[Marxism] A Black / Brown Coalition: How to End the Tea Party (and Scare Obama at the Same Time)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.counterpunch.org/samsmith07232010.html A Black / Brown Coalition How to End the Tea Party (and Scare Obama at the Same Time) By SAM SMITH One of the reasons the left doesn’t do better is because it tends to view the right's transgressions as a moral issue rather than as a pragmatic problem as, for example, a baseball coach would do if the Tea Party were the other team. In fact, calling someone a racist is not a particularly useful political move whereas figuring out why they’re getting to first base all the time, and you’re not, is. Here, for example, are three ways the right's political strategy varies from the left’s: - The right keeps it simple. It speaks United States, not bland abstractions devised by some third rate branding coach. There is hardly anyone in the country who doesn’t know the right opposes gay marriage, abortion and illegal immigration. Now try describing three primary goals of liberals or the left and you see the problem. This not only works on the voters, it works with the media, which finds its difficult to deal with more than three concepts at a time. - The right keeps its eye on issues rather than icons. Liberals just become indentured servants of an Obama or Clinton and let the wars and the Wall Street bailouts go on unimpeded. The GOP doesn’t even have a leading candidate for 2012, but it’s already controlling the issues. - The right knows how to scare the shit out of liberals and politicians like Obama, whereas the right doesn't even get scared at the thought of destroying the planet. The right has become so powerful for the same reason that Bernie Madoff was so wealthy: by conning people. But we didn't send people to prison for being fooled by Madoff and we shouldn't send voters to purgatory for being fooled by the GOP. Instead, we need to rethink the whole game, including figuring out how to turn the rightwing's victims into a progressive constituency. So here are three good places to start changing the left's own politics: speak United States, deal with issues and let the politicians fend for themselves, and start scaring the shit out of the powers that be. And here's one way it could happen. The Tea Party, according to recent polling, is supported by about 18% of the American public. On the other hand, there is a potential constituency of 28% of the American public that could have a huge impact on our politics, but doesn't, in no small part because political mythology has it that its components parts can't get on well enough together. This is a familiar story in American politics: after all southern racism was built in no small part on elite whites convincing less wealthy whites that their real enemies were poor blacks. Similarly today, the media and political establishment tell us that the 28% of the country comprised of blacks and latinos just can't come together enough to make an effective coalition. Yes, there are conflicts such as immigration. But consider that the whole illegal immigration matter involves only about 5% of the workforce, that the illegal immigrant and black workforces tend to be geographically separated, that no illegal immigrant is known to have outsourced any meaningful number of jobs or slashed public employment, and the mythological aspect of the black-latino conflict over immigration becomes clear. It is mainly useful as a tool to keep the two ethnic groups apart. Now it's true that a group of black, latino, labor and other progressive groups are planning a joint demonstration in October, as the Washington Post has described: In an effort to replicate the tea party's success, 170 liberal and civil rights groups are forming a coalition that they hope will match the movement's political energy and influence. They promise to counter the tea party narrative and help the progressive movement find its voice again after 18 months of floundering. The large-scale attempt at liberal unity, dubbed One Nation, will try to revive themes that energized the progressive grassroots two years ago. In a repurposing of Barack Obama's old campaign slogan, organizers are demanding all the change they voted for -- a poke at the White House. But the liberal groups have long had a kind of sibling rivalry, jostling over competing agendas and seeking to influence some of the same lawmakers. In forming the coalition, the groups struggled to settle on a name. Even now, two of the major players disagree about who came up with the idea of holding a march this fall. . . The groups involved represent the core of the first-time voters who backed President Obama -- including the National Council of La Raza, NAACP, AFL-CIO, SEIU and the United States Student Association. . . Their aha moment happened after the
[Marxism] The Jewish-American student who lost her eye to an IDF tear gas canister
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == (A surprisingly good article from the rancid Village Voice.) http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-07-27/art/a-cooper-union-student-lost-an-eye-protesting-in-israel-mdash-but-none-of-her-vision/ A Cooper Union Student Lost an Eye Protesting in Israel—But None of Her Vision At the annual parade of incoming freshmen at Cooper Union, the art majors create their own costumes. In 2007, freshman Emily Henochowicz of Potomac, Maryland, dressed up as one big eyeball. This image of her—arms and legs poking out from the giant eye, the iris and her shoes a matching lime-green, the eye ensconced in some sort of gray matter—has been the icon of her blog since she started it in June 2009. Now it's more than an avatar. At the end of this past May, on the other side of the globe, a tear-gas canister fired by the Israel Defense Forces hit her in the face and blasted her left eye out of her head. The grandchild of Holocaust survivors and daughter of a man who was born in Israel and emigrated to the U.S., she had been protesting at a West Bank checkpoint the morning after the IDF had killed nine people aboard a Turkish aid flotilla bound for Gaza. As Henochowicz recently wrote of her blog icon, I've had it since I made this blog, and it's proven oddly predictive. The older I get, the more ridiculous life seems. Back in the States and getting ready to resume school in the fall, she has referred to herself as Cyclops on the blog. For her, it's still about the art. She doesn't seem to be into the martyr thing. In the hospital in Israel, Henochowicz says, she immediately began drawing again. She says she doesn't even know whether her future art should still be about the Middle East—or even about politics at all. After all, her political activism, she adds, was a real change from who I was before—an experiment, in a way. And it ended in me losing my eye. But it's OK. Brave words, and she mostly believes them. Her confidence in her physical self is not quite all the way there yet, but she studies how other artists have dealt with—and even taken advantage of—their own eye problems. In place of an eye patch, she wears a pair of glasses whose frames she designed herself and on which she has painted a swirling red-and-white design over the left lens. Not that her obsession with her eyes was prompted by losing one of them. As a teenager, she says, she had considered becoming a vision scientist before deciding to go to Cooper. Even during her first years in New York City, she says, she was still obsessed with vision science and even sat in on a vision lab class at NYU. Which means she can still focus. The cool thing about this is that paintings look more 3-D to me now, she says during a recent stroll through the Frick Collection. It's your stereoscopic vision that makes paintings appear flat. Although she has lost depth perception, she says she can now actually perceive depth even more in a flat painting. With mordant humor, she tells the Voice, I guess I can be grateful to the IDF for giving me the chance to see the world in a new way. Henochowicz was admitted to Cooper Union's prestigious art program in 2007, and she has concentrated on drawing, painting, and experimenting with digital imagery. Even before she was admitted to the school, one of the most selective colleges in the nation, she was an independent thinker with a well-developed wry sense of humor. At 18, she was interviewed by The New York Times as a high school senior, when she produced a video for someone else's project called Blasphemy Challenge, an online call to upload videos denying the existence of God. (She has since taken that video down, saying that she's less bombastic about her beliefs than she was and that people should believe whatever they want to believe.) This past spring, like many other college juniors, she chose to study abroad. She picked a semester at Israel's leading art school, the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. She planned to make art, study history, and improve her Hebrew. She says she didn't see her trip as overtly political in any way. But her art collided with reality. There was this view from my school's campus, and you could see all the way out to Jordan on a clear day, she recalls. She started painting that view, which included a line snaking through it, but abandoned it for awhile. When I came back to it, I realized that this big element I was drawing was the Wall. I had been looking at that and drawing that, and I thought, 'Oh, look, it's a fence—oh, it's the fence.' Before her trip, she recalled having seen pictures of Banksy's work on the Wall—the internationally known graffiti artist had left his mark on the controversial concrete
