sued by the Justice Department in 1997, to recover proceeds that the Government asserted were from drug sales that had been deposited in the Bank of New York-Inter Maritime on the Caribbean island of Antigua by a known money-launderer. A Federal judge dismissed the case last year, though, citing lack of jurisdiction. The Government is appealing the decision. A Boston lawyer representing Bank of New York-Inter Maritime, William Shaw McDermott, did not respond to requests to interview Rappaport or talk about the Justice Department suit. Efforts to contact Rappaport were unsuccessful. The Bank of New York, which is cooperating with the Federal money-laundering investigation, declined to comment about Rappaport. The interest of investigators is heightened, one official said, because Rappaport, who is 76 years old and lives in Switzerland, was recently appointed Antigua's Ambassador to Russia. Antigua, this official noted, has been a major center of Russian money-laundering for many years. Rappaport has long had close business, banking and political ties to Antigua, where the Government once granted him a near-monopoly on the fuel-oil market. Money-laundering is a legal catch-phrase that refers to the criminal practice of taking ill-gotten gains and moving them through a sequence of bank accounts so that they ultimately look like legitimate profits from legal businesses. The money is then withdrawn and used for further criminal activity. Rappaport, who has never been convicted of any wrongdoing, is well known in Russian banking circles. He helped solicit business during the boom times in Moscow. In fact, for a brief time, Bank of New York Inter-Maritime was used in 1994 by the Bank of New York to conduct business in Russia. The world of international banking is often built on personal relationships. In that world, an ability to deal easily across borders and within business, political and financial circles is highly valuable to big banks. To gain access to certain foreign markets, the Bank of New York has relied on people like Rappaport. Born in Haifa, now Israel, Rappaport has used his base in Geneva to pursue investments and business in a wide range of places, including Oman, Liberia, Nigeria, Haiti, Thailand, Indonesia, Belgium and the United States. Rappaport opened Inter-Maritime in Geneva in 1966. By the 1980's, he was one of the Bank of New York's largest individual shareholders, controlling millions of dollars in stock amounting to a nearly 8 percent stake in the company. Although virtually all of that stock has been sold, back in the 80's, Rappaport's hefty stake gave him entre to the bank's senior management, including the chief executive at that time, Carter Bacot. Bacot, whom the Bank of New York declined to make available for comment, is said by a former Bank of New York senior executive to have approved the bank's decision to buy a large stake in Rappaport's bank known then as Inter Maritime. By 1992, the Bank of New York reportedly owned about 28 percent of what became known as Bank of New York-Inter Maritime. In the
[PEN-L:10363] Re: Riga Axioms Research Query
Craven, Jim wrote: Has anyone on the list done any work related to the so-called Riga Axioms or the Riga Group of the 1920s (Dulles brothers, Paul Nitze, William Bullitt, James Forrestal, Charles E Wilson, Phillip Reed of GE, George Kennan, Robert Murphy, Loy Henderson, Joseph Grew, Hugh Gibson, James Clement Dunn, Elbridge Dubrow, Ray Atherton, Arthur Bliss Lane etc) who advanced the notion of creation of a "cordon sanitaire" and social systems engineering "axioms"/tactics against the USSR and Bolshevism in general? I have read Daniel Yergin's "Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State" and Martin Weil's "A Pretty Good Club: The Founding Fathers of the U.S. Foreign Service" but would appreciate any other references. Burton Hersch "The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Founding of the CIA" is flawed but good. Bruce Cumings in his massive "The Origins of the Korean War" has a good analysis of the Nitze written NSC 68 (one of the most important documents of the cold war) and the associated "rollback" mileau in US government/elite circles. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:10312] Re: Asian recovery...
