[Marxism-Thaxis] So what
O STREET PIMP MY BLOG CHALLENGE I'm an atheist, so what? FINALIST By PETER JURICH • O STREET GUEST BLOGGER • August 3, 2009 I was at work when someone brought up that I am an atheist. A nearby coworker nearly had a heart attack. You are? she asked. But ... you're such a ... good person! In the words of Oneita: Oh, my. I'd like to set the record straight on atheism. Being an atheist opens up my world to the different possibilities I may have otherwise missed. It makes me an accepting individual because it is an exercise in questioning that allows me to explore any and all walks of life. Atheism breaks down the barriers put up by racism, sexism, xenophobia and other discrimination because I have an understanding that there is nothing more important (i.e. an invitation into heaven) than the feelings I share with others. I explained this to my coworker. Well, I'm older than you, she said. I understand more. I didn't tell her that I attended a strict, private Catholic school for eight years, that I had questions my teachers nervously refused to answer, and that I've since answered those questions myself. I did, however, tell her my views were not without research. Yes, she is older, but that doesn't mean anything. I am capable of empathy, optimism, sadness, patriotism, guilt and love. I told her I'm more confident because I'm not ashamed of any thoughts. I neglected to stress that I still differentiate between right and wrong, but I assumed she knew that. I don't do drugs, have sex with strangers, drive insanely fast or bust caps in asses. Her response? Someday, you'll get it. In respect to the warm and fuzzy feeling one gets (and I've tried very hard to get) from organized religion, I can get that same feeling by going to a concert. All we are feeling is the energy of a group of people coming together enthusiastically for a common interest. The difference is the context: Believers feel God brought them together; fans think it was Ticketmaster. I ended the conversation out of respect for the workplace -- a public school. Begrudgingly, I let my coworker have the final word. Don't give up, she said. Just try keeping a more open mind. PETER JURICH, 23, of Dearborn is a Wayne State University student who wrote Typing With One Hand. Oneita the Editor's Note: I met Peter in February when he interviewed me for a homework assignment. That was flattering, but it didn't curry any favor: I rejected the first blog entry he submitted for this challenge because it was lame. I chose this one because of Peter's honesty and his perspective, and because I knew it would produce a good conversation. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE AN ATHEIST IN THE BIBLE BELT
WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE AN ATHEIST IN THE BIBLE BELT By Susan McCarthy, Comment Is Free Even in the South's big cities, many atheists feel they have to stay closeted. http://www.alternet.org/belief/141801/what_it%27s_like_to_be_an_atheist_in_the_bible_belt/ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] An anti-imperialist perspective
Date: Tues, Jun 23 2009 12:45 pm by Julio The passages below are from an old (mid 1970s) document. Some list members will recognize the author. If you don't and are interested in locating the source, please e-mail me off-list. (Between * designates Italics from the author. Between _ designates my emphasis. Unbracketed ellipsis ... indicating quote discontinuity are the author's while bracketed ones [...] are mine.) IMHO, this is one of the most thought-provoking works in the classical Marxist tradition ever written. In the best intellectual tradition of Marx and Engels, the author grappled deeply and seriously with the existing conditions and ideologies, acknowledging their rationales, following their logic to the point where they forced him to a deeper and broader understanding of the issues. Like Marx's best works, it shows readers how a an engaged mind, committed to the struggle, sorts things out. I read it fresh in 1979, almost as soon as its Spanish version became available in Mexico. The first few chapters were divulged first in a short-lived Marxist journal named Teoría y Política published by a group of South American exiles. The entire work followed under Alfaguara. I re-read it a few times as an undergrad student in Cuba and discussed it at length with friends from -- I believe -- at least four continents, although I can now see how one-sided my concerns were. While some friends got really agitated about some of the -- IMO rather subsidiary -- propositions advanced in the work, some rendered irrelevant by subsequent developments (the bulk of the work is devoted to a critique of the Soviet socialist formation), the passages below taken on their own have maintained a large measure of relevance (not necessarily validity) all along. The tension at the center of the quoted section below has been splitting Marxists since Marx Engels's times (e.g. the Irish and Slavic question). On a formal level, the issue reappeared in the late 19th century/early 20th century chasm between the early social-democrats (Lenin, Plekhanov, etc.) and the narodniki. (As shown below, on this matter, Lenin himself experienced a 180 degree turn over his political life. Just keep in mind the early concerns Lenin had about proving the political relevance of the social democracy in Russia in the light of Russia's backwardness. The young Lenin wasn't