[Marxism] WSJE-Left Party Wins 20%+ in German Regional Elections
Merkel's CDU loses big in regional elections Results embolden left-leaning parties before national vote BERLIN-German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party suffered heavy losses in regional elections on Sunday, encouraging leftleaning parties ahead of Germany's national elections set for Sept. 27. Ms. Merkel's party, the Christian Democratic Union, lost its ruling majorities in the state legislatures of Saarland and Thuringia, potentially opening the way for center-left administrations in both states. The Christian Democrats looked set to retain power in a third state, Saxony. The left-leaning Social Democrats-traditionally the Christian Democrats' main rivals but currently their partners in a bipartisan national government-took heart from conservatives' losses even though their own support stagnated. Sunday's main winners were the Free Democrats, a small free-market party whose support of between 7.6% and 10.5% in the three regions was a marked improvement from 2004, and the Left party, which looked set to win over 20% of the vote in all three regions, exit polls suggested. The Left party, which includes many former East German Communists and is led by former Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine, is now strong enough to potentially form new state governments with Social Democrats and Greens, ousting Christian Democrat state premiers in Saarland and Thuringia. Sunday's results could energize the competition in what has been a low-key national election campaign so far. Germany's deep recession in the past year, and four years of leftright power-sharing under Ms. Merkel, had made politics in Western Europe's most populous country less partisan than usual. Ms. Merkel's camp remains far ahead of the Social Democrats in national opinion polls, indicating that she is likely to remain chancellor after Sept. 27-but what kind of government she might lead next is wide open. Ms. Merkel is aiming to win enough votes to drop the Social Democrats and form a new center-right government with the Free Democrats. But the Christian Democrats' poor showing on Sunday in Saarland and Thuringia, both of which the party has ruled for the past decade, highlights the fragility of the party's support and that Ms. Merkel's high personal popularity hasn't rubbed off on many of her conservative colleagues. Exit polls suggested the Christian Democrats won only around 31% of the vote in the eastern state of Thuringia on Sunday, down from 43% in the last state election in 2004. The party's vote in the western state of Saarland fell to 34.5%, according to the official preliminary result, down from over 47% in 2004. The Social Democrats, who favor a larger state role in the economy than conservatives, won about 18.5% of votes in Thuringia, according to exit polls, an improvement from 2004, and 24.5% in Saarland, according to preliminary results, down from 2004. Still, the Social Democrats' candidate for chancellor, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, called the state elections a success for his party, saying the Christian Democrats' dramatic losses showed Germans don't want a right-leaning government. Ms. Merkel didn't comment on Sunday evening, but she had previously argued the state ballots would reflect local factors and thus weren't a signpost for the national election. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. 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] The German Auto Bubble-WSJ
(JAI: Twice as big as the US 'Cash for Clunkers, programs which compel the destruction of still useful automobiles so as to encourage the purchase of new ones through taxpayer funded subsidy, the German program (as the US') is but modified Keynesianism, itself a re-reading of Marx exposition on the crisis of overproduction Capital. Vol 3. Chap XV. Sec 3. Excess Capital, Excess Population. http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch15.htm , is but yet another further attempt to inject purchasing power into a sector of the market (in this case auto and relateds) in hopes that the buying power of this sector will translate into the purchses of the products of other sectors. It is the same thing as the stock market bubble which burst in 2000, the Fed Reserve created housing bubble burst in 2006 (itselff created in response to the collapse of the stock market and the oil and commodities bubbles which burst last year. What next. Believe me they are thinking of something right now.) AUGUST 31, 2009 Germans Debate Whether Car Trade-In Plan Will Backfire By GEOFFREY T. SMITH FRANKFURT -- Germany's auto makers are worried about slumping sales when the government's cash for clunkers program expires this fall after running through its allocation of ?5 billion, or $7.15 billion. Even so, they don't agree with the dire forecasts in a study issued by German management consultancy Roland Berger. In the study, published Friday, Roland Berger said car sales in Germany may fall more than 20% next year, and that as many as 90,000 jobs may be lost across the industry by the end of 2011. One in two car dealerships could be threatened with failure, and gross domestic product could take a hit, it said. The detailed report by a well-known company with a long history in the auto sector caused a stir, underscoring nagging fears of a slump in demand and another sharp rise in unemployment once the Germany government winds down this part of its fiscal stimulus. The car scrappage program, which subsidizes new car purchases on old trade-ins, was a model for similar plans adopted elsewhere, including the U.S. Since early this year, it has bolstered Germany's big auto industry and helped gross domestic product to return to growth in the second quarter after a year-long recession. The German car market is good for roughly 3 million to 3.3 million cars a year. This year, we will probably sell 3.7 million, and our forecasts are for 2.7-2.8 million next year, said Ralf Landmann, a partner with Roland Berger. If you have 20% less demand for your products, its clear there's going to be an impact on the labor market, Mr. Landmann said. The Federal Statistics Office calculates that Germans spent ?36 billion on new cars in the first half of the year, generating a modest 0.1% increase in overall private consumption. But without the scrappage scheme, consumption would have fallen 1%, and the economy would have shrunk by even more. As it is, output in the second quarter was still down 5.9% from a year earlier. Carsten Dreger, an economist with the DIW research institute in Berlin, contends that not only was the cash-for-clunkers plan increasing 2009 demand at the cost of 2010's, it is also cannibalizing potential demand for other consumer goods this year. Cash for clunkers boosted August sales, but as WSJ's Neal Boudette and Dow Jones Newswires' Jeff Bennett report, auto dealers are already starting to see consumer interest drop off now that clunkers is over. Germany's car makers have already laid off most of the 100,000 temporary workers they employed a year ago, according to a spokesman for the Federal Association for Temporary Work in Berlin. The Roland Berger forecasts refer to cuts in their core personnel, an acutely sensitive topic. A spokesman for the Association of German Automakers, an industry body, disagreed with the Roland Berger forecasts, saying the industry hadn't taken on excess labor in the boom years in any case. What wasn't built up in the first case doesn't need to be reduced, the spokesman said. Volkswagen AG has even promised to add jobs at Porsche AG once it completes its planned takeover of the company. VW has also just started its annual pay round negotiations with the IG Metall union. With unemployment already nearly at 3.5 million, and a jobless rate of 8.3%, the government is hoping that the recent economic improvement will be strong enough to stop another wave of job losses. The fate of Adam Opel GmbH's German employees has been one of the key sticking points in negotiations over the restructuring of GM's European operations, with the German government anxious to avoid any job losses. The Federal Labor Office is due to report August's unemployment data Tuesday. Analysts predict another 30,000 increase in those out of work. The government has subsidized companies to keep their workers on shorter working hours, rather than lay them off.
[Marxism] On Barak Obama (Tuesday, January 20, 2009)
Tuesday, January 20, 2009 On Barak Obama By John A. Imani Member of the Revolutionary Autonomous Communities. Let's face it, comrades, we have our hands full. With the system in shatters all around us, capitalism had played its last card: it has elected ($700,000,000) a young, gifted and black president. At the Martin Luther King, Jr Day here in LA one could strike by two things, the first expected, the second, however, was surprising: Obama was the word on many, nearly every, lip. The impact of the fact that after 400 years of captivity, then second-class citizenship and occupation of its community by a force not of that community (in our case, the LAPD), a person of color was elected to lead completely colored the air as minor celebrities echoed and led the crowd in chants of the new president's name. The surprising thing was that this goodwill extended to just so the occupying force referred to above. Chief Bratton and Sheriff Baca led a contingent of pigs and for some strange reason the crowds applauded them. Not just the head cops but motorcycle, horse, bicycle, Segway riding, walking armed pigs were waved to and cheered. It was like watching concentration camp internees applauding their captors. It was inexplicable. Then the thought hit me: Obama = State. It dawned upon me that my comrade, Joaquin, from Revolutionary Autonomous Communities (RAC) had been correct when before the election he warned that if Obama was elected, it would make it more difficult to rebel. The identification of the president, and all the good will extended by this, had somehow 'rubbed off' on the first and last line of defense of the state, the police. And the occupiers were seemingly transformed, in the minds of the viewers, into their defenders. This is how one might view this happenstance if one ignores the fact that the existence of the police itself is laden with a fundamental contradiction: that its interests and its existence is the protection of the state and not of the people. There is little doubt that the Obama regime will initiate some reforms. It has no choice in this matter: it must generate purchasing power just as the Bush regime did. The difference is promised to be, however, that while Bush injected liquidity into the system with its vast purchases of arms, Obama's medication will be prescribed in the form of extension of benefits, lower taxes on income and capital gains, workfare programs, etc. All of this in an attempt to save a system, a la FDR, teetering on the brink of self-implosion and ingesting vast sums of created public monies that are but IOU's written on the backs of today's and tomorrow's workers. On a macrocosmic level, what this means is that when he sends in more troops to Afghanistan that there will be some, who protested under Bush, will be hesitant to take to the streets. Or, when times get harder and food riots are necessitated, the televised image of concerned 'Brother' Obama will keep some of the hungry at home mindful of the fact that The brother is doing the best that he can. Patriotism used to be the last refuge of scoundrels. Now it seems that its place has been taken by this cynical use of a black man as figurehead, standing in the same relationship to the real holders of power, the capitalist class, just as Bush II, Clinton, Bush's Daddy, Ronald Reagan, etc. Of whom, pick your choice, it was and it would be easier to rebel against. The question is How to critique Obama and not alienate the masses who see this presidency, perhaps in some way, as payment for our sufferings, as reparations for our pains? http://joaquincienfuegos.blogspot.com/2009/01/john-imani-on-barak-obama.html YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. 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] John Bellamy Foster interview on the financial crisis
Just finsihing reading Foster and Magdoff's The Great Financial Crisis. Excellent presentation of MR's stagnation thesis in light of the finacializtion crisis. There is a synopsis at http://www.scribd.com/doc/17483992/Foster-Magdoff-The-Great-Financial-Crisis-2009-Synopsis - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect l...@panix.com To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu; Progressive Economics pe...@lists.csuchico.edu Sent: Wednesday, September 16, 2009 3:59 PM Subject: [Marxism] John Bellamy Foster interview on the financial crisis http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/foster170909.html YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. 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] Marx and Dialectics
