Re: [Marxism] Unionization rate drops to 6.9% in private sector
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Mark L. wrote: We're dealing with something very, very different where consciousness requires less and less of a material check. I'm not sure what exactly this means..., but following on what Richard was saying about the increased rate of exploitation in the, what I would prefer to call, classical capitalist countries (rather than advanced, imperialist cores, etc., which gives the idea that the form of the other countries is less determined by capital, so “underdeveloped” that they actually need more capitalism, which is so progressive these days), I think the central material determination of the break-up of trade-unionization is somewhere else. In other words, the rate of exploitation as I see it has been increasing globally, this we may say initiated in the classical countries but took a global character –as it must- due to a deeper process underlying it which is the fragmentation of the productive powers (or productive subjectivities) of the working class as a whole, or what Marx called the collective labourer. This is a consequence of the development of large-scale industry itself, which particularly since the 70’s (though this process which Mandel called the 3rd technological revolution had started before) accelerated concurrently with the process of over-accumulation of capital. The absolute contradiction of capital is its tendency toward the socialization of *private* labor, so that as much as much as this process needed to homogenize the working class through de-skilling it also had to do it by determining the individual worker as the appendage of machinery, who as the personifications of labor-power have now to reproduce themselves with a differentiated specificity. The ideologies of racism, xenophobia, nationalism, etc. are the manifestations which are needed to perpetuate this fragmentation, and this is why the struggle of undocumented immigrants, not just in the US but as far as Argentina, is central to a reconstitution of workers political power in order to force capital to reproduce the labor-power of the working class on the same universal conditions, and which is therefore to go against the current national form of accumulation and international division of labor. In that respect, such theories of the aristocracy of labor are unhelpful, to say the least. I would write more but I have to go now. Luckily, most of the things I wanted to say (which are not originally mine of course) can be found in these two articles: 'Transformations in capital accumulation: From the national production of an universal labourer to the international fragmentation of the productive subjectivity of the working-class’ by Juan Iñigo Carrera www.iwgvt.org/files/03Inigo.doc ‘The New International Division of Labour and the Differentiated Evolution of Poverty at World Scale’ by Nicolas Grinberg http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/research/events/conferences/povertyandcapital/grinberg.pdf 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] Venezuela: The imperialist threat - PSUV Red Book
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The day I call a government which makes a priority of paying the Paris club billions because it’s the only way to preserve the scrap industry -which is an actual barrier to the development of the productive forces needed to empower workers- while letting children starve to death (as in the province of Salta in Argentina) and forcing thousands to forced labor, which maintains the value of labor-power at a level lower than that left by the last military dictatorship by supporting itself on a putrefact bureaucratic trade-union led by an accomplice of that same military dictatorship and with a looong history of reactionary opportunism (notwithstanding the characterization of this leader as a “progressive element” by some in this list) so that it facilitates the murder of young militants (like Mariano Ferreyra) by protecting its ‘mastermind’, which promotes the false criminalization of the laid-off workers who are struggling for the cause for which this young militant died and are being persecuted by the police and the (in)justice system, which allies itself with other truly bourgeois revolutionary governments to form the ONE Latin-American nation which sends the police and the gendarmes to squash workers who take over abandoned factories as in the case of the struggle against Kraft foods (Argentina) and the workers of Flasko (Brasil) serving (in a plate!) the interests of capital (and no small, or Latin-American, capital at that), which supposedly “combats” these problems of the flexibilization of labor with more of that flexibilization, which positively facilitates and covers up for the murdering of oppressed indigenous peoples (as the Tobas in Argentina), which complains about the dangers of the right when it seals succulent business deals with its top people behind the curtains, oh! And which in all solidarity sends troops to Haiti to help “manage” the situation, etc. etc. etc. etc. (and I mean ETCETERA: http://cuandolacabezanoquiere.blogspot.com/2010/10/letania-k-este-gobierno-no-reprime.html) …the day I call such governments ‘progressive’ because I can’t see further than the superficial movements of so-called redistribution policies while obfuscating the necessary tasks for the struggle of workers, i.e. the tasks to combat this REGRESSIVE form of capital accumulation, and like a petty radical democrat scream “IMPERIALISM” at everything I don’t like to then ideologically (and I mean here ideology of the petty-bourgeois kind) invert the relations of production (capital) for their outward appearance, puffing and puffing about geopolitics and the power battles between “NATIONS” (as if they were some sort of self-subsistent things) while perpetuating the ideological inversion which only serves to break the struggle of workers and make them compete against each other,…so that there is no possible way of understanding the necessity of one’s political as determined by this social-being (capital),… that’s the day I’ll forget about conscious political action, like that the old Karl defended. Till that day though, it’d be interesting to see if anyone has to say something about how that political action has to be based on an objective understanding of the determinations of capital. So far... (p.s. am I being obnoxious?, very well, I'm being obnoxious!) 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] Apologies to the OPE-L list
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == In a post on November 1st last year, in one of my typical obnoxious ramblings, I said: “…quite a number of “Marxist academics”, like Jerry Levy who did not let Juan Iñigo Carrera (JIC) participate in this ultra-elite ‘Marxist economics’ (would that Marx had been an economist…) list OPE-L…” There were a couple of reasons for that, none of them an excuse. First, I had just read the threads from the old spoon lists where JIC had some arguments with Jerry Levy and others and it appeared to me that JIC had been excluded from OPE-L because of his “contentious” views. I was under the impression that the moderation of OPE-L was similar to Marxmail but it’s now been explained to me that this is not how OPE-L works and that it does not forbid “controversy” by a moderator, but that Jerry Levy is simply it’s coordinator. So, I would like to take that back and apologize, especially since that happened 15 years ago and is a problem long past. I got carried away… Secondly and on a more general note, I was exasperated by the fact that some of the accusations against JIC in those threads were little more than a vulgar complaint that JIC was just trying to emulate the Marx of the Grundrisse, which are still quite frequent. I, for one, have no anal obsession with Marx scholasticism, but it’s rather ridiculous that one should find in this list, more often than not, that just because something sounds similar or “orthodox” like Marx, it has no current relevance, no empirical support, or some such shibboleth. The question is not whether Marx said it, but whether whatever he said is an objective process that one can explain critically, and I’ve yet to see a ‘critical’ (i.e. objectively conceived) argument backed-up empirically to justify these dismissals. Anyway, don’t wanna make this too long, but if I may provide a very straightforward example of what I mean, here’s a translation of one of JIC’s writings http://www.cicpint.org/CICP%20English/Libros/Conocer/conocer.html -only the first 3 chapters are ready- regarding a critical approach to Marx’s work, which I had explained in more detail in this post http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2010-December/073510.html in new years' eve -so probably nobody saw it. I would very much like to hear your thoughts about it. 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] Knowing capital today, Using Capital critically
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I’m (very slowly) translating a book (‘Knowing capital today, Using Capital critically’) by Juan Iñigo Carrera. Juan worked as a public accountant for many years, and teaches in the University of Buenos Aires. Below is the first part of the Preface (which I have yet to finish). The aim of the book, as I see it, is to delve into the question of what the role of Capital (which Marx intended to be “the first scientific victory of the working class”) is as a tool to produce a scientific consciousness wherein lies the revolutionary subjectivity of the working class. For now, only the first three chapters are finished. Here you will find a very direct argument which exposes the ideological character of the empty abstractions of neoclassical economics, among others; some of which have been and are still being adopted uncritically by many Marxists, no less than to dogmatically dismiss the real determinations of the value-form of the material product of labor. More generally, it is a very straightforward yet lucid illustration of how economic theory has to eliminate any trace of human consciousness as grounded in its social being, and this in order to impose the ideological inversion of an abstract consciousness with no other determinations than the naturalized whims of a free will, which lacking an objective knowledge of the conditions from which its freedom arises is condemned to remain an illusory chimera. Personally, what I found most valuable is that Juan does not lecture the reader on Capital, or the various interpretations of it. As Juan explains further in the book, the point is not to take any of Marx’s assertions as postulates or assumptions, not to interpret Marx, but rather to *use* Capital as a tool to develop one’s own critical appropriation of their general social relation, capital. To do this one must start with no assumptions other than the fact that one needs to know what capital is, a necessity which capital begets by itself. In this sense, Juan’s book is not a reading of Capital, but his own critical investigation in order to account for this necessity, which, of course, uses Capital to help his and hopefully one’s own investigation. Capital is thus a key political tool in the development of the organization of the working class, for only an action which can account for its own necessity can be a truly scientific basis upon which individuals may build a society of freely, that is, consciously, associated producers. With no further ado, here is the link to the webpage where you can download the chapters in .pdf format: http://www.cicpint.org/CICP%20English/Libros/Conocer/conocer.html You can also find other essays in English in the website, for example, this is Juan’s take on what happened during the political crisis in Argentina in 2001 which appeared in the journal Historical Materialism: http://www.cicpint.org/CICP%20English/Investigaci%C3%B3n/JIC/Argentina/Argentina.html Any corrections or suggestions to my English will be appreciated. Preface The question To read Capital? The mere question evokes difficulty, complexity, contradiction. Was there not someone who began writing a book “to read Capital”, boasting that he had not read it wholly, and closed the vicious circle writing the prologue for an edition of Capital where he imperatively recommended to begin by skipping the whole first section of the work? Proposals of abridged readings rain down on us before the complexity of the question. There is the author who proposes that we “read Capital politically”. The one who considers his reading a “philosopher’s reading”. The one who proposes to leave out anything that does not concern “ethical foundations”. Of course, there is no scarcity of authors who read it as a text of “political economy”. There is even the author who proposes to read it with the indiscreetness implied by not having a concrete question other than “seeing what is in there”. But, are not politics, economics, ethics, philosophy, all of them social forms, social relations, which unity cannot be split without mutilating the content of each one of them? Is it then a question of interpreting the text in its unity? Will the solution perhaps be to face the reading with the intention of interpreting the world by interpreting Marx? This does not seem to be a clear way out of the problem. In the first place, there are those who threaten us with inevitably falling into “the most vulgar interpretation of the theory of value, which directly contradicts Marx’s theory” if we literally abide by the text written by him. But, above all, how do we overlook the absolute contradiction set out by Marx between interpreting the world and changing it? If we refuse to interpret the text, how are we to
[Marxism] The oppressed have no idea, Argentina
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Yesterday both the Federal and Metropolitan police (the first one dependent on the national government, the latter on the provincial one) forcefully “evicted”, (that is, shot the shit out of,) people who were taking shelter in Villa Soldati in the province of Buenos Aires. This resulted in the deaths of a Paraguayan 24 year old man and a Bolivian 28 year old woman, Bernardo Salgueiro, and Rosemary Puña. The people who were “evicted” were in their majority non-nationals, and the police as you might expect, took note, very like “Patria Grande” style. This, however, is only another link in the chain. About a month after the murder of Mariano Ferreyra, the 23 year old militant of the Partido Obrero, (whose fight against the trade-union bureaucracy, as you might recall from our Izquierda Nacional marxmailer, “we MUST protest, [since it] is the perverted way some self-appointed Leftists tried to use this crime in Argentina against the government and the best elements in the union movement”. Best elements who used to lead the Juventud Sindical Peronista (Moyano), which helped the dictatorship in “neutralizing” those terrorist subversives, or who profit millions together with the leader of the anti-national right Macri (Pedraza) with the tercerization business…) in the province of Formosa the gendarmes went to control the protest of the Toba indigenous people of “La Primavera” community, who after being displaced, that is, ripped off their lands, were blocking the road. Just like Miss President Courage, companera Cristina Fernandez de Krichner promised (“Pagaria mil costos politicos antes de reprimir argentinos”,= I would pay a thousand political costs before repressing Argentines) brutally repressed and TWO people died (of course, like the people in Villa Soldati, they were not Argentines, or people...) The QOM peoples have been demonstrating for years blocking the highways since the governmental apparatus is implementing a vicious home-burning “eviction”. Here’s companera Cristina with Gildo Insfran, the governor of the Formosa province, who did not dare cover this up but: justified it, companera Cristina, of course, taking cue from him, didn’t say nothing: http://archivo.elcomercial.com.ar/archivo-on-line/2008/FEBRERO/27-02-08/images/pag-01.jpg Here’s a good report from Indimedia http://argentina.indymedia.org/news/2010/11/762094.php Another link in the chain of objective assaults of the ruling class (in both its progressive nationalist and neoliberal garb) in the interests of capital, not that that matters when the oppressed must still wait to learn from the real Marxists what their real interests are. Anyway, just thought I the “marxist” ought to give the real-life actually existing MARXISTS a hint or two on the contradictory and complex process of the bourgeois construction of the absolute ONE NATION, impudent child I am… I hope I haven’t ruined Nestor’s opportunity to break this news, I am sure he’s writing an objective report which addresses the social conditions instead of throwing empty labels based on apologetic abstractions, as I’m posting this. 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] So Much for Left Wing “Solidarity” in South America
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Vamos Kosloff todavía! :) 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 86, Issue 15
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I'm not related to Nikolas, I don't think...Kosloff, Kozlov, Koslov, etc. is pretty common in Russia, some of my Russian friends say it's something like Smith. At any rate, the name derives from kozel, which means 'goat', which, for Russians, makes your name funny. But it does seem we are political relatives, Nikolas and I... :) (I've posted some stuff on the Kirchners here and there,http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2010-October/071366.html) 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] Now is not the time to be a marxist, on Kirchner
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Just found this video (of April this year) of the Minister of Labor, Carlos Tomada, (of April this year) sitting right next to Pedraza (if you recall, the devil incarnate who manages the politics and hooligans of the Roca railroad line, according to Gorojovsky himself) in a meeting of the Union Ferroviaria http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6whrw72cwYUfeature=share explicitly supporting its “patria grande” politics involving, for example, the millions of dollars that Pedraza, Moyano and Macri –the leader of the opposition movement PRO- (something of a mixture of Rand Paul and Fred Thompson) siphon out of the “tercerizacion” business, (see here http://www.razonyrevolucion.org/ryr/index.php?option=com_contentview=articlecatid=186%3Ael-aromo-nd57-id=1192%3Alas-balas-del-patron-ique-es-la-burocracia-del-ferrocarrilItemid=120) According to Gorojovsky, the devil incarnate (Pedraza) has a blood bond with the dissident peronist Eduardo Duhalde who the Kirchner movement wants to blame for the murder of Mariano Ferreyra by presenting a document of a meeting that they had…last year! Well, since the steadfastness in accusing the ultra-leftist sectarians like Petroni, who has presented a judicial cause against Moyano for his ties with the Triple A and CNU (yes, the very groups that, if I heard correctly, tried to kill Gorojovsky too), of being liars or distorters, is of lightning speed “en estos pagos” (around here), I wonder if there are going to be any explanations for this. Then again, making the revolutionary bourgeoisie carry their national revolutionary tasks armed with the theories of Trotsky…surely no joke. 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] Kirchner and prospects in Argentina