Michael Perelman wrote: The IMF has been producing papers suggesting that corruption is a major problem in the world economy, keeping poor countries poor. Could be, though I would like to know the mechanisms by which this occurs. The solution, of course, is greater IMF control of these countries. I suspect that it is a symptom, although in some full scale kleptocracies (Marcos, Mobutu ) I could be wrong. Corruption became rampant because of the lack of democracy and transparency such that the rulers could get away with anything including naked looting of the central bank. Corruption feeds on itself. The more corrupt a country becomes and the less the people can do about it,people will be more inclined to engage in corrupt practices. Could we classify Russia as a less centralized kleptocracy in the sense that there seem to be a number of centers of corruption, although all are beholden to Yeltsin or the government powers? Maybe, though at his point clearly the government/capitalists/criminals are pretty much one and the same. In Russia, there seems to be a ruling class split between domestic, nationalist gangsters and more imperialist, internationally oriented gangsters. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:10290] Re: Asian recovery...
Stephen E Philion wrote: Sam, I'm not so sure they can't accept it. I get the sense more and more that they are just seen as glitches, inevitable glitches, but glitches that can be overcome and when they are overcome, despite the immediate and heavy price borne by the working class,whether employed or unemployed, all's for the better. Glitches,yes, in an otherwise rational and decent system but that's usually as far as even the best of the mass media goes e.g. FT or WSJ. The mass media have a very short memory. First, following Lee Kwon Yu (sp?) it was "asian values" responsible for the boom in Asia, then "asian values" become the reason for its collapse. I get the sense that if a pundit at a major newsheet began writing strong critiques on a regular basis she wouldn't have job for long (self-censorship). There are constraints to what an employee at a major newspaper or magazine can say. With serious threats to capitalism either removed,peripheralized, or incorporated into capitalist circuits of production and trade, well why should pundits be concerned about being a tad more honest about capitalism than in the past? I agree here since there is no point comparing actual existing capitalism with something that only exists in theory (socialism). Whenever the mass media write about Marxism or socialism it falls into the novelty category. Sort of like doing a story on flying fish or the Edsel. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:10285] Re: Asian recovery...
michael wrote: Let me speculate on the post below. I suspect that corruption is a necessary by-product of that sort of development. How much could you make tapping into market of the Indonesian poor. The rich and the middle class would want fancy imported stuff. So, if you are going to be able to round up a bunch of enthusiastic collaborators with imperialist development, don't you have to offer them an opportunity to steal? Corruption in public service often occurs because civil servants are so low paid. In the private sector, there are also the same incentives for corruption especially when corrupt practices are so widespread. Corruption becomes the norm, even to the point where corrupt practices are to be expected (as in Russia today where firms factor in corruption in their cost layouts.) If everyone else is stealing and is dishonest, what is incentive is there for me to play it straight? As you point out above, in the case of Asia, the close links between government/finance/production were key in the building of these economies but also engendered widespread corruption. A necessary by-product. The mainstream accounts of the Asian crisis emphasized corruption or "crony" capitalism as the key cause in the depressions suffered by Thailand, Indonesia and S.Korea. This was mostly for ideological reasons as mainstream pundits cannot accept publicly that instability and periodic recession/depressions are inherent in the structure of the capitalism. In itself, I don't think corruption played that important a role, it is just a symptom of the underlying processes and irreversible problems of the capitalist economy. Witness the crisis of the Sumitomo firm and Barings Bank (as well as many other Asian banks) caused by corruption yet had a negligible effect on the economy. Copper prices did drop slightly but that can be explained by factors other than the fall of Sumitomo. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:10268] Re: Teleology was Re: Re: Is a Fetus an Appendix?