Totally agree. Especially with the last on Marx' anarcho-communism vis the state. There is a fundamental contradiction of capitalism, And this fundamental manifests itself in many different manners: the growth of organic compositin and the consequent fall in the rate of prfit; the accompanying overproduction (saturation of the market) of consumer goods; the lack of profitable investment outlets leading to a hoard of capital resulting in speculation and asset bubbles; the consequent imperial wars for markets and resources. Yet, like M Theory in string mechanics, all of these are manifestations of a deep underlying contradiction and that contradiction lies in the cheapening of the costs of production of labor-powers. I wrote about this in full at http://www.marxmail.org/Imani.htm -Decline in the Value of Labor-power which Louis was kind enough to host. JAI - Original Message - From: Daniel Koechlin d.koech...@wanadoo.fr To: David Schanoes sartes...@earthlink.net Sent: Wednesday, October 07, 2009 2:34 PM Subject: [Marxism] Marx and Dialectics Marx was a profoundly nuanced, non-dogmatic thinker. His thinking was made up of many strands, his insights into the concrete workings of capitalism and its eventual breakdown (or lack thereof) were ever evolving. Nevertheless, he was deeply aware of the contradictions between appearences and reality, between exchange-value and use-value, between the capitalist imperative to expand and the resistance of the working class. He jeered at the farce of vulgar bourgeois economics, whose real agenda has always been upholding the status quo. But he never got down to finishing Capital and actually spelling out which (out of the many) contradictions of capital, would ultimately lead to its replacement by communism. I suspect he never had the time to actually formulate a precise theory of economic crisis. We are left, in Capital III, with the law of diminishing profits due to increases in constant capital ( at the C-M level), with a theory of disproportionality between sectors I and II (in Capital II), with an understanding of the struggle over surplus-value between workers and capitalists (Capital I). Marx doesn't seem to have seriously subscribed to the underconsumptionist, Sismondian, Keynsian, view that wages were insufficient to realize profits. Anyway, Marx was a very subtle dialectician, always careful not to ascribe one single, absolute, cause to any single phenomenon. I myself find Marx's extant writings (both published and unpublished during his lifetime) to be much closer to anti-authoritarian, libertarian communism than to so-called Marxism-Leninism. I don't think he quite envisioned proletarian dictatorship as individuals vying for power by manipulating a political party or their influence in the armed forces. He thought that the working class should become the dominant class, and that workers should emancipate themselves from the shackles of class oppression. Had Marx had time to complete his work on the State, he would probably have lambasted any notion that the State should become the overseer of the working class and deny the working class any say in the managing of its own affairs. As far as I am concerned, Lenin is quite anti-marxist in this respect. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/sartesian%40earthlink.net YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. 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] Stock Capital and the rate of profit
I think that if stock capital is read as sunk capital then the passage makes all the sense in the world. See how he mentions large productive industries railroads contant capital largest in its relation to variable capital. These are like or may even be monoplies ort near-monoploies (high barriers to entry and do not participate in profit equalization) but if calculations are made on entire investment then a low rate of profit obtaions. Reminds me of Brenner when writing of US 'old capital' competing with new Japanese and German capital after WWII. http://books.google.com/books?id=MdzRuGutydYCpg=PA44lpg=PA44dq=Brenner+sunk+capitalsource=blots=XvirFDu8cxsig=2yav1NxJKrrNz9IU-BmDzm-y62Ahl=enei=9BzOSt-BNpHuswPE57W_Dgsa=Xoi=book_resultct=resultresnum=3#v=onepageq=schrumpeterf=false leading to low rates of profit. The fact that they (by virtue of monoploy postition) are withdrawn from the equalization process thus leading to a higher (than would be otherwise) general rate of profit. JAI - Original Message - From: S. Artesian sartes...@earthlink.net To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Sunday, October 11, 2009 10:54 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism] Stock Capital and the rate of profit You're not alone. I've read that section over and over, worked for railroads, and studied the economics of railroading, and I'm still not sure that I grasp Marx's thought on this completely. I think, and emphasize think, that Marx finds that the portion of capital represented in the issuance of stock and producing dividends is not part of the process of creating a general rate of profit because the dividend rates are so much lower than the average rates of profit. Of course, as Michael Milliken and the LBOs, vulture investors, asset strippers have proven, that situation can be reversed-- utilizing the purchase of joint stock companies to award themselves dividends, interests, payment far above the actual rate of profit, in effect liquidating the company from the inside. The stock-capital could be included, added to the constant capital, employed in production, but if so, then the rate declines even more. I think, again emphasize, think we see something along these lines if you look at the US Dept. of Commerce Quarterly Financial Review of industries-- there you see rates of return calculated as a return on equity, and rates of return calculated on net property, plant, equipment. - Original Message - From: brendan cooney callmecoo...@gmail.com To: David Schanoes sartes...@earthlink.net Sent: Sunday, October 11, 2009 1:24 PM Subject: [Marxism] Stock Capital and the rate of profit I have been puzzling over a paragraph in Volume 3 of Capital. I was hoping some kind and wise soul on the list might be able to help me understand it better. In the chapter on counteracting influences on the falling rate of profit Marx ends with a paragraph about the way in which Stock Capital enters, or doesn't enter into the rate of profit. I can't seem to wrap my head around Marx's argument. I understand that the division of surplus value into rent, interest, industrial profit, etc. is secondary to calculating the rate of profit. But then he says that interest payments don't go into the leveling of the general rate or profit, giving the example of railroads. Is he saying that joint-stock companies don't enter in the equalization of profit rates b/c dividend payments are lower than the real profit rate? Or is he saying that joint-stock companies do enter into the equalization of the rate of profit but must calculated in terms of total mass of profit in these industries and not just interest payments? How is this a counteracting influence? Lawrence Harris' entry on forms of capital and revenues in the Dictionary of Marxist thought says that joint-stock companies represented a unique historic stage in capitalism and act as a counteracting influence on the FRP because of their willingness to accept a lower yield as a result of the dominance of interest. But I don't see how a lower yield halts a falling rate of profit. I suppose that I may have to wait until I get to Part 5 of Volume 3, but that may take some time at the rate I'm going. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. 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 second Great Depression is still possible
(JAI: This is evidence of a forthcoming double dip. The first wave attacked lower income levels of the working class but now the loss of purchasing power from these 'lower' levels affects upper tiers leading to a cascade of forclosure. Also, next is commercial real estate defaults due to the same phenomenon.) OCTOBER 13, 2009 Foreclosures Grow in Housing Market's Top Tiers a.. By NICK TIMIRAOS New data suggest that foreclosures are rising in more expensive housing markets. About 30% of foreclosures in June involved homes in the top third of local housing values, up from 16% when the foreclosure crisis began three years ago, according to new data from real-estate Web site Zillow.com. The bottom one-third of housing markets, by home value, now account for 35% of foreclosures, down from 55% in 2006. The report shows that foreclosures, after declining earlier this year, began to accelerate in the late spring and that more expensive homes have more recently accounted for a growing share of all foreclosures. The slope of that curve in recent months is much sharper than it was recently, said Stan Humphries, chief economist for Zillow. Rising foreclosures among more-expensive homes could create added pressure for a housing market that has shown signs of stabilizing in recent months as sales of lower-priced homes pick up. The Zillow research compared homes against the median values for their local market and broke each market into three tiers by value. Zillow then looked at the share of monthly foreclosures in each tier over the past decade. Foreclosures are rising in more expensive markets as home values in those areas fall, leaving more homeowners with mortgages that exceed the value of their properties. Prime loans accounted for 58% of foreclosure starts in the second quarter, up from 44% last year, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Subprime mortgages accounted for one-third of foreclosure starts, down from one-half last year. The prime category includes so-called exotic mortgages that were increasingly used to buy more expensive homes, including interest-only mortgages that allowed borrowers to defer principal payments during an initial period. Borrowers often aren't able to refinance out of these products because the drop in home values has left them with little equity in their homes. Default rates are particularly high and expected to rise on option adjustable-rate mortgages, which allow borrowers to make minimum payments that may not cover the interest due. Monthly payments can increase to sharply higher levels after five years or when the outstanding balance reaches a certain level. A study by Fitch Ratings found that 46% of option ARMs were 30 days past due last month, even though just 12% of such loans have reset to higher monthly payments. Zillow estimated that nearly one in four homes with mortgages was worth less than the value of the property at the end of June. Mr. Humphries said he didn't expect to see foreclosure volumes level off until later in 2010. Write to Nick Timiraos at nick.timir...@wsj.com Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A19 - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect l...@panix.com To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Monday, October 12, 2009 6:17 AM Subject: [Marxism] A second Great Depression is still possible (posted to LBO-Talk by Ira Glazer) http://blogs.ft.com/economistsforum/2009/10/a-second-great-depression-is-still-possible/ Over the past year the global economy has experienced a massive contraction, the deepest since the Great Depression of the 1930s. But this spring, economists started talking of “green shoots” of recovery and that optimistic assessment quickly spread to Wall Street. More recently, on the anniversary of the Lehman Brothers crash, Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve chairman, officially blessed this consensus by declaring the recession is “very likely over”. Clip YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. 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] Marxism Digest, Vol 72, Issue 43