emphasizing the lack of capitalist development in Russia, but precisely the opposite. Naturally, with his responsibilities as head of the Soviet state, in the middle of a civil war, after a devastating world war, things looked quite differently.) At a deeper level, though, the controversy had intrinsic intellectual roots in Russian history (and other backward places), dating back to the conflict between the liberal modernizers and the ancestors of the populists. In their historical essays, E.H. Carr and Isaac Deutscher discussed the matter in some detail. Rosa Luxemburg clashed with the Polish, Galician, and Baltic nationalists on this very issue. Etc. My decision to post these passages in extenso is, of course, prompted by the current debate re. the Mousavi-Ahmedinajad conflict. IMO, the ideological cloak of the anti-imperialist struggle is secondary. The key thing is the social character of the movement and its *objective logic* (if I'm allowed to use that old Hegelian formula). It is of course twisted, ironic and shameful, historically speaking, that the global discredit of Marxism and -- more tragically and decisively -- the mechanical suppression of Marxists and socialists in central Asia and the Middle East (including here repression conducted by the very forces that now appear to lead the anti-imperialist resistance, blemishes and all) have limited its role in the local anti-imperialist struggles, which have turned instead to the ideological straight-jacketed form of political Islam. However, secondary doesn't mean unimportant. If the strictures of the religious integument have dulled beyond a point the anti-imperialism it portends, all bets are off. In that case, the triumph of the popular movement excited by Mir Hossein Mousavi or the aftermath may turn out to be the necessary precondition for a better political framework for the anti-imperialist struggle in Iran. I'd think that the risk has diminished with time, but history shows (including the history of Iran!) that even a large nation has difficulty escaping subordination to imperialism. It's not clear to me from my distance and ignorance whether this is already the case in Iran. It does disturb me to see the excited support that the Mousavi movement has elicited among the always suspect Western establishment. But that's not decisive. I have no answer to the vexing question. The matter is complex. No kidding. The left in, say, the West doesn't need to settle it as a precondition to unite in the local struggles ahead. Nothing human should be alien to us, but too much rancor in
[Marxism-Thaxis] Why Oprah Deserves to Be Rich and the Wall Street moguls notRalph
Dumain Why Oprah Deserves to Be Rich and the Wall Street Moguls Deserve... by Jed Diamond Posted March 14, 2009 http://www.thirdage.com/today/giving-back/why-oprah-deserves-to-be-rich-the-wall-street-moguls-dont?utm_medium=emailutm_source=nl_community-connections_20090319utm_campaign=thirdage Kinda typical stupidity, no? Speaking of hype and BS, I saw Obama on Jay Leno last night. He's charming and slick, but he's basically covering up how the capitalism system operates, perpetuating universally accepted illusions. ^^ CB: I don't think too many people are fooled, illusions not very universally accepted. Kinda hard to coverup how the capitalist system operates nowadays. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Babel's dawn
Email this ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Administration unveils financial system overhaul
Administration unveils financial system overhaul By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer Martin Crutsinger, Ap Economics Writer WASHINGTON – The Obama administration on Thursday unveiled a sweeping overhaul of the financial system designed to impose greater regulation on major players like hedge funds. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told lawmakers that the changes are needed to fix the flaws exposed by the current financial crisis, the worst to hit the country in seven decades. The goal is to repair a system that has proven too unstable and fragile, he said. Over the past 18 months, we have faced the most severe global financial crisis in generations, Geithner said in testimony to the House Financial Services Committee. To address this will require comprehensive reform. Not modest repairs at the margin, but new rules of the game. The administration's proposal, which will require congressional approval, would represent a major expansion of federal authority over the financial system. It would impose tougher standards on financial institutions judged to be so big that their failure would represent a risk to the entire system. It also would extend federal regulations for the first time to all trading in financial derivatives, exotic financial instruments such as credit default swaps that were blamed for much of the damage in the meltdown. The administration also wants larger hedge funds to be required to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, the administration proposed the creation of a systemic risk regulator to monitor the biggest institutions. Geithner did not designate where such authority should reside, but the administration is expected to support awarding this power to the Federal Reserve. The plan also includes a measure that Geithner and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke discussed before the committee on Tuesday to give the administration