Carrol Cox wrote: Sam, careful. You are implying a teleology to evolution. Even in strictly historical and social terms I see no evidence that "hopes ... of reproductive success" play any part in human affairs. Not consciously. The argument is genetic. SP
[PEN-L:10244] [Fwd: LAT: Concerns Grow About U.S. Military Aid to Colombia]
[NOTE: In what I think is a first, this article quotes a Pentagon spokesman admitting --on the record-- that American personnel are, in fact, fighting "in the field!" These are not "DEA agents", however. They are "special operations." -DG] "We do have Americans in the field, probably out fighting, but those guys are not with the Department of Defense," he said. "They are DEA" agents, he said, and refused to comment further. _ LOS ANGELES TIMES Tuesday, August 17, 1999 Concerns Grow About U.S. Military Aid to Colombia - By Juanita Darling, Ruth Morris BOGOTA -- Back in 1982, when U.S. leaders feared communism more than cocaine, then-Vice President George Bush attended the inauguration here of President Belisario Betancur and offered to build him a U.S. military base to keep an eye on his country's leftist insurgents, according to a Colombian official of that era. Wary of such a high-profile U.S. presence, Betancur demurred, but he did agree to let the Americans install radar stations for surveillance. By 1990, relations were cordial enough that a group of U.S. military advisors reviewed Colombia's military intelligence organizations and recommended changes. Hundreds more soldiers, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, and CIA and Drug Enforcement Administration agents have since followed them to Colombia. Today, Americans assist in operating five radar stations to monitor Colombia, fly drug-eradicating crop dusters and are helping redesign the Colombian army into a more effective drug-fighting force. They even pilot spy planes like the one that crashed into a Colombian mountain last month, killing all seven crew members, including five U.S. Army aviators. The crash of that plane has raised questions about what exactly 200 or more Department of Defense employees --both civilian and military-- are doing in Colombia. And that's not counting the unknown number of CIA and DEA agents. Are they here to combat drugs, or are they harbingers of another U.S. venture into an intractable war with Marxist guerrillas? And what happens to the information gleaned by U.S. spies? The standard answer from U.S. military officials is that most of these Americans are involved in training missions and that none are involved in combating the Marxist guerrillas who have been fighting the Colombian government for more than three decades. The number is unusually high now --283 on Aug. 10-- because of investigations into last month's crash of the De Havilland RC-7, said Lt. Col. Bill Darley, a Pentagon spokesman. On top of that, 1,000 U.S. Marines arrived Thursday for a previously scheduled training exercise on the Pacific Coast. "We do have Americans in the field, probably out fighting, but those guys are not with the Department of Defense," he said. "They are DEA" agents, he said, and refused to comment further. "Two hundred people scattered over a country . . . is not that much," Darley said. He contrasted that number with the 5,000 U.S. soldiers sent to Central America to help with disaster relief after Hurricane Mitch struck in October. In a press briefing in Washington on his return Monday from a trip to Colombia, Undersecretary of State Thomas R. Pickering dismissed the possibility that more U.S. troops will be deployed to this country. "That is not our policy," he said. "It is a crazy idea." In fact, he added, until Colombia makes significant new progress in fighting the drug threat, the United States is unlikely to increase its counter-narcotics aid. Analysts Recall Denials Regarding El Salvador - But those answers do not satisfy many political and human rights analysts, who recall that until 1996, the Pentagon also denied that the U.S. military advisors in El Salvador --officially never more than 55 at a time-- were involved in combat against the country's leftist guerrillas during the 1980s. Such concerns have been heightened as U.S. officials point to the strong ties between rebels and drug traffickers to justify the growth in U.S. anti-narcotics assistance to Colombia. Colombia's insurgents get an estimated $600 million a year in "taxes" on opium poppies and coca --the raw material for cocaine-- grown in territory under their control. Colombia supplies about three-fourths of the cocaine and a growing share of the heroin consumed in the United States. To curb that supply, the United States has budgeted $289 million in anti-narcotics aid for Colombia this year, with the restriction that the money is not to be used to fight Colombian rebels. U.S. officials insist that careful logs are kept to enforce that