Hate to appear like a weirdo on this point but there is the phenomenon of quantum back action. Indeed the forming of interference patterns even when electrons are fired one at a time through one of two open slits, an action that ought to produce no such interfence(diffraction), ends up with diffractive properties. An article (way above my head) is at http://www.fourmilab.ch/rpkp/rhett.html - Original Message - From: marxism-requ...@lists.econ.utah.edu To: John A Imani johnaim...@earthlink.net Sent: Sunday, October 18, 2009 7:35 AM Subject: Marxism Digest, Vol 72, Issue 43 Send Marxism mailing list submissions to marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to marxism-requ...@lists.econ.utah.edu You can reach the person managing the list at marxism-ow...@lists.econ.utah.edu When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than Re: Contents of Marxism digest... No virus found in this incoming message Checked by PC Tools AntiVirus (6.0.0.19 - 10.004.069). http://www.pctools.com/free-antivirus/ Today's Topics: 1. MASSIF [rough draft of an original poem] (Max Clark) 2. Re: Is Goldstone the tipping point for Israel? (Gary MacLennan) 3. A Serious Man; The Informant! (Louis Proyect) 4. Large Hadron Collider: Swindle of the Century? (jayroth6) 5. Re: Large Hadron Collider: Swindle of the Century? (Greg McDonald) 6. Re: Large Hadron Collider: Swindle of the Century? (Mark Lause) 7. Re: Large Hadron Collider: Swindle of the Century? (Jeff) 8. Re: Large Hadron Collider: Swindle of the Century? (Shane Mage) 9. Re: Large Hadron Collider: Swindle of the Century? (Mark Lause) 10. Re: Internationale in Irish (sobuadha...@hushmail.com) 11. Re: self determination for oppressors (Dennis Brasky) 12. Re: self determination for oppressors (Shane Mage) 13. Pension Fund Fraud: The Wall Street Journal vs. Unions (michael perelman) 14. Social protests expected in Peru for next week (Juan Fajardo) 15. Australian Socialist Alliance wins first local gov't seat (Ratbag Media) 16. Re: Australian Socialist Alliance wins first local gov't seat (Alan Bradley) 17. Re: Australian Socialist Alliance wins first local gov't seat (Ratbag Media) 18. Re: Internationale in Irish (Paddy Apling) 19. Re: self determination for oppressors (Marv Gandall) 20. Re: self determination for oppressors (Louis Proyect) 21. Re: self determination for oppressors (S. Artesian) 22. Re: self determination for oppressors (S. Artesian) 23. Re: self determination for oppressors (Marv Gandall) 24. Re: self determination for oppressors (Bhaskar Sunkara) 25. Re: self determination for oppressors (Louis Proyect) 26. Re: self determination for oppressors (Marv Gandall) ___ Marxism mailing list Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. 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] Forbes Life-Salute to the Labor Theory of Value
It's in a room like this that virtually every watch, from the humblest $100 automatic to the costliest limited-edition mechanical marvel, starts its life. The components are made by supersophisticated industrial robots--computer-guided automatic milling machines and spark-erosion fabricators. Which brings up a question: If this is so, why do watch prices range from less than the cost of a decent lunch to more than that of a comfortable suburban house?...It's fair to ask why a top-notch timepiece is so expensive. But when you multiply the number of hours it takes to hand-finish just one part--more than half a day in some cases--by the number of components in the movement and then by the number of years it takes to learn how to finish a piece of metal the size of a fly antenna, it's easier to see how the price starts to add up. It's the hundreds of hours of human skill concentrated in a cubic centimeter. http://www.forbes.com/forbes-life-magazine/2009/1102/big-time-finishing-touches-watches.html YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. 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] WSJ-Increase in Relative Surplus-value in theUS
a.. OCTOBER 23, 2009 U.S. Manufacturing Productivity Jumps By SARA MURRAY The U.S. enjoyed one of the largest increases in manufacturing productivity among 17 countries last year despite also posting the biggest drop in employment, as companies got more output from fewer workers. The employment picture has worsened this year, with unemployment reaching 9.8% in September. And the number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits rose last week, the Labor Department said Thursday in its weekly report. Both the U.S. and South Korea saw productivity rise 1.2% in 2008, the first full year of the recession, from 2007. They experienced the largest increases of the 17 countries included in the Labor Department's international manufacturing-productivity report released Thursday. Productivity, which is defined as output per hour worked, declined in 12 of the countries, with the largest drops in Singapore and Denmark. In the U.S., productivity growth in manufacturing has been above that in services for some time, said Mike Elsby, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Michigan. Put another way, manufacturing has been progressively doing more with less for 40 years. Consequently, I would expect it to continue. Over the long run, productivity is key to improved living standards because it spurs rising output, incomes and asset values. But in a down economy, improving productivity with existing workers might mean hiring fewer new ones. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125621438312901121.html YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. 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] We're Still Here, We Never Left-2nd Anniversary of RAC's Food Program
(JAI: RAC was formed as a response to the police riot in MacArthur Park on May Day 2007 that their intimidation will not deter us from working in our neighborhood for the human rights of all.) Music Line up for 2 yr Anniversary Film Screening A Place Called Chiapas Confirmed: Leonel (Poemas) FOOD Seminars on: Tuberculosis Handski DRINKS Housing Problems Angustia Aidge34 MUSIC Immigration Rights DJ Skript Healthcare Two Years! Every Sunday! Rain or Shine! We're Still Here, We Never Left You can join us every Sunday at 1:30 PM. Meet at the SE Corner of Wilshire and Parkview in MacArthur Park Revolutionary Autonomous Communities' Food Program The Revolutionary Autonomous Communities has created a food program where we are empowering ourselves and others to become self-sustainable. The Food Program is a mutual-aid project where people themselves are organizing and distributing food in their own neighborhoods. This is not charity, we do not believe that change will happen this way. This is self-empowerment, where working class neo-colonies are feeding themselves, and organizing to feed themselves. Since the first week of November, 2007, RAC has distibuted much needed grocieries to the needy workers of the area at times having served up to 200 people. You can join us every Sunday at 1:30 PM. Meet at the SE Corner of Wilshire and Parkview in MacArthur Park. RAC Mission Statement: We feel that this system is killing our people by what the corporations feed us or don't feed us. At the same time there is an abundance of healthy food that goes to waste. They would rather let food go to waste than allow the prices of food in the market to drop. Then they disconnect people (all indigenous and colonized people) from the land, which a free and independent people need to survive. They centralize power and resources in the hands of the few, this is how they keep oppressed people dependent on a white-supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist-imperialist system. RAC's Food Program is a way that we can work with supporters and other organizations to feed healthy food to our communities. We want people to connect with each other, to pick up and distribute the food amongst themselves. We will support, help connect people and to supply whatever resources we can. Through this process our goal is to connect our communities and to take them back. Our overall goal is to regain our necessary connection to the land. We need land to survive, and the land belongs to us, not the colonizer. We want to relearn how to live off the land and how to truly be self-sustainable. We're Still Here, We Never Left Revolutionary Autonomous Communities Support our Food Program. Help Pick Up Food. Help Distribute Food in Your Neighborhood. Donate to our Community Mutual-Aid Program. Get Organized! Take Back Our Communities and Take Back the Land! All Power THROUGH the People! -Revolutionary Autonomous Communities E-mail RAC: r...@lists.riseup.net To donate to the RAC Food Program:
[Marxism] Fw: Anarchism in Science
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == - Original Message - From: johnaimani To: r...@lists.riseup.net Sent: Friday, November 20, 2009 5:55 PM Subject: WSJ: Anarchism in Science a.. NOVEMBER 20, 2009 More Scientists Treat Experiments as a Team Sport Massive Collider, a Global Collaboration, Has a Bumpy Start; but Sometimes the Work of Crowds Yields Wisdom a.. By ROBERT LEE HOTZ If all goes well, researchers Friday may power up the Large Hadron Collider -- a $6 billion particle accelerator near Geneva. The atom smasher is so large that a brief status report lists 2,900 authors, so complex that scientists in 34 countries have readied 100,000 computers to process its data, and so fragile that a bird dropping a bread crust can short-circuit its power supply -- as occurred earlier this month. The Large Hadron Collider, a $6 billion particle accelerator, is so large that a recent status report lists 2,900 authors. Robert Lee Hotz says the project is a prime example of how scientists are inventing new ways to foster teamwork through the Internet and shared data bases around the world. Far from trouble-free, the proton accelerator is resuming operations after a catastrophic breakdown in 2008 that triggered a year of repairs and recriminations. Its large research teams operate on such an elaborate scale that project management has become one of science's biggest challenges. Around the world, scientists are cutting across boundaries of place, organization and technical specialty to conduct ever more ambitious experiments. Inspired by such cooperative enterprises as Linux and Wikipedia, they are encouraging creative collaborations through networks of blogs, wikis, shared databases and crowd-sourcing. Once a mostly solitary endeavor, science in the 21st century has become a team sport. Research collaborations are larger, more common, more widely cited and more influential than ever, management studies show. Measured by the number of authors on a published paper, research teams have grown steadily in size and number every year since World War II. To gauge the rise of team science, management experts at Northwestern University recently analyzed 2.1 million U.S. patents filed since 1975 and all of the 19.9 million research papers archived in the Institute for Scientific Information database. We looked at the recorded universe of all published papers across all fields, and we found that all fields were moving heavily toward teamwork, says Northwestern business sociologist Brian Uzzi. As research projects grow more complicated, management becomes a variable in every experiment. You can't do it alone, says research management analyst Maria Binz-Scharf at City College of New York. The question is how you put it all together. Researchers ready the Large Hadron Collider, which physicists hope will reveal the forces that shaped the universe. The key is bringing the people together in the first place, which has sped technological advancements that often benefited the rest of us. The ease of global business and social networking today owes much to the World Wide Web, which was designed to aid information-sharing between scientists. It was invented at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the home of the Large Hadron Collider. New online science management experiments are underway. Last year, the National Science Foundation started a $50 million project to map all plant biology research, from the level of molecules to organisms to entire ecosystems, so scientists can swoop through shared data as if they were using Google Earth. Last month, U.S. computer experts launched a $12 million federal project to create a national biomedical network called VIVOweb to encourage collaborations. Scientists are experimenting with the new technology of teamwork even in mathematics, where researchers customarily work alone. Last January, British mathematician Timothy Gowers invited volunteers to work on a problem in combinatorial research called the density Hales-Jewett theorem, which he posted at his Polymath Project blog. By brain-storming together online, two dozen volunteers solved the problem in 37 days. This way of doing research led to our finding the proof much more quickly than otherwise, says Dr. Gowers at Cambridge University. Recommended Reading a.. Northwestern University researchers analyzed millions of research papers and patents to document The Increasing Dominance of Teams in Production of Knowledge. b.. Teamwork in science increasingly spans university boundaries in most research fields, analysts reported in Multi-University Research Teams: Shifting Impact, Geography, and Stratification in Science. c.. To examine the development of creative teams
[Marxism] Fw: [DopeXResistance-L.A.] college students' resistance in CAlifornia