expanded powers to take over major nonbank financial institutions, such as insurance companies and hedge funds that were teetering on the brink of collapse. That power was aimed at preventing a repeat of the problems surrounding insurance giant American International Group Inc., which sparked a furor last week when it was revealed the company had distributed $165 million in bonuses to employees of its financial products group. The unit specialized in trading credit default swaps, the instruments that drove the company to near-collapse last fall. Let me be clear, Geithner told the committee. The days when a major insurance company could bet the house on credit default swaps with no one watching and no credible backing to protect the company or taxpayers must end. The administration, pushing for quick action on its reform agenda, sent Congress a 61-page bill dealing with the expanded powers to seize control of nonbank institutions late Wednesday. The House committee, chaired by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., has indicated it could move on the measure as early as next week. However, it was unclear how fast the rest of the financial reform agenda might move through Congress. Geithner on Thursday provided only a broad outline of the other proposals. Many thorny details will need to be worked out. Administration officials promised that the remaining issues would be hammered out in consultation with Congress with the goal of getting legislation approved as quickly as possible. The administration wants hedge funds and other private pools of capital, including private equity funds and venture capital funds, to be required to register with the SEC if their assets exceed a certain size. The threshold amount has yet to be determined. The proposal on credit default swaps and other derivatives would require the markets on which they are traded to be regulated for the first time, and for the buying and selling of these instruments to be conducted in ways that will foster greater oversight. Credit default swaps, which trade in a $60 trillion global market without government oversight, are contracts to insure against the default of financial instruments like bonds and corporate debt. They played a prominent role in the credit crisis that brought the downfall of investment banking giant Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. last fall and nearly unraveled AIG, forcing the government to provide more than $180 billion in support. Hedge funds, vast pools of capital holding an estimated $1.5 trillion in assets, operate mostly outside of government supervision. As the market crisis deepened last fall, hedge fund selling was widely cited as one of the reasons for increased volatility that pounded stocks and bonds. Hedge funds also suffered huge losses last year, notably from investments in securities tied to subprime mortgages. The outline of the regulatory reform was unveiled a week before President Barack Obama is scheduled to meet for discussions among the Group of 20 major industrialized and developing
[Marxism-Thaxis] sarkozy-under-pressure-as-millions-take-to-streets-
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/sarkozy-under-pressure-as-millions-take-to-streets-1648608.html ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Notes on an Orientation to the Obama Presidency
Notes on an Orientation to the Obama Presidency by Linda Burnham http://alainet.org/active/29144lang=es The election of Obama, while enthusiastically embraced by most of the left, has also occasioned some disorientation and confusion. Some have become so used to confronting the dismal electoral choice between the lesser of two evils that they couldn’t figure out how to relate to a political figure who held out the possibility of substantive change in a positive direction. Others are so used to all-out, full-throated opposition to every administration that they wonder whether and how to alter their stance. Still others sat out the election, for a variety of political and organizational reasons, and were taken by surprise at how wide and deep ran the current for change. Now there’s an active conversation on the left about what can be expected of an Obama administration and what the orientation of the left should b e towards it. There are two conflicting views on this: First, that Obama represents a substantial, principally positive political shift and that, while the left should criticize and resist policies that pull away from the interests of working people, its main orientation should be to actively engage with the political motion that’s underway. Second, that Obama is, in essence, just another steward of capitalism, more attractive than most, but not an agent of fundamental change. He should be regarded with caution and is bound to disappoint. The basic orientation is to criticize every move the administration makes and to remain disengaged from mainstream politics. It is possible to grant that Obama is a steward of capitalism while also maintaining that his election has opened up the potential for substantive reform in the interests of working people and that his election to office is a democratic win worthy of being fiercely defended. Obama is clear – and we should be too – about what he was elected to do. The bottom line of his job description has become increasingly evident as the economic crisis deepens. Obama’s job is to salvage and stabilize the U.S. capitalist