[Marxism] The march of idiocy
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Today in Barcelona a coalition of carniverous imbeciles, opportunists, and separatist demagogues farted in the face of a three-millennial Mediterranean tradition of celebratory taurine sacrifice by outlawing the *corrida* anywhere in Catalonia. The authors and supporters of this blasphemy all deserve, and will surely receive, the suitable penalty: their next two rebirths will be as bull-calf, once to be destined for the veal stall and once for the abattoir. Shane Mage Porphyry in his Abstinance from Animal Flesh suggests that there are appropriate offerings to all the Gods, and to the highest the only offering acceptable is silence. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Nativism continues unabated
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/07/28/new.york.assaults.bias Police beef up presence on Staten Island after attacks on Mexicans By Logan Burruss and Ashley Vaughan, CNN New York (CNN) -- New York police have stepped up patrols in a Staten Island neighborhood after a string of attacks on Mexican nationals, authorities say. The attacks -- 10 since April -- are being investigated as anti-Mexican assault cases, said Inspector Michael Osgood, head of the New York Police Department's Hate Crimes Task Force. The victims have all been Mexican males, police said. In all but one case, the assailants were described as African-American, police Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne told CNN Wednesday. The victims typically have been beaten while assailants yelled racial slurs at them, he said. Although the incidents vary, weapons -- including blunt objects, baseball bats and, in one case, a Razor scooter -- were used, police said. The assaults have resulted in multiple hospitalizations, authorities said. Browne said some victims were knocked unconscious. Five of the 10 were robbed, police said. In the most recent attack, on Saturday, a 32-year-old man was struck in the chest with a baseball bat, knocking him to the ground, said police Sgt. Carlos Nieves. His assailants then kicked him in the face, Nieves said. The man was taken to a hospital, where he received 12 stitches across the left side of his face. A total of eight people have been arrested in connection with three of the incidents, Browne said. In two of the three, the perpetrators are believed to be the same, a man and a woman, he said. The suspects range in age from 14 through the early 20s. We have increased patrols in the area, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters on Tuesday. We're meeting with community people. We're meeting with our own officers internally, making sure we're doing everything we can do to prevent attacks such as this. We're concerned about it. We're not going to tolerate it. We're taking proactive measures to see to it that if it does happen, we're going to make an arrest very quickly. Kelly met Tuesday with Ruben Beltran, Mexico's consul general in New York, said Beltran spokesman Julio Garcia. A coalition of community organizations, elected officials and government agencies has launched a new initiative, I Am Staten Island, and a website, www.iamsi.info. This campaign was inspired by the spate of bias attacks that have taken place on Staten Island this year, the website says. Initially, we thought that these were isolated, random incidents, but that no longer appears to be the case. Something very serious is happening on the island, and it is going to take a comprehensive response from the entire Staten Island community to address this challenge. However, some community leaders have expressed doubt that whether the incidents were truly motivated by race. In two cases where arrests have been made, Staten Island grand juries have declined to indict the suspects on hate crime charges. The victims might be undocumented and could be seen as competitors for scarce jobs, said Edward Josey, president of the Staten Island NAACP. When the economy is bad and when jobs disappear, people get edgy, he said. Meanwhile, Fernando Mateo, president of Hispanics Across America, said the incidents may be robberies, not hate crimes. Some of these cases are not racially motivated, he said. They're motivated by people wanting to rob other people. When you're robbing someone, you might say slur words. Browne said that usually, about 300 uniformed officers are stationed in the area. That number has been increased by about 100, he said. Kelly told reporters plainclothes officers might also be an option. The Guardian Angels have also begun patrolling the Port Richmond neighborhood. Curtis Sliwa, president and founder of the volunteer group, said members began patrolling Monday and will continue as long as needed. We welcome additional eyes and ears, whoever we can get, Kelly said. Sliwa said his group's presence was requested by the Staten Island district attorney's office. The group, whose mission is to help prevent street violence and protect public safety, began patrols on Richmond Avenue Monday evening. Hispanics Across America is offering a $5,000 reward for information on the assaults. A march is planned in Port Richmond Wednesday night by the nonprofit, primarily Latino group Make The Road New York. --- NY Times July 28, 2010 Sarkozy Orders Illegal Roma Immigrants Expelled By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 2:35 p.m. ET SAINT OUEN, France (AP) -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday ordered authorities to expel gypsy illegal immigrants and dismantle their
Re: [Marxism] Israel, South Africa and the single-state non-solution
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Surely the biggest question for a single state is what its immigration (and thus 'right of return') policy would be? An extension of the current Jewish Right of Return to all those of Palestinian origin (however that is defined) as well? Solidarity, Ian Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Israel, South Africa and the single-state non-solution
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == David Thorstad wrote: I don't see how a single state would grant the Jewish character of the state necessarily. Aren't demographics relevant here? About as relevant as they are in South Africa with 10 percent of the country being white. They figured out a way to keep the Black majority down after the end of formal apartheid, so Israel should have no problems especially given the corrupt leadership in the West Bank. In fact, the real question facing the Arab masses is how to break through the religious and class distinctions that keep them from fighting effectively. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Israel, South Africa and the single-state non-solution