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == (JAI: An important contribution on the relationship between the student protests in particular and the problems presented to workers by the continuance of capitalism in general.) - Original Message - From: Zeno Storm To: dopeX Sent: Tuesday, December 01, 2009 10:11 AM Subject: [DopeXResistance-L.A.] college students' resistance reflections on the recent university occupations and the anti-budget cut movement from Advance the Struggle: http://advancethestruggle.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/occupations-spread-across-california/ Occupations Spread Across California 24 11 2009 Occupations Spread Across California Behind Every Fee Increase is a Line of Cops Fully armed, a line of 10 swat team police marched up to the picket line. Half-stunned by their presence, the crowd of supporters hesitatingly jeered the cops. In unison and on command the pigs charged forward and shoved the picketers to the ground. Throughout the day there were various refusals to accept these attacks; they ranged from hurling verbal abuse at the cops with chants like Fuck the Police, to resistance such as refusing to sit down at the urging of cops and fellow protesters, to minor incidents of exchanging blows with the pigs. Some of these bold acts of resistance were deplorable to those protestors whose go-to chants were Peaceful protest! Peaceful protest! as the pigs violently attacked students. One chant was even directed to the cops themselves: We are fighting for your kids! We are fighting for your kids! This brings into sharp relief the widespread confusion about the role of the state in the anti-budget cut movement. Let's be clear that the state, with its armed police and military forces, carries out its brute force when peoples' consciousness begins to transcend capitalism's ideological chokehold. What has been clearly demonstrated this past week is that resistance to the budget cuts is a class struggle that immediately brings us into confrontation with the force of the state. The image of a protester violently resisting police brutality has certain activists blaming the victims of the brutality, pleading with militant protesters: Why are you antagonizing them? You're only making it worse! It is an image that represents a political fact that we have been too slow to acknowledge - that education sector budget cuts are a particular point of a struggle involving the whole working class; a struggle against a crisis that presents itself to us as an increase in the overall disciplining of the working class; discipline which seeks to keep workers in line generating profits - especially when we refuse to go on as normal as everything around us falls apart. The escalation in the capitalist state's corrective violence manifested on the UCB picket line is behind other seemingly disconnected government actions: the murder of Oscar Grant, ICE raids, and the wars in the Middle East. Behind every policy is an army of police. The occupation of Wheeler Hall at UCB last Friday was a testament to the value of confrontational tactics. The common fear that a bold, confrontational action will look ridiculous and isolate the movement is proven to be out of date. Thousands of students played a spontaneously active role fighting the fee hikes and budget cuts. This action was incredibly democratic, inspiring, and educational because it materially mobilized the power of the people present at general assemblies held the day before. The occupation and the struggle to support it acted as a teachable moment by highlighting the farce that is the capitalist, liberal-democratic state. The liberal-democratic state is a tool of the capitalist class, a means of bourgeois rule that by definition we, the working class, are shut out of. The question is: how do we resist government policies from our position completely outside the official, democratic framework of the state? In the campus movement, the two primary answers to this question have been popular organizing (general assemblies) and militant resistance (occupations). What happened last week at university campuses across California was a step toward a synthesis of these two approaches. UCB's occupation was approved at a general assembly. This is a good development, but as this synthesis is reached a new contradiction presents itself: what is the role of the education sector (especially university students) in generalizing this wave of campus resistance towards including the rest of the working class? What active steps can students take to introduce the practice of militant struggle independent of ruling class structures? Student Uprisings For three days throughout California universities engaged in militant struggle.
[Marxism] REgarding the Socialist Calculation Debate (was FROP...)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == farmelantj at juno.com farmelantj at juno.com Tue Mar 31 09:25:36 PDT 2009 Well, if it is critiques of Hayek on the socialist calculation debate your interested in the following should be of interest:: Then there are some more recent writers like Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell There is also the most interesting Calculation in-Natura, from Neurath to Kantorovich Paul Cockshott at http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/standalonearticle.pdf I had first drafted my own exploration on the debate when I came across the two. Highly readable and despite, at firts dauntin economic math, enlightening to potentialities. JAI 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] Fw: [anetwork] NYC Anarchist Book Fair Saturday April 17
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == - Original Message - From: Todd Eaton toddea...@optonline.net To: anetw...@lists.riseup.net; carava...@lists.riseup.net; takedirectact...@lists.riseup.net Sent: Monday, December 21, 2009 7:30 PM Subject: [anetwork] NYC Anarchist Book Fair Saturday April 17 Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:21:21 -0500 (EST) From: murmur at stealthisemail.com Announcing the 4th Annual NYC Anarchist Book Fair: April 17, 2010 Announcing the 4th Annual NYC Anarchist Book Fair April 17, 2010 11am-7pm Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South, Manhattan New York City, a center of anarchist life, culture, struggle, and ideas for 150 years, will host its 4th annual NYC Anarchist Book Fair, a one-day exposition of books, zines, pamphlets, art, film/video, and other cultural and very political productions of the anarchist scene worldwide, on April 17, 2010, at Judson Memorial Church in Manhattan. In addition there will be two days of panels, presentations, workshops, and skillshares on April 17 and 18 to provide further opportunities to learn more and share your own experience and creativity. The goal of the book fair is to enable people to connect with one another as well as to provide broader access to the rich and varied field of anarchist ideas and practices. Now is the perfect time to be exploring those ideas and practices and bringing them into play in our communities and the world. We are calling for all anarchist publishers, zinesters, film/videographers, artists and all members of the worldwide anarchist community. Come meet local anarchists and others from all over the globe looking to connect with other anarchists. Whether you are an old anarchist with deep ties and knowledge or anarcho-curious and looking to find out more about anarchy, the book fair is for you. The 4th Annual Anarchist Book Fair is a place where the ideas, activism, ethics, creativity and history of the contemporary anarchist movement come together in an exciting weekend of community and collaboration. For more information about the NYC Anarchist Book Fair, please visit our website at http://www.anarchistbookfair.net. To contact the NYC Anarchist Book Fair Organizing Collective to volunteer, make a donation, or get more information, email us at: info[at]anarchistbookfair[dot]net. To apply for a table or to propose a presentation, panel, workshop, or skillshare, see the forms below or visit our website, http://www.anarchistbookfair.net. Diversity is important to us: we are committed to promoting voices typically underrepresented at mainstream and activist conferences alike, whether for reasons of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, income or ability. The Book Fair has adopted a policy of zero-tolerance for racist, sexist, queer-phobic, and other disrespectful behavior that works against collective liberation for all communities. Food will be available ($), plus childcare (free). Judson Memorial Church is a wheelchair accessible, smoke-free environment. # # # # # TABLES: 2010 NYC ANARCHIST BOOK FAIR APPLICATION FORM The 4th Annual NYC Anarchist Book Fair will be held Saturday, April 17 at Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South, NYC, between 11am and 7pm. Please fill in this form and email it back to us at tables[at]anarchistbookfair[dot]net by February 26, 2010, to request exhibition space at the Book Fair. We will follow up as soon as possible after that date with confirmation and payment details. 1. Name of tabler: Address: Contact name: Contact phone: Contact email: Category (check all that apply): _ Publisher _ Bookseller _ Publication _ Nonprofit _ Other (please specify) 2. Space desired: _ Full table ($75-100 sliding scale) - includes 3 chairs per table _ Half table ($40-60 sliding scale) - includes 2 chairs per table If you're representing a for-profit enterprise, and according to your ability, please consider paying at the higher end of the scale to help offset costs. 3. Describe what your exhibit will consist of: 4. Special requests (if any): 5. Would you consider donating one or more books, posters, or other items to a Silent Auction to benefit the Book Fair? If yes, please specify: 6. Do you need childcare? Tables and chairs will be provided. Tablers are expected to set up and break down their exhibits and clean up any debris in their exhibit area. Set-up hours: 8:30-10:30am. Breakdown and clean-up hours: 7:00-9:00pm. Tablers who need to have material shipped should arrange for it to be delivered directly to Judson Memorial Church. Please contact us at tables[at]anarchistbookfair[dot]net for specifics on when and how to ship your materials. For any other questions related to the 4th Annual NYC Anarchist Book Fair that are not about tabling, please visit our
[Marxism] Fw: [LAAMN] Why Nothing is Made in the USA Anymore
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == From: johnaimani To: LAAMN Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 3:38 PM Subject: Re: [LAAMN] Why Nothing is Made in the USA Anymore (JAI: The article cited below is a call for the re-invigoration (expansion) of the US manufacturing capability. While they are right about its desirability, they arwrong in its perceived ability to save capitalism. For an area with developed manufacturing capability, there is no reason for tvs, computers, cars, etc to be built elsewhere. Doing so adds a transportaion tax that is unnecessary when manufacturing is localized. Shipping costs of fuels and/or materials, of course, have to be weighed in, but do as determinants of what should be produced where. These and the other real determinants of comparative advantage (when similar products have dissimilar production costs) are not due to differences in the wages paid to the labor forces (which are the basis of the 'advantage' third world countries have over more advanced economies). An example of this is the placing of Japanese auto factories in the US after wage differentials between US and Japanese auto workers vanished. The mythical superiority of the Japanes workforce, where not due to more modern quipment, trundles down to the fact that their workforce was paid less leading to a product that could be sold for less than its close competitors. The reason that such a call for the re-invigorization of US manufacturing capacity cannot and will not 'save' capitalism is that there is already excess productive capacity even when there is no recession. See chart pf capacity utilization at http://online.wsj.com/mdc/page/2_3024-indprd-18.html As there is also unemployment. What is lacking is not the ability to do work but the will. Productive capacity and labor are squandered because what is referred to as 'effective demand' (i.e. the ability to pay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_demand) is already saturated. Keynes pointed out that this could happen where an economy finds its equilibrium (i.e. all that is produced is sold) at a place lower than at full employment: A central conclusion of Keynesian economics is that, in some situations, no strong automatic mechanism moves output and employment towards full employment levels. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics) Therefore purchasing power must be 'injected' into the system by the government so as to 1.) 'jump start' (think electro-convulsive shock to restart the heart) the economy; and, 2). be done in such a way as to not compete with private industry already in a coma because of an enriched diet of too much productive capacity. Keynes suggested burying gold and then paying people to find it: If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing. http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/ch10.htm Milton Friedman suggested tosing money out of helicopters, a proposed tactic which gained the support of Ben Bernanke: He (Bernanke) had delivered what became his famous helicopter speech the year before, in which he quoted economist Milton Friedman in suggesting that the central bank could combat deflation by printing money and dropping it from helicopters.http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2009-05-06-greenspan-bernanke-vague_N.htm Is this really any way to run an economy? JAI FDR Had It Right If the economy is going to come back, we need to buy -- and make -- American. Leo Hindery, R. Thomas Buffenbarger, Donald W. Riegle, Edward G. Rendell and Leo W. Gerard | December 21, 2009 http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=fdr_had_it_right 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] LA: Free Julio!