system and to perform whatever triage is necessary to restore the core institutions of finance and industry to profitability. Obama’s second bottom line is also clear to him – and should also be to us: to salvage the reputation of the U.S. in the world; repair the international ties shredded by eight years of cowboy unilateralism; and adjust U.S. positioning on the world stage on the basis of a rational assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the changed and changing centers of global political, economic and military power – rather than on the basis of a simple-minded ideological commitment to unchallenged world dominance. Obama has been on the job for only a month but has not wasted a moment in going after his double bottom line with gusto, panache and high intelligence. In point of fact, the capitalists of the world – or at least the U.S. branch – ought to be building altars to the man and lighting candles. They have chosen an uncommonly steady hand to pull their sizzling fat from the fire. For some on the left this is the beginning and the end of the story. Having established conclusively that Obama’s fundamental task is to govern in the interests of capital, there’s no point in adjusting one’s stance, regardless of how skillful and popular he may be. For the anti-capitalist left that is grounded in Trotskyism, anarcho-horizontalism, or various forms of third-party-as-a-point-of-principleism, the only change worthy of the name is change that hits directly at the kneecaps of capitalism and cripples it decisively. All else is trifling with minor reforms or, even worse, capitulating to the power elite. From this point of view the stance towards Obama is self-evident: criticize relentlessly, disabuse others of their presidential infatuation, and denounce anything that remotely smacks of mainstream politics. Though this may seem an extreme and marginal point of view, it has a surprising degree of currency in many quarters. The effective-steward-of-capitalism is only one part of the Obama story. Obama did what the center would not do and what a fragmented and debilitated left could not do. He broke the death grip of the reactionary right by inspiring and mobilizing millions as agents of change. If Obama doesn’t manage to do even one more progressive thing over the course of the next four years, he has already opened up far more promising political terrain. His campaign: Revealed the contours, composition and potential of a broad democratic coalition, demographically grounded in the (overlapping) constituencies of African -Americans, Latinos, Asians, youth across the racial groups, LGBT voters, unionized workers, urban professionals, and women of color and single white women, and in the sectors of organized
[Marxism-Thaxis] Babel's dawn note
http://www.babelsdawn.com/babels_dawn/ The Group and the Individual are mutually dependent. Is there a way to talk about the whole as a unit, or must we choose between them whenever we talk about social change? This blog’s long-time emphasis on the role of cooperation and community in human evolution got some extra attention this week. My alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis, sponsored a conference on “Man the Hunted” which presented evidence that human evolution owes much more to the lineage’s role as prey than as predator. I thought about covering the event, but did not because its focus was too far from speech. However, I have also read a provocative essay in the latest issue of Group Analysis by a psychotherapist, Claire S. Bacha, on “Becoming Conscious of the Human Group” (abstract here). The paper is much too speculative to be received as the solution to any puzzles, but it is still important. I don’t believe I have ever read a more radical understanding of the nature of the “Human Group.” The paper’s most radical assertion comes from S.H. Foulkes, founder of group psychoanalytic therapy: individual grow from groups; groups do not grow out of individuals. [65] Having just lived through thirty years of Republicanism and its counter-assertion that the individual creates society, I sat up. Bacha immediately interprets the statement in terms of interest to group therapists, but the remark is provocative enough to offer food for thought on this blog’s subject as well. After all, language too emerges from a group and the great mystery of language origins is that our ancestral group never spoke, but now all people do. How do you get from a silent group to a speaking one? The conservative temptation is to think of the transition from non-linguistic to linguistic groups entirely in terms of individuals. There was a mutation that led to mutant individuals who were selected and became a mutant group. Even with the introduction of multi-level selection (see: A Vote for Group Selection) the reason for the selection tends to be the benefit the individual brings to the group rather than what the group brings to the individual; e.g., the law-abiding individual benefits the group and therefore group survival favors law-abiding individuals. But after all those years of Republican catastrophe, the radical reversal doesn’t seem so ridiculous: the law-giving group makes the law-abiding individual possible. When groups don’t form laws, it is impossible for group members to follow them or benefit from them. Similarly it is the language-speaking group that makes the individual poet or story-teller possible. Both the