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Ian Pace wrote: Surely the biggest question for a single state is what its immigration (and thus 'right of return') policy would be? An extension of the current Jewish Right of Return to all those of Palestinian origin (however that is defined) as well? I think the more far-sighted Zionists have figured out that they can continue to run the show even if every Palestinian scattered across the planet returns. Political power flows from economic power, something that seems lost on the single state theorists. Even though he is for a two state solution, another chimera, Michael Neumann gets to the heart of the problem in responding to Jeff Halper and Virginia Tilley, single state advocates: http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann05152007.html And how does this work in the snake oil one-state solution? Here the sales pitch gets murky. In Israel, Jewish property holders either keep what they have, or the disputes continue as they have since before Israel's foundation--it isn't clear. In the occupied territories, though, the settlers get a sweet deal: Jews in the occupied territories simply keep what they have. Am I kidding? Here we have Jeff Halper, justly celebrated for his Committee against House Demolitions, writing around 2003: Israeli Jews wishing to live in the settlements could continue to do so under Palestinian sovereignty (which would permit the settlements to be integrated, of course), but would lose their role as extensions of Israeli control by remaining Israeli citizens. [A Middle Eastern Confederation: A Regional 'two-Stage' Approach To The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict . A working paper by Jeff Halper, written around 2003)] Here he is again, writing in The Kansas City Jewish Chronicle on November 24, 2006: The two-state solution is dead. Israel killed it (as Begin charged Sharon with doing back in 1977). The settlement enterprise has gone beyond the point of no return. And Virginia Tilley agrees: ...Israel must admit its Muslim and Christian population as citizens and then grapple with the ensuing tough work of pluralist democracy like the rest of us. This was the hard-won South African solution, where the state now represents everybody. Seventeen languages and differing historical narratives are recognized and dignified. Whites have retained their property and wealth, while black Africans are rising rapidly to join the middle and upper classes. ...that we presently have a one-state solution--Israel's apartheid version--allows us to affirm a different one: a unified secular-democratic state, in which everyone is equal in dignity and rights, and where the Jewish and Palestinian national homes can share the land as they should. Note the glowing Whites have retained their property and wealth. I gather that, come Tilley's revolution, Palestinians and Israelis will be equal in their right to stare at what was once a Palestinian home. This will be very good because it will 'recognize and dignify different historical narratives'. The more you look at claims about the settlements, the more suspicious you grow. Sure, the settlement enterprize has gone beyond the point of no return, and sure the settlements are there to stay. It's just that the settlers aren't: their buildings would house Palestinians quite as well as Jews. Is it impossible to get the settlers to give up their settlements? Not at all. If the Israeli army withdraws, the Palestinians would have no difficulty persuading the settlers it was time to leave. The Algerians did the same with settlers much more deeply rooted than in Palestine. If it's so impossible, why did it already happen--why did Israeli troops make it happen--in Gaza? It's impossible to get rid of the settlers only if the Israeli government supports them, that is, only if it's impossible to get the Israeli government to stop supporting them. But if that's impossible, how, is it possible that Israeli government will give up something far dearer to it--its home turf, its own existence, and the existence of a Jewish state, at the very least within 1948 borders? How are the settlements a tougher nut to crack than the state of Israel itself? What's the point of this one-state solution? If the settlements are something to be legitimated, why not say the same--as Tilley hints--of all Israeli land claims, everywhere in Palestine? Entrenching the settlements means a great big pat on the back for the very worst, least conciliatory, most violent political forces in Israel, the spoilt, fanatic racial supremacists who conceived the settler movement and made it into the formidable force it is today. It confirms that their strategy worked. Do Halper and Tilley really think this is
Re: [Marxism] Judge Blocks AZ Immigration Law-for now.
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == 16 years ago, California's Proposition 187 died in the courts and the Arizona statute likely may too - Federal pre-emption is a pretty powerful argument. SR - Original Message - From: Tom Cod http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/us/29arizona.html?_r=1hp Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/srobin21%40comcast.net Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Uri Avneri on the single state solution
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1279969692 Rosemary’s Baby 24/07/10 SINCE I witnessed the rise of the Nazis during my childhood in Germany, my nose always tickles when it smells something fascist, even when the odor is still faint. When the debate about the “one-state solution” began, my nose tickled. Have you gone mad, I told my nose, this time you are dead wrong. This is a plan of the Left. It is being put forward by leftists of undoubted credentials, the greatest idealists in Israel and abroad, even certified Marxists. But my nose insisted. It continued to tickle. Now it appears that the nose was right, after all. THIS IS not the first time that a kosher leftist plan leads towards extreme rightist consequences. That happened, for example, to the ugliest symbol of the occupation: the Separation Wall. It was invented by the Left. When the “terrorist” attacks multiplied, leftist politicians, headed by Haim Ramon, offered a miracle-solution to the problem: an impassable obstacle between Israel and the occupied territories. They argued that it would stop the attacks without recourse to brutal actions in the West Bank. The Right opposed the idea vehemently. To them it was a conspiracy to fix the borders of the state and promote the two-state solution, which they saw (and still see) as an existential threat to their designs. But suddenly the Right changed its tune. They realized that the wall offered a wonderful opportunity to annex large tracts of West Bank land and turn them over to the settlers. And that is what happened: the wall/fence was not put up along the Green Line, but cuts deep into the West Bank. It takes away large areas of land from the Palestinian villages. Nowadays leftists are demonstrating every week against the wall, the right is sending soldiers to shoot at them, and the two-state solution has been set back. NOW THE rightists have discovered the one-state solution. My nose is tickling. One of the first was Moshe Arens, former Minister of Defense. Arens is an extreme rightist, a fanatical Likud member. He started to talk about one state from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, in which the Palestinians would be granted full rights, including citizenship and the vote. I rubbed my eyes. Is this the same Arens? What has happened to him? But this apparent mystery has a simple solution. Arens and his companions are faced with a mathematical problem that seems insoluble: turning the triangle into a circle. Their aim has three sides: (a) a Jewish state, (b) the whole of Eretz Israel, and (c) democracy. How to combine these three sides into one harmonious circle? Between the sea and the river there now live about 5.6 million Jews and 3.9 million Palestinians – a proportion of 59% Jews to 41% Palestinians (including the inhabitants of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the Arab citizens of Israel.) This number does not include, of course, the millions of Palestinian refugees who are living outside the country.) Several “experts” have tried to dispute these numbers, but respected statisticians, including Israelis, accept them with tiny changes here and there. The proportion, alas, is rapidly changing in favor of the Palestinians. The Palestinian population is doubling every 18 years. Even taking into account the natural increase of the Jewish population in Israel and the potential immigration in the foreseeable future, one can predict with almost mathematical precision when the Palestinians will constitute the majority between the Jordan and the sea. It’s a matter of years rather than decades. The inescapable conclusion: one can reconcile between any two of the three aspirations, but not all three at once: (a) a Jewish state in the entire country cannot be democratic, (b) a democratic state in the entire country cannot be Jewish, and (c) a Jewish and democratic state cannot include the entire Eretz Israel. Simple. Logical. One does not have to be Moshe Arens, an engineer by profession, to see this. Therefore the Right is looking for another logic that would allow the creation of a Jewish and democratic state in the entire country. LAST WEEK Haaretz published a stunning sensation: prominent personalities of the extreme Right – indeed, some of the most extreme – accept the solution of one-state from the sea to the river. They speak about a state in which the Palestinians will be full citizens. The rightists quoted in Noam Sheizaf’s article do not hide their reasons for adopting this line: they want to obstruct the setting up of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, which would mean the end of the settlement enterprise and the evacuation of scores of settlements and
