Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The playboy philosopher

[Jim Farmelant]

 
On Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:35:48 -0400 Ralph Dumain
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> What a useless piece of shit Badiou is. His politics are even more 
> worthless than his philosophy.
> 
> As for Sartre, there are others on the anti-Stalinist left who bear 
> a 
> grudge against him for his erstwhile apologetics for the Communist 
> Party. Some might wonder what he was doing with Maoist students.
> 

Sartre's involvement with the Maoists came when the Gaullist government
in France initiated a crackdown on the Maoists in 1970. Jean-Pierre Le
Dantec, who was editor-in-chief of the newspaper, La Cause du peuple -
published by the Maoist group Proletarian Left was arrested and his paper
seized. He was immediately replaced by a new editor, Michel Le Bris, who
was then arrested ten days later. In other words, the French government
was most intent on suppressing the Maoist press at that time. Since the
government had made it clear that it would arrest anybody who would take
charge of the paper, the Maoists decided to turn to Sartre. So on April
28, 1970, Sartre after meeting with a number of leading Maoists including
Benny Levy (then known as Pierre Victor) accepted the post of
editor-in-chief. Later that year Sartre accepted the same position at
several other Maoist papers that were also facing suppression by the
French government. In the meantime,the French National Assembly passed
legislation restricting demonstrations, which gave the minister of the
interior the power to dissolve the Proletarian Left, which he ordered on
May 27, 1970. 
 
Sartre's acceptance of the post of editor-in-chief with several Maoist
papers lent his name, his prestige and indeed his active participation to
the campaign against the attempts by the government to suppress the
Maoists. For this Sartre was attacked by most of the bourgeois press
which charged him with grandstanding and self-promotion, while the
Communist paper, L'Humanite attacked him for endorsing the "vulgar
provocations" of the Maoists. Only Le Monde was in any way supportive.
 
When the cases of the two arrested editors of La Cause du peuple was
taken to the courts, the decision to outlaw the paper was revoked but the
editors were still found guilty of violating the law. That verdict was
followed by outbreaks of violent demonstrations. In June, Sartre and his
friends founded the Association of the Friends of "La Cause du peuple,"
with Simone de Beauvoir and Liliane Siegel as fronts. They organized
public distributions of the paper in Paris with Sartre, Beauvoir, and
many leading intellectuals and journalists publicly hawking the paper.
Sartre, no stranger to publicity, made sure that there was a photographer
from Gallimard to photograph the whole thing. Sartre was arrested,
questioned by the police, then released.
 
Following that incident Sartre who had been called as a witness inthe
trial of a Maoist leader, Alain Geismar, refused to come to the court.
Instead, he harangued the workers at the Renault Billancourt plants where
he called upon the workers to support Geismar's cause. Most of the
workers ignored his speech. 
 
Sartre was widely ridiculed in the French press.
 
Sartre's active involvement with the Maoists continued until 1973. His
relations with them were often quite stormy but his involvement did help
beat back the government's attempts to suppress or censor the radical
press in France.

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The playboy philosopher

[Jim Farmelant]

 
On Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:35:48 -0400 Ralph Dumain
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> What a useless piece of shit Badiou is. His politics are even more 
> worthless than his philosophy.
> 
> As for Sartre, there are others on the anti-Stalinist left who bear 
> a 
> grudge against him for his erstwhile apologetics for the Communist 
> Party. Some might wonder what he was doing with Maoist students.

I can answer that as follows:

Sartre's involvement with the Maoists came 
when the Gaullist government in France initiated a crackdown on 
the Maoists in 1970. Jean-Pierre Le Dantec, who was editor-in-chief 
of the newspaper, La Cause du peuple - published by the Maoist group 
Proletarian Left was arrested and his paper seized. He was immediately 
replaced by a new editor, Michel Le Bris, who was then arrested ten 
days later. In other words, the French government was most intent on 
suppressing the Maoist press at that time. Since the government had made 
it clear that it would arrest anybody who would take charge of the paper,

the Maoists decided to turn to Sartre. So on April 28, 1970, Sartre after

meeting with a number of leading Maoists including Benny Levy (then known

as Pierre Victor) accepted the post of editor-in-chief. Later that year
Sartre 
accepted the same position at several other Maoist papers that were also
facing 
suppression by the French government. In the meantime,the French National

Assembly passed legislation restricting demonstrations, which gave the
minister 
of the interior the power to dissolve the Proletarian Left, which he 
ordered on May 27, 1970. 

Sartre's acceptance of the post of editor-in-chief with several Maoist
papers 
lent his name, his prestige and indeed his active participation to the
campaign 
against the attempts by the government to suppress the Maoists. For this
Sartre 
was attacked by most of the bourgeois press which charged him with 
grandstanding and self-promotion, while the Communist paper, L'Humanite,
attacked him for endorsing the "vulgar provocations" of the Maoists. 
Only Le Monde was in any way supportive.

When the cases of the two arrested editors of La Cause du peuple was
taken 
to the courts, the decision to outlaw the paper was revoked but the
editors 
were still found guilty of violating the law. That verdict was followed
by 
outbreaks of violent demonstrations. In June, Sartre and his friends
founded 
the Association of the Friends of "La Cause du peuple," with Simone de
Beauvoir 
and Liliane Siegel as fronts. They organized public distributions of the
paper in 
Paris with Sartre, Beauvoir, and many leading intellectuals and
journalists publicly 
hawking the paper. Sartre, no stranger to publicity, made sure that there
was a 
photographer from Gallimard to photograph the whole thing. Sartre was
arrested, 
questioned by the police, then released.

Following that incident Sartre who had been called as a witness in the
trial of a 
Maoist leader, Alain Geismar, refused to come to the court. Instead, he
harangued 
the workers at the Renault Billancourt plants where he called upon the
workers to 
support Geismar's cause. Most of the workers ignored his speech. 

Sartre was widely ridiculed in the French press.