conservative and the radical propositions seem to make sense. Bacha sums up this relationship between group and individual nicely. She reports that according to Foulkes individuals and groups exist in a Gestalt where they are both always present but difficult to see at the same time. Sometimes the group is in the foreground and sometimes the individual [65] The speaker and the language, for example, are always together, but we can only pay attention to on one or the other at a time. Since language echoes perception (see: What I’ve Learned About Language) it is very hard to understand the two as a unit. It is like like the yin and the yang. We can visualize their mutual dependence and yet we look at one part or the other. Yet both are there. Thus, we may always have intellectual reversals in which we go from attending to the evolution of the speaker to focusing on the evolution of the speaking group without ever grasping the whole, the nut and its shell together. Bacha approvingly quotes Ralph Stacey who says in his book Complexity and Group Process: A Radically Social Understanding of Individuals who refers to … the paradox of individual minds forming and being formed by the social at the same time. [Stacey p. 327] Bacha refers several times to this paradox as “irresolvable,” which is alright for her because she is a clinician and can work with a paradox, even an irresolvable one, but is alarming for this blog whose ultimate hope is to understand how we came to be speakers. If the explanation rests on an irresolvable paradox, that ambition is foredoomed. The best we can hope for is the mess physics has gotten into, where we have a series of extremely accurate equations that people can use, but not understand. Fortunately, I don’t have to despair because the paradox may not be irresolvable. First, a sentence like, “At church the individual and the group sing hymns,” draws attention to the whole gestalt and its effect. It sounds a little funny and we may have to work out the meaning, but that may be because simultaneous attention to individual and group is novel. With practice we might work it out and find it easy to think this way. Second, contrary to Chomsky’s suggestion, the ultimate form of language is not the sentence.
[Marxism-Thaxis] Babel's dawn
http://www.babelsdawn.com/babels_dawn/ A Tale Without Episodes Radio transmitters provide a misleading metaphor for speech. They encourage the notion of a signal that must be encoded and then decoded rather than an active tool whose meaning comes from where it directs one's attention. The pieces have fallen together in a position I did not anticipate when I began this blog. None the less, last week’s post has left me feeling that I now understand the basic outline of the story of speech origins. “Basic outline” means I don’t have dates, but I do know the outline of what evolved and even how it happened. What Evolved When I began this blog, I thought of language as a means of expressing ideas and emotions, but I now see that definition as too abstract to help think clearly about how speech works or how it evolved. Talk about ideas and emotions encourages mystical thinking in which words somehow contain a “meaning” that carry an idea from speaker to listener. The technical analogy is a radio that transmits a signal to specific receivers. The evolution of a linguistic species requires the appearance of individuals able to pack meaning into words, transmit them as sentences, and then retrieve the meaning from the received signal. A great deal of philosophical and critical confusion has come from taking these abstractions literally. Put more mundanely, but concretely, speech is a tool for directing attention. Instead of transmitting meanings it directs the joint attention of speaker and listener. In this view, understanding speech requires a perceiving, aware listener capable of joining in on the attention of another. The story of the evolution of language is not a tale of increasingly complex capacity to transmit and deconstruct meanings; it tells instead of an increasingly rich ability to share perceptions and to know what is on each other’s minds. Last week’s post focused on episodic thinking (see Episodes on the Highway of Life) and suggested complex syntax might have evolved to describe episodes. The description of an episode can require more than one sentence. So you see the use of full paragraphs in speech. It is a very late development in the story of speech origins. How it Evolved Episodic thinking can lead to mistakes, For one thing, it makes us expect a story to occur in episodes instead of along a continuum. The story of speech evolution is a handy example. Episodic thinking encourages people to expect a series of episodes, or milestones, that went something like: first came words, then phrases, then simple sentences, and then rich sentences. Trust Noam Chomsky to show the logical limitations of that approach without finding the solution. Words alone, phrases alone, get you no closer to syntactically rich sentences, so why suppose there were such stages? But instead of getting rid of episodes this argument just reduces the number of milestones to one: thinking in syntactically rich (recursive) sentences. Episodic thinking encourages before-and-after thinking. Before the episode things were one way and after they were another way. Thus we expect genes to introduce novelties so that we can say before the episode of the mutant