Re: [Marxism] Interesting factoid
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == More Republicans (160) voted to fund the war in Afghanistan than Democrats (148). This is additional confirmation that we are living during the third Bush term. We are, but the statistic is misleading in the extreme. Republicans, with the exception of Ron Paul and perhaps one or two others, voted against funding the war purely for political motives, because they think a loss in the war will give Obama a black eye, not because they're actually opposed to the war. On the other hand, many Democrats voted against the bill as a protest against the fact that money for the economy (e.g., hiring teachers) had been cut (http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_15622566 - Some Democrats, like Eshoo, also opposed the war funding bill because the final draft didn't include money for the U.S. economy, including cash to stave off teacher layoffs. ). The number of Democrats REALLY opposed to the war, and willing to vote against funding it, is still in the low double-digits (Kucinich et al.). You can bet that if the vote were actually going to go against war funding, the vast majority of the Democrats who voted against the funding would have voted for it. But since it wasn't, a few more Democrats got to emphasize their fake progressive credentials in order to allow Medea Benjamin and Michael Moore to continue justify recommending voting for them in the next election. Eli Stephens Left I on the News http://lefti.blogspot.com Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Israel, South Africa and the single-state non-solution
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis, how can you have the popular revolution that you and I want in Palestine without guaranteeing the right of return for exiled Palestinians? Doesn't the current two-state project imply, at best, the installation of a Palestinian national bourgeoisie? How can one guarantee a practical right of return for millions of Palestinians to the tiny state (22% of historical Palestine) that is the best possible outcome of the two-state model? Doesn't the right of return require one-state, which would simply apply international law and allow Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to their country of origin? And if you reject the one-state solution, and see the two-state solution as another chimera, what model do you favor instead, and what historical tendencies do you see towards its realization? Yes, there are all kinds of grim capitalist prospects, even for a democratic and unified Palestine. But despite the capitalist horrors of contemporary Kenya and South African, I doubt you could find many of their black citizens yearning for British colonial rule or apartheid. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] A response to Blankfort's hatchet job on Chomsky
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Oh, don't go off in a snit, Manuel. You can't be done with me now, since I see no evidence that you've engaged what I'm saying in the first place This isn't a deification of Noam Chomsky or anything like that. Anyone serious about building a movement here is going to have to build it out of human material that is light-year farther away from us than Chomsky. Surely, if we've learned nothing from decades in the movement, we've learned that it will NOT be built by staking out the moral high ground and denouncing everybody who doesn't meet it. This has been tried by many groups and persons over the last century. Look around. It's not worked. ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The higher education bubble
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == brad babscriti...@gmail.com wrote: I don't know if saying that folks shouldn't have gone to college in the first place is really the best approach. Which is, of course, what I'm not saying or even implying. And, although I don't see why it's an issue, I should add that, for the record, neither of my parents even got to start high school and I got my undergraduate education largely through a community college ML Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Single-state solution
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Maybe it's different down in this part of the world, but here single-state solution is synonymous with democratic, secular Palestine. It's used as short-hand opposition to the two-state solution favoured by imperialism and sections of the Israeli establishment and not as a synonym for a Greater Israel. No wonder I was totally bamboozled when I first saw Louis' article! Phil Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] David Rovics, All Aboard the Marvi Marama
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == David Rovics is playing a gig at Canterbury University, organised by the Workers Party campus club and co-sponsored by the students association. It's a gig for our PFLP solidarity campaign, which raises funds for the PFLP and expands awareness of the Palestinian cause in general and the PFLP in particular. We also sell t-shirts to raise funds for them. See: http://wpnz-pflp-solidarity.blogspot.com/ All profits from the t-shirts go direct to the PFLP. Phil Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Israel, South Africa and the single-state non-solution
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis, I think you're closer to Ali Abunimah than you want to admit--also to As'ad AbuKhalil, Edward Said, Ilan Pappe, and the other advocates of a secular, democratic Palestine. Abunimah's discussion of Moshe Ahrens and the other right-wing Zionist one-staters is precisely the dialectical approach that Engels favors in SOCIALISM: UTOPIAN AND SCIENTIFIC--looking for impulses, contradictions, and movements that might be bent toward a radical social transformation, rather than simply insisting on an abstract ideal. It misrepresents his argument to suggest he's embracing the right-wingers, of whom he says, Their visions still fall far short of what any Palestinian advocate of a single state would consider to be just: the Israeli proposals insist on maintaining the state's character -- at least symbolically -- as a 'Jewish state,' exclude the Gaza Strip, and do not address the rights of Palestinian refugees. http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11411.shtml I wish Abunimah's ONE COUNTRY had dealt more with class struggles and the Palestinian communist tradition. But in arguing for one state and the right of return, he seizes the bull point. Anything short of this will inevitably produce, at best, a sordid and patriarchal Palestinian national bourgeoisie. Thanks for your wonderful blog and for all your work. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Israel, South Africa and the single-state non-solution