[PEN-L:10245] [Fwd: IPS: Paramilitaries Massacre Supposed Rebel Allies]
la guerra sucia = The attacks, attributed by witnesses to the right-wing Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), have taken place in the northern departments of Bolivar and Cesar, Antioquia in the northwest, Tolima in central Colombia, and Caqueta in the southeast. _ = INTER PRESS SERVICE Thursday, 19 August 1999 Paramilitaries Massacre Supposed Rebel Allies - By Yadira Ferrer BOGOTA -- The death toll by paramilitary groups, which have set out on a killing spree in Colombia targetting supposed guerrilla collaborators, has reached 28 so far this week. The attacks, attributed by witnesses to the right-wing Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), have taken place in the northern departments of Bolivar and Cesar, Antioquia in the northwest, Tolima in central Colombia, and Caqueta in the southeast. According to human rights groups, the attacks are part of a paramilitary strategy to ''deprive the guerrillas of a social base'' by killing civilians considered sympathetic to the rebels. In the town of Curumani, in the northern department of Cesar, eight people were killed Wednesday by an AUC commando, which according to witnesses began its rounds of death in a petrol station, killing three members of a family and the manager of the locale. The paramilitaries then dragged four men out of their homes, killing them in the street. Franklin de la Vega, home secretary of the department of Cordoba, bordering Cesar, declared his region in a state of emergency due to fears that the paramilitaries would launch attacks in Cordoba next. De la Vega warned of a possible escalation of mass killings, as part of a paramilitary offensive to regain control over territory. Seven other bodies, belonging to members of one family, were pulled out of a river Wednesday in the town of Morelia, in the southeastern department of Caqueta. In farming towns around Zambrano, in the department of Bolivar, 13 people were killed by AUC Monday, and Catholic Bishop Armando Larios said around 500 people had fled their homes to take shelter in the town Wednesday. Peasant farmers reported that the 13 victims were killed by gunmen Monday night in the public squares of Capaca and Campoalegre, in the municipality of Zambrano, while two other local residents were abducted. A peasant farmer who made it to safety with his wife and three children told several radio stations, on the condition of anonymity, that paramilitaries killed seven of his relatives and gave the rest of the inhabitants of Capaca two days to abandon their land. A communique released Wednesday by the leftist Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) said the massacres were committed by paramilitary units ''with the support of Marine Battalion number three and troops of the First Army Brigade.'' Around 100 municipalities where police have no presence have been occupied by guerrilla or paramilitary groups, according to researcher Alfredo Rangel, with the non-governmental Fundacion Social. From January to April, rights organisations logged 3,408 reports of human rights violations. Paramilitary units were accused in 2,327 cases and the armed forces in around 150, while the rest were attributed to the guerrillas, according to the non- governmental Centro de Educacion y Cultura Popular. In his weekly audience in the Vatican Wednesday, Pope John Paul II issued a call for peace in Colombia, and urged the various parties to the conflict to observe international humanitarian law, which protects non-combatants. The Pope dedicated his message to the dozens of people held captive by the irregular armed groups, which he called on to respect the sacred right to life, inviting them to reactivate the peace process. He condemned the kidnapping of Bishop Jose Quintero in the northeastern town of Tibu Monday, abducted by the Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN), the second largest insurgent group after FARC. FARC is holding dozens of civilians, as well as 500 soldiers who it aims to trade for imprisoned guerrillas. The ELN, meanwhile, is holding around 80 hostages, to pressure the government to give in to its conditions for a return to the negotiating table. Copyright 1999 IPS _ * * CSN-L is brought to you by the COLOMBIAN LABOR MONITOR at * * http://www.prairienet.org/clm * * To subscribe send request to [EMAIL PROTECTED] * *SUB CSN-L Firstname Lastname * * (Direct questions about CSN-L to
[PEN-L:10240] Re: Is a Fetus an Appendix?