Sartre's active involvement with the Maoists continued until 1973. 
His relations with them were often quite stormy but his involvement did
help 
beat back the government's attempts to suppress or censor the radical
press in France.

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The playboy philosopher

[Ralph Dumain]

What a useless piece of shit Badiou is. His politics are even more 
worthless than his philosophy.

As for Sartre, there are others on the anti-Stalinist left who bear a 
grudge against him for his erstwhile apologetics for the Communist 
Party. Some might wonder what he was doing with Maoist students.

As for Sartre's philosophy, the philosophy he is known for seems to 
me a failure. I think one would have to read Critique of Dialectical 
Reason in search of a lasting contribution.

At 05:03 PM 10/6/2008, Charles Brown wrote:

>Ruthless Critic of All that Exists
>
>
>Sartre had horrible (Stalinist) political views, actually.
>
>^^^
>CB: Actually, no he had pretty good ones. Opposed French imperialism
>and colonialism. And his support of the SU was, of course, another
>political position. His politics were much better than these clowns.
>
>
>
>Why are you calling Badiou an anti-Marxist, by the way?
>
>^^^
>CB: Ok the other ones.
>What kind of Marxism does Badiou have ? Oh I see you have some below.
>I'll have to check it out
>
>
>
>*An Essential Philosophical Thesis: "It Is Right to Rebel against the
>Reactionaries"
>
>
>CB: Well, uh, yeah. True
>
>^^^
>*
>by Alain Badiou
>Translated by Alberto Toscano
>
>
>We are familiar with Mao Zedong's formula: "Marxism comprises many
>principles, but in the final analysis they can all be brought back to
>a
>single sentence: it is right to rebel against the reactionaries." This
>phrase, which appears so simple, is at the same time rather mysterious:
>how
>is it conceivable that Marx's enormous theoretical enterprise, with
>its
>ceaselessly and scrupulously reworked and recast analyses, can be
>concentrated in a single maxim: "It is right to rebel against the
>reactionaries"?
>
>
>CB: I'm not sure Marxism can be condensed to this quite.
>
>^^^
>
>  And what is this maxim? Are we dealing with an observation,
>summarizing the Marxist analysis of objective contradictions, the
>ineluctable confrontation of revolution and counterrevolution? Is it a
>directive oriented toward the subjective mobilization of revolutionary
>forces? Is Marxist truth the following: one rebels, one is right?1 Or
>is it
>rather: one must rebel? The two, perhaps, and even more the spiraling
>movement from the one to the other, real rebellion (objective force)
>being
>enriched and returning on itself in the consciousness of its rightness
>or
>reason (subjective force).
>
>^
>CB: Well, ...uh... lets examine this more closely.
>
>
>
>**
>**
>*A. Practice, Theory, Knowledge*
>We are already handed something essential here: every Marxist
>statement
>is-in a single, dividing movement-observation and directive. As a
>concentrate of real practice, it equals its movement in order to return
>to
>it. Since all that is draws its being only from its becoming, equally,
>theory as knowledge of what is has being only by moving toward that of
>which
>it is the theory. Every knowledge is orientation, every description is
>prescription.
>The sentence, "it is right to rebel against the reactionaries," bears
>witness to this more than any other. In it we find expressed the fact
>that
>Marxism, prior to being the full-fledged science of social formation,
>is the
>distillate of what rebellion demands: that one consider it right, that
>reason be rendered to it. Marxism is both a taking sides and the
>systematization of a partisan experience. The existence of a science
>of
>social formations bears no interest for the masses unless it reflects
>and
>concentrates their real revolutionary movement. Marxism must be
>conceived as
>the accumulated wisdom of popular revolutions
>
>
>CB: That's seems a good thought.
>
>^
>, the reason they engender, the
>fixation and detailing of their target. Mao Zedong's sentence clearly
>situates rebellion as the originary place of correct ideas, and
>reactionaries as those whose destruction is legitimated by theory.
>Mao's
>sentence situates Marxist truth within the unity of theory and
>practice.
>
>
>CB: Hear, hear
>
>
>
>Marxist truth is that from which rebellion draws its rightness, its
>reason,
>to demolish the enemy. It repudiates any equality in the face of truth.
>In a
>single movement, which is knowledge in its specific division into
>description and directive, it judges, pronounces the sentence, and
>immerses
>itself in its execution. Rebels possess knowledge, according to their
>aforementioned essential movement, their power and their duty: to
>annihilate
>the reactionaries. Marx's Capital does not say anything different: the
>proletarians are right to violently overthrow the capitalists. Marxist
>truth
>is not a conciliatory truth. It is, in and of itself, dictatorship and,
>if
>need be, terror. [clipped]
>
>^
>CB: This is discussion for the underground party (smile)
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[Marxism-Thaxis] Post on crisis

[Charles Brown]

bauerly

 The deregulation of the financial sector — begun under Reagan and the
first Bush, and completed under Clinton — has led to the mushrooming of
financial derivatives (hedge funds, mortgage-backed bonds, etc.) with little
foundation in real capital invested in buildings, machinery, equipment and
stocks of goods and services (the “real economy”).


CB: And the most important form of capital, labor , or variable capital





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[Marxism-Thaxis] The playboy philosopher

[Charles Brown]

Ruthless Critic of All that Exists 




Sartre had horrible (Stalinist) political views, actually.

^^^
CB: Actually, no he had pretty good ones. Opposed French imperialism
and colonialism. And his support of the SU was, of course, another
political position. His politics were much better than these clowns.



Why are you calling Badiou an anti-Marxist, by the way?

^^^
CB: Ok the other ones. 
What kind of Marxism does Badiou have ? Oh I see you have some below.
I'll have to check it out



*An Essential Philosophical Thesis: "It Is Right to Rebel against the
Reactionaries"


CB: Well, uh, yeah. True

^^^
*
by Alain Badiou
Translated by Alberto Toscano


We are familiar with Mao Zedong's formula: "Marxism comprises many
principles, but in the final analysis they can all be brought back to
a
single sentence: it is right to rebel against the reactionaries." This
phrase, which appears so simple, is at the same time rather mysterious:
how
is it conceivable that Marx's enormous theoretical enterprise, with
its
ceaselessly and scrupulously reworked and recast analyses, can be
concentrated in a single maxim: "It is right to rebel against the
reactionaries"?