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Lou wrote: At the moment the majority of the Hebrew-speaking workers in Israel support the maintenance of the Jewish state. This support helps keep them ideologically enslaved to the Israeli capitalist ruling class, blocking them from fighting for their own class interests. Unless and until the Israeli Jewish working class ends its support for the Israeli state and supports the demand of the Palestinian Arabs for a united, democratic, secular Palestine, it will remain the cat's paw of Zionist colonialism. This of course could also be an exact description of the Northern Irish situation. Just substitute Protestant for Hebrew-speaking and Israeli Jewish and British for Zionist and you have the Northern Ireland tragedy, encapsulated in three sentences. comradely Gary Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Abstract labor (long)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Original Message *Subject: * Re: [Marxism] Abstract labor (long) *Date: * Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:15:21 -0600 *From: * ehrbar ehr...@lists.econ.utah.edu *Reply-To: * Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu *To: * marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Reading Marx one might be tempted to conclude that value exists in all modes of production because production always consumes human labor-time, and the value of a product is simply its labor content.= since all labor is the expenditure of human labor-power (I am writing this here in response to JAI's posting from July 20, hoping that this will be useful to JAI.) Marx's answer is that of course you can make this abstraction in your head. Since it is a physiological truth that all labor is the expenditure of human labor-power, nothing prevents you from reducing in your mind labor to the expenditure of human labor-power. Comrade, I appreciate you taking your time to explicate. However, I have no idea where Marx might have said that. Be that as it may: This is not the first time I have come up against conceptual problems regarding the nature of value. As example, supporting your point, consider II Rubin: Every distribution of social labor does not give the product of labor the form of value, but only that distribution of labor which is not organized directly by society, but is indirectly regulated through the market and the exchange of things. In a primitive communistic community, or in a feudal village, the product of labor has value /(tsennost)/ in the sense of utility, use value, but it does not have value /(stoimost)/. II Rubin Essays on Marx's Theory of Value. Black Rose Books. Montreal, Quebec. 1990. p68. However, I must again counter-pose this to Marx: ...after the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, but still retaining social production, the determination of value continues to prevail in the sense that the regulation of labour-time and the distribution of social labour among the various production groups, ultimately the book-keeping encompassing all this, become more essential than ever. Vol 3. Chap 49. p851. Or even counter-pose this to II Rubin, himself: / The value of commodities is directly proportional to the quantity of labor necessary for their production.// //Ibid. p65./ Furthermore, how to calculate, in the coming socialist commonwealth, the price of produced commodities save through labor-time values? Even further, in the coming communist commonwealth, when the veil of scarcity has been lifted, how are we to assess whether the 'non-commodities' have been produced 'economically' (i.e. using the least amount of 'living' and 'dead' labor inputs) save through an assessment of the product's labor-times. This may appear tautological but appearance cannot deny reality. The reality that, even sans scarcity, if we are to make the best use of human labor and nature's resources that such a calculation must occur. Thus one might be tempted to conclude that value exists in all modes of production because production always consumes human labor-time, and the value of a product is simply its labor content. Please. Your definition of 'value'. The problem, as I see it, is that 'value' in commodity-production is born as a duality: 1.) amt of human labor congealed (i.e. a scientific measurement); and, 2.) titles of ownership (i.e. a social relationship) be they a.) physical possession of the product; or, b.) certificates of ownership of the product; or, c.) currency equivalents of the product. These 'titles' act as 'value'---fictitious value if you will---in the commodity economy. 'Value', in the sense of these latters (a, b, c,) will most certainly disappear in the communist commonwealth; however, value as the measure of embodied 'dead' and 'living' labor, supplemented by various 'social rents' needed to conform social demand to social productive capacity, will continue as guide to economical use of (wo)men and means of production. And as these problems of allocation are tremendously complicated equations, one (the commonwealth) must do more than: ...make this abstraction in your head. This was further complicated by the fact that Marx used the shorthand 'v' to represent the capital set aside for (1. (as the 1 above)) the 'living' labor actually embodied; as well as, (2. ( as the 2 above)) the capital set aside as wages: The capital C is made up of two components, one, the sum of money c laid out upon the means of production, and the other, the sum of money v expended upon the labour-power... Capital. Vol 1. Chap IX.
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] (no subject)
In a message dated 7/27/2010 5:26:49 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, erca...@yahoo.com writes: ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: _http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis_ (http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis) Welcome WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Labor aristocracy
In a message dated 7/22/2010 8:49:59 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, _cb31...@gmail.com_ (mailto:cb31...@gmail.com) : In Marxist theory, those workers (proletarians) in developed countries who benefit from the superprofits extracted from the impoverished workers of underdeveloped countries form an aristocracy of labor. Comment A careful reading of Lenin reveals he makes distinction between the labor aristocracy and labor lieutenants of the capitalist class. Lenin refers to the latter as the upper strata of the labor aristocracy. There is the labor aristocracy and also labor lieutenants of the capitalist class. The first refers to a historically evolved privileged status of the peoples - all classes, in the imperial centers in relationship to the colonials or rather former colonial world. When these oppressed peoples venture into the imperial centers they are confronted with a social system that trapped them into a political status of second class citizens. The plight of the Korean in Japan, the Irish in England, the Algerian in France, Eastern versus Western Europe and of course the actual history of blacks, browns and Indians in America. There has always been a persistent anti-Chinese political and social policy in America that expresses the evolution of the color factor during the era of bourgeois rule. Two political categories describe the historical evolution of imperial privilege as a lived experience of the colonials and former colonials. Those colonials venturing to the imperial center that is their colonizer are dubbed national minorities. The Algerian in France is a national minority. In England he is a minority. The Irish in England is a national minority and in America a minority. The Korean in Japan is a national minority and in America a minority. It is the status of the majority of citizens of the earth in the imperial centers that prove imperial bribery and privilege. II. The evolution of the old great industrial middle class in America, formed on the basis of automotive production is a thing of our past. This great industrial middle class was not formed on the basis of colonial subjugation. This middle class was formed based on the advance of the technological revolution in the imperial centers under the domination of the capital relation. The imperial centers were historically formed based on conquest, wars of genocide, colonial exploitation and slavery. Like most inquiry, the more one studies the issue the more complex it becomes. What is incontestable is historic privilege and the second class citizenship status of the former colonials in the imperial centers. If one view capital as a world wide unified system of accumulation it is fairly obvious that the proletarian masses in the former colonies and dependent countries receive a much smaller wage for similar and identical work as compared with the workers in the imperial centers. The issue is a systemic relations rather than isolating one part of the workers wage in the imperial centers are a direct result of colonial plunder. II. Jesse Jackson Sr. is a labor lieutenants of the capitalist class. In Europe these labor lieutenants of the capitalist class arose and consolidated based on the social democratic movement. In America there never was a movement of social democracy whose origins are in the overthrow of the feudal order. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Labor's Role in the Obama Era: A Troublesome and Unreliable Ally ?