gene our lineage talked this way; after the episode it talked this other way. We also expect a series of milestone to produce a series of distinct differences. Thus, it is not enough for speech itself to be unique to humans. It must have resulted from a series of distinct milestones, each of which introduced a novelty, such as recursive syntax, into the picture. I am very much an episodic thinker myself, but the evidence does not support a story of evolution via milestones. For example, the one gene found so far that seems assuredly part of our tale, FOXP2, is not at all like one would expect as milestone.FOXP2 is indirect, it controls other genes, and its effects are not limited to speech. Speech does break down in cases without a normal FOXP2 gene, although cognitively there seems to be little damage. In FOXP2 mutants, the ability to coordinate muscular movements for proper speech seems deficient and there are problems in comprehension as well. Finding the gene has tangled the story instead of bringing the clarity you should expect from finding a milestone. Also contrary to expectations is the issue of differences. It is clear that we talk and apes do not, but that very great difference seems to rest on a series of small similarities. Apes in some small degree have many of the traits that humans find useful for speech, and yet they don’t speak at all. It is difficult to account for this tangle of similarity and difference by referring to episodes that introduce unprecedented novelties. The chief solution has been to attempt to keep the episodes to a minimum. Instead, I believe the story is very different. It is one of co-evolutions, the increasing dependence of traits on one another so that something
[Marxism-Thaxis] Man the hunted
Non-profit Charity Promotes Altruism as Key to Man's Evolution and Well-Being ST. LOUIS, March 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Anthropedia Foundation has teamed with the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and Washington University Center for the Study of Ethics and Human Values to present the conference Man The Hunted: Sociality, Altruism, and Well-Being. Spanning Thursday, March 12 to Saturday, March 14, Man The Hunted includes panels and presentations by leaders in anthropology, psychiatry, ethnography, philosophy, education, biology, and healthcare. The conference highlights man's historical role as prey rather than predator, and human reliance on cooperation, altruism, and sociality for survival and healthy development. The conference will tackle many related questions: How is the negative paradigm of man as predator reflected in current research and institutions? What are the scientific and societal implications of the positive paradigm that man is altruistic? How can we translate theory into practice and have an impact on the community? The event is co-chaired by Robert Sussman, Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology at Washington University, and Robert Cloninger, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry and Genetics, Director of the Center for the Psychobiology of Personality, and the Center for Well-Being at Washington University. Dr. Cloninger is also the Director for the Anthropedia Institute, the research body of the Anthropedia Foundation. Dr. Cloninger will co-present Neurobiology of Human Temperament and Character with Dr. Sita Kedia, Vice-President of the Anthropedia Foundation. Dr. Kedia received her M.D. from the University of Colorado. Dr. Cloninger will also deliver another presentation, The Direction of Evolution: Growth toward Self-awareness, Altruism, Well-Being. Addressing a bio-psycho-social approach to health promotion, Dr. Helen Herrman and Dr. Lauren Munsch will present Promotion of Well-Being in Healthcare. Dr. Herrman is Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre in Mental Health and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne. Dr. Munsch earned her M.D. from St. Louis University and is founder, Chairman and CEO of the Anthropedia Foundation. Former President of the World Psychiatric Association, Dr. Juan Mezzich will introduce Friday's second session, Human Altruism and Cooperation: Needs and the Promotion of Well-Being in Modern Life. Dr. Mezzich is Professor of Psychiatry and Director at the Division of Psychiatric Epidemiology and International Center for Mental Health at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. The president of the Anthropedia Foundation, Dr. Kevin Cloninger, will present Hope Rekindled: Well-Being, Humanism, and Education. Dr. Cloninger received his Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Denver. Dr. Dan German Blazer, II will speak on Moving Beyond the Nature/Nurture Distinction: Promotion of Transdisciplinary Research. A Geriatric Psychiatry expert, Dr. Blazer is Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and Community and Family Medicine at Duke University. The conference ends by discussing current assumptions of man as predator, and the positive effects of re-examining man's development. Members of the Anthropedia Institute will discuss implications for education, healthcare, and quality of life. About Anthropedia As the rates of lifestyle and stress-related illness, depression, and anxiety rapidly increase, the Anthropedia Foundation recognizes the need for concrete strategies for improving mental, physical, and social health. Anthropedia is an educational foundation led by a council of experts in medicine, public health, psychiatry, and education who integrate the most effective practices from their fields into a comprehensive approach to health and happiness. Anthropedia creates personal development resources and health education programs that are simple, practical, and powerful. To learn more about Anthropedia, please visit www.anthropedia.org. SOURCE Anthropedia Foundation -0- ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Read the big four to know capital ’s fate