CB: I'm not sure Marxism can be condensed to this quite.

^^^

 And what is this maxim? Are we dealing with an observation,
summarizing the Marxist analysis of objective contradictions, the
ineluctable confrontation of revolution and counterrevolution? Is it a
directive oriented toward the subjective mobilization of revolutionary
forces? Is Marxist truth the following: one rebels, one is right?1 Or
is it
rather: one must rebel? The two, perhaps, and even more the spiraling
movement from the one to the other, real rebellion (objective force)
being
enriched and returning on itself in the consciousness of its rightness
or
reason (subjective force).

^
CB: Well, ...uh... lets examine this more closely.



**
**
*A. Practice, Theory, Knowledge*
We are already handed something essential here: every Marxist
statement
is-in a single, dividing movement-observation and directive. As a
concentrate of real practice, it equals its movement in order to return
to
it. Since all that is draws its being only from its becoming, equally,
theory as knowledge of what is has being only by moving toward that of
which
it is the theory. Every knowledge is orientation, every description is
prescription.
The sentence, "it is right to rebel against the reactionaries," bears
witness to this more than any other. In it we find expressed the fact
that
Marxism, prior to being the full-fledged science of social formation,
is the
distillate of what rebellion demands: that one consider it right, that
reason be rendered to it. Marxism is both a taking sides and the
systematization of a partisan experience. The existence of a science
of
social formations bears no interest for the masses unless it reflects
and
concentrates their real revolutionary movement. Marxism must be
conceived as
the accumulated wisdom of popular revolutions


CB: That's seems a good thought.

^
, the reason they engender, the
fixation and detailing of their target. Mao Zedong's sentence clearly
situates rebellion as the originary place of correct ideas, and
reactionaries as those whose destruction is legitimated by theory.
Mao's
sentence situates Marxist truth within the unity of theory and
practice.


CB: Hear, hear



Marxist truth is that from which rebellion draws its rightness, its
reason,
to demolish the enemy. It repudiates any equality in the face of truth.
In a
single movement, which is knowledge in its specific division into
description and directive, it judges, pronounces the sentence, and
immerses
itself in its execution. Rebels possess knowledge, according to their
aforementioned essential movement, their power and their duty: to
annihilate
the reactionaries. Marx's Capital does not say anything different: the
proletarians are right to violently overthrow the capitalists. Marxist
truth
is not a conciliatory truth. It is, in and of itself, dictatorship and,
if
need be, terror. [clipped]

^
CB: This is discussion for the underground party (smile)





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[Marxism-Thaxis] Two flyers

[Charles Brown]

Mark Lause 

Voting records on what the pirates put to a vote.  Cool.

Ya got anything on their astrological signs?

ML

^
CB: Yeah. Your sign is not rising.



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[Marxism-Thaxis] 'Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

[Charles Brown]

The New York Times has an interesting article about the way that the subprime 
mortgage industry pressured Fannie Mae into approving questionable loans. The 
article has 2 throw-away lines giving the Democrats some responsibility. Is 
there anything to this accusation?

Duhigg, Charles. 2008. "Pressured to Take More Risk, Fannie Hit a Tipping 
Point." New York Times (5 October).
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/business/05fannie.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
 


Here are the two points in question:

Congress was demanding that Mr. Mudd help steer more loans to low-income 
borrowers.

Capitol Hill bore down on Mr. Mudd as well. The same year he took the top 
position, regulators sharply increased Fannie’s affordable-housing goals. 
Democratic lawmakers demanded that the company buy more loans that had been 
made to low-income and minority homebuyers.

“When homes are doubling in price in every six years and incomes are increasing 
by a mere one percent per year, Fannie’s mission is of paramount importance,” 
Senator Jack Reed 
,
 a Rhode Island Democrat, lectured Mr. Mudd at a Congressional hearing in 2006. 
“In fact, Fannie and Freddie can do more, a lot more.”


Here is the entire text:

“Almost no one expected what was coming. It’s not fair to blame us for not 
predicting the unthinkable.“- Daniel H. Mudd, former chief executive, Fannie 
Mae 

 


When the mortgage giant Fannie Mae recruited Daniel H. Mudd, he told a friend 
he wanted to work for an altruistic business. Already a decorated marine and a 
successful executive, he wanted to be a role model to his four children - just 
as his father, the television journalist Roger Mudd, had been to him.

Fannie, a government-sponsored company, had long helped Americans get cheaper 
home loans by serving as a powerful middleman, buying mortgages from lenders 
and banks and then holding or reselling them to Wall Street investors. This 
allowed banks to make even more loans - expanding the pool of homeowners and 
permitting Fannie to ring up handsome profits along the way.

But by the time Mr. Mudd became Fannie’s chief executive in 2004, his company 
was under siege. Competitors were snatching lucrative parts of its business. 
Congress was demanding that Mr. Mudd help steer more loans to low-income 
borrowers. Lenders were threatening to sell directly to Wall Street unless 
Fannie bought a bigger chunk of their riskiest loans.

So Mr. Mudd made a fateful choice. Disregarding warnings from his managers that 
lenders were making too many loans that would never be repaid, he steered 
Fannie into more treacherous corners of the mortgage market, according to 
executives.

For a time, that decision proved profitable. In the end, it nearly destroyed 
the company and threatened to drag down the housing market and the economy.

Dozens of interviews, most from people who requested anonymity to avoid legal 
repercussions, offer an inside account of the critical juncture when Fannie 
Mae’s new chief executive, under pressure from Wall Street firms, Congress and 
company shareholders, took additional risks that pushed his company, and, in 
turn, a large part of the nation’s financial health, to the brink.

Between 2005 and 2008, Fannie purchased or guaranteed at least $270 billion in 
loans to risky borrowers - more than three times as much as in all its earlier 
years combined, according to company filings and industry data.