Labor's Role in the Obama Era: A Troublesome and Unreliable Ally? Nelson Lichtenstein Dissent UpFront DissentMagazine.org - June 7, 2010 http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online.php?id=360 With a perilous set of midterm elections on the horizon, it would be understandable if labor and its liberal allies just closed ranks with President Obama and the Democrats, downplayed any disappointment they might feel, and muted their critique of his often lukewarm liberalism. After all, if the Republicans take one or both houses of Congress, then the whole Obama presidency will be in danger. As every good unionist knows, solidarity is a great thing, but in this case it is the wrong prescription for the American labor movement. Instead, the unions and other labor partisans should be difficult and demanding allies of our president. History shows that such a posture would generate the greatest political and organizational dividend, for labor as well as any insurgent group that seeks to transform American politics and policy. To show what I mean, let's take a look at two eras of labor and social movement success-the 1930s and the 1960s-in order to win a few insights that might be useful for our own times. As Mark Twain once wrote, History never repeats itself, but sometimes it rhymes. There are three points to be made about such times past. First, conservative movements and right-wing ideas actually grow more extreme in eras of liberal and labor reform. We know that is true today, but it was also true at other moments of change or potential change in twentieth-century U.S. history. Second, when a Democratic administration is in power, the most potent and efficacious strategy for labor and its leadership is to be-and be seen as-a troublesome, even unreliable ally. And third, the labor movement needs to be, and be seen as, a social movement. This does not come without organizational costs. It is a dangerous strategy, but such a transformation is essential if anything resembling an organized labor movement is to survive. We sometimes look at past moments of victory through rose-colored glasses, but neither the era of the New Deal nor that of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and early 1960s were times of uncontested liberalism. They were also times of mobilization, a renewal of ideas, and activism on the Right. The opponents of reform were not always out-of-touch reactionaries. They were often innovative and aggressive men and women who would later achieve power and position when the political winds tilted in their direction. The Right grew in these eras not because of too much radicalism on the part of labor and civil rights activists, but because any great reform, no matter how carefully put forward, polarizes a society. The rise of labor in the 1930s created a kind of civil war even within the working class. It was mainly nonviolent, and it would later subside, but such polarities can be expected whenever many Americans, even some that one might expect to be allies, see change as a subversion of their religious or ideological worldview. In the 1930s that social and ideological civil war divided not just American parties, but also churches, factories, and many communities. Anti-labor and anti-FDR rhetoric was pervasive in the years of the Great Depression, even as the unions triumphed at Flint and Pittsburgh and in the mines and mills of countless smaller towns. One of the great right-wing demagogues of that time was Father Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest from Royal Oak, Michigan who pioneered the use of radio for sermons and political talk. He was a brilliant speaker whose audience far exceeded, in comparative terms, the reach of Fox News and its most flamboyant pundits. Coughlin had been a supporter of FDR and labor in 1933 and 1934 because he hated the big banks, the big corporations, and the Depression itself. Roosevelt or Ruin was the slogan he deployed when FDR ran for president in 1932. Indeed, Coughlin thought that Wall Street and the Communists were the twin evils of a secular Satanism subverting the virtuous citizens of the United States. And as Elizabeth Warren has reminded us in such compelling fashion, Americans really do mistrust the bankers and the speculators of that New York street, today as much as eighty years ago. Father Coughlin broke with FDR when he realized that the New Deal would regulate Wall Street, not abolish it; and because Coughlin and some other conservative Catholics believed that the new, militant industrial unions, who deployed as organizers lots of socialists and Communists and other kinds of secularists, were stealing the loyalty of their own parishioners right out from under them. Indeed, it was the success of the UAW-CIO right in Coughlin's own Detroit that sent him into a frenzy of anti-labor, anti-Semitic, and anti-FDR invective. To Coughlin, the New Deal was a Jewish plot and the UAW a red front. Sinclair Lewis was thinking of people like Father Coughlin, as well
[Marxism-Thaxis] The Great Decoupling of Corporate Profits from Jobs
The Great Decoupling of Corporate Profits from Jobs By Robert Reich July 27, 2010, robertreich.org http://robertreich.org/ Second-quarter earnings reports are coming in, and they're making Wall Street smile. Corporate profits are up. And big American companies are sitting on a gigantic pile of money. The 500 largest non-financial firms held almost a trillion dollars in the second quarter, and that money pile is growing larger this quarter. Profits that plummeted in the recession have bounced back. Big businesses have recovered almost 90 percent of what they lost. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] More Optimistic Today Than Ever: A Talk with Pete Seeger
More Optimistic Today Than Ever: A Talk with Pete Seeger David Kupfer in conversation with Pete Seeger July 23, 2010, Reality Sandwich http://www.realitysandwich.com/conversation_pete_seeger There is hardly anything bad in the world that doesn't have something good connected to it. Pete Seeger is one of the world's quintessential activists, having played such an important role in singing the songs and engaging in the struggles of the civil rights, free speech, human rights, anti-Vietnam War, environmental, peace, anti- nuclear, and social justice movements. He spans musical eras, from those who inspired him, Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, to those he inspired, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bruce Springsteen, Dave Mathews, and Ani DiFranco. Seeger has had an epic life, full of amazing contributions to our culture and politics. In person, he conveys a comfortable, homespun way about himself that puts you at ease. He is a modest soul, and in conversation is slow to credit himself on his lifework's impact, but it can be safely said that in the 20th century there is no other individual who has so successfully combined folk music and progressive politics. In the late 1960s, Seeger shifted away from typical American folk music, embracing African music, Latin-American folk songs and other forms of world music. At this time Pete became active in the nascent environmental movement, drawing attention to pollution of the Hudson River with the activist group Clearwater, which teaches schoolchildren about water pollution. He and friends built the Clearwater Sloop, a reproduction of a 19th Century cargo sloop, and sailed it up and down the river, spreading the word about pollution and raising public support to clean up the river. Because of these and other's efforts, the Hudson is now open for swimming in many places. One thing that's endeared him to audiences all over the world is that he always gets people to join in. It's almost a religion with him. The world will be saved when people realize we all have to pitch in. You can't just pay your money and hope that someone else will do the job right. He continued performing into the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, most often at charity shows and benefits. Seeger embodies the spirit of this nation more than anyone I have met. At 90, he is humble, straight-backed, clear-eyed, and as straightforward, sincere, and real as any living folk music icon could be. He remains opinionated, articulate, and keenly aware of his place in history and, thankfully, has maintained his inimitable sense of hope and optimism. Pete once confided to me that he can go on and on (talking), and frequently I do. I have found my favorite talkaholic can always be counted on for bold, provocative, and poignant observations. I