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I just translated this note by a friend (below). However, if you can read Spanish (or suffer Google translator, it's not that bad actually) I encourage you to go over the whole, or most, of the last paper 'el aromo' which was dedicated to the issues of the bureaucracy, the 'social' conditions which support it and the inanities of the intellectuals who support the government -case in point, Laclau, Zizek's compinche, thinks Nestor Kirchner was a Gramscian!- among many other things. http://www.razonyrevolucion.org/ryr/index.php?option=com_contentview=categorylayout=blogid=186Itemid=114 I know comrades would not fall for the senselessness and distortions of Gorojovsky, but it's always good to take double precautions. The intestate. The death of Néstor Kirchner and the prospects of Argentina politics By Fabián Harari I thought it was a joke. I had not heard anything in the morning news, so I demurely washed my hands of the matter. When I turned the TV on again, that joke had become a reality: he was actually gone. Just like that, abruptly, unappealably. Without the preambles and agonies which usually prepare the mood and give time for secret meetings. Nobody believed he was going to die and nobody had prepared for it. For three days, it was unclear what was to follow. The state administration, the parliamentary fracases and the negotiations around campaigns, posts and internal elections remained frozen. The scale of the stupor is evidence of the quantity and quality of the relations that this man tethered around his person. There is no doubt about it: the bourgeoisie have lost their best cadre (in itself, this also is evidence of its state…). It is not strange that it is mourning and that it will take some time to rearrange the pieces. The virtues of Bonaparte Néstor Kirchner imprints his seal on a decade which, paradoxically, represents the awakening of the Argentine working class, after prolonged lethargy. With enough strength to forge alliances, impel and intervene in a political crisis, provoke an insurrection and win a number of social victories, the working class succeeded in detaining its enemy’s advance. However, due to subjective weaknesses, it did not manage to impose its own solution. This scene sets a draw. After a series of vacillations (with those who tried out for presidents: Puerta, Rodríguez Saá, Duhalde [1]), the bourgeoisie attempts to break this tie through a repressive maneuver (the repression of Puente Pueyrredón), but it must rapidly retreat, yield to the demands and rearm itself for something different. Duhalde himself starts this abrupt turnabout by giving 2 million social plans for jobs (“Planes Trabajar”) and, as a good soldier of its class, he resigns in advance to prevent the deepening of the crisis. That “something different” is Kirchner. The democratic resolution of 2003 had not begun well. The candidate of bonapartism had not only lost the elections but had only achieved a meager 22%. Adding insult to injury, the opponent (recall: Menem) refrained from going to a second-round election, speculating on a further sharpening of the crisis. As Néstor himself used to reminisce, “I had more unemployed people than votes”. If he wanted to carry forward his presidency, he had to put the pieces together in a special way. And so he did it. He performed as a real referee (who is never neutral). He froze up the public services fares to prevent an outbreak of protest. He offered resources to “piquetero” organizations and won quite a few of them to his side (MTD, Barrios de Pie). He rolled back the rip-offs of the project of cooperativism to a lot of organizations. Through transfers and concessions, he allowed for the expansion of the CGT and the enthronement of Hugo Moyano (the current leader of the CGT) as its leader, thereby creating a political base of workers in the formal sector with higher wages. He seduced the disobedient petty-bourgeoisie, separating it from the left through the politics of Human Rights, and taking in the way Mothers, Grandmothers and Sons and Daughters [this refers to organizations who seek justice for the victims of the military dictatorship of the 70’s]. But he also delivered to the right: inefficient industries and public services companies received subsidies. This added to the precarious conditions of employment and, after 2005, the inflation which started to eat away at wages. As far as political issues, he swept away anything that was in front of him. Not only did he keep a part of the “piquetero” movement, but he also built up the hopes of more than one leftist party (e.g. the communist party), he dissolved duhaldism, and broke the radicalismo movement into pieces. Of course, none of this could have been done without the
[Marxism] CO2 rising – the science of global w arming
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == You realize this makes the case for a social revolution in Argentina, Uruguay AND the US all the more urgent :) 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] CO2 rising - the science of global warming
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I actually kind of agree with you there Carrol. The left tends to make take the socialism or barbarism as a pretty catholic nostrum.But, I was just speaking figuratively, we eat a shitload of meat in Argentina...watch out for the smiley faces :-) 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] Good take-down of John Holloway's latest book
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I'm actually in the process of translating an article from some friends who are specialists in the study of labor processes, which is a constructive critique of Braverman's ‘Labor and Monopoly Capital’. The merits of Braverman’s work are based largely on what he borrowed from the Grundrisse. I think I should have it ready in a few weeks, and perhaps what I’m saying will be clearer. 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] Good take-down of John Holloway's latest book
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == @Carrol, By saying that the critique of political economy is a political work, I'm not saying it is aboutpolitics, it is a book to 'do' politics, contra the statement right above by Angelus [sic]. 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] Murder of PO Activists
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Anthony, I appreciate your comment highly, as high as the sky. However, Les has been a saint in all of this,...and Louis, sort of a dark angel... 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] Now is not the time to be a marxist, on Kirchner
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I recently participated in a thread, with friends whose names is not necessary to disclose, on Kirchner. It made me pour out a number of things which I think are useful. I have other comments on Gorojovsky’s turgid lies and cavillations, but I don’t have time to put them up now. But, just to counter the “now is not the time to talk about Kirchner’s “mistakes””, I wanted to post this. There was also another Argentine friend who was in the discussion, who I call ‘G’. LK: The question is, where did that change come from? Kirchner's personal qualities? Or the masses of people who came out in 2001 to put a stop to the counterrevolution of the 80's and 90's -as a reaction to the world revolutionary wave from the late 60's to the mid 70's? And in that case, where did those masses come from but, just as in Venezuela and other countries in Latin America, from their social being as members of the excess layers of population (relative surplus population, to use Marx's term) expulsed during these decades by capital itself? And since then, what has the Kirchner couple, who worked with the ex-president Carlos Menem -one of the prime agents of said counterrevolution- represented? A continuation of this process, or rather, something more like its Peronist containment, a perpetuation of the form of accumulation in Argentina and other countries which condemns the masses to toil and suffering for a lost cause, i.e. developmentalism, while particularly imposing on the workers the same kind of labor flexibilization which expresses how this form of accumulation preconditions the trend for the working class to consistently sell its labor-power below its value? Which, as a corollary, means a continuation of the Peronist, under its various strands, union busting and repression of workers struggles as it was clearly manifested when the workers of the Kraft company were confronted with bullets by gendarmes. The way I see it what the Kirchners represent is a recuperation on very feeble bases, such as the sporadic rise in soy prices, and now that Kirchner is dead there will be an intense internal struggle, particularly involving the union bureaucracy which the Kirchners have had to ally with very strongly, which will determine whether this containment will take a more repressive form. This week also had the death of a 23 year-old militant of the Partido Obrero, Mariano Ferreyra, at the hands of the railroad union hooligans. With the conditions set by the world crisis, which the government connivingly claims it has “superseded”, this will be hardly a hopeful prospect…in that case, the Kirchners’ torch will have been nothing but a prelude to a vicious attack of the ruling classes. G: I completely agree with Leonardo. Just a week ago, a young, 23-year-old Trotskyist, Mariano Ferreyra was murdered by a squad of the railway union bureaucracy and the Peronist Party. This bureaucracy is beyond any doubt fostered by the Kirchners (especially by the late Néstor). Scores of Kirchnerites slandered and viciously attacked the memory of Mariano, a revolutionary student who was fighting against labor casualisation in the railways. What a difference with Néstor Kirchner, someone who had made a fortune out of swindling poor people as a lawyer with the aid of the Military during the last dictatorship, and someone that secured bourgeois rule after the crisis of 2001. Néstor Kirchner's talk on human rights was a sham, as it was shown by the way his government did all in its power to secure impunity for those who kidnapped Julio López, a witness against the military butchers. I could go on and on telling more about him like this, but all I want to say is that Mariano Ferreyra is one of our martyrs; while we should definitely count Néstor Kirchner as someone from the ruling class. With respect, greetings from Argentina G: When the Kirchners supposedly took an anti-IMF stance, they didn't repudiate and cancel paying the foreign debt. Quite the contrary, they paid it off in full to different international financial institutions! They said that in this way they would avoid any further conditioning by these institutions... However, Argentina is indeed heavily burdened -more than before the Kirchners, not less- since their motto is a sovereign return to the international capital markets. As a result, by now while soy prices are still soaring, as Leonardo says, they don't need to resort to structural adjustment plans as would be needed by such payoffs [my add: but Cristina has been looking for loans desperately, as her invitation of and meeting with Hillary Clinton shows]. What they do instead is keeping a strongly devalued currency (unlike the 1990s, when the Argentinean peso was pegged to the US dollar) to boost exports, while keeping
[Marxism] (no subject)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis wrote: And I’m not saying this out of an ultra-leftist desire to criticize abstractly. As Iñigo says, quoting Marx himself, the consciousness and will of workers are ruled as attributes of capital, the axis of conscious political action (as embodied in the critique of political economy) lies in the potentiality inherent in the specific historical conditions established by capital to give rise to a scientific consciousness which advances in its freedom by recognizing itself as alienated in capital. Concretely, it is about acting within capital as representatives of its own inherent revolutionary tendencies, vis a vis, its own supersession, which lies most concretely in “the mutation of the productive attributes of the collective labourer according to a determinate tendency: the individual organs of the latter eventually become *universal productive subjects*. This is the inner material determination underlying the political revolutionary subjectivity of the proletariat”, [‘The system of machinery and the social and material determinations of revolutionary subjectivity in the Grundrisse and Capital’, Guido Starosta.] Gibberish. Thanks for reading! By the way, Starosta is working on a book on this topic, who knows?, perhaps it will even have a chapter 11, like the Grundrisse... :) 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] Now is not the time to be a marxist, on Kirchner
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == And now the UOCRA hooligans, convoked by the secretary general of the CGT of Rio Gallegos (where Kirchner was from), has celebrated Kirchner's funeral vigil by attacking local members of the PO. Miguel del Pla, a long standing activist from the PO in the region was hit with sticks and kicked on the head http://www.opisantacruz.com.ar/home/2010/10/28/trabajadores-de-la-uocra-golpearon-salvajemente-a-militantes-del-partido-obrero/10329 Two of the protesters had to be hospitalized. 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] Now is not the time to be a marxist, on Kirchner
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == OK, last one for tonight, because it's just too good. Here's CFK wearing the hat of the Union Ferroviaria http://www.pagina12.com.ar/fotos/20091113/notas/na03fo01.jpg 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] MRZine, Che Guevara and Iran
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == And, of course, el Che would have supported Peronism. Except, he didn't. 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] MRZine, Che Guevara and Iran
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == What I think is more complex is your image of me as an ultra-leftist left communist (talk about black and white pictures). For one, if Peron or Ahmedinejad had had to face open war with imperialism, I, surprise surprise, wouldn't be on the latter's side.But, as you may be aware, the bourgeoisie are not a particularly congenial class, they'll fight workers as much as themselves to the death.The problem is rather different. The problem is to suppose that the road to conscious political action is a stable, linear, progressive development of capitalism until the workers will be spoonfed revolution. The problem is when one uses abstract theories and projects such images of open war while failing to recognize how the ruling class builds up the conditions for it itself -and, of course, sends the workers to die first-, to avoid the work of building that consciousness, and slowly but surely, end up working against it.Sorry, I happen to think that the struggle is a miserable heap of shit by which workers build their own consciousness by recognizing themselves as the representatives of capital's own potentiality to supersede itself. That takes toil, blood, and a class perspective.And I think el Che understood (look at anarchist me joining hands with the Cuban stalinist) this as clearly as anyone, perhaps, was even aroused (not sure, if I'm translating correctly) by it. Written English sounds kind of patronizing sometimes, hmmm 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] Argentine Trotskyist of the PO murdered by Peronists on Weds.
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == If Louis wants to say that Petroni is a liar he will have to tell me what he’s referring to, I don’t know Petroni enough, and at any rate he’s not here to defend himself. So far, however, Petroni has simply reported what the masses (warning: the masses are only right when the Izquierda Nacional says so) are, that the unión bureaucracy has killed a PO militant, or to put it in the PO’s actually apt categorization –and I’m not a PO devotee-, that it has committed ‘a crime against the working class.’ I know that Petroni has been leading an effort to carry out an investigation on Moyano’s role in the CGT and his collaboration with the Triple A (created thanks to the general, lest we forget) and that doing this when Moyano is playing out the best hand for the Kirchners takes guts. I also know that Gorojovsky goes around pointing the finger to comrades with the accusation that they are “objective helpers of our murderers”, because he can’t argue himself out of a bottle. Yet he defends Moyano as the next hero of the Latin American Revolution. BUT even if, for the sake of “argument”, Moyano, by a lightning or something, has now become a good-natured fellow who will protect the interests of workers at all costs, What then, do Marxists do? “Hope” that things will go alright?, that by a struck of luck, by the pure subjectivity of the revolutionary bourgeoisie, imperialism will start crumbling? Well, that is exactly what Nestor is saying, he complains about the tercerizacion conditions but makes it a problem of the corrupt nature of Pedraza, who was cuddling with miss president courage a couple weeks ago...And the union bureaucracy? Ahh it doesn’t exist, except for some rotten tomatoes, let’s not be “idealists”… But what’s the solution to these problems? Of course, it’s a question of the good national nature of the Argentine bourgeoisie. See? It all fell from the sky…that's what I call a program for conscious political action. So much for 1st grade politics. p.s. The “hypothesis” that Moyano is a good-natured union leader is despicable enough, I mean Petroni might lie, but to defend Moyano like Nestor, to apologize for the Kirchner government like Nestor when it has already made perfectly clear that it is prepared to send in the gendarmes to repress workers, that’s just MERCENARY. Last time, when the workers of Kraft –who, by the way, went to strike and blocked roads to repudiate this murder-, were repressed, while Moyano complained that their demands were too “political” -though he know says that he was always trying to help them, which is belied by any allegation of the workers in the internal commission-, the blame was being put on Anibal Fernandez or Daniel Scioli or my dog. Were there any consequences for them? Yeah right... Yet, miss president courage, has proclaimed that she is prepared to suffer any political costs before repressing workers…who the fuck falls for this shit? Oh and the “data” in Nestor’s list? Same ol’ vomit of the official petty-bourgeois ideology so characteristic of the fake “socialistic” liberal mind, the crap that the defenders of the government are masters of. And now these MFS wanna blame the “crazy left” for being “divisive”, yea like the piqueteros, the unemployed (of whom you can see racist remarks in Nestor’s list, the only one where you can learn the truth, to be sure) are really being “divisive”, my God when will they learn to materialize their own food and shut the fuck up? p.p.s. sorry for the curse-words. 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] Mobilization for Mariano Ferreyra
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Here’s a video of the mobilization in Plaza de Mayo to repudiate the murder of Mariano Ferreyra http://po.org.ar/media/2010-10-23/marcha-y-acto-de-repudio-al-crimen-de-mariano-ferreyra , some of the chants were “Cristina, you are so popular, you go to Pedraza who kills because we struggle” “We will avenge Mariano Ferreyra, with piquete and the general strike” And here’s some good pictures by Marie Trigona who regularly contributes to Znet, without as many typos and omissions as in my last message (it’s hard to write in English when “la bronca” –the anger- is in Spanish) http://mujereslibres.blogspot.com/2010/10/photos-and-text-by-marie-trigona-labor.html Meanwhile those close to the government have been working non-stop to find a “chivo” –someone to put the blame on- be it Duhalde, Pedraza, etc. With no mention, of course, that they are all friends with the Kirchners and Hugo Moyano, the latter even came out to defend Pedraza. We will see if miss president “courage” is up to the task of reciprocating with clarification and justice. There were numerous strikes in all sorts of trades, including airlines, and throughout the country. 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] Argentine Trotskyist of the PO murdered by Peronists on Weds.