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == - Original Message - From: Joaquin Cienfuegos To: dope_x_resistanc...@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, April 18, 2010 12:27 PM Subject: [DopeXResistance-L.A.] Fw: Free Julio! To: Date: Sunday, April 18, 2010, 11:39 AM 4/17/2010 Sisters and brothers, Our beloved friend and comrade Julio Rodriguez was arrested today 4/17/10 in Downtown Los Angeles, while protesting against white supremacy, by the LAPD. For those of you who do not know Julio he has been involved with Communities For A Better Environment Huntington Park, Anarchist Black Cross Guadalajara, Nahuatl education in Brown communities, and most recently helped organize the April 10th event to raise funds for Oso Blanco and the children of Chiapas. He is being held on the trumped up charge of “Assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer or fireman,” which is a felony. His court date is Tuesday 4/20/10; his bail is 50,000 dollars, and he is currently in the LAPD Parker Center, located at 150 N. Los Angeles Street, Los Angeles, CA. His booking number is #2301368. Tomorrow, Sunday, 4/18/10, visiting hours are from 10-12 and 1-3 pm. I will be able to make at least two trips to visit him tomorrow and one on Monday, if anyone has a government issued ID and wants to carpool, please contact me at MapachinABC@ gmail.com . I will post the court time, address, and room number as soon as the information becomes available to me. It is crucial that as Anarchists, anti-imperialists, anti-racists, and anti-fascists we support our friend behind enemy lines, as well as his family, offering our aid in any way possible. Please circulate this message. FREE JULIO! Mapache Los Angeles Anarchist Black Cross No Yocoyani nechmaca in Yolic quena nicuiz ina cequin toni amo nihueli nimopataz Yolcahuana quena nimopataz nenqueh toni nihueli uan Tamatiliz quena niquixmatiz in taman . __,_._,___ 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] Fw: Class Struggles in Los Angeles 2010
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == - Original Message - From: johnaimani To: r...@lists.riseup.net ; rac-la_support...@yahoogroups.com ; anarchistmarxisteconom...@lists.riseup.net Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2010 1:04 PM Subject: Class Struggles in Los Angeles 2010 Class Struggles in Los Angeles 2010 May 5th, 2010 Today, before the HCED of the City Council of Los Angeles a motion made to place a 1 year moratorium on rent increases by Councilman Alarcon and amended by Councilman Herb Wesson of the 10th District to limit the moratorium to 4 months (and a possible 2 extra months) passed with a notable exception of Jan Perry of the 9th District. The motion will now go before the full City Council. On one side stood the landlords; the big and, especially, the small given their space to speak and be cheered rather wildly by the crowd of supporters. They explained what hardships such a moratorium would bring them. And in truth, their inability to raise rents would mean, everything else being equal, their inability to improve their property. In counter to this there is a law that allows the landlords to pass on the costs of such improvements to the renter (CITE?). In counter to that while it is true that the freeze would impair such landlords who do pass on increases in rent into improvements in property, the landlords would be vastly outnumbered by those who would be hurt if such a suspension of rent increase were not put into place. In addition to that, Mr Wesson advised that due to the crisis and the causing and resulting decline in the 'value' of such residential property that the coming re-assessment (for purpose of property taxes) that these landlords would be receiving a tax decrease upon their properties. This crisis is hurting almost all but it is inflicting greater wounds upon those of us who have no property, those of us who have nothing but their ability to work, those of us standing on the other side of the city council chambers, facing up to the owners who seek to further increase their livelihood at the expense of those of us who, in truth, have nothing more to give. Here is the rub. The landlords bring with them two weapons which they are in no way hesitant to use. They bring with them the ability to make political contributions for or against elected officials who stand again for office. Further, they bring an almost certainty of these very same people exercising their personal franchise to cast a vote for or against this or that politician or would-be-politician. And lastly, they are organized as they demonstrated with strategically placed in the back of the room cheerleaders who began (and clapped to the end) when one of them spoke. Arrayed against these are us. Who are we? We are many. We are many more than them. What do we have? Nothing. Nothing, that is, that we can fork over to the political cash-wagons of this or that politician. Where is our power, in this arena? Many, though not all, also have the right to vote but do so at a percentage far les than our adversaries. We must run comrades for political office who will stand up not only for those who vote for them but also those who cannot vote for them. This last we cannot, as yet, immediately do anything about. But we can do something about those who could vote for our representative, but in the past have not exercised their right to vote. These comrades know their interests which is nothing but our interest but have not been inspired by any candidate to make the efforts to not only vote but also to impress this urgency upon their friends, their relatives and, most importantly, themselves. Our candidate must be one of us. He/she must be directly responsible to us and only us just as the candidates of wealth are answerable to those who fund their campaigns. He/she ought take this position at a workingman's wage, say $40,000 which is approximately the yearly total of a 'union-waged' position paying $20/hr with all above that allocated to a fund for either political or social purposes aimed at improving the lives of the poor and workers receiving wages up to that of a 'union wage'. This candidate ust also articulate, advocate and advance the three necessaries: 1.) the right to a job for all wanting to work at a 'union-wage': 2.) The right to housing and an end to involuntary homelessness; 3.) the right to free and quality health-care; 4.) the right to free education up to the person's ability; 5.) the right to participate in real job-training so as to dramatically improve the skill levels of the unemployed, the underemployed and, those who are for now
[Marxism] Fw: [copwatchla] Interview for High School Political Science Student
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == - Original Message - From: Joaquin Cienfuegos To: johnaimani Sent: Monday, May 10, 2010 4:51 PM Subject: Re: [copwatchla] Interview for High School Political Science Student For sure compa, I need to drop off some rice at your house and money donated some time this week -- Sent from the Revolution On May 10, 2010 4:21 PM, johnaimani johnaim...@earthlink.net wrote: This is real cool. Can I post to other listserves? - Original Message - From: Joaquin Cienfuegos To: dope_x_resistanc...@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, May 10, 2010 10:30 AM Subject: [copwatchla] Interview for High School Political Science Student I did this interview for a comrade's student who is in a High School Political Science Class COP WATCH LA INTERVIEW Joaquin Cienfuegos • How long have you been involved with Cop Watch LA (CWLA)? I have been involved in Cop Watch L.A. since its inception on November 2006 • What made you want to join CWLA? Since I was 13 years old the police have harassed me, they've arrested me, and brutalized me. I saw that there was a need to organize ourselves and our community, to stop police brutality from happening, not just react to it. Especially after the cases of police murder in Los Angeles of young children Susie Lopez Pena who was 19 months and Devin Brown who was 13 years old. • What makes CWLA different than other Cop Watch organizations in California? Cop Watch L.A. is different because we are an all people of color organization, we felt it was necessary to organize our own communities, since we are the ones who are targeted by the police. We felt we needed to create our own structure/organization, vision, and model for not only fighting police terrorism, but creating a new world in general free of an oppressive state apparatus (which includes: the police, the military, the courts, even their schools). We hold a position that we don't patrol in an area we do not live in, or we're not invited to. • Why is it called the Guerilla Chapter (GC)? It is called the Guerrilla Chapter because this chapter is made up of people from different communities from throughout L.A., and because they felt it was necessary to continue to build a popular movement against the police state. Which means providing training, support, any resources, to individuals and communities who want to build this type organization and take this type of direct action. The main idea of the Guerrilla Chapter was the fact that, we would go out on scheduled patrols, but in general, we are always on patrol. If we saw the police harassing youth of color, we would stop and observe, talk to the community and encourage them to participate in observation and in being part of the organization. • Does CWLA work with any other organizations? If so which ones? We work with different organizations who are doing similar work against police brutality, in example the Black Riders Liberation Party (a new Black Panther Party Organization), the October 22nd Coalition to Stoop Police Brutality, and others. • What are some of the local, state, or national policies and laws that Cop Watch has supported or opposed? I don't think as an organization we support government policies or mobilize to change policies in particular. We are a grassroots community organization, and real change comes from the self-organization of our communities. We fight to make conditions better today but in general we feel a systemic change needs to happen. • How is CWLA structured and what is the decision making process? We are a horizontal network of communities and individuals (we are not top down). We communicate with each other first with the members of our particular chapter and then the rest of the chapters online. • How does CWLA benefit the community? CWLA is one tactic in taking back our communities from people who patrol our streets but do not live in our communities, so do not know how to relate to us, so they treat us all like criminals. It builds the fighting capacity of our community, so we won't live in fear from those who are supposed to protect and serve. It serves as a deterrent to police murder, because when we observe them with cameras, it puts them on the defensive and in a big way can hold them accountable. We are building power, not just reacting to the power structure. • How has your involvement in CLWA affected you as an individual? It has changed my life, and has taught so much about how we all have
[Marxism] Fw: Tenants Attacked and Beaten by Police at City Hall