visited him just before his 90th birthday in the spring of 2009 on a warm afternoon. The home he shares with his wife, Toshi, overlooks the Hudson River and Denny's Point near Beacon. I helped him bring out an umbrella from the barn that we set up in the picnic table on the porch next to the log cabin he hand built some 50 years ago. He began discussing the local history of the region. Pete is an excellent historian and a wonderful storyteller. During the course of our interview, Toshi brought us out a pitcher of water and contributed to the conversation. ** David Kupfer: What is it about the power of a sing along song? Pete Seeger: There is something about participating. It is almost my religion. If the world is still here in 100 years, people will know the importance of participating, not just being spectators. That's what this book, Blessed Unrest, by Paul Hawken is about. Millions of small groups around the world, that don't necessarily all agree with one another, but they are made up of people who are not just sitting back waiting for someone to do things for them. No one can prove anything, but of course if I didn't believe it had some kind of power, I wouldn't be trying to do it. Curiously enough, the people who are suspicious of songs have put their words down, so they also think there is something to the power of song. Plato is supposed to have said it is very dangerous to allow the wrong kind of music in the Republic. There is an old Arab story, when the king put the poet on his payroll; he cuts off the tongue of the poet. I know very well that the powers that be would like to control the music that the people listen to. Herbert Hoover said to Rudy Vallee, who was a top singer in 1929: Mr. Vallee, if you can sing a song that will make the American people forget the depression, I will give you a medal. A lot of musicians would like to get that kind of medal. Bing Crosby had a hit record, Wrap your troubles in dreams, and dream your troubles away. That was how we were going to solve the depression in 1932. DK: I never thought of those singers as propagandists. PS: The exception proves the rule. A lefty named Yip Harburg got a musician named Jay Gorny
[Marxism-Thaxis] Review: Red Plenty by Francis Spufford
http://21stcenturysocialism.com/article/review_red_plenty_by_francis_spufford_01992.html Tuesday, 27th July 2010 by Paul Cockshott / May 23rd 2010 Review: Red Plenty by Francis Spufford This is a marvelous and unusual book. It sits in a remarkable way in between science popularisation, social history and fiction. The author describes it variously as a novel whose hero is an idea and a fairytale. The hero idea is that of optimal planning. The idea of running a planned economy in just such a way as to ensure that resources are optimally used in order to deliver the ?red plenty? of the title. Combining real and imagined characters, politicians like Khrushchev, mathematicians and economists like Kantorovich and Nemchinov with fictionalised minor characters, it gives a gripping and apparently realistic picture of life in the USSR during the 50s and 60s. It is not a single narrative as one expects from historical fiction. Instead it gives us a series of snapshots from the lives of individuals, separated by years. The common link is the project of the Cybernetic economic reformers, and the ambitions of Khrushchev to attain communist plenty. The author shows real skill as a science populariser, explaining such diverse topics as how the Pentode valve logic of the early BESM computers worked, to the molecular mechanics of the carcinogenesis mechanism that eventually killed its designer. He vividly portrays the enthusiasm and self confidence of the USSR in the late 50s when Khrushchev?s boasts that they would overtake the USA by 1980 and achieve communism seemed plausible. He gives a good didactic account both of the basic mechanisms of the Soviet Economy, and, through the lives of incidental characters paints a picture of its real operation that is more detailed and convincing than any academic history. He traces the idea of cybernetic economic management from the hope of the 50s and early 60s to its sidelining under Kosygin, and the eventual relegation of Kantorovich to the less ambitious task of optimisating steel tube output for the oil and natural gas industry. Ironically, says Spufford, as growth rates slipped in the 70s, it was only the exploitation of petroleum for export that allowed Soviet living standards to rise. This is a book that should be read by anyone who is seriously interested in the possibility of a different sort of economy from the one we now have. It shows both the strengths, and the hidden weaknesses of the most serious attempt so far to construct an alternative to capitalism, an attempt that was born when the idea of a communist future was taken very seriously by a whole society. To read it is to be convinced that whatever the truth of standard leftist criticism of the USSR as being undemocratic and bureacratic, there was much more than that at issue in this tragedy. It raises real political and philosophical issues that would have to be faced by any future socialist project, and draws attention to a forgotten history that today?s socialists ignore at their peril. The bulk of what we read and hear about the USSR focuses on the 20s and 30s. The remaining 50 years of its history fade before the glamour, grandeur and horror of the early years. But the early 1960s, when Russia was already an industrial country, with many areas of internationally competitive technology in aviation, space, computing holds more relevant lessons for the European left than its early years. It is clear what lesson orthodox economists will draw: It?s a timely exploration, now so many people have gone off the idea of markets, of why the alternative is worse. But such conclusions betray an unjustified and callous smugness. It is a smugness not justified by the elegaic last paragraph of the book. The restoration of the market mechanism in Russia was a vast controlled experiment. Nation, national character and culture, natural resources and productive potential remained the same, only the economic mechanism changed. If Western economists were right, then we should have expected economic growth and living standards to have leapt forward after the Yeltsin shock therapy. Instead the country became an economic basket-case. Industrial production collapsed, technically advanced industries atrophied, and living standards fell so much that the death rate shot up by over a third leading to some 7.7 million extra deaths. If you were old, if you were farmer, if you were a manual worker, the market was a great deal worse than even the relatively stagnant Soviet economy of Brezhnev. The recovery under Putin, such as it was, came almost entirely as a side effect of rising world oil prices, the very process that had operated under Brezhnev. But this does not excuse us from seriously considering the problems so vividly raised in the book. Spufford recounts how the attempt to follow the reformers' recomendations and raise the price of food to provide more income for farmers provoked strikes by industrial workers, which
[Marxism-Thaxis] Making it plain
http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/07/what-is-it.html What Is It? By James Howard Kunstler on July 26, 2010 9:26 AM The New York Times ran a story of curious import this morning: Mel Gibson Loses Support Abroad. Well, gosh, that's disappointing. And just when we needed him, too. Concern over this pressing matter probably reflects the general mood of the nation these dog days of summer - and these soggy days, indeed, are like living in a dog's mouth - so no wonder the USA has lost its mind, as evidenced by the fact that so many people who ought to know better, in the immortal words of Jim Cramer, don't know anything. Case in point: I visited the Slate Political Gabfest podcast yesterday. These otherwise excellent, entertaining, highly educated folk (David Plotz, Emily Bazelon, and Daniel Gross, in for vacationing John Dickerson) were discussing the ramifications of the economic situation on the upcoming elections. They were quite clear about not being able to articulate the nature of this economic situation, ...this recession, or whatever you want to call it... in Ms. Bazelon's words. What's the point of sending these people to Ivy League colleges if they can't make sense of their world. Let's call this whatever-you-want-to-call-it a compressive deflationary contraction, because that's exactly what it is, an accelerating systemic collapse