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis wrote:“Just what the world has been waiting for. News about internecine warfare in the Argentine labor movement with no clue about how to verify the allegations. And in staircase formatting to boot. Ugh.” Shmuck alert!!! Shmuck alert!!! Perhaps some Spanish lessons might help? If not, perhaps a little less patronizing when you haven’t even looked into the facts? Of course, you don’t mean that your sources on your essay on Peron are “facts”? The allegations are pretty well verified, you don’t get the Peronist government –you don’t get Nestor Gorojovsky- to repudiate the murder if it had just been a scuffle, there are videos and tons of witnesses and even Nestor has just told a fairly accurate though purely factual account of the incident. I will say right here, that it is true that quite a number of Kirchnerists repudiate this crime, however “skewed” their vision, and that shows they have good, if naïve, intentions. Were the murderers Peronist? Who knows? (Unfortunately, David, people call themselves all sorts of things, like look at Nestor, he is a Marxist national socialist) The ideology of these slugs is irrelevant though, probably nothing more than “thuggism”? But what are the conditions that pre-exist their actions…ah well, that’s a totally different matter, and here there’s basically two ways to approach the thing: -The superficial idealist way: Oh these were just the corrupt “Stalinists”, the black sheep, of the labor movement. Nevermind all those pictures with the Kirchner couple and Moyano, and other state functionaries, they’re in, the meetings, the hugs, and all that love: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_0YMSgZBTcys/SzQZynHuqsI/APE/aIOPwS5izKw/s400/pedraza,+cristina+y+moyano.jpg from left to right: Pedraza - head of the Railroad Mafia, miss president courage, Hugo Moyano -modest leader of the corrupcion general del trabajo. Or, what is the other face of the same coin, i.e. apologetic, to think that in their revolutionary project the bourgeoisie will invariably have to deal with these bad sheep, because the revolutionary bourgeoisie have a national consciousness which can transcend capitalism through some idiotic dependency theory “magic trick” a la Laclau, etc., which is sort of the inverted utopia of anarchism, though, more deservedly in my view, an idealist “crock of shit.” -The materialist way: situating the position of the Kirchner government as what it is, the personification of the specific form of capital accumulation in Argentina (which results in almost the exact opposite picture provided by Dependency Theory). In this perspective, what one has to start with is that this form of accumulation preconditions the specific trend of the working class having to sell its labor-power below its value, and from this the immediate corollary is that the bourgeoisie have to break the unity of trade union struggles whatever it takes. For this, Peronist populism always served itself of the union bureaucracy, but in this pathetic re-vamped edition, it is being consumed by it since it has to impose more of this bureaucracy to make the workers accept the “tercerizacion” conditions. So, perhaps the murderers weren’t Peronists, but ‘the’ murderer was Peronism. And it murders because the left is itchy, bothersome, and it's bothersome because it's making progress. Or, we could just complain about the immorality about the tercerizacion conditions and go ask the revolutionary bourgeoisie to solve it for us with their all powerful will. Talk about the right side of the barricades… 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] Left communist News from Argentina (was: I have turned Danny K into a news star)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Greg asks:Good article, from a French anarchist to a Argentine communist. what'snot to like? Boy, is that the right question at the right time about the “right” Argentine communism… What’s not to like? Well, for starters, yesterday a militant from the Partido Obrero of Argentina, Mariano Ferreyra, 23, has been murdered in an incident where there was a “scuffle” (i.e. a hunt) by the railroad union and the Juventud Peronista led by Hugo Moyano’s –the secretary general of the CGT- son. A mobilization by the FR left communist parties was set in order to support the railroad workers who had been fired and remain without secure contracts (“tercerizados”) and have been putting up a struggle for months. That this operation is linked to the whole ex-Duhaldist now Kirchnerist (you mean Kirchnerist as in Kirchner? The anti-imperialist couple who call for meetings of the anti-imperialist Unasur who facilitate anti-imperialist bases in Colombia? My my …) mafia is pretty much beyond doubt since the son of the transportation secretary had the good obscene sense of showing up with sheriff at the festivities. What’s not to like is that this comes as a signal of more of the same Peronist, or whatever you wanna call it, shit of making the workers war with themselves under the false hope for “popular national solutions” while in the meantime they keep selling out, in this case, the pension funds of retired people. As an inverted image of the wonderful protests in France, which the national socialist left (I’m not making the name up, this is how they prefer to call themselves) welcomes since Sarkozy is a bad bad neoliberal bourgeois as opposed to……, what we have in Argentina is a fight by the real defenders of the nation who kill the far left crazies so that the patriotic government can choose how best to sell the pensions, among other things, while they celebrate (and I’m not saying they are wrong to celebrate, it’s just a little vomitive when it comes from them) the French protests and pretend they’re all with French workers while they throw racist epithets against the piqueteros. Not blaming Gorojovsky here btw, just reporting what a post on his list says in CAPITAL letters. Moyano (look at me criticizing the revolutionary leader of the CGT who sent a letter of support for Correa, who has been in the CGT for decades, decades, like the decade of the 70’s, the decade where the CGT informed the dictatorship about crazy leftists and workers, see this guy is a true fighter against those who “objectively help our murderers”) has been doing everything in his power to break the struggles of the last years. That this occurred is “almost” ominous, but it comes when the Kirchner’s are feeling the pain of not having what to give to international credit institutions, except for those pension funds, which they claim they cannot give any of it back to retired people who live below poverty levels because…because that would empty out the state funds which must…which must be used to warrant new succulent loans. Sorry if this is a bit depressive, but while Dan’s reports provide us with elation, I cannot fail to denounce (big word here) the two-faced expressions, the 3rd wordlist pseudo-critical pessimism, which all too often permeate this list... Just as in France and as in Argentina, though, it is the workers who show these supposed “real political”, “real concrete”, theories for what they are… 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] Analytical Biography Updated
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Hi Prof. Perelman, Thanks for your helpful comments on ground rent, hopefully I can come back to this discussion before long. I read your interesting analytical bio. Kind of reminded me of the mathematician Paul Halmos’ autobiography, which he called: an “autoMATHography” (by the way, you don’t have any relation to Grigori Perelman?, he’s one of the latest’s winner of the Fields medalists –the biggest prize in math-, but he rejected it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman), so perhaps you should call yours an autoMARXography. Anyway, as I was reading I found this remark: “The economy would eventually recover from the crises, but these downturns could be long‑lasting unless something else intervened, such as World War II. The competitive pressures brought on by the economic crises encouraged replacement investment and the search for improved techniques, which eventually helped to make the economy stronger. This process created enormous human costs, especially because recovery could many years.” From what I’ve read on the 30’s, mostly from Marxists, that seems to be the case. Yet, last week I found a new article by Anwar Shaikh, he says that “There are several lessons that can be taken from these episodes. First, cutting back government spending during a crisis would be a ‘consequential mistake’. This is Obama’s point. Second, it is absolutely clear that the economy began to recover in 1933, and except for the administration’s misstep in cutting government spending in 1937, continued to do so until the US build-up to the Second World War in 1939 and its full entry in 1942. (Pearl Harbor being December 7, 1941). It is therefore wrong to attribute the recovery, which had begun nine years before the war, to the war itself. The war itself further stimulated production and employment. Third, it is nonetheless correct to say that (peacetime) government spending played a crucial role in speeding up the recovery. Fourth, the government spending involved did not just go towards the purchase of goods and services. It also went toward direct employment in the performance of public service. For instance, the Work Projects Administration (WPA) alone employed millions of people in public construction, in the arts, in teaching, and in support of the poor.” (http://homepage.newschool.edu/~AShaikh/Shaikh%20First%20Great%20Depression%20of%20the%2021st%20Century%208_23_10.pdf, p.13) Shaikh doesn’t provide much evidence except for a chart, but it sounds as though he’s saying that even if the war hadn’t happened, the recovery policies would have eventually worked, which sounds suspicious to me. The way I see it, the form in which the recovery took place was part of the process of development of the specific conditions for the massive destruction of capital which was WWII, it was no accident. Anyway, just wondering if you could tell us more about that. 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] Analytical Biography Updated
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I should have clarified that I'm still quite ignorant about the whole process took place, and I don't want to sound like a crass determinist, I'm still learning how to make my English more nuanced. Yet, I think the implication from Shaikh's comment is that the State is somehow separate of the accumulation process, a view which I definitely not share. Of course, it's a big topic, so I was only asking for a little clarification, perhaps some references. Thanks again. 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 84, Issue 30
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Michael Perelman wrote First of all, I don't think we use titles here. LK: My mistake... MP: What Shaikh says is true. The New Deal was having a positive effecton the economy, but in 1937, the budget cutters pulled the rug out from the New Deal the economy fell back down again until WW II. I should have been more clear in what you cited. Policies can shorten the recovery time, but in the absence of such policies, a crisis can take decades to recover.LK: Yes I know this. I'm not saying that the policies didn't have any positive effects, but that even if they had attained this recovery...what kind of recovery would that have been?If I recall correctly, it is in Monopoly Capital where Baran and Sweezy argue, I think (, at least that's where I seem to remember it from), that the problems affecting the foundations of the economy would haveremained, the tendency to stagnation would still be there. This isn't my view though. I think the recovery, had it been attained through New Deal policies, which it temporarily could have, (though I repeat, I'm not knowledgeable enough) wouldn't have restored profitability sufficiently enough so as to avoid this destruction of capital indefinitely. Andrew Kliman, for example, looks at it along similar lines: http://sites.google.com/site/radicalperspectivesonthecrisis/finance-crisis/on-the-origins-of-the-crisis-beyond-finance/kliman%E2%80%9Cthedestructionofcapital%E2%80%9DandthecurrenteconomiccrisisThanks for the response, and sorry for the typos. 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] Analytical Biography Updated
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Sorry, I bungled the subject header of my message as Marxism Digest 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] [More] Interesting details on Ecuador
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == There was a certain degree of obnoxiousness in my last post, I’m not sure if I should apologize to the moderator or congratulate him for making me write that way, which is one of my very bad weaknesses, so I’ll do both. I certainly apologize to all Marxmail subscribers. 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] Arg main unions central against the coup in Ecuador(Spanish)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == S.Artesian: But of course the point is that Marxists should act to oppose the actions of the police without endorsing, or offering any support to the contradictory government of Correa. No way. Marxists questions the limitations of capitalism? Gosh, to quote Louis, you learn something new every day. I'm sure 50 or something messages incited by our moderator with his accusations of Bordig-ism this, left-ism that, is way more helpful, revolutionary, political, and concrete, than talking about the circumstances which make Correa represent the interests he represents. Of course, since, in the capitalist mode of production, the consciousness, will, and good intentions of people, especially the revolutionary bourgeoisie, determines their social being, to talk about these concrete circumstances would just distract us from our all historic task of personally accusing each other, in the best non-sectarian, non-dogmatic and Marxist tradition. And, of course, the revolutionary CGT leaders in Argentina have a way more advanced perspective than the CONAIE. 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] Marx on ground rent (was: Thanks)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == S.Artesian mentioned some interesting points on Marx’s treatment of rent. I can’t comment too much on all the elements themselves, in large part, because I’m trying to understand them myself. But, I don’t think Marx endorsed Ricardo in any methodical manner; if he agreed with some of his conclusions, he always diverged with him in the approach. Marx was very clear in that there weren’t any naturalistic laws regulating differential rent but that these were specifically social and emerged due to the differential productivity of labor applied to more fertile lands, (not due to the productivity of lands themselves as vulgar economy would have it). I think this divergence in the approach is concomitant with Ricardo’s confusion of cost-price and value, as S.Artesian mentioned, and whenever monopolistic conditions arise due to the existence of small land-owners, these are only the shape which accumulation takes. In short, I think what Marx is going for and why he devotes so much space to the rent question in Theories of Surplus Value is that he’s looking for a further unfolding of the ‘law of value’, I even think there’s a letter to Engels to that effect. For example, take the following passage from Theories of Surplus Value, “The fact that the differences in rents (excess profits) become more or less fixed distinguishes agriculture from industry. But the fact that the market-price is determined by the average conditions of production, thus raising the price of the product which is below this average, above its price and even above its value, this fact by no means arises from the land, but from competition, from capitalist production. Hence this is not a law of nature, but a social law. This theory neither demands the payment of rent for the worst land, nor the non-payment of rent. Similarly, it is possible that a lease rent is paid where no rent is yielded, where only the ordinary profit is made, or where not even this is made. Here the landowner draws a rent although economically none is available. Rent (excess profit) is paid only for the better (more fertile) land. Here rent “as such” does not exist. In such cases excess profit—just as the excess profit in industry—rarely becomes fixed in the form of rent (as in the West of the United States of North America).” Very (very) succinctly, I think the crucial element is that there is a specific limit in the production scale of the agrarian capitals which operate with favorable conditions, which then allows them to sell their produce over its value but lower than the price of production of the more concentrated capitals, and this is actually a manifestation of a relatively enduring differentiation in the rates of profit which regulate the valorization of these small capitals. In more generality, this also follows when the difference between industrial rate of profit and the rate of interest regulates interest-bearing capitals, which would be the case of petty producers who can survive competition if they can attain a valorization capacity which, at the same time, imposes on them the release of surplus value in whatever particular chain of production they are involved in, and which would be appropriated by capitals of higher concentration, but which are just as well limited in their competition against each other. This, which is a consequence of the development of accumulation itself, is what I see as the inverted content in the theories of monopoly capital, etc. which start from the forms of the market to then “explain” the divergence in the rates of accumulation, per the abstract will of the cartels who fix whatever prices they like a la Hilferding et al. Anyway, I left out hundreds of things, but luckily here’s an article by Guido Starosta which I think I might have mentioned before which treats this question in larger detail: http://www.cicpint.org/cicp/congreso%20marx%20int/Guido%20Starosta%20commodity_chains_Paris[2].pdf 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 struggle of food workers in Argentina
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == and the work of socialist parties on it. http://www.ceics.org.ar/index.php?option=com_contentview=articleid=157:new-article-sour-sweetness-the-left-attacks-the-heart-of-argentine-capitalismcatid=65:argentine-economyItemid=78 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 struggle of food workers in Argentina