Ajit Sinha wrote: Do you think animals have rights or not? No. I don't like rights-based theories at all--they have intractable problems-- but in some cases ,like abortion, talk about "rights" makes the conversation a lot easier. Most political philosophies, even contractarians like Rawls and Gauthier, make some use of the concept of "rights". Nozick argues that one cannot derive any conception of property rights from a right to life.(A,S,U p129) So its possible to talk about a right to life while eschewing all other talk about rights. If yes, do you think animals have consciousness of right and obligation? The ideas of rights and obligations are our cultural construct. On some theories, yes. A lot of rights-based theorists argue that rights are absolute and universal with no difference across cultures (Nozick). N's conception of rights is so strong that he assumes what he is trying to prove. Natural law theorists like Murray Rothbard try and derive rights from nature. The most prominent rights based theorist (and defender of abortion) ,Ronald Dworkin,I think, agrees with you, he says: "Individual rights are political trumps held by individuals. Individuals have rights when, for some reason, a collective goal is not a sufficient justification for denying them what they wish, as individuals, to have or do, or not a justification for imposing some loss or injury on them." (Taking Rights Seriously pXI) Dworkin isn't interested in discussing the ontological foundations of rights, he posits them to derive his legal and poltical theories. An entity does not have to be conscious of the right that is conferred to it by us--it has mainly to do with who we are. To repeat, why assign rights to people and not trees? There must be a criterion for assigning rights or rights become arbitrary. By the way, an infant, in my opinion, has no consciousness of anything that would confer it a right to life by your definition. An infant does have consciousness, so there must be some intentional content. A human infant, unlike many other small animals, is not born completely prepared to survive in the outside environment--this is the price we have to pay for having a large brain. Yes, humans spend a lot of time--a great deal more than most animals-- in raising and rearing the young in hopes time invested now will pay off later in terms of reproductive success. Most human brains operate at about 10-15% capacity (and that's not just some of the participants on usenet groups). But, Ajit, perhaps you know all this? Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:10191] Re: Is a Fetus an Appendix?
Ajit Sinha wrote: __What kind of a rotten arguments you are producing Sam? Do you think a newly born child has an understanding of what x is? Has a consciousness of his/her rights and obligations? There are many even adults who do not have such consciousness due to many reasons. Are you proposing that all these people should be treated as vegetables? OK, but the idea is that someone should at least know what life is in order to respect others right to life. Even young infants and severely retarded people distinguish between life and death though there are exceptions like Rickey Ray Rector. Certainly we would want the exceptions to have the same rights. There must be some criterion for assigning rights (if one is to assign rights at all) or else cars and trees would have rights. Sam Pawlett
[PEN-L:10120] Re: John Lloyd
John Lloyd was embarrased by Peter Gowan in a debate carried in the New Left Review# 215. Lloyd it looks has changed his tune since his neo-liberal ravings in NLR and a previous piece in the LRB. Sam P.
[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
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
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: : 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
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: 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
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
[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
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
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.
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
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/
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
[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: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: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: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: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: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: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: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.
[PEN-L:10661] Timor