“We didn’t really know what we were buying,” said Marc Gott, a former director 
in Fannie’s loan servicing department. “This system was designed for plain 
vanilla loans, and we were trying to push chocolate sundaes through the gears.”

Last month, the White House was forced to orchestrate a $200 billion rescue of 
Fannie and its corporate cousin, Freddie Mac 
.
 On Sept. 26, the companies disclosed that federal prosecutors and the 
Securities and Exchange Commission were investigating potential accounting and 
governance problems.

Mr. Mudd said in an interview that he responded as best he could given the 
company’s challenges, and worked to balance risks prudently.

“Fannie Mae faced the danger that the market would pass us by,” he said. “We 
were afraid that lenders would be selling products we weren’t buying and 
Congress would feel like we weren’t fulfilling our mission. The market was 
changing, and it’s our job to buy loans, so we had to change as well.”


Dealing With Risk

When Mr. Mudd arrived at Fannie eight years ago, it was beginning a dramatic 
expansion that, at its peak, had it buying 40 percent of all domestic mortgages.

Just two decades earlier, Fannie had been on the brink of bankruptcy. But chief 
executives like Franklin D. Raines 

[Marxism-Thaxis] ... applying the scientific approach to economics.

[Charles Brown]

.. applying the scientific approach to economics.

The New York Times / October 1, 2008

Op-Ed Contributor
This Economy Does Not Compute
By MARK BUCHANAN

Notre-Dame-de-Courson, France

A FEW weeks ago, it seemed the financial crisis wouldn't spin
completely out of control. The government knew what it was doing — at
least the economic experts were saying so — and the Treasury had taken
a stand against saving failing firms, letting Lehman Brothers file for
bankruptcy. But since then we've had the rescue of the insurance giant
A.I.G., the arranged sale of failing banks and we'll soon see, in one
form or another, the biggest taxpayer bailout of Wall Street in
history. It seems clear that no one really knows what is coming next.
Why?

Well, part of the reason is that economists still try to understand
markets by using ideas from traditional economics, especially
so-called equilibrium theory. This theory views markets as reflecting
a balance of forces, and says that market values change only in
response to new information — the sudden revelation of problems about
a company, for example, or a real change in the housing supply.
Markets are otherwise supposed to have no real internal dynamics of
their own. Too bad for the theory, things don't seem to work that way.

Nearly two decades ago, a classic economic study found that of the 50
largest single-day price movements since World War II, most happened
on days when there was no significant news, and that news in general
seemed to account for only about a third of the overall variance in
stock returns. A recent study by some physicists found much the same
thing — financial news lacked any clear link with the larger movements
of stock values.

Certainly, markets have internal dynamics. They're self-propelling
systems driven in large part by what investors believe other investors
believe; participants trade on rumors and gossip, on fears and
expectations, and traders speak for good reason of the market's
optimism or pessimism. It's these internal dynamics that make it
possible for billions to evaporate from portfolios in a few short
months just because people suddenly begin remembering that housing
values do not always go up.

Really understanding what's going on means going beyond equilibrium
thinking and getting some insight into the underlying ecology of
beliefs and expectations, perceptions and misperceptions, that drive
market swings.

Surprisingly, very few economists have actually tried to do this,
although that's now changing — if slowly — through the efforts of
pioneers who are building computer models able to mimic market
dynamics by simulating their workings from the bottom up.

The idea is to populate virtual markets with artificially intelligent
agents who trade and interact and compete with one another much like
real people. These "agent based" models do not simply proclaim the
truth of market equilibrium, as the standard theory complacently does,
but let market behavior emerge naturally from the actions of the
interacting participants, which may include individuals, banks, hedge
funds and other players, even regulators. What comes out may be a
quiet equilibrium, or it may be something else.

For example, an agent model being developed by the Yale economist John
Geanakoplos, along with two physicists, Doyne Farmer and Stephan
Thurner, looks at how the level of credit in a market can influence
its overall stability.

Obviously, credit can be a good thing as it aids all kinds of creative
economic activity, from building houses to starting businesses. But
too much easy credit can be dangerous.

In the model, market participants, especially hedge funds, do what
they do in real life — seeking profits by aiming for ever higher
leverage, borrowing money to amplify the potential gains from their
investments. More leverage tends to tie market actors into tight
chains of financial interdependence, and the simulations show how this
effect can push the market toward instability by making it more likely
that trouble in one place — the failure of one investor to cover a
position — will spread more easily elsewhere.

That's not really surprising, of course. But the model also shows
something that is not at all obvious. The instability doesn't grow in
the market gradually, but arrives suddenly. Beyond a certain threshold
the virtual market abruptly loses its stability in a "phase
transition" akin to the way ice abruptly melts into liquid water.
Beyond this point, collective financial meltdown becomes effectively
certain. This is the kind of possibility that equilibrium thinking
cannot even entertain.

It's important to stress that this work remains speculative. Yet it is
not meant to be realistic in full detail, only to illustrate in a
simple setting the kinds of things that may indeed affect real
markets. It suggests that the narrative stories we tell in the
aftermath of every crisis, about how it started and spread, and about
who's to blame, may lead us to miss the d

[Marxism-Thaxis] What's the total amount of money in the whole world ?

[Charles Brown]

What's the total amount of money in the whole world ?

-- 
From: Sandwichman  :

As Benjamin Franklin explained, "time is money." The question that
needs to be asked, then, is: "how much money and time is there in the
whole world."

On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 7:39 AM, Julio Huato <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> Chris wrote:
>
>> Whatever the measures, which can proliferate,
>> and interact in complex ways,
>> they are related to labor and the productivity of labor.
>> In the world.
>
> That relation is highly mediated, but you're right it's good to see
> through the mediations.  I described in a recent post an exercise I
> used to conduct with my international finance students at Ramapo on
> the first day of class.  That first day was my only chance to help
the
> students see that producing wealth "the hard way" underlay the
> financial superstructure.  After that, we'd go into
arbitrage-derived
> parity conditions, forex derivatives, exposure, etc.  So, without
this
> discussion, the students would just take the trees for the forest.
>
> I just posted an edited version of this story on my blog:
>
>
http://juliohuato.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/on-life-and-financial-markets/

> ___
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[Marxism-Thaxis] What’s the total amount of mon ey in the whole world ?