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis wrote: Wow. The revolution is nigh. That's not the point of the article Louis. If you were more acquainted with the publications of RyR you would have noticed the constant critique between it and these parties. In fact, one of the founding members of the group, Eduardo Sartelli used to be a militant of the PO and quit it for reasons not unlike, but not the same as, yours. I suppose you, at some point, would want to engage the socialists here who work in different parties so that a movement could be created, or wait, is Marxmail just for daily entertainment? The point is rather simpler. The years of work that these parties have put so that the organization of this struggle could occur the way it did is now justified. Justified, in the sense that the debauchery of the trade-union bureaucracy is cracking as it hasn’t cracked before, and so the patient work that it took based on the analysis that this was going to happen ought to be given credit. Is that so hard? Actually, don't you have an essay somewhere where you give credit to the CPUSA for their work in the 30's and 40's? I guess this one doesn't count because these ultra-leftist workers, in the oppressed nations, have dared confront the revolutionary bourgeoisie who will develop the right conditions for revolution somewhere in the not so distant future, of planet Earth. Should we apologize for the repression instead? As for Nestor, I would reply if I had time…haha, kidding! 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 fantasy of imports substitution industrialization
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.ceics.org.ar/index.php?option=com_contentview=articleid=156:new-fantasies-of-the-past-what-the-imports-subsitution-industrialization-was-and-what-it-wasnt-catid=65:argentine-economyItemid=78 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] Out of whack (was: Abstract labor)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I agree with Hans’ objections to Angelus Novus characterization of abstract labor. Of course, there isn’t much point in me commenting further since Novus is not in the list anymore.He was correctly expelled for being “out of whack with the obvious agenda of Marxmail” which includes, but is not restricted to, items like Lebron’s decision or endorsement of rape. Things like the Grundrisse, or any of Marx’s Talmudic concepts, as the ample evidence provided by the moderator has shown, are really only meant to distract workers and trade-unionists (say like Dan Koechlin, who was just starting a discussion on Kondratieff cycles, a subject which this other Talmudic priest, Ernest Mandel, paid some attention to). 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] Out of whack (was: Abstract labor)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == ML wrote: Get a grip, Leonardo. As has often been pointed out, this is an email listnot a party. One of the major problems in our civiliaation at this point--it isn't restricted to this list of the movement--is the confusion with online communities, email lists, etc., with RL. Anyone can argue anything anywhere they want, including online, but the real test is going to be out there in the real world. ML Who are you responding too Mark? Where did I say that I think of this list as a party?It's because I think it's rather the other way around (a place to lay out critical ideas about partiesin a non-dogmatic way, as its banner says) that I was willing to hear the, admittedlysomewhat pedantic prose of Angelus Novus, but nonetheless valid questions he was raising.I don't have to explain that Marx wrote Capital as a tool for workers (I think), and the reason it's importantto have these discussions aside from the fact that there's a crisis and the way I see it, it's very much a Marx crisis (as opposed to a Minsky, Altvater, Emmanuel, etc.) is that during the last decades of neoliberal (call it what you will) onslaught, the way I see it, the depth of it is manifested at the levelof consciousness, which doesn't only mean TINA, it is far deeper in the sense that people (not everyone of course)have lost any notion of objectivity, so there are those who have to cling to Marxist-Leninist models, thosewho think reality doesn't exist, those who think Marx was obsolete because he wrote in the 19th century, etc.The point is, not to defend Marx to the letter, but to defend critical, I would unabashedly say scientific,thinking. And I think in terms of the intricacies of value, these could be unraveled in a relatively clearnon-pedantic and objective manner, a way in which one understands not because Marx said it, but because one needs to develop a tool to consciously appropriate reality objectively, that is how capital creates its own grave-diggers.Or to indulge in a little Marx quote-mongering:… we do not confront the world in a doctrinaire way with a new principle: Here is the truth, kneel down before it! We develop new principles for the world out of the world’s own principles. We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to. (Letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843)Anyone can have a bad day, or weeks, of course, but I'd humbly advise the moderator to not take things personally, because that's in the way of critical thought. 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] Out of whack
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Angelus Novus: I am glad that Hans and Charles take these issues seriously and don't write stuff like the following: Things like the Grundrisse, or any of Marx’s Talmudic concepts, as the ample evidence provided by the moderator has shown, are really only meant to distract workers and trade-unionists You're welcome Angel. Since you're so serious, I'd also like to get the response I deserve to the article by Starosta Kicillof (which I agree with in full) that I sent you explaining the flaws of the circulationist view -started by Isaac Rubin- which sees abstract labor as historically specific to capitalism. (Anyone interested, contact me for details).In all seriousness, Louis, even if he hadn't given you enough time to respond (for which I reacted obnoxiously as usual), which you now have, asked the right question: how is the analysis of value politically relevant? So far you've only said that Marx dedicated his life to it, which explains very little. The ball's on your court... unless you're watching soccer. -- Mark, I used expel because that was my way of translating unsubbed, no party connotation. 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] Lenin's Imperialism, was: Question on the Far Right
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Speaking of electronics and the law of value, here is an article by Guido Starosta, a colleague of Juan Iñigo Carrera, on the Global Value Chain (GVC) approach, a sort of Wallersteinian theory that purportedly addresses the problems of competition in global chains of electronics production: The Changing Dynamics of Value production and ‘Capture’ in theElectronics Global Value Chain: A Marxian Perspective http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/PEI/publications/wp/documents/Starosta01-09.pdf Let me quote what the aim of the article is, which is elaborated further on by developing how Marxtreated capitals of different sizes, and how the simpler form of the law of value is actually unfoldedin what mistakenly, as I see it, became the monopoly capital era: Two major weaknesses can be observed in this account (Starosta, 2008b). First, whilst thereis no doubt that some firms have more power than others to ‘capture’ value (and hence have ahigher rate of profit) this is simply an empirical fact that requires explanation. Surely, the GVCapproach attempts to ground the differentiation of ‘value-capturing’ capacities in the exclusivepossession of ‘scarce assets’ by lead firms. But this analytically displaces the phenomenon to beexplained one step further. For why is it that certain capitals systematically have a greater potentialto appropriate scarce assets whilst others have no access to those means of capitalist competition?Perhaps one could argue that lead firms possess the magnitude of capital or access to financialresources necessary to generate their own barriers to entry, whilst lesser chain members do not(Rutherford and Holmes, 2008). But this will not do the trick either. It simply begs the question ofwhy in certain branches of the division of social labour capitals of a particularly restrictedmagnitude systematically prevail despite the general tendency for the concentration andcentralisation of capital characterising capitalist production. In a nutshell, one of the centralproblems with the GVC’s ‘theory of value capture’ is that it actually assumes what needs to beexplained, i.e. the systematic differentiation of capitals of stratified valorisation capacities. Second, the GVC approach fails to grasp the relations among individual capitals beyond their immediate appearances. It is thereby unable to uncover the content of the phenomenon under investigation behind its outward manifestations and actually inverts the latter into the very cause of the phenomenon itself. Thus, it sees the constitution of commodity chains as essentially governed by direct social relations of command (or maybe co-operation). This overlooks the essentially indirect nature of the general social relation that regulates capitalist society, namely, the generalised production and exchange of commodities. A proper explanation of the social constitution of GVC should therefore show why the indirect establishment of the general unity of the division of labour through the commodity-form becomes eventually mediated by relatively enduring direct social relations on particular nodes of the overall process of social production. Building on the Marxian law of value, the following section offers such an alternative account of the content and form of GVC. I will come back to this in a couple days (?) when I have more time. But thanks for keeping the discussion respectful, and by the way Joaquin, thanks for the link to the Silvio Rodriguez' blog. _ Hotmail is redefining busy with tools for the New Busy. Get more from your inbox. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_2 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] International Competition and Foreign Debt, Argentina's case
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Here's a more readable version: http://www.ceics.org.ar/index.php?option=com_contentview=sectionlayout=blogid=34Itemid=78 You might also want to check out the other articles and interviews with Andrew Kliman, Fred Moseley, etc. _ Hotmail has tools for the New Busy. Search, chat and e-mail from your inbox. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_1 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] Sweet Dreams (wikileaks)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == US soldier in WikiLeaks massacre video: “I relive this every day” Iraq war veteran Ethan McCord, who is seen running with an Iraqi child in his arms in the video posted by WikiLeaks of a July 2007 massacre of civilians in Baghdad, talked to the World Socialist Web Site about the impact of this and similar experiences in Iraq.The video, which records the shocking deaths of at least 12 individuals, including two Iraqi journalists employed by Reuters, has been viewed more than 6 million times on the Internet.McCord, together with another former member of the company, Josh Stieber, have addressed an open Letter or Reconciliation to the Iraqi people taking responsibility for their role in this incident and other acts of violence. Both soldiers deployed to Iraq in 2007 and left the Army last year. (clip) http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/emcc-a28.shtml _ Hotmail is redefining busy with tools for the New Busy. Get more from your inbox. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_2 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] What is the biggest flaw in the labor theory of value?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == So, thinking about science and Marx’s work, (you know how it is when you’re bored,) the picture of Engels’ “Socialism: Scientific and Utopian” came back to me, and then I had a vague remembrance of the last time I talked to Tom in a post related to Rosa Lichtenstein’s “refutation” of dialectics (giggles), when he suddenly accused me of “sectarian”, though it didn’t seem he was following the thread, after which he recommended to me Engels’ “The Origin of the family, private property and the state.” So, Tom, to return the favor, I recommend to you http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm You know, maybe it’ll spurt your interest and maybe you may provide us with some (any) evidence to support your claims against the whole “idealist” work of Marx, how “subjective” conditions determine prices, how Lenin’s Imperialism is exempt from this charge given its popular approach, etc., evidence, science, you know what I mean. It’s not about intellectual elitism; it’s about trying to further an informed, conscious political action ( politics and science? How could those two ever be related? That Marx guy must have been delirious spending years, poverty, his child’s death, to write this most abstruse “critique” of political economy –critique…hah, we all know he was just an economist who made the ‘choice’ to stand on the side of workers, as opposed to Adam Smith who didn't make that choice, so we're all here cuz we've made a choice see...) something which, who knows, maybe, perhaps, goes a little beyond a couple Mao slogans? Else, like my mom says: en boca cerrada, no entran moscas. _ Hotmail has tools for the New Busy. Search, chat and e-mail from your inbox. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_1 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] Immigration demo in D.C. this Sunday
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Thanks for the info. _ The New Busy is not the old busy. Search, chat and e-mail from your inbox. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?ocid=PID27925::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:032010_3 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] Immigration demo in D.C. this Sunday
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == This Sunday, as some of you may already know of course, there will be a (expectedly) big mobilization for Immigration reform in D.C. Also, Saturday ANSWER will be doing its anti-war action. I’ll be going in one of the buses (for free ;) ) so if any marxmailer is going to be there, that’d be good to know. It seems there will really be lots of people there, it was hard for me to find a spot. Now, (one of )the reason(s) for this action organized by RIFA is to push for the Gutierrez bill, which has ‘many’ caveats, particularly it hardly mentions the need for complete end to the raids. But, not to ruin Greg and Mark’s “reírse para no llorar” (“laughing not to cry”) apt exchange in “Immigration reform is already Dead” post, even with Obama’s last Judas kiss evinced in the NYT piecel, given the direness of the whole situation, I still think a “show of force” is still very much on the agenda. But I’d be very interested in hearing people’s thoughts. Best, _ Hotmail has tools for the New Busy. Search, chat and e-mail from your inbox. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?ocid=PID27925::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:032010_1 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] Use Value
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Dan wrote: We are being told that the old capitalistic GDP is no good indicator of the standard of life we enjoy, because it does not factor in ecological and social externalities, such as the suffering of the unemployed or the pollution of our coastlines, or turning the whole of Europe into some gaudy theme park. I agree. Which is why I am against the new social and ecological indicators that are supposed to replace the good old GDP we have been using since the 1920s. There is an irreducible difference between use value and exchange value. That is the fundamental distinction in MArxism. Capitalists dream of bridging that gap. They want to transform the whole world into a commodity. to which Shawn replied: The real problem with GDP, I would argue, resides in that it values (with bling) only labor which passes through 'the market'. Obviously this is intentional, and conscious. But it's real. GDP is a Big Lie - a counter-intuitive, statistical gimmick that poisons our conceptualization of the world. It provides the 'scientific', economic foundation that enables the quantify-ism you identify (rightly) as problematic. So Dan wants to go back to good old GDP while Shawn says GDP is a Big Lie since it's counter-intuitive, although they both do this from the same standpoint, complaining about the 'evil' of the market. But the market is a social form through which THE subject of production, Capital, imposes ITS will. Capitalists personify this will, so there is no such thing as a natural will of the capitalists to bridge a gap between the 'concepts' of use value and exchange value. Use value and exchange value are inseparable real attributes of the commodity, and Capital certainly does not want to merge them, since, indeed, Capital wants to transform the world into a commodity. At the same time, the problem with GDP is not that it, as a concept, which is to say an abstraction, hence devoid of any will, values only the labor which goes through the market. GDP, of course, doesn't do that; what GDP represents is an abstract, purely physical, (equating bananas with cars, for example) notion of material wealth. So, on the contrary, GDP does not account AT ALL for the labor that goes through the market, that is, labor which produces value. As an illustration, ...[t]he physical volume of Argentine social production evinced substantial growth during the 1990s, EVEN MORE SO than that of the USA. During 1990–2001, the average physical volume of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew 26% more than levels reached during the previous stagnation of 1975–89 and 74% more than levels reached during the previous sustained growth period of 1960–74. However, as we well know, in those societies where the capitalist mode of production dominates, social wealth does not simply appear as the material accumulation of use-values but, rather, as the accumulation of value. In other words, it is clearly not enough to merely possess more goods in order to be wealthier; what really matters is the total value of those goods. This is a delicate issue for the Argentine economy, where, particularly over the last decade, complex industrial production has been overtaken by imports while only the production of raw materials and very low value-added activities have expanded... Juan Iñigo Carrera-- http://www.cicpint.org/jinigo/articulos/argentina/articulo%20HM.pdf In other words, what GDP abstracts from is the production of value, and this is hardly conscious on the part of the capitalists. No, it is Capital, again, which mandates on the alienated consciousness of the capitalists, in the most grotesque form of neoclassical economics, to empty out the determinations of labor, its private and independent form, from the general social relation. Because Capital has a doble potentiality, from which it cannot escape, it has to valorize surplus value, for which it must impose an abstract consciousness on individual commodity producers, but it can do this only by producing relative surplus value, for which it must produce the objective, scientific consciousness, of the collective worker, in order to insure its reproduction. What Marxism is about, as I see it, is to bring about that scientific consciousness, through political revolution, because Capital, the human general social relation, wants it like that. _ Hotmail has tools for the New Busy. Search, chat and e-mail from your inbox. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?ocid=PID27925::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:032010_1