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == - Original Message - From: wayne henderson Sent: Friday, May 21, 2010 6:09 PM Subject: Tenants Attacked and Beaten by Police at City Hall Today in City Hall tenant rights advocates and supporters were without provocation were attacked by LAPD. After a vote by the City Council to not grant tenants a rent freeze for four months, tenants began protesting their displeasure. Tenants had been promised by some councilmembers after months of organizing they we would be granted a rent moritorium. The police were summoned by the council and told to clear the council chambers. Polce began shoving tenants which included seniors, children and disabled residents. Councilmember Dennis Zine gave the order I said clear this chambers now giving the police the green light to brutalize tenants. Two members of LACAN were arrested after being attack and Geraldo Gomez and tenant rights and homeless advvocate was also arrested. This attack by the police was unwarranted and many of us, including myself were beaten and released. bilal ali 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] Dalai Lama: I am a Marxist
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == - Original Message - From: waistli...@aol.com To: marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Friday, May 21, 2010 11:18 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism] Dalai Lama: I am a Marxist Remember when an asset was brick and mortar and a labor force rather than a mathematical equation about a package of potential that has a potential to return X amount of cash flow... When public finance was new and credit was based solely on balance-sheet assets, the German-born Goldman was the first to recognize that industrial companies, such as retailers and manufacturers, could be valued on the capitalization of their earning power instead. Business Week. Review of: When Money Was in Fashion: Henry Goldman, Goldman Sachs, and the Founding of Wall Street By June Breton Fisher http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_21/b4179082983000.htm 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] Anthony Bourdain on Harvey Pekar
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I watch Bourdain often. My girlfriend and I even saw him recently at UCLA where he gave a one-man show. The episode from his show he did on the 'border' w Mexico was just about the best argument for open borders I've seen. Though he takes potshots at the former 'communist' regimes in Eastern Europe, if I judged from a non-partisan point of view, what he said about them was pretty much correct. This show may be on television and the guy may now be a 'celebrity chef' but what I dig about the show is that wherever he goes, the first thing he looks for is what are the locals eating. And he eats with ordinary people enjoying ordinary but extraordinary foods. Go where there is a line is his mantra and that is probably the best advice that any traveler to an unfamiliar spot can receive. The Cleveland episode I saw only once (and part of the way into it as a matter of fact) but the graphics were outstanding: city scenes faded into art. It would cheapethe graphics if I compared it to Leroy Neiman's abstracted sports. I would like to see it again (especially) now that the below has tipped me off to Mr Pekar. As I said, I watch the show almost every week (even re-runs which are the majority of the time) and if I spot the Cleveland episode and/or the one on the border I will post a notice in this spot. Thanks for this. J On 11:59 AM, Louis Proyect wrote: (Anthony Bourdain has a show on the travel cable channel specializing on local cuisines, more or less in line with the sort of thing that Calvin Trillin does in print.) http://anthony-bourdain-blog.travelchannel.com/read/the-original-goodbye-splendor?fbid=F15V9nfu-Ld The Original (Goodbye Splendor) A few days ago, the city of Cleveland lost a truly great and important man. And I'm not talking about LeBron James. A hundred years from now, few--other than a few sports nerds--will remember him as much more than statistics on a long ago basketball court. They will, however, remember Harvey Pekar, whose life and works will surely remain an enduring reference point of late 20th and early 21st century cultural history. Like those other giants of their eras, Twain, Whitman, Dos Passos, Kerouac, Kesey, the times he lived in cannot adequately be remembered without him. It is true enough to say that he was the poet laureate of Cleveland or to describe his American Splendor as Homeric, but those descriptives are still inadequate. He was the perfect man for his times, straddling...everything: the underground comic revolution of the 60's, the creation and transformation of the graphic novel, independent film, television, music (the classic jazz he championed relentlessly throughout his life). He was famed as a curmudgeon, a crank and a misanthrope yet found beauty and heroism where few others even bothered to look. In a post-ironic and post-Seinfeldian universe he was the last romantic--his work sincere, heartfelt, alternately dead serious and wryly affectionate. The last man standing to wonder out loud, what happened here? His continuing compulsion to wonder what's wrong with everybody else was both source of entertainment and the only position of conscience a man could take. After all, Cleveland, the city he lived in and loved, had, he reminded us, lost half it's population since the 1950s. A place whose great buildings and bridges and factories had once exemplified 20th century optimism needed its Harvey Pekar. What went wrong here? is an unpopular question with the type of city fathers and civic boosters for whom convention centers and pedestrian malls are the answers to all society's ills but Harvey captured and chronicled every day what was--and will always be--beautiful about Cleveland: the still majestic gorgeousness of what once was--the uniquely quirky charm of what remains, the delightfully offbeat attitude of those who struggle to go on in a city they love and would never dream of leaving. What a two minute overview might depict as a dying, post-industrial town, Harvey celebrated as a living, breathing, richly textured society. A place so incongruously and uniquely...seductive that I often fantasize about making my home there. Though I've made television all over the world, often in faraway and exotic places, it's the Cleveland episode that is my favorite--and one about which I am most proud. That show was unique among over a hundred others in that everything--absolutely everything--went perfectly and exactly as planned. Unlike every other episode, pretty much everything had been written (or at least planned out) in advance: the look, the American Splendor graphics, destinations, subjects and content. In the middle of
[Marxism] Anthony Bourdain's Blog
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == (JAI: At the start of the Cleveland show seen tonight there is a Hwy sign: Cleveland-Keep Left, incidental or coincidental?) The Original (Goodbye Splendor) http://anthony-bourdain-blog.travelchannel.com/read/the-original-goodbye-splendor http://anthony-bourdain-blog.travelchannel.com/?fbid=11-YwuOe2Ye The Original (Goodbye Splendor) Jul 13, 2010, 10:45 AM | Comments (179) http://anthony-bourdain-blog.travelchannel.com/read/the-original-goodbye-splendor?fbid=11-YwuOe2Ye#comments | Permalink http://anthony-bourdain-blog.travelchannel.com/read/The%20Original%20%28Goodbye%20Splendor%29 A few days ago, the city of Cleveland lost a truly great and important man. And I'm not talking about LeBron James. A hundred years from now, few--other than a few sports nerds--will remember him as much more than statistics on a long ago basketball court. They will, however, remember Harvey Pekar, whose life and works will surely remain an enduring reference point of late 20th and early 21st century cultural history. Like those other giants of their eras, Twain, Whitman, Dos Passos, Kerouac, Kesey, the times he lived in cannot adequately be remembered without him. It is true enough to say that he was the poet laureate of Cleveland or to describe his American Splendor as Homeric, but those descriptives are still inadequate. He was the perfect man for his times, straddling...everything: the underground comic revolution of the 60's, the creation and transformation of the graphic novel, independent film, television, music (the classic jazz he championed relentlessly throughout his life). He was famed as a curmudgeon, a crank and a misanthrope yet found beauty and heroism where few others even bothered to look. In a post-ironic and post-Seinfeldian universe he was the last romantic--his work sincere, heartfelt, alternately dead serious and wryly affectionate. The last man standing to wonder out loud, what happened here? His continuing compulsion to wonder what's wrong with everybody else was both source of entertainment and the only position of conscience a man could take. After all, Cleveland, the city he lived in and loved, had, he reminded us, lost half it's population since the 1950s. A place whose great buildings and bridges and factories had once exemplified 20th century optimism needed its Harvey Pekar. What went wrong here? is an unpopular question with the type of city fathers and civic boosters for whom convention centers and pedestrian malls are the answers to all society's ills but Harvey captured and chronicled every day what was--and will always be--beautiful about Cleveland: the still majestic gorgeousness of what once was--the uniquely quirky charm of what remains, the delightfully offbeat attitude of those who struggle to go on in a city they love and would never dream of leaving. What a two minute overview might depict as a dying, post-industrial town, Harvey celebrated as a living, breathing, richly textured society. A place so incongruously and uniquely...seductive that I often fantasize about making my home there. Though I've made television all over the world, often in faraway and exotic places, it's the Cleveland episode that is my favorite--and one about which I am most proud. That show was unique among over a hundred others in that everything--absolutely everything--went perfectly and exactly as planned. Unlike every other episode, pretty much everything had been written (or at least planned out) in advance: the look, the American Splendor graphics, destinations, subjects and content. In the middle of a blizzard in the dead of winter, we got exactly what we were looking for. We wanted American Splendor and that's what we got. This is due entirely to Harvey (and the incredible Joyce). Harvey may have had a reputation as cantankerous, TV-averse and difficult but from the very first minute he and his family were a delight. They opened up their lives to us in every way they could. They were exactly as they appeared in the great graphic novels and in the film--only warmer and even nicer. The look, the tone, the sound, the whole feel of the episode that followed was Harvey's. There was a moment at Sokolowski's I'll always remember as quintessential Pekar--that perfectly encapsulated the way we all felt absorbed in to PekarWorld. We'd just finished shooting a scene with Harvey, Toby Radloff and Michael Ruhlman--and Danielle, Harvey's daughter, who'd been hanging out off- camera, temporarily went missing--out of Harvey's watchful gaze. I remember looking at him, swiveling his head frantically, the very picture of parental concern and exasperation and actually SEEING comic book curlicues, exclamation