[Charles Brown]

What’s the total amount of money in the whole world ?

-
From: "Julio Huato" 




Sabri wrote:

> Firstly, money has never been infinite and will never be. Because it
> can be destroyed as easily as it can be created, and given the complex
> financial system we are surrounded by, this has nothing to do with the
> labor productivity. By lending and borrowing, Chris and I can create
> money between the two of us with no difficulty, as long as the debtor
> between the two of us is credible, that is, it is believed that the
> debtor can make good on his debt, so that the creditor can use the
> debt he owns to buy other stuff.
>
> Notice that I am talking about beliefs, not realities. Labor and
> productivity are about realities, not about beliefs.
>
> When beliefs change and credibility is lost, money gets destroyed.

In a sense, what Sabri says is correct.  Money's creation and
destruction (i.e. its flow or change in its stock) is unrelated to
labor productivity, in that it doesn't necessarily have anything to do
with whether productivity goes up or down or stays the same.

However, that's not what I'm talking about.  The existing stock of
money at a point in time is not unrelated to the existing amount of
wealth in the economy.  There's a *definite* economic relationship
between them, which is captured by the notion of purchasing power, or
its reciprocal (prices).  And the existing amount of wealth in the
economy is related to labor productivity.

Sabri and I are emphasizing two different things.  Sabri is saying
that the dynamics of money (or, more generally, debt creation) follows
its own logic.  I'm saying yes, but financial assets are ultimately
claims over real wealth (or its change, income).  In a potluck party,
people cannot eat (or waste) more than they collectively bring to the
party.  The relationship between the real wealth the assets claim and
the assets themselves is captured by their prices.  Those prices can
never be infinite.





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[Marxism-Thaxis] What's the total amount of money in the whole world ?

[Charles Brown]

From: "Julio Huato" <

Chris wrote:

> Whatever the measures, which can proliferate,
> and interact in complex ways,
> they are related to labor and the productivity of labor.
> In the world.

That relation is highly mediated, but you're right it's good to see
through the mediations.  I described in a recent post an exercise I
used to conduct with my international finance students at Ramapo on
the first day of class.  That first day was my only chance to help the
students see that producing wealth "the hard way" underlay the
financial superstructure.  After that, we'd go into arbitrage-derived
parity conditions, forex derivatives, exposure, etc.  So, without this
discussion, the students would just take the trees for the forest.

I just posted an edited version of this story on my blog:

http://juliohuato.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/on-life-and-financial-markets/

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[Marxism-Thaxis] Shorter working hours

[Charles Brown]

Technological unemployment (was "economic growth" (was: Problem with
Dean Baker's "The Bailout Round II: Adult Version?"))





On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 12:40 PM, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> the very simple Harrod model of growth (a.k.a. Harrod-Domar) says
that
> all else constant, technological change leads to falling employment.
> Thus, the real GDP needs to grow to absorb the unemployed.

Well, yes, "all else constant" that makes sense. Technology leads to
falling unemployment. However, expanding real GDP is not the only
conceivable way of absorbing the unemployed. Back in the day when the
OLD conventional wisdom (in its original incarnation) still prevailed,
Ira Steward proposed a very different solution than simply growth of
real GDP -- although economic growth would indeed have been one of the
end results of the approach. That approach began with cutting the
hours of work. Keynes had the same idea during the second world war.
Marx got the same idea from an anonymous 1821 pamphlet, the Source and
Remedy of the National Difficulties.

Growth doesn't happen by itself. The conventional prescription for
growth starts from debt. What is debt? In banking terms it is a
WITHDRAWAL from a bank that occurs in anticipation of future deposits.
In effect, it creates something from nothing.

What is reduced working time? It is a WITHDRAWAL from labor activity
in anticipation of future work at an increased level of productivity.

Both debt and SWT share a future orientation -- the present
withdrawals underwrite the future deposits -- but with debt it is
capital that receives the interest payment for the future creation of
value; with SWT, that interest accrues to labor.

-- 
Sandwichman




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[Marxism-Thaxis] From Subprime to Slump?

[Charles Brown]

From Subprime to Slump?
By Jon Amsden

The collapse of Lehman Brothers has got the mainstream media hitting the panic 
button and talking of systemic crisis. But the crisis isn't just spreading to 
the real economy, it began there, argues Jon Amsden

In May of this year, Brian Marks made a valiant attempt to tie together 
inflation, the current crisis in financial markets, and struggles of the world 
working class. Marks wrote:

"The food and energy crises are key ways capital is trying to displace the 
costs of devaluation onto the working class. (Foreclosures, the manipulation of 
interest rates, and the outright bailout of banks with public money are other 
important measures). The transfer of workers' wealth through energy and food 
costs to the energy sector is then conveyed in a concentrated form to save (by 
buying up) the banks in crisis. That is where primitive accumulation meets 
fictitious capital."