[Marxism] Perry Anderson idiocy on China
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I don’t have much time to elaborate but I wanted to make a reference to Paresh Chattopadhyay’s book, ‘The Marxian concept of Capital, and the Soviet experience’. Chattopadhyay, who was a student of Charles Bettelheim and friends with Sweezy, argues that the Soviet Union was capitalist even to the extent that there was in fact no restoration of capitalism. For him, even though the form of accumulation was not classical in the sense that it was based largely on accumulation of absolute surplus value, the dynamic of competition between state enterprises and the characteristic problems of a mass of relative surplus population and overaccumulation of capital were still pungent in the USSR, with their own particularities. He relies quite a bit on the work of Janos Kornai. I haven’t read the book carefully enough to have a well thought-out appraisal but I think it’s very well researched, so a good point to start, even if one disagrees. Chattopadhyay is quite the anti-Leninist too, so that should make it all the more enjoyable. _ Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469227/direct/01/ 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] quiz
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Who said this? -Karl Marx -Karl Heinrich Marx -Carlos Marx The system of public credit, i.e., of national debts, whose origin we discover in Genoa and Venice as early as the middle ages, took possession of Europe generally during the manufacturing period. The colonial system with its maritime trade and commercial wars served as a forcing-house for it. Thus it first took root in Holland. National debts, i.e., the alienation of the state-whether despotic, constitutional or republican-marked with its stamp the capitalistic era. The only part of the so-called national wealth that actually enters into the collective possessions of modern peoples is their national debt. Hence, as a necessary consequence, the modern doctrine that a nation becomes the richer the more deeply it is in debt. Public credit becomes the credo [italics in the original] of capital. And with the rise of national debt-making, want of faith in the national debt takes the place of the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, which may not be forgiven. The public debt becomes one of the most powerful levers of primitive accumulation. As with the stroke of an enchanter's wand, it endows barren money with the power of breeding and thus turns it into capital, without the necessity of its exposing itself to the troubles and risks inseparable from its employment in industry or even in usury. The state-creditors actually give nothing away, for the sum lent is transformed into public bonds, easily negotiable, which go on functioning in their hands just as so much hard cash would. But further, apart from the class of lazy annuitants thus created, and from the improvised wealth of the financiers, middlemen between the government and the nation-as also apart from the tax-farmers, merchants, private manufacturers, to whom a good part of every national loan renders the service of a capital fallen from heaven-the national debt has given rise to joint-stock companies, to dealings in negotiable effects of all kinds, and to agiotage, in a word to stock-exchange gambling and the modern bankocracy. ... With the national debt arose an international credit system, which often conceals one of the sources of primitive accumulation in this or that people. Thus the villainies of the Venetian thieving system formed one of the secret bases of the capital-wealth of Holland to whom Venice in her decadence lent large sums of money. So also was it with Holland and England. By the beginning of the 18th century the Dutch manufactures were far outstripped. Holland had ceased to be the nation preponderant in commerce and industry. One of its main lines of business, therefore, from 1701-1776, is the lending out of enormous amounts of capital, especially to its great rival England. The same thing is going on today between England and the United States. A great deal of capital, which appears to-day in the United States without any certificate of birth, was yesterday, in England, the capitalised blood of children. _ Your E-mail and More On-the-Go. Get Windows Live Hotmail Free. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469229/direct/01/ 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] Argentine debt update
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == On another, lighter, note, the revolutionary Argentine government has now very democratically ‘decreed’ that it will destine the reserves of the Central bank to pay the IMF, some 6 billion dollars. And the opposition, yes, full of proto-fascists and catholic fanatics, is scrambling its poker hands to see how it can get something out of this, but guess who isn’t getting shit out of this. It seems unquestionable that Marxists should denounce this, or maybe I’m missing something? p.s. I haven’t put the inverted commas, lazy me. But, given that the REAL LEFT support for this government come from LENINISTS who cling to the revolutionary nature of the bourgeoisie, and enemies of sepoy-ism whose strategy is to empty the oppressed out of their very means of subsistence, I’m sure you’ll be able to figure out where the inversions are. _ Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft’s powerful SPAM protection. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469226/direct/01/ 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] Trail of Dreams, was: Video of KKK Rally 2010 South Georgia
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Thanks for the video Greg. One of the motivations for the rally was the reception of the walkers in the trail of dreams, four of the bravest kids I met who are going all the way up to D.C. to deliver Obama a letter for immigration reform (which I, without exaggeration, think is the most important battle to be waged today) on May Day. Sign here, to show your support: http://www.trail2010.org/action/?ref_by=2382-109357 more info: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/guskin120110.html _ Your E-mail and More On-the-Go. Get Windows Live Hotmail Free. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469229/direct/01/ 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] 'West of the Tracks' documentary (was: Perry Anderson: Two Revolutions (Russia-China))
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The documentary mentioned in Anderson's piece is in youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO4W3KfXrGkfeature=related I think one should be able to find the other parts in the related videos. _ Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469228/direct/01/ 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] An under accumulation of capital?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis writes: Although I am not that interested in the kind of Talmudic discussions that typify Marxist value theory, I am familiar enough with the topic to have my interest piqued., to then conclude: In Marx’s final years, the foundations of monopoly capital had already been put in place. It was a calculated effort to make sure that investments would always go rewarded through price-fixing, trade secrets, collusion with the state and a hundred other mechanisms that have become popularly known as Government Sachs today. so that one should be content with knowing that prices are determined by what monopoly capitalists fix them to be. The question almost begs itself: Can the moderator objectively explain why, without any Talmudic resort to value -since it doesn't pique his interest-, commodities which prices are subject to the abstract will of the capitalists, do in fact have a price, or in other words, what the price of such commodities is? _ Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft’s powerful SPAM protection. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469226/direct/01/ 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] An under accumulation of capital?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == @Gary, can you tell me where these discussions are, or will I have to “water my mouth” for how the whole of Marx was debunked till the end of my days? In the meantime, maybe you can answer: what is the price of a commodity, without referring to value, or more specifically according to your lampooning claims, without referring to labor? @Louis, I wish I could follow along with the jokes, I like jokes, but unfortunately this one just don’t sound really good, maybe try “three Marxists walk into a bar…”? So once again: what is the price of a commodity, without referring to value? I have a pretty objective explanation, but unfortunately it is close to Marx and all his “Talmudic” value coming before the form of realization of the commodity in the market. With your help, however, I should be able to convert myself soon enough to Hilferdingism, where such a form is taken as the content which determines the accumulation of capital, and of course, is only subject to the abstract whim of the capitalist. So, unless you can answer the question (or refer to some literature where this is explained, John Bellamy Foster does not) it kinda makes it look like your evasion reinforces the point that the theory of monopoly capital has this inversion at its core and therefore is destined to move in a world of appearances, which is a criticism beyond its “historical validity”. _ Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469227/direct/01/ 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] To have it all backwards (was: A democratic bourgeois nationalist answers to the Leftists)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Well, since you are asking so nicely Gorojovsky, I think this Jorge Giles really writes for the ‘giles’ (the ‘foolishly naïve’ or just plain fools, in argentine slang). But like I said, no one better than you Gorojovsky to show everyone the superficial and empty phraseology your ideology comes from, so keep’em coming, let us know what the bourgeois nationalists think, let us find out the perspective of the Peronist on the debt which has starved so many, let us know how behind your dialectical mantle you keep apologizing for the parasites, just in another one of your evasions, which carries over from day one, to avoid answering the question any Marxist has to answer in order to consciously act politically (in Argentina): How does capitalism work (in Argentina)? I was writing you a response to the previous collection of ideological claims you made so I’ll put that here as well,…and to think that before this last trope by Gorojovsky, I was gonna say I’m glad to see that the discussion was starting to take a more objective tone… it could not last for long obviously. Of course, Nestor can’t fail to categorize me as an imperialist shill, a juanbejustista, a sepoy,… once again, but I never cared for such out of nowhere crap, categorizations are always abstract, and boy, is this a collection of histrionic crap. So let’s take the more relevant part of his argument, by the end of his “Fossils laid bare (second part)”. For questions of time, I can only do this very synthetically. Nestor writes:“Since they consider that Arg capitalism is the same thing as, say, French capitalism, then they are anti patriotic and think they are doing the right thing (as, for example, a French socialist would have done by opposing the campaigns of Saint Cyr officers in Argelia, Rwanda, Yugoslavia or Indochina).” Not at all, that’s actually more like your view because you never care to look at capitalism, the general social relation as it develops in Argentina or France, but just babble about on the “political” (more like the news junkie) thrillers between states, and never on the root cause. If I have ever argued for anything, that’s looking at the SPECIFIC form of accumulation in Argentina. To work mentally by mere analogy is the characteristic seal of abstract logical games, and is in fact at the root of the many nationalist and reactionary apologetics. Because, to say that breaking away from the imperialist yoke in order to develop the national means of production, as an abstract isolated representation, inverts the fact that capital develops nationally as a concrete form of its global unitary accumulation, and in the meantime gives capital, and so capitalists, potencies that it can NEVER have. Hence, the nationalist, always harbors the hope that if there were no imperialism (and good luck trying to have capitalism without imperialism) then there could be some harmonious road to the development of the nation; so that, for example, if Argentina weren’t a “semicolony” it could enjoy the social wealth of France, then the bourgeoisie could fulfill its historical tasks and then, only then, is the road to power for the working class open. And so each country which is a victim of imperialism, the “bad” capitalism, has to fight against this “bad, bad” capitalism, kill it, let real “good, good” capitalism develop and then the working class will be all ready to take power. More to the point, Argentina’s misery or that of any country which cannot sustain its national sphere of accumulation, is not a result, in toto, of the “bad” side of capitalism, the imperialist part, but, in essence, it is a consequence of the very role that accumulation gives it in the world market and in this deploying the full ensemble of capitalist social relations in a specific form there (…but more below, where you dismiss this as “abstract”.) The only thing Gorojovsky ever said about Argentina’s capitalism is that it’s a semicolony, he’s never addressed the social relations in their historical evolution. And, speaking of backward “semi-colonies”, are you saying the October revolution was just a historical fluke?, All of this simply says that the whole of Marx is useless, because in the end Marx wasn’t addressing the objective determinations of capital as capital, but only the “liberal” stage of capitalism, which he couldn’t observe, such as monopoly capital, unequal exchange, inter-imperialist rivalry, blah blah blah…and so what one has to do is to always look for the ‘external’ “factor” which distorts the functioning of capitalism. In short, we should either fall back to Ricardo and his law of comparative advantage or go forth and embrace neoclassical analytic Marxism, and never (never!,) concern
[Marxism] To have it all backwards
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == There’s a video of a talk Norman Finkelstein is giving at some elite university, can’t remember which one now. In the QA session some guy asks him something like: “Dr. Finkelstein, why do you approach the question in such a biased style, this detracts from objectivity and logic?” Finkelstein kind of acknowledges this, then he says, “Well, if you’re going to look at my style instead of the content of what I write and the evidence that I show, you might as well start complaining about the way that I dress!” Admittedly, Iñigo’s prose, more in English than in Spanish, is somewhat too obscure, though it depends and it’s been changing. He recently published two books, “Conocer el Capital hoy” and “La formación económica de la sociedad Argentina”. The latter develops the specific form of accumulaiton in Argentina as I mentioned earlier in a pretty clear manner, and meticulously shows the empirical evidence of his findings (in fact, more than half the book is comprised of statistical measurements, and also justifying its methodology). The former has the deepest critiques of neoclassical abstractions that I’ve read so far, and develops, dialectically, the determinations of value and the commodity form. They’re both in Spanish for now unfortunately. One of Iñigo’s friends, Guido Starosta, is one of the editors of ‘Historical Materialism’ and he’s very good too, and cleans up some of the things Iñigo argues, if you can, you can check out “The commodity form and the dialectical method: On the structure of Marx’s exposition in Chapter 1 of Capital”, Science and Society, vol. 72, No. 3, July 2008. By the way, I said the Kirchners are the richest family in the Patagonia, but I meant to say ‘one of’ the richest families,…if that makes a difference. _ Your E-mail and More On-the-Go. Get Windows Live Hotmail Free. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469229/direct/01/ 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 Iñigo Carreras
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I see, let's forget about real evidence,...cuz who cares? as long as we can spread some rumour about the father of the family. you rest your case?...what case?, all you have is chucherías (trinkets) _ Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469228/direct/01/ 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] To have it all backwards