ASIET News Updates - September 6, 1999 == * Refugees flee as East Timor burns * The butchery begins in East Timor * International community betrays the Timorese people * Expelled activist tells of Indonesia's payback * Jakarta's bloody hands: military back killings * Army's next move crucial to the nation's future - Refugees flee as East Timor burns = Associated Press - September 6, 1999 Geoff Spencer, Dili -- Pro-Indonesia militiamen and Indonesian security forces shot and burned their way through East Timor's capital unchallenged Sunday, forcing thousands of terrified civilians to flee from violence set in motion by a vote overwhelmingly in favor of independence from Indonesia. With waves of gunfire echoing across the city and militiamen wielding machetes and guns, fears of civil war have heightened since the United Nations announced Saturday that 78.5 percent of East Timor's voters chose independence in Monday's referendum. The UN compound in Dili was under siege Sunday, with militiamen circling outside, shooting assault rifles and menacing the several hundred people inside the compound. Food and water shortages loomed when 1,000 civilians taking refuge in a school next door fled into the compound after they were threatened. The unarmed UN mission is completely dependent on Indonesian security forces for protection. But many in the Indonesian army are believed to be allied with the militias. Casualty reports were impossible to verify, though witness accounts said scores were killed Sunday in the former Portuguese colony. "There is every indication that a massacre is taking place, staged by (Indonesian) military forces," Ana Gomes, who is Lisbon's diplomatic envoy to Jakarta, told Portugal's TSF radio. "Over 100 dead would be a conservative estimate." Defense Minister Gen. Wiranto said Sunday that the army will dispatch about 1,400 troops to maintain order. Wiranto was part of a high-level delegation rushed from Jakarta to meet local authorities and UN officials who organized the vote. People fled however they could, part of an exodus from the province that threatened to reach tens of thousands. Some 2,000 huddled at the Dili residence of Bishop Carlos Belo, East Timor's spiritual leader and co-winner of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize. His diocese office elsewhere was set ablaze. More than 5,000 terrified civilians fled from Dili's seaport on ferries bound for nearby islands, while exasperated police said 15,000 people had crowded into the police compound to stay out of harm's way. At the airport, civilians clutching their dearest possessions dashed across the runway, scrambling aboard an air force cargo plane to fly to safety through skies filled with smoke from burning buildings. Journalists and other foreigners were also evacuating. Foreign Minister Ali Alatas claimed the violence was a result of anti-independence forces not understanding how the complaints process against alleged elections irregularities worked, a UN official said on condition of anonymity. But doubts about the government's commitment to security remained. Thousands of Indonesian soldiers and police made no apparent attempt to rein in the rampaging militias, who lit the night skies orange with fires. No one ventured outside except to flee. Leandro Isaac, a spokesman for the pro-independence forces, said he had a report that up to a dozen people had been killed in the turbulent Becora district. In another report, a witness told The Associated Press that members of a notorious militia were shooting at people -- apparently settlers from Java, Indonesia's most populous island -- trying to flee aboard ferries. The witness said two people were killed. The butchery begins in East Timor = Agence France Presse - September 6, 1999 Lisbon -- Timorese resistance leaders living abroad warned Sunday that Indonesia was preparing an "ethnic cleansing" of East Timor after a landslide vote for indpendence, state news agency Lusa reported. The National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT) said in a statement issued in Australia that it had evidence Indonesia was massing between 30,000 to 40,000 troops along the border of East Timor, in preparation for an "invasion," Lusa said. "Thirty-six hours after the Timorese celebrated the victory of independence, Indonesia is preparing a plan of genocide and social disintegration to literally kill the independence movement," Lusa quoted the the statement as saying. Thousands of people have fled to the mountains, it said, charging that "police are firing indiscriminately and pursuing refugees in towns nearest the mountains." In South Africa, Mari Alkatiri, a leader of the Fretilin armed resistance movement, was quoted Sunday by Lusa as saying that Indonesia sought to
[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: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: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-à-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: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: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:2846] Re: postmodernism and neoclassical economics