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5e61e20c-0f44-11de-ba10-779fd2ac,dwp_uuid=ae1104cc-f82e-11dd-aae8-77b07658.html ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] As capitalism stares into the abyss, was Marx right all along? ( Yes)
Does a bear s___ in the woods ? ^^ Stephen King: As capitalism stares into the abyss, was Marx right all along? We may avoid a 1930s Depression but the best we can hope for may be a 1990s Japan Monday, 2 March 2009 http://us.mg204.mail.yahoo.com/dc/launch?.partner=sbc.rand=c27i56kobk3ja Modern bourgeois society ... a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. Those of you with revolutionary zeal will immediately recognise these words. Penned by Karl Marx in 1848, they form part of the Communist Manifesto. Marx, like Adam Smith before him, had a historical view of society's development. Capitalism, with its bourgeoisie, had replaced feudalism, but capitalism, according to Marx, would be replaced by communism. Capitalism was inherently unstable, as Marx noted later in the same paragraph: .the commercial crises... by their periodical return, put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity – the epidemic of over-production. Whatever else one thinks of Marx, he certainly knew a thing or two about the business cycle. Were he alive now, he would surely claim his theories were being vindicated. We are, after all, witnessing the most remarkable collapse in economic activity around the world. Take Japan. In November, industrial production fell 8 per cent. That was bad enough. In December, production dropped another 9 per cent. That was even more remarkable. January's production figures, though, are simply eye-wateringly awful, showing a further 10 per cent decline. Production, then, is down almost 30 per cent in just three months, a pace of decline unprecedented in Japanese post-war economic history. Or how about the US, where we discovered last week that national income contracted in the final quarter of last year at an annual rate of more than 6 per cent, the biggest drop since the early 1980s. Then there's Taiwan, where exports have been in freefall in recent months. Not to mention dear old Blighty, where the economy might end up shrinking by approaching 4 per cent this year. The pace of decline in global economic output is extraordinary. On virtually any metric, we are seeing the worst global downturn in decades: worse than the aftermath of the first oil shock in the mid-1970s and worse than the early-1980s downswing, when the world economy had to cope with a doubling of the oil price, the tough love of monetarism and the onset of the Latin American debt crisis. Moreover, this time we cannot use the resurgence of inflation as an excuse for lost output: the credit crunch in all its many guises has seen to that. Instead, we have a world of collapsing output combined with falling prices: a world, then, of depression. For many years, Marxist ideas appeared to be totally irrelevant. The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 brought to an end the era of Marxist-Leninist Communism, while China's decision to join the modern world at the beginning of the 1980s drew a line under its earlier Maoist ideology. In western economies, Marxist ideas were at their most potent after the First Word War when the likes of Rosa Luxemburg could smell revol-ution in the air and as the Roaring Twenties gave way to the Great Depression of the 1930s. I'm not suggesting we're entering revolutionary times. However, it seems increasingly likely that the economic landscape in the years ahead will be fundamentally different from the landscape that has dominated the working lives of people like me who entered the workforce in the 1980s. We've lived through decades of plenty, where incomes have risen rapidly, where credit has been all too easily available and where recessions have been mostly modest affairs. Suddenly, we're facing a collapse in activity on a truly Marxist scale. It's difficult to imagine the world's love affair with free markets being sustained under this onslaught. The extreme nature of this downswing will change our lives for decades to come. The first change relates to the allocation of capital. Increasingly, policymakers are accepting that market forces, left to their own devices, will lead to a race to the bottom. The dangers are becoming greater by the day. Interest rates are close to zero while prices and wages are in danger of declining. If deflation takes hold, real interest rates on cash will start to rise, creating perverse incentives in capital markets. Why bother to buy equities or corporate bonds if you are nicely rewarded for hanging on to an entirely risk-free piece of paper? The
[Marxism-Thaxis] The US Financial System is Effectively Insolvent