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Gorojovsky: “However, my only answer to this moralistic crap of a petty bourgeois pro-imperialist Leftist is: a) what´s wrong with a national-democratic bourgeois being rich? and b)Wasn´t Friederich Engels a member of one of the richest families in Barmen Eberfeld? Wasn´t a Karl Marx a heir of the owners of the Phillips electric factories in Holland? Didn´t Lenin belong to a well-to-do middle landowners´ family in Russia? Wasn´t Trotsky the child of a wealthy and quite exploitive farmer in Southern Ukraine? Wasn´t Chairman Mao a privileged librarian in the University of Beijing in the times that such a post was a passport to life in a starving country?” Jajaja, so now the Kirchner’s are Marxist revolutionaries?? Boy, I must’a slipped on that one. Well, so much for talking points, but if you have the time, please go on, ‘total?’ It’s all just a big “poker game” to quote your Peronist. Relations of forces, hmmm, where did I hear that one before? Spain, Hungary, Prague, Tiannanmen,… _ Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469230/direct/01/ 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] A policy against pelotudos (was: Industrial capacity)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Waistline wrote: Yet you have nothing to say about the working class movement in America in the here and now and prefer kicking Nestor. Tell me about your independence of the proletariat in America. You write as an imperial chauvinist. It is best you shut up because I am itching for a real fight about real theory and strategy and have enough of your nonsense. In other words I already ... and some more crap after that. This by waistline makes it for the “pelotudo” post of the day (including the misspelling of Colombia, unless he insists on writing it in English…h chauvinism, I see) By the way, couldn’t there be some kind of policy against these imbecile flame-war upstarts of gorilla (to borrow from Peronism) pseudo-Leninist babble which Gorilovsky and waistline have made examples out of (the former by swearing allegiance to the bourgeoisie.) What is it about them beating their chests in front of the monitor that helps discuss concrete tasks for activists and militants whose hope for a workers’ future is incompatible with radical Keynesianism (whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean… oh wait, I know, it means paying the debt and keep on accumulating capital for the benefit of the bourgeoisie and to keep millions of children starving to death in Argentina)? I suggest that every time someone posts out of nowhere crap like waistline’s above or Nestor’s “murderer” accusation (and since he’s so willing to defend the Kirchner government against the “Leftists” to keep starving children to death, he oughta try the monitor for a mirror) they be banned from the list for some time, so that we can read the more important things backed up by some form objective argumentation, which waistline 'some'-times tries to do. p.s. thanks to comrade S.Artesian for restraining himself of replying to this crap. p.p.s. waistline, I'm from Argentina, I don't live there at the moment, but I did for most of my life. I will of course explain nothing about why I'm here in the US, because it has nothing to do with objective reality, although in Nestor's 'nationalist left' ideology, this is enough to dismiss anything I contribute as bombastic liberal chatter, mostly because he can't reply, and so he extrapolates trying to imply anyone who doesn’t buy his bullshit is denying the existence of imperialist force, accuses anyone who doesn’t buy his bullshit of murderer, anti-patriot, etc.. This has nothing to do with any sane form of discussion, much less Marxism, which is supposed to be scientific. Unless, unless you think scare-quotes about the “Left” and proclaiming oneself a real ‘nationalist leftist’ has anything to do with the real conditions of the Argentine working class which, contrary to Nestor’s illusions, is consciously starting to realize the scam which a “radical Keynesian” program implies after three decades of waiting for Peron’s resurrection. Unless you obviate the specific form of accumulation in Argentina which makes the tragedy of the debt be the last umbilical cord of the parasitic class which thinks itself progressive, and the lackeys after it. Because, waistline, in Argentina, capitalism is fully developed and to have hopes for “radical Keynesianism” is to be counterrevolutionary. _ Hotmail: Free, trusted and rich email service. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469228/direct/01/ 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] Obama is Asked: Why Haven't You Condemned Israel?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZVO_LmsV3Ifeature=player_embedded# _ Your E-mail and More On-the-Go. Get Windows Live Hotmail Free. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390709/direct/01/ 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 75, Issue 62
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Gorojovsky: “But they have never been gorilla leftists. Which is a point of honor in a country where this kind of leftist is so frequent and gives Marxism such a bad name among the working class. So that here goes a comment on the foreign debt issue with which I agree in part, in part not exactly so, but which at least does not hide the main problem under bombastic liberal chatter.” Gorilla Leftist = Peronist political weapon par excellence, but you rarely see it used by a Gorilovsky. Gorojovsky has a lot of honor. For example, as the true, the truest, Marxist, he showed us that the correct response to one of the bravest worker battles in the last decade in Kraft is to defend the national interests by standing with the police and the gendarmes sent by the government which protects the interests of the biggest American food corporation. Or, for instance, by thinking that communists who not only fought but died and were tortured by the police and the military deserved it. Beware this bombastic liberal chatter. “BTW: the answer by Kosloff to my last posting has given me an opportunity to write a rather long series of postings on the Arg Left which I hope I will be beginning to send to the list next week. If such a type as a Petroni could help me to depict the social history of Mar del Plata, why can´t Kosloff help me in showing some funny (or rather funny weren´t they tragic) sides of Arg Leftism.” Can’t wait!, it’s never too late for another of Gorojovsky’s petty personalistic (with personas he invents and associates in illusory plots in his brain,…or whatever) rants, to show us once more that when it comes to real issues he’s only got “”Leftism””, “pelotudo”, “liberal”, “Kautskyist”, “Stalinist”, “cipayo”,…. “What makes the PL a serious party is, for example, what follows: Short translation: We don´t accept the fake third positionism (tercerismo) that equates the democratic government with the destituting opposition. Cristina is not the same as Cobos, Macri, Carrió, de Narváez and Duhalde. Mercedes Marcó del Pont is not the same as Redrado. Página/12 and Channel 7 are not the same as the Clarín monopoly. Trials to the genocides are not the same as the request of amnesty by Guelar (PRO). It is not the same thing to participate in UNASUR and the simpathies of the opposition towards the Fascists Uribe and Piñera]” Comrades, I thought you all knew, but yes, I’ve been dreaming about Uribe and Piñera to come together and murder the masses only too anxiously, yes, yes, I’m a murderer because who doesn’t stand with the “nice” bourgeoisie, must be an agent of the “bad” bourgeoisie. But hey, isn’t it “unfortunate”, as the SERIOUS PL and Gorojovsky say, that this government is going to recycle one neoliberal for another to get into debt?, I “hope” that doesn’t mean they may “betray” the masses. It’s not that it’s fun replying to your shit Gorojovsky, no one better than you to let it out. But I’m just waking up, and I need to despabilarme (I don’t know how to translate despabilar, maybe 'snapping out of one’s slumber'?). _ Your E-mail and More On-the-Go. Get Windows Live Hotmail Free. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390709/direct/01/ 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] A reasonable Marxist position on the Arg Central Bank / Foreign Debt issue
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Gorojovsky: “But they have never been gorilla leftists. Which is a point of honor in a country where this kind of leftist is so frequent and gives Marxism such a bad name among the working class. So that here goes a comment on the foreign debt issue with which I agree in part, in part not exactly so, but which at least does not hide the main problem under bombastic liberal chatter.” Gorilla Leftist = Peronist political weapon par excellence, but you rarely see it used by a Gorilovsky. Gorojovsky has a lot of honor. For example, as the true, the truest, Marxist, he showed us that the correct response to one of the bravest worker battles in the last decade in Kraft is to defend the national interests by standing with the police and the gendarmes sent by the government which protects the interests of the biggest American food corporation. Or, for instance, by thinking that communists who not only fought but died and were tortured by the police and the military deserved it. Beware this bombastic liberal chatter. “BTW: the answer by Kosloff to my last posting has given me an opportunity to write a rather long series of postings on the Arg Left which I hope I will be beginning to send to the list next week. If such a type as a Petroni could help me to depict the social history of Mar del Plata, why can´t Kosloff help me in showing some funny (or rather funny weren´t they tragic) sides of Arg Leftism.” Can’t wait!, it’s never too late for another of Gorojovsky’s petty personalistic (with personas he invents and associates in illusory plots in his brain,…or whatever) rants, to show us once more that when it comes to real issues he’s only got “”Leftism””, “pelotudo”, “liberal”, “Kautskyist”, “Stalinist”, “cipayo”,…. “What makes the PL a serious party is, for example, what follows: Short translation: We don´t accept the fake third positionism (tercerismo) that equates the democratic government with the destituting opposition. Cristina is not the same as Cobos, Macri, Carrió, de Narváez and Duhalde. Mercedes Marcó del Pont is not the same as Redrado. Página/12 and Channel 7 are not the same as the Clarín monopoly. Trials to the genocides are not the same as the request of amnesty by Guelar (PRO). It is not the same thing to participate in UNASUR and the simpathies of the opposition towards the Fascists Uribe and Piñera]” Comrades, I thought you all knew, but yes, I’ve been dreaming about Uribe and Piñera to come together and murder the masses only too anxiously, yes, yes, I’m a murderer because who doesn’t stand with the “nice” bourgeoisie, must be an agent of the “bad” bourgeoisie. But hey, isn’t it “unfortunate”, as the SERIOUS PL and Gorojovsky say, that this government is going to recycle one neoliberal for another to get into debt?, I “hope” that doesn’t mean they may “betray” the masses. It’s not that it’s fun replying to your shit Gorojovsky, no one better than you to let it out. But I’m just waking up, and I need to despabilarme (I don’t know how to translate despabilar, maybe 'snapping out of one’s slumber'?). _ Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390707/direct/01/ 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] Argentina's debt as tragedy and farce
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == a rough translation... The debt is not the problem By Juan Kornblihtt The fight between the government and the opposition for the so-called Bi-centennial Fund and whether the money should come from the funds held by the state or the central bank’s reserves, shows the programmatic coincidence of interests of the two sides. The distinction is only a tactical one. The government and the opposition are in agreement as to the return to the indebtedness cycle of the 90’s. The difference is that that the government aspires to imitate Menem and Martínez de Hoz but trying to avoid ending up as Raúl Alfonsín o Celestino Rodrigo. On the other hand, the opposition wants to be Menem starting 2011, but they also want the government to make the previous adjustment (i.e. to assume the role of the disgraceful fallen). The two coincide in becoming indebted once again and favoring foreign lenders and national capitals on the workers’ backs, upon whom the burden of these policies will ultimately fall. From resolution 125 to the nationalizations of the AFJP (pension funds) In spite of official rhetoric, the scene of general crisis of capital accumulation in Argentina is set. After the devaluation, the means of support for the recovery was the strong increase in agrarian rent, pushed by the rise in soy prices. This allowed for protectionist scheme based on an undervalued exchange rate and subsidies which compensated for the low competitiveness of local industries, whether national or foreign ones. This explains the recovery of industrial activity and employment after the debacle of 2001. But to protect means to transfer real resources, and if the great majority of capitals receives more than they give, it is necessary for them to find new sources. A part of what was spent in keeping the dollar high and providing subsidies came from the rent captured through retentions, and the surplus value due to the increase in the rate of exploitation of workers, captured through taxes. However, another important part did not have a real grounding. The pesos to buy dollars, the credits via bond emissions and the subsidies were made, largely, with monetary emission without backing, which accelerated inflation. Therefore, the protectionist effect of the 3 to 1 exchange rate lost its potency. Adding to this, the government’s fiscal problems were brought to the surface, particularly those of the provinces, although also, and in a more and more pressing manner, those of the national state. The looked-for solutions always went in the same direction: to get fresh funds to keep transferring them to the local and foreign bourgeoisie through exchange protection and subsidies. First increasing the retentions, and then nationalizing the AFJP. But the plan which was always behind this whole pursuit was becoming indebted again. In fact, Cristina Kirchner’s presidential campaign was pulled through coquetting abroad with future lenders and promising “juridical safety” and exchange and tariffs adjustments as offerings to get fresh money. Cristina’s plan to go back to the 90’s is implicit in her electoral platform, beyond the rhetoric of her speeches. That is why the cover of the number 39 of the paper El Aromo, of November 2007, under the title “Results and Prospects”, showed Cristina face to face with Menem. In spite of the polemics which this generated, the comparison was and is pertinent. Nonetheless, that plan could not be implemented exactly as Cristina wanted. Even though she replaced any vestiges of Keynesianism and put some of the most rancid orthodox neoliberals as functionaries in the ministry of economy, this symbolic gesture was not enough for the international banks to lend the money. The main problem in spite of all these gestures is that Cristina’s plan to be Menem ran into the financial fall down and the scarcity of credit. This explains why the payment to the Paris Club could never concretize itself even with all the repeated negotiations, nor was the situation with the bonds which had defaulted fixed, the government’s will notwithstanding. The key to the problem is not in the lack of will or a firm government position in the negotiations, but in the lack of credit. The conditions of the Kirchnerist menemization The objective of paying the debt is to borrow again and cover up the increasing accumulation problems. To do this, the government needs two things. The first and fundamental one is financial availability on an international level. The second one is solvency, even if only superficially. This is why the government cannot use its own funds, given that, beyond the manipulations of the INDEC (the national institute of statistics and census, which releases
[Marxism] OK, you win Master Sch. / and a BTW
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Nestor wrote:“I am, just like all of my comrades and as you have very well put, Schanoes Adoní, a phisical coward who hides behind a computer screen and never faces enemies -save for some policemen and military during mass mobilisations in Argentina, 1972 onwards.” …and why should anyone think higher of your views as opposed to those of the people who consciously fought for the working class then, and still do it today, against a “popular” government which has now decreed the payment of the debt to the IMF which carries over since 1972, not to mention the repression against workers you justify because of the myth that the national bourgeoisie of Argentina ought to fulfill their historical role, when it’s but a decrepit parasite? Oh yeah, I forgot, the national front, the real-life politics, the real Marxist National Left who explains the actions of the fake neoliberal populist of the day, yesterday Menem, (tomorrow...?), just as a 'traitor' to the Nation...how come the other marxist left, the real ultra-leftist, Kautskyist one, didn't think of that one 'explanation' before?!... Nestor added (who knows why):“I have decided never to step on the US of Am or anywhere that lies at less than 7000 kilometers of NYCity.” Aren’t you the guy who was complaining about chauvinism a couple threads ago? Way to go champ! _ Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft’s powerful SPAM protection. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/196390706/direct/01/ 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] A note to moderators (was: A vial of poison ++)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Yes, yes, I know this was supposed to be over. But I had to note something just for the record, and Les had granted one more post to each for the day...so. In his last message Gorojovsky addressed me as a slanderous bastard, before that he had called me a ‘pelotudo’ (roughly, a brainless schmuck), an ignorant, an oligarch. Nestor, clearly, doesn’t know a fucking thing about me (and yet he’s as lunatic as to write about it as fact), to the point that he ridiculously associated me with Claudio Katz, a professor at the university of Buenos Aires, and the group ‘Economistas de Izquierda’ which he apparently organizes. Well, I’ve had a very personal relationship with Katz…in youtube videos. On another note, Nestor charges me with having disreputed Jorge Enea Spilimbergo, whom besides having read a couple essays I googled for, I know nothing of. I hadn’t mentioned Spilimbergo in any of my posts so I don’t know why Nestor brought him up. In any case, Nestor totally, once again, misread what I was going for. What I said was that Nestor and his comrades explain the ‘treachery’ of Menem as just that: ‘treachery’, so that they actually expected someone like Menem to put the interests of workers before the parasitic class he represents (though in Nestor’s idiotic theory the bourgeoisie, or some who-knows-which section of it, in Argentina have very important tasks to complete, if they only got their asses to it, and imperialism wasn't on their back, Argentina would reach Germany's capacity in no time). So Spilimbergo said to Menem in his face that he was a traitor,… great, that confirms my point, which is, here comes, real Marx and Engels: you put abstract consciousness before social being. Schematic? Well, you’re gonna have to deal with a lot of your own Marx-Engels empty epithets, if you want to throw that one out. So, in your worldview, your very “concrete” and “dialectical” real life politics, Gorojovsky, that Menem was the richest motherfucker in La Rioja, not to mention his connections with the mafia, not to mention his whole parasitic careerist track, not to mention how he sold out every fucking bit of public patrimony ‘in your face’, not because he was forced to but because that is the social force he had to personify which anyone who can concretely (as opposed to your abstract mental construction of the national front) understand a little about the specificity of how capital accumulates in Argentina ought to see, doesn’t matter; he said “siganme, no los voy a defraudar!” (“follow me, I won’t let you down!”) and so, because the masses followed him, you abstractly impose out of nowhere that these are the objective interests of the working class. Now, I suppose, comes Nestor rebuttal: “Who are you to say what the interests of the working class are, you oligarch?!”. But it’s not me who says it Gorojovsky, it is capital, remember?, the overpowering subject of society. And what capital determines as the objective interests of the working class, which is an attribute of capital, is to constantly revolutionize the mode of social metabolism which is to give the working class its historical powers to realize the ultimate potency, and so surpass the ultimate barrier, of capitalism, itself, (and there are different barriers to go through before that.) That isn’t to say obviously that those who understand this necessity consciously have to sit around to wait for capital to do whatever, that is not to say that one is to deprecate the masses as inferior, because that from the very beginning would imply that on the one side there is some abstract consciousness which can engineer the workings of capitalism on the other, when that consciousness is actually a product of capital, unlike Nestor’s distorted and shameless bullshit does, so that he blames it on what he calls the “mainstream left”, that is, the left which fought for an independent program of the working class, with its own problems, that the disaster was brought about by the conscious organ of the working class which started to discover itself in complete antagonism to the interests of capital. Why shameless bullshit? And here I’ll quit the “orthodox oligarchical style”, because Nestor is as fucking daring as to imply that the revolutionaries who died in struggle were actually the ones who were to “lead” the working class, as if it wasn’t a question of the working class leading itself, to disaster (since the interests of the working class lie in building a class alliance with a particular section of the bourgeoisie which really is revolutionary, as long as there are no traitors to screw it up….why didn’t Nestor's beloved Lenin and Trotsky fucking think about that one?) so that the latter had