Re: [Marxism] Abstract labor (long)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Comrade, Let us see if we are talking apples or oranges. I wish to again take issue with your contention that: Value only exists under commodity production. My conception of Marx' assay of the value of a commodity is the total amount (NB: calculated in labor-time) of the c + v + s (i.e. c-capital invested in means of prod; v-capital invested in labor-power; and, s-portion of the outcome that is appropriated w/o compensation (i.e. labor-time past the point of 'necessary labor' (during which time the value of the wage is recreated)). You wrote: Marx does not want to prove that *value* exists in all modes of production That may be so, however, the above posited definition of value is timeless and belongs solely to no particular mode of production. As you wrote: the determinations of value (Wertbestimmungen) are universal Below that, you wrote: Labor-time, in socialism, has two social functions: it is needed to allocate labor efficiently to the different branches of production, and in early socialism it is also needed to allocate the finished product to the consumers (to each according to his labor). But again it does not become a quasi-material attribute of the products themselves (value). Value only exists under commodity production. This quasi-material substance, I admit, does exist as if extra-dimensions (of a societal nature) attach themselves to the object. And I agree that these only exists under commodity production. However, it appears to me, and correct me if I am wrong, that this quasi-material substance is, indeed, 'value' of a sort, i.e. exchange-value. Let me put it this way, the concept of value has 3 interpretations (manifestations) and these interpretations exist, and exist only, in separate circuits of production. These are: use value-2nd (Production) and 4th (Consumption) wherein products are valued for their facility to directly satisfy end-users needs. Value-1st Circuit (Planning (in capitalism and socialism (i.e. where the guiding principle is, as you mentioned, to each according to his labor), the factors market)) -where products are assayed to determine their labor-time content. This is compared with the expected outcome resulting from their use in production and decisions are made whether or not it is worth it to pursue the hiring of these factors. Under capitalism and in socialism, these labor-time contents are translated, transformed if you will, into currency-equivalents. Exchange-value-3rd Circuit (Distribution) wherein products produced are directed (under capitalism and in socialism) to the highest bidder. Value is calculated in labor-time; exchange-value is calculated in monetary equivalent of labor-time (MELT); and, use-value (we must, at this point, invite in the 'marginalists' as Marx gives us no measuring stick of satisfaction of need/desire) can be measured in 'utils'. It appears, that these 3 different manifestations are but different guises of the same thing existing separately in these separate circuits. Of these 3, only the 2nd (exchange-value) disappears in communism. The other two continue for as Marx said, and I repeat from my previous posting: ...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. As to your 2nd assertion that: I agree that the definition of simple abstract human labor is labor which everybody in society can do. No. Abstract Human Labor (AHL) is the labor (no matter what kind whether simple (uni-functional) or complex (multi-functional)) that is exactly average in its value-adding abilities. This is Marx' measuring stick. His means of quantifying human effort. Consider: The value of a commodity (including labor-power) is composed of the labor-time equivalent of in this case of labor-power, all of the food, clothing, shelter, care and feeding by parent(s), education, etc et al. This acquired value is translated (under capitalism and socialism) into an exchange value measured by a currency-equivalent (wage). Over time, and considering Marx' posited equality of exchange between value and wage, then the sum total of wages (if Marx' theory of the 'subsistence wage' is correct) will, on average, exactly recompense the laborer these costs-of-production of herself as a commodity, labor-power. According to this logic, a second laborer-to-be in a more skilled position might have, say, 2x the production costs of the AHL, and therefore is not only 2x as productive in his value-adding ability; but, also receives as recompense for his costs-of-production The matter I think
Re: [Marxism] FW: Comment from a Christian
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Comrades, I honestly feel that this is the most dangerous times in America since the '60's. Difference being that: This rise is occurring in a crisis of the world-wide capitalist economy whereas we waged our battles while the economy was speeding off the boost that was provided by war spending; there was room to buy off sectors of the 'middle-class' whom we had already alienated by race-based resistance and then almost-open rebellion against capitalism. Necessary resistance, carved up out of segregation's beaten bodies, but doomed to failure as the connection with the majority of workers necessary never obtained. This time the militant thrust is coming from the right not the left. They are organizing, growing, buying and practicing with guns, electing representatives, holding protests, sponsoring social events, dominating the press and the airwaves. I saw Anderson Cooper, doing the story on Shirley Sherrod (great and brave comrade that she is) apologize 5 times (presumably to Fox News), that while the edited film controversy was engineered by a right winger, the Left did shit like that too. It was amazing this reporter bending over backwards (again 5 times) to be neutral, neither Left nor Right. That's the domination of the means of communication that the Right forces have obtained And we sit arguing amongst ourselves. Comrades, these are dangerous times. We need must talk to each other, organize together, elect working class representatives whose mission is to articulate our side of the story. Here we are in a failure of capitalism and it is the very same m'f'ers who, engineered this crisis trying to save capitalism through speculation, who are dominating the discussion. We must get our ideas out and before the mass of workers. JAI On 11:59 AM, Mark Lause wrote: I agree with Manuel that Louis' Christian blogger nailed it, so to speak, but I don't share some of the assumptions here. The Right isn't doing that well because its mobilized its people any more than because of the merits of its ideas. Who does well when people aren't actually in the streets relies heavily on who occupies the corporate media platform and the Right is usually going to do better there, if only because our ideas and arguments are so reprehensible to the owners of that platform. In terms of actually mobilizing people, lobbyists can stage tea party events but these rarely mobilize many people at all. Just enough for the cameras. As to excoriating the list because of our failures to mobilize I'd bet a very sizeable portion of this list are in their 50s or older. As I've pointed out elsewhere, we knew in 1970 that the future did not belong to sixty-year olds. We need to face that factin 2010 when we're in the neighborhood ourselves. Most of us can add a great deal to enrich a movement but we can't detonate one...unless we're talking about a movement among retirees and the aged. (THAT might be well worth considering.) And as to regroupment, the builders of parties of all sorts had a long litany of disparaging names and arguments they applied to those of us who dared even hint that such an effort would have been useful back when we had mass movements in the streets. The last serious meetings I attended on this, I looked around the table and saw nothing but what could have been an SDS reunion... Good coffee, nice snacks. Utterly irrelevant in terms of social forces or even the next chapter in the political history of the American Left... Solidarity! Mark L. 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] Explusion warning to be taken serious
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Comrades, I agree w the comrade that this is some new shit and that all of the ideological baggage of the past has and continues to hinder. New thinking and new methods of working interaction with the mass of our class is necessitated. Regarding the moderator must disagree in that no attempt has been made to prevent my postings from an anarchist-Marxist perspective. Indeed, he has hosted my (long) papers on line. Moderating a listserve requires an immoderate amount of time. I know as I do so for a list reaching 1400 in LA. (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dope_x_resistancela/) In addition, the moderator has provided a huge mass of information w his postings of papers from other sources. I cannot imagine how he can review the amount of info that he sends. This heavy heavy workload has perhaps, at times, contributed to his being quick on the draw about expulsions. Yet, as we have seen, in the case of Angelus Novus (and others) he has reversed himself. Comrades, we must talk w each other and do so with the idea of not being correct but that of finding the way to making a revolution. Battles won on-line do not necessarily, and most often do not, translate to victories on the battlefield that is class war. JAI On 11:59 AM, waistli...@aol.com wrote: But is it somehow permitted to worship at the shrine of Trotsky? Grover Furr Comment Mr. Furr, you seek an impartiality and ideological content to this list you will never find. Consequently, you will be purged from this list with your next inquiry. 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] Doug Henwood debates rightwing asshole on the crisis
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On 11:59 AM, Louis Proyect wrote: http://www.therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=31Itemid=74jumival=5749 A social-democrat versus an Adam Smith libertarian. This last named because, in addition to his invisible Hand pronouncements, at two points (21:25 and 25:40) Schiff makes Smith's (Ricardo's, Marx's) case that labor is the source of all value (esp profits). Was disappointed that Henwood only made the the Keynesian/Roosevelt case for public works jobs. Further he conceded that small manufacturing won't come back to the US. Why not? The advantage that emerging nations have in this capacity is not a natural comparative one, it is the result of the fact that labor rates are 1/10 or so that of the US. There is no reason that we should not manufacture televisions, toasters, computers, etc here and put our workers back to work. Why should they be manufactured elsewhere when that implicits the added, and unnecessary, burden of transportation costs? Where was the argument for communism? Full employment. Living wages (until scarcity been overcome by the rise in productivity of an unchained workforce). Capitalist Keynesianism, no matter how well intentioned, if successful only recreates the conditions of our wage-slavery. And then, only at a cost of a down-the-road and exacerbated crisis, certain to follow, as the fiscal policies enacted come into conflict with the internal dynamics of a system bent on its own destruction. On this last see Grossman-The Law of the Accumulation... or Marx-Capital Vol3 Chap XV, Sec 3. JAI 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] Economics Paper featuring RAC-LA Published in Theory in Action