Odd. Neoclassical economics, as I learned it, presents itself as value free hence no commitment to equality. A pareto optimal situation may be an extremely unequal one. Nc economics and postmodernism have different roots. Neoclassical economics in good old British empiricism and postmodernism in Heidegger, Husserl and Nietzsche. Nc economic man is very Humean since passion and never reason motivates. Reason is instrumental finding means to ends. Since reason can never discover ends or summum bonum, ends cannot be compared.As Hume said "reason is and ought to be a slave of the passions." Postmodernism seems to be the idea that understanding cannot be accounted for in explanatory terms. The scientist attempting to explain everything cannot explain herself trying to explain everything. The neurophysiologist cannot explain neurophysiology neurophysiologically. What's left out of attempts at total explanation or metanarratives is the 'self' that does the explaining.Pomo takes its cue from Nietzsche's statement in The Will to Power that "there are no facts just interpretations".Heidegger reveals the ways that everyday practice and culture illuminate the meaning of Being. Or something like that. So if pomo and nc theory have anything in common its for different reasons. I also think that a lot of pomo is so vague that it can be interpreted to mean just about anything. The exception would be Foucault. Needless to say, neoclassical economics and postmodernism don't do much for my utility function. Sam Pawlett Michael Yates wrote: Friends, In a review of "In Defence of History: Marxism and the Postmodern Agenda" (edited by Ellen Wood and John Foster, Monthly Review 1997), economics professor, Yanis Varoufakis of the Univ. of Sydney, says, "Come to think of it, the asymptotic limit of postmodern fragmentation is the neoclassical general equilibrium economic model. In both cases, the only admissible social explanation springs from differences in preferences (and if identities are freely chosen, in identities) which are constructed in such a manner that they ban any comparison across persons. As for social relations, these are reduced to interplay, voluntarism and exchange. Freedom is defined in negative terms, and structural exploitation is axiomatically rendered meaningless. Above all else, both neoclassicism and postmodernity espouse a radical egalitarianism that is founded in the rejection of any standard by which the claims of one group (or one person) are more deserving than those of another. Moreover, both fail to provide a principle that promotes, in the context of their radical egalitarianism, respect for the other's difference or utility. If indeed postmodernity is analytically indistinguishable (at least in the limit) from neoclassical economic method, is there any doubt about this book's pertinence? After all, the whole purpose underpinning the emergence of the neoclassical economic project, at a time when Marx's "Capital" was beginning to bite, was to rid economics initially, and social science later, of history." What do list members think of this? michael yates
[PEN-L:2847] Re: Re: Re: Re: AIDS and the blow back3.0.5.32.19990201152147.00e735f0@pop.qut.edu.au3.0.1.32.19990201122711.00b29da0@popserver.panix.com3.0.3.32.19990201110822.006ce850@lmumail.lmu.eduv04011707b2dc25721b22@[166.84.250.86]v04011708b2dcc6bf70f7@[166.84.250.86] v04011713b2dd853ae263@[166.84.250.86]
Doug Henwood wrote:
William S. Lear wrote:
No they don't but I think you're underestimating the preference of the
privileged to insulate themselves as much as possible from a problem rather
than facing it head on. From the first, the response to AIDS has been to
ignore its threat to "normal" (i.e., affluent white suburbanites) people,
and stigmatize it as a disease of queers, junkies, and racial minorities.
Unless lots of people in Scarsdale and Topeka start falling ill, the
"normal" people will continue to believe this and act accordingly. I'm
sorry to repeat myself on this to the point of boredom, but most
intellectuals overestimate the power of reason in politics.
I'm not sure I follow. You say the "privileged" would rather
"insulate themselves" from the AIDS problem "rather than facing it
head on". I agree. Why bother with a disease you think only affects
"others", particularly when you are privileged ("affluent white
suburbanites") and can live a life of isolated ease?
There's a question of whether they can successfully insulate themselves
from microbes. They may think so, but pathogens are devious, persistent
little buggers.
However, I don't
see how your last sentence follows from this. First, how does it
follow, and second, what exactly do you mean? Who exactly are you
referring to and could you give us an example?
It's very hard to persuade affluent Americans that the problems of the poor
can be their problems too someday, or that ecological crisis could have any
bearing on them. No doubt many, even most, people who drive SUVs consider
themselves environmentalists of some sort. You can present all kinds of
reasoned stats on rising surface temperatures and climatic instability, or
on the risks of infection of "normal" populations, and they won't believe
you. And if any of the threats become too real, it's likely they'll opt for
containment (incarceration, quarantine) or private sector solutions
(private schools, air filters, bottled water) over more humane approaches.
Maybe it's just that I saw Blade Runner the other night.
Blade Runner! Galactic! The flame that burns twice as bright lasts half as long.
The original or the directors cut? I think the directors cut makes the fact that
Harrison Ford was an android more transparent.I don't think the dystopia of
Bladerunner is that fanciful. It contains a lot of great lines..its not easy to
meet your maker...
Its too bad she won't live...but then again, who does?
Sam Pawlett
Doug