[Marxism] Monopoly Capital versus Marxist economics
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Andy Pollack wrote: “It's shockingly explicit rejection of Marxist economics, both in dismissing any importance for profit rates, and for justifying a focus on appearance rather than essence…” I think this is exactly the point. Monopoly capital, though I would say this is already latent in ‘The Theory of Capitalist Development’, is, at the root, a neoclassical rehashing of an underconsumption theory (couched in Marxist vernacular) which Marx did already have in consideration in his investigations, (contrary to the myth that he had not been able to observe this stage, a myth which dates back to Engels,) and had consistently opposed, precisely, by writing Capital and not making monopolies the determinant of accumulation. As Marx would unequivocally write in the Grundrisse, “Competition executes the inner laws of capital; makes them into compulsory laws towards the individual capital; BUT IT DOES NOT INVENT THEM. It realizes them. To try to explain them simply as the results of competition therefore means to concede that one does not understand them.” So the theory of monopoly capital takes the ‘apparent’ form of the market, whether this be competitive or not, etc., and places it, in a completely abstract way, if I may be allowed the impudence, as the determinant of accumulation. What one has to do is the reverse, one must start with the essence of the laws of accumulation to then explain their form; this is what the dialectical method does as the reproduction of the real concrete in thought, as opposed to the abstract ideal models which take ideas for reality. I translated a little piece by Juan Kornblihtt, an Argentinean researcher who writes for the group ‘Razón y Revolución’, a while back, which touches on some of these issues (it might not be a completely accurate translation). I don’t necessarily agree with the whole of it, or at least with how some of the things are put, that is probably due to the constraints of a magazine format as well, but, in broad strokes, it’s a much better approximation to how empirical data support Marx. There is also the work of Anwar Shaikh, Willi Semmler and other researchers like Juan Iñigo Carrera whose work is still not in English. I won’t have much time to reply during these days, but because I think it’s a crucial discussion and because I can’t wait to get accused of ultra-leftist sectarianism, I wanted to lay some things out… Interesting though, that expert Marxists like Dawson should feel that, at the time of a crisis of generalized overproduction, the best thing the left can do is to forget Marx’s main scientific achievements. (Note: for some reason my posts’ format is messed up, so I suggest putting this in word for better readability.) The theory of monopoly capital and the supposed end of competition Juan Kornblihtt It’s almost commonplace to lay blame on the big monopolies of being the cause of the evils provoked by capitalism. In this article, we will discuss this idea. Not because the capitals with the highest concentration deserve any defense, but because the idea that their power resides in their monopolistic character leads to confusions regarding the functioning of capitalism, and, in large measure, how to combat it. The north-American economist Paul Sweezy is one of the most influencing intellectuals in Marxism and the one who gave theoretical justification to the idea that the domination of monopoly capital replaced competition [1]. His theories are present in a large number of traditional parties of the left in all their variants, from Maoists to Trotskyists. The debate could seem minor and be reduced to subtleties. Nevertheless, what is being hidden behind attributing the handling of the economy to the monopolies is the absolute transformation of Marx’s theory: the end of competition between capitals implies, in the last instance, to forget the theory of value. A position which is against the data afforded by reality: permanent increase in the productivity of companies to win markets, the disputes through price lowering for different products, the persistence of various companies including in those branches with the highest concentration, and the historical tendency of the falling rate of profit. FAREWELL COMPETITION Marx pointed out that in capitalism, contrary to other modes of production, exploitation is realized in economic and not [in directly, LK] political form and that this was the key to the competition between capitals. Starting from the phase of primitive accumulation and that of the bourgeois revolutions, there had taken place an expropriation of the means of production resulting in those who owned them, on the one side, and the workers, on the other. Given that they are
[Marxism] Chuck Grimes comments on Cockburn (from LBO-Talk)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Hi Les, I was wondering if you've heard of Piers Corbyn and his group in weatheraction.com, who dismiss global warming as 'non-sense' http://www.weatheraction.com/pages/pv.asp?p=wact10fsize=0 . Piers Corbyn is an astro-physicist and an ex-member of the Internationalist Socialist group and was quite active back in the day, it seems. Here's a video of him with a Russian meteorologist on the issue about those hacked e-mails, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anHuOAXIl0M Basically, the two things he claims there are that CO2 does not drive temperature and that temperatures have actually gone down in the last decade. And there's also an interview, apparently done by the Larouchites, here http://www.larouchepub.com/other/interviews/2007/3422piers_corbyn.html ...is he our climate Hitchens? _ Your E-mail and More On-the-Go. Get Windows Live Hotmail Free. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222985/direct/01/ 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] Daniel Guerin
Anyone heard of an Anarchism vs. Marxism debate (or something along those lines) between Guerin and Mandel? I once saw this in a bibliography and tried to find it but couldn't, I'm not sure if it's only in French... _ Your E-mail and More On-the-Go. Get Windows Live Hotmail Free. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222985/direct/01/ 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] Rosa replies to SA, SM, and LK
Rosa wrote: “What of this question, though? “Where does logic come from Rosa?” Don't you know? As far as we can tell, from that ruling-class theorist, Aristotle. But so what?” And Aristotle and the whole mode of thinking of Greek society, obviously, fell from the sky. So Rosa, the Historical Materialist, can’t be bothered with explaining why logic came about as a product of the necessities of life, and instead gives us this accidental, bourgeois, at the very root, view that logic was the particular fancy of this particular philosopher which happens to work according to the ordinary language standard of clarity, which Rosa takes for granted. Remember? It is PEOPLE who make their own history, it is their actions, not your whimsical taste for clarity. And Marx, well he just happened to be a particular communist, but no relation to the historical conditions in which he lived though, no siree. The anal retentiveness is YOUR anal retentiveness, because lacking a formal model where to fit the dialectic, and reduce it to YOUR sterile mind games, (I don’t mean to scare you by putting YOUR in caps, I only want to stress these are your actions, it is time for you to understand where they come from as pertains your social being) you think advancing the interests of workers is a question of convincing comrades of your philosophy, which is bourgeois pragmatism in disguise, instead of, as it were, engaging in the real movement, or more to the point, the production of an objective consciousness. Until we are clear on what our social being is, we can’t even start talking about dialectics in a materialistic fashion. _ Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222986/direct/01/ 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] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK
Thanks for the heads up Jim, I started to write a response but it was getting kind of drawn out, so I’ll keep it to a single simple CLEAR question, and we’ll see if we can do more later, like I said, I’m not in the position to comment on this at any length and that’s why I refer to the literature, which, of course, must be read critically; speaking of which, Rosa’s ban of Zeleny’s book sounds a li’l dogmatic for a Wittgesnteinian-Trotskyist, no? Rosa did get something right out of my comment, which wasn’t intended as a ‘totalistic’ critique of all her writings, which I haven’t read, but were only my impressions of the debate at the Marxist Humanist Initiative. Alas, it was only one thing: it was off topic. That’s because according to Marx’s materialist conception of history, or any possible reading of it I can think of, -by the way, Marx never had a grand theory of historical materialism- taken in its full literal sense, “social being determines consciousness”, so that to ask for a ‘clear’ (where does this ‘clarity’ come from? who’s clarity is it, Wittgenstein’s? Giaquinto’s? Priest’s? Or could this rather be your alienated consciousness which doesn’t recognize the abstract image in which it must represent itself so that it, by necessity, reproduces the capitalist mode of production?) explanation of dialectical contradiction is an abstract fixation; it’s the wrong topic (!). We could talk about the dialectical method, someday, but the point is you give logic, clarity, or what have you, an independent existence; is that not the essence of idealism? But please, don’t take it from me, here is the old man himself, in historical materialist mode, “When, for instance, wealth, state-power, etc., are understood by Hegel as entities estranged from the human being, this only happens in their form as thoughts ... They are thought-entities, and therefore merely an estrangement of pure, i.e., abstract, philosophical thinking. The whole process therefore ends with absolute knowledge. It is precisely abstract thought from which these objects are estranged and which they confront with their presumption of reality. The philosopher – who is himself an abstract form of estranged man – takes himself as the criterion of the estranged world. The whole history of the alienation process [Entäußerungsgeschichte] and the whole process of the retraction of the alienation is therefore nothing but the history of the production of abstract (i.e., absolute) thought – of LOGICAL, speculative thought.” And, with regard to the materialist conception of history, Therefore, to the kind of consciousness – and this is characteristic of the philosophical consciousness – for which conceptual thinking is the real human being, and for which the conceptual world as such is thus the only reality, the movement of the categories appears as the real act of production – which only, unfortunately, receives a jolt from the outside – whose product is the world; and – but this is again a tautology [SIC] – this is correct in so far as the concrete totality is a totality of thoughts, concrete in thought, in fact a product of thinking and comprehending; but not in any way a product of the concept which thinks and generates itself outside or above observation and conception; a product, rather, of the working-up of observation and conception into concepts. The totality as it appears in the head, as a totality of thoughts, is a product of a thinking head, which appropriates the world in the only way it can, a way different from the artistic, religious, practical and mental appropriation of this world. The real subject retains its autonomous existence outside the head just as before; namely as long as the head’s conduct is merely speculative, merely theoretical. Hence, in the theoretical method, too, the subject, SOCIETY, must always be kept in mind AS THE PRESSUPOSITION. Rosa says she agrees with this conception, but this is only from a proto-idealist standpoint. For where does Rosa account for the social origins of formal logics, whatever kind, she makes such an unwarranted fuzz of? Did logic fall from the sky? Are we to believe that on the basis of neoclassical economics, along with the puny game theory of “analytical Marxism”, etc., etc., all but blatant manifestations of an inverted consciousness which doesn’t take society as the presupposition but directly starts from the imposition that society ‘should’ conform to the pure form of logic, and have served as the instrument of domination for the ruling classes, compels us all to pay homage to formal logic, because of how, it, coming from an abstract netherworld, and whose movement APPEARS as the real act of production, has developed nice purrrty technologies? Yeah let’s read Von Neumann before Marx, “johnny boy”, as they called him, was such a radical, making atomic bombs and shit… Where does logic come from Rosa? p.s. thank you so
[Marxism] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK
Shane Mage wrote: “ ...where does Rosa account for the social origins of formal logics, whatever kind, she makes such an unwarranted fuzz of? Did logic fall from the sky?... It is the most obvious of mistakes to ask for the social origins of valid scientific concepts, whose only origin is the structure of reality to which they perforce conform. The origin of formal logics is mathematics, the method by which mathematical truth (the key to science) is discovered. More immediately, the origin of formal logic is *dialectic*, as anyone who has read Platon and his pupil Aristoteles cannot be unaware. Formal logic's propositions apply to *one* side of reality--the reality of unchanging, atemporal, structure. They are thus inherently in tension with the other side of reality--the reality of constant flux in which all material things participate. Dialectical logic unites these two opposite sides of reality. From that all else follows.” Shane, before this quote of mine, I had quoted Marx saying that “society must always be kept in mind as the presupposition”, but silly me, thinking that Marx had a say on a Marxism list… p.s. I respect you a lot Shane, no kidding. p.s.s. It is only too ironic that I don’t have time to criticize mathematics more fully, I have to study drift-diffusion equations! I’m not saying, at all, that mathematics doesn’t have a role in science, or more precisely, in the production of an objective consciousness, but please, check out the work of Sohn-Rethel to get a stab at what I mean with more elaboration. There’s also some articles in Spanish and English which I might translate, if the authors permit me, and share them on here, but that won’t be soon. Also the short, but insightful book on the history of mathematics, by Dirk J. Struik, who founded the journal ‘Science and Society’. _ Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222986/direct/01/ 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] Rosa L. replies to RL and LK
S. Artesian wrote: But in the end, I think she knows actually very little about Marx, the development, method, and content of his work. No doubt, but not only that. This whole anal retentiveness with contradiction in the end, as I see it, leads to a direct inversion, hidden as it is in 'no bullshit', in language, to say the least, of the very materialist conception. Let's see what Gerry Cohen says in his defence of Marx's theory of history: To personify capital is to practice the principle (the capitalist principle, the use of exchange value to increase exchange value) and POSSESS the mentality (the capitalist mentality, the quest for exchange value which is not controlled by a DESIRE for use-value, or not at any rate by a desire to exchange it for use-value.) Now, you’ll excuse my Spanish, when the f**k was it that the capitalist got to ‘choose’ which mentality he’s going to POSSESS?, no sir, it is the 'mentality', the alienated consciousness, (and I bet 9 times out of 10, a 'No Bullshit' Marxist will explain the mentality as the DESIRE, and the Desire?...as the Mentality,) which possesses the capitalist. Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. Get it now. _ Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222986/direct/01/ 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] Rosa Lichtenstein versus JB on dialectical contradictions