Marks argued that inflation is a special form of ‘looting' whereby the 
capitalist class attempts to appropriate ‘the wealth of the workers', for the 
purpose of ‘propping up fictitious capital'. In a discussion on the Meltdown 
mailing list Ben Seymour queried Marks' logic on this point, noting that since 
inflation essentially devalues the workers' portion, at least in monetary 
terms, such would not be a particularly effective form of ‘looting'. For 
Seymour, the very thing that is supposed by Marks to constitute an accelerated 
‘looting' of the working class, ‘an escalation of the ongoing compulsion of 
work' which presumably increases the rate of surplus value extraction, is at 
the same time undermining or cancelling out the value extracted. Thus, crisis 
can increase the economic pressure on the working class, but the actual rate of 
exploitation is offset by the devaluation of the currency which measures the 
product and price of their labour power. We will visit the ‘increased economic 
pressure' that inflation places on the working class a bit later on. In one 
respect, however, inflation can, in fact, be favorable to that part of the 
working class who may be net debtors. For example, Joe Sixpack has an 
outstanding credit card balance of $9,000 US. As the real value of this figure 
is diminished by inflation, Joe will have to contribute less value to pay it 
back than he received (on credit) in the first place.


full: http://www.metamute.org/en/content/from_subprime_to_slump 






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[Marxism-Thaxis] Bad decision

[Charles Brown]

Russia's last emperor Nicholas II 
October 1, 2008 

Last tsar's family rehabilitated
http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/31214 

Russia's Supreme Court has ruled that the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and
his family were victims of political repression and should be
rehabilitated. http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/31214 




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[Marxism-Thaxis] On Raymond Williams

[Charles Brown]

LRB http://www.lrb.co.uk/ 
31 July 2008 

Upwards and Onwards http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n15/coll01_.html 

Stefan Collini 

Raymond Williams: A Warrior's Tale by Dai Smith 

When Raymond Williams died suddenly, aged 66, in January 1988,
estimations of him were sharply divided. There were those who regarded
him as a deservedly influential literary and cultural critic, a major
socialist theorist and an exemplary instance of the union of
intellectual seriousness and political purpose. There were others who
thought he had for too long enjoyed an inflated reputation, that he was
a muddy thinker and verbose writer who had been swept to a form of
cultural celebrity by the vogue for working-class sentimentalism in the
1960s and lefter-than-thou self-righteousness in the 1970s.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n15/coll01_.html 








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[Marxism-Thaxis] A global downturn in the power of the west

[Charles Brown]

A global downturn in the power of the west

By Dominique Moïsi 
Published: October 5 2008 18:21 | Last updated: October 5 2008  18:21
 
It is not too early to assess the first geopolitical lessons of the current  
financial maelstrom. As the crisis unfolds, trends are emerging. The near 
_collapse of financial  capitalism_ 
(http://www.ft.com/indepth/global-financial-crisis)  both confirms and 
accelerates a revolution that  was already under way 
in international politics. Who are the losers and who are  likely to be the 
winners - that is, those who lose the least - in the present  mess? In the 
language of Wall Street, the west is down and the state is up.  Moreover, 
democracy itself risks falling into disrepute if solutions are not  found to 
the 
crisis. 
First, the shock reinforces the relative decline of the US and the passage  
from a unipolar to a multipolar world. Whoever is its next president, America  
will not only have to face more diverse and complex challenges but will have  
fewer means with which to confront them. The interaction between the 
infectious  greed of its financial class and its politicians’ dereliction of 
duty has  
impoverished the country. The torch of history seems to be passing from west 
to  east. It is true that China and India are also affected by the financial  
turmoil; _less so Japan_ 
(http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/932f7720-8be0-11dd-8a4c-779fd18c.html) , a  
country whose financial conservatism is the product of 
bitter experience 20  years ago. But to paraphrase French President François 
Mitterrand: growth is in  the east and debts are in the west. Furthermore, fear 
is in the west and hope is  in the east, so we are equipped in very different 
ways to face this crisis. 
The meltdown has also revealed the depth of an identity crisis, not just in  
America but also in Europe. Nationalisation may have been the initial American 
 response to the crisis. But it is nationalism that is the main obstacle 
facing  Europe. The temptation of the “to each his own” mindset was present in 
Europe in  the good times, but has become irresistible in bad times. Nicolas 
Sarkozy,  French president of the European Union, may be mounting a brave and 
gallant  fight to produce a “European answer”, but his activism is not 
sufficient to hide  deep divisions among member states. The gold medal for 
selfishness 
may once more  be given to the Irish, who have followed the ingratitude of 
their No vote on the  Lisbon treaty with absolute contempt towards the _search 
for a collective  solution_ 
(http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b514c10a-8f2e-11dd-946c-779fd18c.html)  to the 
financial crisis. The European spirit is low  and a “
European political will” is lacking. 
The financial crisis has also shaken Russia and demonstrated the gap between  
its ambition to recover cold war superpower status and its true means as a  
country whose wealth is solely based on energy. By contrast, thanks to the  
diversity of its resources, Brazil is likely to come out of the present morass  
stronger. Though they are affected too, the Emirates might engage in a shopping 
 spree on the devalued jewels of western capitalism. On the African 
continent,  only the energy-rich countries may emerge relatively unaffected, 
while the 
rest  risk falling further. When the rich become less rich, the poor tend to 
become  even poorer. 
As the west withers, the state is on the rise. On the eve of the last World  
Economic Forum in Davos in January, its president and founder Klaus Schwab 
asked  “what business can do to save the world”. The question has been reversed 
today:  “What can the state do to save the business of finance?” The present 
crisis has  much more to do with the 1907 bankers’ panic in America than with 
the Great  Depression. At that time, the solution was found by John Pierpont 
Morgan, who  convinced other bankers to provide a backstop for the crisis. 
Today it is the  state that is called upon as the ultimate saviour of 
capitalism. 
However, while citizens of the western world are expressing their need for  
state protection, they are also increasingly cynical towards politics and  
politicians. Their fear is growing as their trust is diminishing. If state  
intervention were unsuccessful, the comments made by many African leaders -  
comparing the stability of authoritarian regimes with the chaotic condition of  
democratic ones - would be raised too in many western countries. The 1929 stock 
 
market crisis led to the second world war. If we fail to resolve it, the 2008  
financial crisis will accelerate the comparative decline of the west as a force 
 today and as a model for the rest of the world tomorrow. 
The writer is a senior adviser at France’s Institute for International  
Relations and author of the forthcoming ‘The Geopolitics of Emotion’, to be  
published in Britain by Bodley Head





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[Marxism-Thaxis] U.S. Command for Africa Established

[Charles Brown]

U.S. Command for Africa Established
"But concerns remain that whatever arena the Pentagon enters, it has more
money, more personnel and more power than any other government organization,
American or foreign."
By THOM SHANKER
October 5, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/world/africa/05command.html?ref=world 

WASHINGTON ‹ For decades, Africa was rarely more than an afterthought for
the Pentagon.