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == (JAI: Note that the members of the RAC-LA Food Program (examined in the paper) will celebrate our 3rd anniversary of 'serving the people' on Nov 14. I can forward pdf (or Word doc) to any one who wants to read the full paper.) - Original Message - *From:* Theory in Action Journal of TSI mailto:jour...@transformativestudies.org *To:* johnaim...@earthlink.net mailto:johnaim...@earthlink.net *Sent:* Thursday, October 28, 2010 7:40 AM *Subject:* Your manuscript publication with Theory in Action Dear John, Once more, congratulations for the publication of your manuscript Marx's examination of the circular movements of capital and the economic contradictions between anarchists, socialists and communists or The ordering of production in the coming socialist commonwealth. It is scheduled to appear in the online and print versions of Vol. 3, No. 4 of Theory in /Action/, October, 2010. http://www.transformativestudies.org/publications/theory-in-action-the-journal-of-tsi/ Feel free to share your complimentary PDF version of your manuscript attached to this email with family, friends, and colleagues. It has been a pleasure working with you and we hope you will consider us for your future works. Best Wishes, The Editorial Collective Theory in Action-The Journal of the Transformative Studies Institute 39-09 Berdan Avenue Fair Lawn, NJ 07410 USA www.transformativestudies.org http://www.transformativestudies.org/ Putting Theory into /Action/ *Marx' examination of the circular movements of capital and the economic contradictions between anarchists, socialists and communists* *or* *The ordering of production in the coming socialist commonwealth * * ABSTRACT* An opening towards a discussion on rapprochement between anarchists, socialists and communists framed within an economic analysis of the features of the coming socialist commonwealth as counter-posed to the features of the circuits of capitalist production as described by Marx in Capital Vol 2; and, as demonstrated, in incubus, in the serve the people work of RAC-LA. * ASSERTIONS * There can exist no political equality where there is not economic equality. RAC-LA's Food Program is an experiment in pure anarchic-communism.* * Marx' examinations of the circuits of production can be extended into a fourth circuit, that of Consumption. There exists a conservation of value throughout the circuits of production. * * ** Capitalist commodity production will be replaced by socialist commodity production with society itself as the appropriator of the surplus. The members of the socialist commonwealth, with freedom of choice, will pre-order their chosen commodities thereby bringing production and distribution into accordance. Given the pre-orders of the members of the commonwealth; and, given an assay of the existing productive forces; the prices of goods follow from their costs-of-production + the value-added of the planned surplus. Each member of the commonwealth ought receive equal entitlement to shares of the commonly produced goods and services. An after-market akin to a socialist e-bay will account for changes in desires subsequent to the ordering process as members trade certificates for goods and/or services. Hiring (and firing) decisions ought be made by the workforces. Frederick Taylor's trial and error procedure, similar to Walras' /tatonnement /process, provides the mechanism by which a socialist commonwealth can calculate the value of the factors of production and the Austrian economic problem is solved. P26. Oskar Lange's commodification of leisure-time provides a possible mechanism for the amelioration of economic antagonisms on the left as well as the preservation of incentive in the coming socialist commonwealth . Part of the necessaries required for the social needs (the Social Surplus) will consist of occupation fees from labor in the form of job-assessments or payments by the worker for his right to work, her choice of occupation. Part of the necessaries required for the social needs will consist of the portion of the total commodity-value formerly accruing to the capitalist as surplus-value and part will come from an expansion of the productive capacities. The commonwealth will effect a shift from a pricing schedule based upon prices-of production to a schedule based upon value (embodied abstract human labor.) And, the products of labor-intensive industries would experience a marked increase in consumer price. The transition from socialism to communism will be a gradual (really, a graduated) process. *Appendix* The examination of
[Marxism] Henryk Grossman’s” Law of the Accu mulation of Capital” and the Internet
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Henryk Grossman’s ” Law of the Accumulation of Capital” and the Internet ...what is the impact of the accumulation of capital on the process of reproduction? Can the equilibrium which is presupposed be sustained in the long run or do new moments emerge in the course of accumulation which have a disruptive effect on it? Henryk Grossman Law of the Accumulation and Breakdown of the Capitalist System. 1929. P67. http://www.marxists.org/archive/grossman/1929/breakdown/ch02.htm Grossman's supposition (following Marx' analysis in Capital Vl 3 Chapter XV Section 3) asserts that in advanced capitalism a disjunction occurs when the growth of the constant capital relative to the surplus produced by it (s/C) leads to a falling rate of profit and an eventual breakdown of the system as the amount of surplus produced in not sufficient to meet the investment needs. Excerpt from Business Week's article Will Video Kill the Internet, Too. 12-6-2010. P43-4 http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_50/b4207043617708.htm (Curiously, the on-line version is entitled: Will Netflix Kill the Internet?) ATT (T http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?symbol=T) and Comcast (CMCSA http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?symbol=CMCSA) will see Internet revenues grow by 5 percent a year through 2020. Meanwhile, traffic will surge by 27 percent annually, and carriers will need to increase their investments by 20 percent a year to keep up with demand. By this math, the carriers' business models break down in 2014, when the total investment needed exceeds revenue growth. In addition, there is this interesting tidbit on the second page on-oline P44 print): Sanford C. Bernstein (AB http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?symbol=AB) analyst Craig Moffett has studied the issue from the perspective of the wireless carriers. As traffic soars, he expects the revenue per megabit to fall from 43 cents today to just 2 cents in 2014.” http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_50/b4207043617708_page_2.htm Here, the curious business propensity (think oil companies) to reckon profit on the ratio of return from the circulating capital. In this case, the 'information packages' (i.e. movies, downloads, etc) are seen effectively as the circulating capital (v). This all akin to a capitalist commodity merchant reckoning his rate of profit (P') by his margin on each good sold. 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-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on e-democracy
At 09:37 PM 5/24/2009, Jim Farmelant wrote: Paul Cockshott on how the Soviet economist and mathematician, Leonid Kantorovich (who was the only Soviet economist to ever win the Nobel Prize in economics), used his work on linear programming to answer the arguments of economists like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek who argued that rational socialist economic planning was, even in theory, impossible. Calculation in-Natura, from Neurath to Kantorovich http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/standa lonearticle.pdfhttp://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/standalonearticle.pdf The http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/standa was a bad link. The article (in HTML) can be found at http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:SpB5zxZviEEJ:www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/standalonearticle.pdf+%22Calculation+in-Natura,+from+Neurath+to+Kantorovich%22cd=1hl=enct=clnkgl=us In pdf at http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/standalonearticle.pdf What is interesting (to me) is that I just started reading Colectivist Economic Planning (edited and with a contribution by Hayek). A book I had sought for a while (copies from the library did not avail themselves to the type of reading that I do (underlining and in situ note taking). Copies on the internet invariably cost more than $100. However, it just became available vai the von Mises Institute's republication for $15 plus shipping. Hated to give them the money but had to have that book. http://mises.org/econcalc.asp This is most welcome. JAI - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain rdum...@autodidactproject.org To: marxistphiloso...@yahoogroups.com; marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Tuesday, September 22, 2009 9:46 AM Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on e-democracy Again, no endorsement, esp. not of any Maoist or Stalinist influences to be found here, but this is material of some interest: E-Democracy http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/leadershipconcepts.pdfLeadership Concepts and Democracy A draft book chapter to be translated into Spanish. It deals with the history of ideas of leadership in the socialist movement from the critical standpoint of participatory democracy. http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/mettegFinal.docELECTRONIC PLEBISCITES Paper with Karen Renaud, We suggest a technology and set of procedures by which a major democratic de?cit of modern society can be addressed. The mechanism, whilst it makes limited use of cryptographic techniques in the background, is based around objects and procedures with which voters are currently familiar. We believe that systems like this hold considerable potential for the extension of democratic participation and control. http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/votingmachines.pdfElectronic and Athenian Democracy, paper given at the Workshop on e-Voting and e-Government in the UK, Feb 2006. http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/electronicvotesspanish1.pptLos Plebiscitos electrónicos a talk based on work by Karen Renaud and I that was given at a seminar in Barquisimeto in Venezuala in 2007. http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/%7Ewpc/reports/electronicvotes.pptEnglish version At 11:39 AM 9/22/2009, Ralph Dumain wrote: Not that I endorse an exclusive concentration on economic calculation, but Cockschott's overall perspective can be found here: 21st Century Marxism http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/21stCenturyMarxism.htmhttp://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/21stCenturyMarxism.htm At 11:02 AM 9/22/2009, Ralph Dumain wrote: Some time ago Jim gave us this reference. If you are interested in Cockshott's analysis of the socialist calculation debate, high-tech socialism e-democracy more generally, see his web site: http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/http:// www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/ At 09:37 PM 5/24/2009, Jim Farmelant wrote: Paul Cockshott on how the Soviet economist and mathematician, Leonid Kantorovich (who was the only Soviet economist to ever win the Nobel Prize in economics), used his work on linear programming to answer the arguments of economists like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek who argued that rational socialist economic planning was, even in theory, impossible. Calculation in-Natura, from Neurath to Kantorovich http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/standa lonearticle.pdfhttp://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc/reports/standalonearticle.pdf ___ 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