I don’t have much time to comment on this, but I just wanted to make a point. It’s understandable that after the asinine vulgarities of dialectical materialism, some people, like Rosa here, should feel aversion for anything dialectical. But for all intents and purposes, Rosa, the Wittgenstenian-Trotskyist-Marxist, who is pretty avid at the quote-mongering game as long as the quotes ‘sound’ to her as something she (?) would agree with, wants to resuscitate a debate which Marx had already put in ash-heap of history in his twenties. The question for Rosa is ‘what is dialectical contradiction?’, she is looking for a higher rationality than that of formal contradiction, of course, leaving the whole presupposed metaphysic of formal logic totally unquestioned. A good critique of this blindness can be found in the Hegelian philosopher Errol Harris, surely that has all the caveats of him being a defender of some liberalized version of Hegel, with a bag-full of Spinozism on the side, but still, a pretty clear reference (see his ‘Formal, Transcendental and Dialectical Thinking’) if Hegel’s obscure style throws you off…the cliff. The question is not whether dialectical logic is more ‘rational’ than formal logic, the essence of the matter is in that both are LOGICS, they are a manifestation of alienated consciousness, which as external (‘out-there’) modes of thinking fail miserably in grasping the internal, truly historical (history being a process), dynamic of the human species’ appropriation of Nature. In this sense, as Alfred Sohn-Rethel (whose work, ‘Intellectual and Manual Labor’, I highly recommend,) puts it, that “social being determines consciousness” is something that a Marxist, beyond any –isms, should understand in its full literal sense. Why? Because the real question is: ‘what is the dialectic for?’ And, as crass as this may sound in this format, the dialectic is a method (and there is a whole lot to say about this obviously, though if I can recommend one more thing, the book by Jindrich Zeleny, ‘The Logic of Marx’, despite its tasteless title and that it’s more of a summary, has some good pearls on the methodological issue, as regards the analytical and synthetical stages, etc.) to ascertain the objectivity of the real process of subsumption of labor under capital, and it is superior to the formalized scientific method, in that it goes beyond any appearance by not hypostasizing the external immediacy of sense-data (itself a result of the fetishism of the commodity form), by, that is, penetrating the object which one is trying to appropriate consciously until one attains the objective knowledge of this object so as to fully deploy the necessity of one’s action. It is a method then to provide Marxists a scientific critique of science, science being ‘the’ modality of production of relative surplus-value, that is, the production of a scientific consciousness, wherein lies the revolutionary subjectivity of the working class. I’m not a big fan of Adorno -the fact that I haven’t read him enough might have something to do with that- but this quote of his rings very true to me: ‘If the Hegelian synthesis did work out, it would only be the wrong one.’ _ Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222986/direct/01/ 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] Hmmm…yeah…about that national - re al life politics - front
The workers of Kraft (largest food and beverage company headquartered in the United States and the second largest in the world… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraft_Foods)-Terrabusi, (something beginning with imp…imper…impes…it’ll come back to me) company which is supported by COPAL, owned by Zorroguieta, a minister of (yes yes yes) Jorge Rafael Videla, in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, occupied the factory because the company didn’t comply with the conciliations and fired 160 workers, though maybe I'm biased. The workers, those “leftist” petty-bourgeois academicists, ask Mrs. anti-imperialism//anti-neoliberalism Kirchner “Where are you Mrs. President?”, “Donde está Señora Presidenta?”, then repression by the federal police ensued: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVpH2fXDQNM the “fun” part starts at 3 mins. The workers are still detained inside the factory: “Socialism that’s where the workers are.” _ Lauren found her dream laptop. Find the PC that’s right for you. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/choosepc/?ocid=ftp_val_wl_290 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] Guardian video report on the Gaza massacre
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLZgNy46aTQ This may have already been posted, apparently it was done around March. They show an interview to three kids who were taken hostage by the IDF to be used as 'human shields', alongside other niceties... _ Bing™ brings you maps, menus, and reviews organized in one place. Try it now. http://www.bing.com/search?q=restaurantsform=MLOGENpubl=WLHMTAGcrea=TEXT_MLOGEN_Core_tagline_local_1x1 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] Voting with feet, not commendable in Argentina Re: China's high speed rail plans
Louis Proyect wrote: My main disagreement with Nestor is his tendency to apply such examples to Iran, China or other countries with nominally anti-imperialist governments but at least he errs on the side of living reality rather than quote-mongering from Marx. Well, Louis, as always, I think that depends on the context. For example, when the whole discussion starts to get embroiled with ‘Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, agrees with me!’ –Néstor’s words, then should we not take a step back and see what Marx said? Is it enough to invoke the theories of Lenin or Trotsky out of nowhere? In fact, if you allow me the impudence, reading your posts on the latest events on Iran, you quote Trotsky quite a bit yourself. Same goes for when I talk to Stalinists who, and I suggest you experiment with this, can be caught saying exactly what Marx was going crazy about in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, a ‘political’ programme, and no, I’m not saying Néstor is one of them. So far the argument had been mainly centered, at least from my side, on the (determinative) role of accumulation (forgive me, I have to say this here, Marx said accumulation is ‘the’ independent variable,) is that orthodox, economistic, dogmatic, determinist? Not if one takes Capital as a political book, notwithstanding how Council Communists have made a religion out of this outlook, I think. I certainly didn’t mean any of this to be an abstract condemnation of the CCP, nor am I willing to abstract from the complications and propose instead to engage in the demonization spectacle, and even further, while I don’t accept, and think it is necessary to expressly reject, Nestor’s framework about ‘using’ capitalism, the way I understand it, the transitional period is capitalist, but then we have to measure how the production process is progressively veering toward socialist society in terms of productivity, organic composition of capital, labor relations, etc.. But I’m starting to notice here, that Néstor and I perhaps started with the left foot, so given the circumstances which I’m starting to feel out, and as I take it, that he is man of struggle, I’ll try to keep the quotes to a minimum, or just plagiarize them. Take a look at the Iñigo Carrera article, it’s not just Perón, there’s a specific “pattern” to the expansive cycles in the agrarian sector, and their respective political representatives, and when the contraction starts to hurt, the blood starts to run. _ Get back to school stuff for them and cashback for you. http://www.bing.com/cashback?form=MSHYCBpubl=WLHMTAGcrea=TEXT_MSHYCB_BackToSchool_Cashback_BTSCashback_1x1 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] Voting with feet, not commendable in Argentina Re: China's high speed rail plans
True enough. The way I started was stupidly insensitive, careless, perhaps I’m rubbing the crap from other lists, environments, etc., perhaps Louis, putting it in nationalists terms now, or at least those of my barrio, Saavedra, this is an all too common, but bad, habit for us Argentines, or porteños, and you’re not used to it…yet. I’ve been reading Marxmail posts, wow can’t even remember, couple years maybe, and the posts in your blog too, which I found quite helpful, let it be said. But I had read some of Néstor’s posts before and even the differences you had with them, the reason I haven’t and am not able to be more “active” is because…well, personal reasons of all sorts, studying, working, etc. etc., but I digress. I’ll try to make my views on the Universe a little clearer, evolving as they are, before we all die, but I can’t promise anything. I did say some if you plow thorugh my comments. Punching bag? No, I play futbol. Néstor, I’m not living in Argentina at the moment, but I go, was going, somewhat often, we’ll see about it then, I’ll try to read the books you’ve suggested. Iñigo Carrera’s approach may be somewhat stale but: Si vogliamo che tutto rimanga come é, bisogna che tutto cambi. _ Hotmail® is up to 70% faster. Now good news travels really fast. http://windowslive.com/online/hotmail?ocid=PID23391::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HYGN_faster:082009 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] Voting with feet, not commendable in Argentina Re: China'shigh speed rail plans
Nestor: I agree with all that Lueko has answered you Re: what is all that that he ‘has answered’?, he asked me a question, if I have anything to add to the little detail that the Chinese bureaucracy personifies the interests of capital, I assume he then acknowledges that that’s in fact the role of the CCP, am I right Lueko?, Nestor: Leonardo you ignorant Re: Nestor shows the level of his dialectical materialism once more and addresses me personally –“puteando”: throwing insult- before replying to my claim made two posts ago: that his comments so far implicitly take the consciousness of commodity producers as determined outside the sphere of capital accumulation, that is, as abstract consciousness,… do any of the Nestor’s posts mention value, relative surplus-value, methods of production in China?, do any of Nestor’s posts talk about how workers are separated from the conditions of production, capital is accumulated, in China? Not so far. Hence, unless we understand capital in the same terms of bourgeois political economy, the determinations of consciousness have not been addressed by Nestor -lest you think Marx wrote Capital because he was masturbating-, instead he proceeds to falsely S.Artesian's claim, which is the one my intervention started with: him saying the CCP ‘uses’ capitalism to build socialism, this was Nestor a few posts ago: 'It is one thing to _use_ capitalism, and a different one to _bow_ to capitalism. The whole thing when it comes to the China debate is whether the Chinese leadership _uses_ capitalism or _bows_ to it, which implies bowing to imperialism. China is not doing the latter. Doing the former, of course, entails the most serious risks. ' Nestor: I would add a single question: Re: As for the three questions below… Nestor: (a) what were the interests and desires of Arg workers that Peron, as you bluntly and automatically parrot, betrayed? Re: Well Nestor, this might just be me masturbating here, but as I take it from the Communist Manifesto, the interests of Argentinean workers run parallel to the interests of workers around the world: the overthrow of capital. Now I suppose you mean specific issues, how Peron exterminated Montoneros, how he was a closet fascist, how he sold out YPF, how he opened the gates to the dictatorship which came after his terms? But may I kindly request you answer my question first, because I think the objective issues (capitalism, for only then can we begin to clear up how these interests have been betrayed) are a tad more important than ideological polemic, again, you wouldn’t want anyone to think that you’re just hiding behind your dialectical mantle in order to ensconce your evasion. Nestor: And (b) who are you, what is the stool you stand up on to define what were, are or will ever be the interests of Arg workers? Re: See above Nestor: That is, who do you think you are, Leonardo? Re: That’s a nice question to masturbate over, let me do that and get back atcha. _ Windows Live: Keep your friends up to date with what you do online. http://windowslive.com/Campaign/SocialNetworking?ocid=PID23285::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:SI_SB_online:082009 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] Voting with feet, not commendable in Argentina Re: China'shigh speed rail plans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAWQkY8Rlbg _ With Windows Live, you can organize, edit, and share your photos. http://www.windowslive.com/Desktop/PhotoGallery 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] Voting with feet, not commendable in Argentina
First, I’d like to apologize to everyone for the stupid video I sent. It’s a song: “who do you think you are?” by the spice girls, I was just trying to poke some little fun at the question Nestor asked me “who do you think you are?”, but I’ll promise I’ll be more serious from now on, I mean, more dialectical materialist, sorry. Lueko asked me if saying that the CCP personified the interests of capital was all I was planning to add. It’s not like I want to digress from the first question I posed to Nestor, or Lueko too, I suppose (CCP ‘using’ capitalism, etc. etc.) but I did share an article by Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett on how transnational accumulation undercuts the scale to which productivity is expanding in China, and I’ll leave the other ‘less important’ FDI issues aside for now. It’s from the (prissy) historical materialism journal but I think these guys are the ablest I read so far on China and, you know, it’s free, just a click. Yes, I didn’t pick out relevant quotes; I guess that makes me a lazy bastard. Here it is again: http://legacy.lclark.edu/~marty/China%20Transnational%20Accumulation.pdf But just what does accumulation mean? –and it’s not like I’m trying to sound arrogant pretending you don’t know, it’s that I like to have things clear, you know, considering that the “issue” of value was one of the most disputed problems in Marxist theory. As S.Artesian has been painstakingly trying to explain, it’s wrong-headed to look at capital as an agglomeration of use-values (GDP and shit like that, what has to be measured is how the mass of value has evolved and I’m not quite sure, nor have the time to go back at them right now, but I don’t think this was duly considered in previous posts) capital is a social relation, viz. the autonomized self-valorization of the commodity form in which private and independent labor is socially metabolized. And where does accumulation come from? It comes from the separation of the workers from the conditions of production. So when one looks at HSR, the important thing to consider is how these conditions are exacerbated. Since surplus-value originates in the production process it is also important to look at how labor relations have developed since the reform period and picture is hardly pretty, here’s some relevant papers by Simon Clarke http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~syrbe/china/ But what do all these economic categories have to do with the abstract heavenly question of consciousness?, it’s that unless we look at consciousness as bourgeois political economy does, an agglomeration of ideas, utilities, etc., consciousness, is but the generic way through which humans appropriate their medium, and so it is a result of how this metabolism instantiates itself. Perhaps you’ve heard of the work of Alfred Sohn-Rethel, who wanted to show that the Kantian system, as well as other general scientific and philosophical conceptions, had in fact resulted as the historical result from the act of real exchange, in other words, that the logic itself, and I dare include that of Hegel, is a particular way of thinking which comes from the mode of production, (mental) abstraction then comes from people’s own actions and that is why the fetishism of commodities is an immensely crucial dimension to grasp –incidentally, also the reason why Stalinist ideology had to ‘prove’ this was just Marx masturbating, Althusser being the exemplary spokesman of this tradition, though he moved away from this in his later years- this is how I understand Marx’s critique of Hegel in the Paris Manuscripts. Yes, this I suppose is all very trivially accepted but then why do we go back, and put the question abstractly, ‘how should the CCP use capitalism?’, that is idealist. The objective perspective starts from looking at capital and what the necessary limitations to conscious political action springing from the determinations which ensue from the analysis are. That probably sounds haughty and anti-dialectical, but, looking at it this way, just to illustrate, I claim for example that ‘the’ problem as regards our beloved ex-socialist Soviet state (USSR) was that the modality of accumulation, exclusively centered around the production of absolute surplus value, broadly put, with unchanging methods of production, made it impossible for “full-blown” capitalist relations not to reestablish themselves. Is China on the same road to blind productionism?, not in the same exact way, clearly, and though I don't claim that the opponents to S.Artesian here are as blind as to understand the issues involved, it looks to me as though the logic you're putting forth is 'almost' a copycat...then again, there's always the Stalinist hope that Russia will regain its glory and this is all Putin's plan. But what is the role of capitalist incursion in China? Mainly, I think, that it works to sustain the fragmentation of workers into the two main groups of those with a
Re: [Marxism] China's high speed rail plans
Ah, but Mage, you forget that in Néstor's dictionary it isn't social being, i.e. the social relation borne by the capital form, which determines consciousness, but the abstract consciousness (perdy, no other than that of the CCP bureaucracy) of commodity producers which determines the former, uses it. Indeed, the CCP bureaucracy doesn't bow down to imperialism, which is why they finance most of the Iraq carnage and exploit Chinese workers to a degree which makes the word mutilation sound hackneyed. Perhaps Néstor could use some of the data from Burkett and Hart-Landsberg to see that there never was, is, or will be a national process of capital accumulation other than the one which is determined by the unity of its global content. http://legacy.lclark.edu/~marty/China%20Transnational%20Accumulation.pdf Bajá un cambio, Néstor. _ Windows Live: Make it easier for your friends to see what you’re up to on Facebook. http://windowslive.com/Campaign/SocialNetworking?ocid=PID23285::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:SI_SB_facebook:082009 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