Responsibilities for American military affairs across the vast African
continent were divided clumsily among three regional combat headquarters,
those for Europe, the Pacific and the Middle East. Commanders set priorities
against obvious threats, whether the old Soviet Union and then a resurgent
Russia, a rising China or a nuclear North Korea, or adversaries along the
Persian Gulf.

If deployment of fighting forces is an indicator, that historic focus north
of the equator endures. But since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a new view
has gained acceptance among senior Pentagon officials and military
commanders: that ungoverned spaces and ill-governed states, whose
impoverished citizens are vulnerable to the ideology of violent extremism,
pose a growing risk to American security.

Last week, in a small Pentagon conference hall, Defense Secretary Robert M.
Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
inaugurated the newest regional headquarters, Africa Command, which is
responsible for coordinating American military affairs on the continent.

There are barely 2,000 American combat troops and combat support personnel
based in Africa, and the new top officer, Gen. William E. Ward of the Army,
pledges that Africa Command has no designs on creating vast, permanent
concentrations of forces on the continent.

³Bases? Garrisons? It¹s not about that,² General Ward said in an interview.
³We are trying to prevent conflict, as opposed to having to react to a
conflict.²

Already, though, analysts at policy advocacy organizations and research
institutes are warning of a militarization of American foreign policy across
Africa.

Mr. Gates said the new command was an example of the Pentagon¹s evolving
strategy of forging what he called ³civilian-military partnerships,² in
which the Defense Department works alongside and supports the State
Department and the Agency for International Development, as well as host
nations¹ security and development agencies.

³In this respect, Africom represents yet another important step in
modernizing our defense arrangements in light of 21st-century realities,²
Mr. Gates said. ³It is, at its heart, a different kind of command with a
different orientation, one that we hope and expect will institutionalize a
lasting security relationship with Africa, a vast region of growing
importance in the globe.²

Mr. Gates and General Ward said that this work to complement and support
American security and development policies would include missions like
deploying military trainers to improve the abilities of local
counterterrorism forces, assigning military engineers to help dig wells and
build sewers, and sending in military doctors to inoculate the local
population against diseases.

While that thinking has influenced the work of all of the military¹s
regional war-fighting commands, it is the central focus of Africa Command.

And over the past two years, it has quietly become the central focus of the
military¹s Southern Command, once better known for the invasions of Grenada
and Panama, but now converting itself to a headquarters that supports
efforts across the United States government and within host nations to
improve security and economic development in Latin America.

A number of specialists in African and Latin American politics at
nongovernmental organizations express apprehension, however, that the new
emphasis of both these commands represents an undesirable injection of the
military into American foreign policy, a change driven by fears of
terrorists or desires for natural resources.

Officials at one leading relief organization, Refugees International, warned
of the risk that Africom ³will take over many humanitarian and development
activities that soldiers aren¹t trained to perform.²

In a statement, Kenneth H. Bacon, the president of Refugees International,
said that the creation of Africa Command was ³a sign of increased U.S.
attention to Africa.² But he also said that it was ³important that Africom
focus on training peacekeepers and helping African countries build
militaries responsive to civilian control and democratic government.²

Mr. Bacon, a Pentagon spokesman in the Clinton administration, added, ³The
military should stick to military tasks and let diplomats and development
experts direct other aspects of U.S. policy in Africa.²

Refugees International released statistics showing that the percentage of
development assistance controlled by the Defense Department had grown to
nearly 22 percent from 3.5 percent over the past 10 years, while the
percentage controlled by 

[Marxism-Thaxis] Left's Bailout Statement Mentioned in Wall Street Journal

[Charles Brown]

Ruthless Critic of All that Exists 





Is the Rescue Plan Socialism? The Far Left Says, 'No Way, Comrade'
Wall Street Journal - USA

During a transport workers union protest on Wall Street this week,
members of the Socialist Party USA handed out fliers that screamed "NO
to the Banker ...








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[Marxism-Thaxis] Invite: Bruce Springsteen in Ypsilanti Today

[Charles Brown]

We call Ypsilantii, Ypsitucky.

John Henry

Charles,

This afternoon, please join the Obama campaign for a Vote for Change
rally featuring a special acoustic appearance by Bruce Springsteen.

Here are the details:

 Vote for Change Rally
 with Bruce Springsteen

 Oestrike Stadium 
 Eastern Michigan University
 Ypsilanti, MI

 Monday, October 6th
 Gates Open: 3:00 p.m.
 Program Starts: 4:30 p.m.

RSVP: http://mi.barackobama.com/springsteenMI 

The event is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required;
however an RSVP is strongly encouraged.

For security reasons, do not bring bags and limit personal items. No
signs or banners are permitted.

Thanks,

Obama for America



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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The military budget is way out of hand

[CeJ]

The DoD has its Africa Command in place. Meanwhile Demoncratic
operatives are out and about in the media, hinting that all promises
can not be fulfilled (i.e., BO's limited health care will be even MORE
limited). Meanwhile, Pres. Barrage Obomber steadies himself, preparing
to take command and INCREASE military spending. I think the best thing
people could do is simply not vote. Imagine if all Americans just
stayed home and did not vote. Then perhaps 500,000 voting for Ralph
Nader could vote him into office.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/usel-o06.shtml

On Thursday, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, Senator
Joseph Biden, used the debate with McCain's running mate, Alaska
Governor Sarah Palin, to espouse an even more aggressive foreign
policy than the Republicans. While making a spurious pledge that Obama
would "end the war" in Iraq, to appease antiwar sentiment, Biden
called for increased US military intervention in Afghanistan and
Pakistan, and a more aggressive pro-Israeli policy than that conducted
by Bush. He also defended past US military interventions in the
Balkans, and suggested a new US military role in Sudan.