of activity due to over-investments in hyper-complexity (thank you Joseph Tainter). A number of things are going on in our society that can be described with precision. We've generated too many future claims on wealth that does not exist and has poor prospects of ever being generated. That's what unpayable debt is. We have such a mighty mountain of it that the Federal Reserve can create new digital dollars until the cows come home (and learn how to play chamber music), but they will never create enough new money to outpace the disappearance of existing notional money in the form of welshed-on loans. Hence, money will continue to disappear out of the economic system indefinitely, citizens will grow poorer steadily, companies will go out of business, and governments at all levels will not have money to do what they have been organized to do. This compressive deflationary collapse is not the kind of cyclical downturn that we are familiar with during the two-hundred-year-long adventure with industrial expansion - that is, the kind of cyclical downturn caused by the usual exhalations of markets attempting to adjust the flows of supply and demand. This is a structural implosion of markets that have been functionally destroyed by pervasive fraud and swindling in the absence of real productive activity. The loss of productive activity preceded the fraud and swindling beginning in the 1960s when other nations recovered from the traumas of the world wars and started to out-compete the USA in the production of goods. Personally, I doubt this was the result of any kind of conspiracy, but rather a comprehensible historical narrative that worked to America's disadvantage. Tough noogies for us. The fatal trouble began when we attempted to compensate for this loss of value-creation by ramping up the financial sector to a credit orgy so that every individual and every enterprise and every government could enjoy ever-increasing levels of wealth in a system that no longer really produced wealth. This was accomplished in the financial sector by innovating new tradable securities based on getting something for nothing. That is what the aggregate mischief on Wall Street and its vassal operations was all about. The essence of the fraud was the securitization of debt, because the collateral was either inadequate or altogether missing. That's how you get something for nothing. The swindling came in when these worthless certificates were pawned off on credulous marks such as pension funds and other assorted investors. Tragically, everybody in a position to object to these shenanigans failed to issue any warnings or ring the alarm bells - and this includes the entire matrix of adult authority in banking, government (including the law), academia, and a hapless news media. Everyone pretended that the orgy of mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt and loan obligations, structured investment vehicles, credit default swaps, and other chimeras of capital amounted to things of real value. Certainly the editors and pundits in the media simply didn't understand the rackets they undertook to report. You can bet that the players on Wall Street made every effort to mystify the media with arcane language, and they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. (Making multiple billions of dollars by trading worthless certificates based on getting something for nothing must be the ultimate definition of succeeding beyond one's wildest dreams.) It's harder to account for the dimness of the news media. I doubt they were in on the caper. More likely there is a correlation between their low pay and their low
[Marxism-Thaxis] Jobless Workers Look to Shift Elections
Jobless Workers Look to Shift Elections http://washingtonindependent.com/92821/the-unemployed-organized-online-look-to-the-midterms The Unemployed, Organized Online, Look to the Midterms Jobless Workers Look to Shift Elections By Annie Lowrey 7/28/10 6:15 AM Workers march to protest for jobs legislation. (Rasdourian/Flickr) Sometime this spring, Republicans turned against unemployment. In Nevada, Sharron Angle (R), the candidate facing incumbent Sen. Harry Reid (D), told local reporters, “You can make more money on unemployment than you can going down and getting one of those jobs that is an honest job.” (Untrue.) Angle also called the unemployed “spoiled.” Rand Paul, a candidate for a Kentucky Senate seat, made similar statements, and politicians in Washington followed suit. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said on C-SPAN that extending unemployment would discourage “individuals that are out there to actually go out and go through the interviews.” But unlike most comments from politicians, these criticisms did not diffuse into the generic noise of political chatter. They began reverberating in what might be termed the unemployed netroots — a system of highly trafficked, influential blogs and sites connecting the jobless and updating them, often in minute detail, about ins and outs of Congress’ work on unemployment issues. When Jordan, a former programmer living in Nevada, lost his position with a local university, he began sending out resumes, but he also found himself following the eight-month battle for an unemployment extension closely — each failed Senate vote, each new House proposal. (He requested I withhold his last name to avoid impeding his job search.) Online, he started surfing list-servs, posting on message boards and using resources from the unemployed. A few times, he has worked up the courage to call his legislators’ offices. Jordan has searched hard for a job and is now considering moving away from his family for a few months, if it means he can send home a paycheck. “I have voted Republican my entire life,” he says. “I don’t want to vote for Harry Reid. But I don’t want to be told I’m lazy, and I’m dumb, and I’m living high on the hog, collecting [unemployment insurance] because I want to.” There are more than 30 million people left without work at some point during the course of the recession; 14.6 million are currently unemployed. As many as 4 million people have exhausted the maximum weeks of federal and state unemployment benefits. In each case, Jordan is among these millions, and for an uncountable number of people like him, the experience with income insecurity has led to a political awakening. Among the biggest sites in the unemployment netroots is LayoffList, managed by Michael Thornton, a native of Rochester, N.Y. Thornton stared LayoffList in 2008; five months ago, he began writing articles and posting legislators’ information. He now receives hundreds of emails and has logged more than a million hits. Thornton is finding that, rather than losing interest in politics since the end of the fight for extended benefits, the unemployed are “energized and motivated” and have started looking forward to the fall. “Even Republicans say they aren’t voting Republican anymore,” the soft-spoken former technical writer says. “You have millions of unemployed people out there. If even half of them voted, they could swing a nationwide election.” Paladinette — the online “zealot for the unemployed” also known as LaDona King — has taken the battle over the unemployment extension as more of a call to arms. She routinely publishes phone numbers, fax numbers and email addresses of lawmakers to target, rallying her thousands of online supporters to the cause. King personally calls 25 or 30 legislators’ offices a day. Sometimes, when she posts lawmakers’ numbers or picks out a particularly egregious example of a legislator blocking a vote or putting down the unemployed, her followers flood a Senate or House office with phone calls. The same goes for LayoffList. At one point, Thornton published the name and number of a House staffer working on unemployment legislation. Soon after, the staffer called and begged him to take it down, he says. “They’re all concerned about their re-election,” King says. “We’re making sure the Republicans get blasted for their obstructionist behavior. … We have tons of people calling, faxing, emailing.” “We’re lobbyists in training,” she laughs. “Without all that money!” During the eight month battle to extend unemployment insurance, with the unemployment rate peaking over 10 percent, huge online networks of the unemployed came into fruition. Now, coming into the fall and the midterms, King and other grassroots organizers for the unemployed are hooking up with formal organizing groups to add institutional oomph to the effort. They say they do not want to let the long battle for simple