The same day, Obama's top national security adviser, Richard Danzig,
who was secretary of the navy in the Clinton administration, told a
press gathering that an Obama administration would increase military
spending over the gargantuan levels already established under Bush. He
said that he did not "see defense spending declining in the first
years of an Obama administration," adding, "There are a set of demands
there that are very severe, very important to our national
well-being."

Danzig went out of his way to praise the current Pentagon chief,
Robert Gates, saying that many of his policies "are things that
Senator Obama agrees with and I agree with." He said that Obama
recognized the need for a smooth transition between the outgoing and
incoming administrations, particularly in the two war zones, Iraq and
Afghanistan. Asked if this meant that Gates might be retained, Danzig
replied that Gates was a good defense secretary, and "He'd be an even
better one in an Obama administration."

These developments demonstrate that whether Obama, as now appears
likely, wins the election November 4, or McCain makes an unexpected
comeback, the next US president will continue, in all essentials, the
policies of the Bush administration. This political fact is all the
more remarkable given that the same polls that show Obama pulling away
give the Bush administration the lowest ratings for any US government
in modern history. One study found that only 9 percent of those
interviewed thought the United States was on the right track, while
Bush's approval/disapproval numbers rival those of Richard Nixon in
the weeks before he was forced to resign the presidency.

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The military budget is way out of hand

[CeJ]

Chalmers Johnson? Why not just cite a yahoonews story about the
spending getting passed? Chalmers actually understates the amount
anyway. It's about a trillion dollars a year and no accountability
except the rogue state within a state runs the state.

The populist resentment over the 'bailout' seems to have two aspects:

1. 'People' think fat cat bankers and Wall Street types (and their
shareholders--maybe) shouldn't get any government help.
2. 'People' think that debt or mortgage relief will go to people who
don't deserve it, or go to (as with so many federal programs) a select
few.

The current crisis seems to come from the same parts of the political
economy as the previous one (only this crisis is fully global,
post-big-bang). Savings and loans were the sort of financial
institutions that made unscrupulous loans, according to popular
accounts of 'what went wrong'. And the junk bond scandal of the same
era was local governments and companies floating debt under the guise
of 'securities'.

And I remember how the business press tried to give all this a 'black
face' too. The media wanted you to believe that S&L were for shady
financial institutions serving urban slum dwellers. Junk bonds were
used by local governments and school districts with poor black urban
tax bases. Etc. Blame the victims--it always works. And make the poor
white victims feel better by putting a black face on those who get
blamed.

There's your backlash. That's America.

CJ

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] recapitalization

[CeJ]

>>will be interested
in the so-called 'toxic' debt because they will hope that it is the
rainbox that leads to all sorts of under-valued treasures<<

Sorry my metaphor got messed up.

The financial capitalists will hpe that the toxic debt stripped out of
banks will yield the 'treasure at the end of the rainbow'.

Which brings me back to the ultimate nature of such crises.
Ultimately, companies are accounting black boxes so long as they make
money--and make more money this quarter than the last. If they can't
do that, then the black box gets opened up.
Additionally, what does it tell you about so-called financial giants
that they couldn't survive 'runs on their stock'? Killed by the very
same things they did to others.

CJ

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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] recapitalization

[CeJ]

In banking accounting, deposits are liabilities (payable to account
holders on demand) and loans are assets, the profits from which, in
part, pay shareholders of the bank. 'Shareholders' are account holders
in credit unions and credit cooperatives, so 'profits' should go to
makes loans cheaper and interest on accounts higher (but Demoncrats
and Repugnicans in effect passed legislation back in the 90s making
credit unions more like banks, so banks could compete with them).

The banks have to be recapitalized in order to be able to borrow money
again in the US's and global systems. That means they will be forced
to hold more deposits (money they borrow, including from account
holders) in proportion to their loan portfolios, while loans that are
not paying have to be stripped from them and put elsewhere. The hope
also will be that with these deposits, the banks will be able to lend
more--which is what the whole bubble economy depended on in the first
place. Borrowing and leveraging. On the other side of things, as
post-bubble Japan shows, you can't force people and firms to borrow
once they go into 'hunker down' mode. So stagnation is almost sure to
follow.

The usual finance capitalists (private equity, private equity arms of
listed companies, surviving investment banks, etc.) will be interested
in the so-called 'toxic' debt because they will hope that it is the
rainbox that leads to all sorts of under-valued treasures. They will
even hope that there will be governments that pay them to take over
the assets, so they can make even more money off them.

The US's banking system might be nationalized if banks became credit
unions and the US government acted as an umbrella for them. They could
also nationalize those parts of the private banking system that fail
or already failed by putting them under a national bank. The problem
with the US is it has not got very much already in existence to get
started. In the case of Japan, the national postal savings and
insurance systems could be used as an umbrella company to put failed
banks and insurance companies under. However, the catch there is that
the freemarket ideologues have led the charge to privatize, sell off
and float on the already long sunk Tokyo Stock Exchange the postal
savings and insurance. On the other hand, Japan also has the
agricultural cooperatives and these too could be formed into a
national banking system in the event of a private banking collapse.
However, once again, the ideologues who run the government and the two
major parties have no place in their belief system for something like
unless rightwingers were allowed to declare some sort of national
emergency requiring immediate salvation.

I suspect the US is already at that point, but it also lacks (as
already stated) existing entities by which to pull off a
nationalization (even one that is done largely to reflate the
financial capitalists's bubbles).

As for why this time is different, that brings me back to 1979. So
much of the working class and the economy in which they survive is and
has long been

--non-union
--minimum (even sub-minimum wage)
--part-time
--temporary
--no health insurance
--no real retirement

They have been hardest hit by the high price of gas, but they already
survive in a world that WL seems to want to predict.
I would say the financial system's issues go back 35 years, and the
economy that it helps determine almost that long.
So for financial reforms that determine our world, go back to Nixon.
For the socio-economic reality, go back to Carter.

CJ

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