Meaning , what ? Its firms can't pay their debts ? depression = stag-deflation CB The US Financial System is Effectively Insolvent by Nouriel Roubini Forbes.com (March 05 2009) For those who argue that the rate of growth of economic activity is turning positive - that economies are contracting but at a slower rate than in the fourth quarter of 2008 - the latest data don't confirm this relative optimism. In 2008's fourth quarter, gross domestic product fell by about six percent in the US, six percent in the euro zone, eight percent in Germany, twelve percent in Japan, sixteen percent in Singapore and twenty percent in South Korea. So things are even more awful in Europe and Asia than in the US. There is, in fact, a rising risk of a global L-shaped depression that would be even worse than the current, painful U-shaped global recession. Here's why: First, note that most indicators suggest that the second derivative of economic activity is still sharply negative in Europe and Japan and close to negative in the US and China. Some signals that the second derivative was turning positive for the US and China turned out to be fake starts. For the US, the Empire State and Philly Fed indexes of manufacturing are still in free fall; initial claims for unemployment benefits are up to scary levels, suggesting accelerating job losses; and January's sales increase is a fluke - more of a rebound from a very depressed December, after aggressive post-holiday sales, than a sustainable recovery. For China, the growth of credit is only driven by firms borrowing cheap to invest in higher-returning deposits, not to invest, and steel prices in China have resumed their sharp fall. The more scary data are those for trade flows in Asia, with exports falling by about forty to fifty percent in Japan, Taiwan and Korea. Even correcting for the effect of the Chinese New Year, exports and imports are sharply down in China, with imports falling (minus forty percent) more than exports. This is a scary signal, as Chinese imports are mostly raw materials and intermediate inputs. So while Chinese exports have fallen so far less than in the rest of Asia, they may fall much more sharply in the months ahead, as signaled by the free fall in imports. With economic activity contracting in 2009's first quarter at the same rate as in 2008's fourth quarter, a nasty U-shaped recession could turn into a more severe L-shaped near-depression (or stag-deflation). The scale and speed of synchronized global economic contraction is really unprecedented (at least since the Great Depression), with a free fall of GDP, income, consumption, industrial production, employment, exports, imports, residential investment and, more ominously, capital expenditures around the world. And now many emerging-market economies are on the verge of a fully fledged financial crisis, starting with emerging Europe. Fiscal and monetary stimulus is becoming more aggressive in the US and China, and less so in the euro zone and Japan, where policymakers are frozen and behind the curve. But such stimulus is unlikely to lead to a sustained economic recovery. Monetary easing - even unorthodox - is like pushing on a string when (1) the problems of the economy are of insolvency/credit rather than just illiquidity; (2) there is a global glut of capacity (housing, autos and consumer durables and massive excess capacity, because of years of overinvestment by China, Asia and other emerging markets), while strapped firms and households don't react to lower interest rates, as it takes years to work out this glut; (3) deflation keeps real policy rates high and rising while nominal policy rates are close to zero; and (4) high yield spreads are still 2,000 basis points relative to safe Treasuries in spite of zero policy rates. Fiscal policy in the US and China also has its limits. Of the $800 billion of the US fiscal stimulus, only $200 billion will be spent in 2009, with most of it being backloaded to 2010 and later. And of this $200 billion, half is tax cuts that will be mostly saved rather than spent, as households are worried about jobs and paying their credit card and mortgage bills. (Of last year's $100 billion tax cut, only thirty percent was spent and the rest saved.) Thus, given the collapse of five out of six components of aggregate demand (consumption, residential investment, capital expenditure in the corporate sector, business inventories and exports), the stimulus from government spending will be puny this year. Chinese fiscal stimulus will also provide much less bang for the headline buck ($480 billion). For one thing, you have an economy radically dependent on trade: a trade surplus of twelve percent of GDP, exports above forty percent of GDP, and most investment (that is almost fifty percent of GDP) going to the production of more capacity/machinery to produce more exportable goods. The rest of
[Marxism-Thaxis] Stirner, Feurbach, Marx and the Young Hegelians - David McLellan
Stirner, Feurbach, Marx and the Young Hegelians - David McLellan Submitted by Ret Marut on Feb 27 2009 http://libcom.org/history/stirner-feurbach-marx-young-hegelians-david-mclellan A summary of Stirner's ideas and their strong impact on his fellow Young Hegelians. McLellan asserts that Stirner's influence on Marx has been under-estimated and that he played a very important role in the development of Marx's thought by detaching him from the influence of Feuerbach, his static materialism and his abstract humanism. Stirner's critique of communism (which Marx considered a caricature) also obliged Marx to refine his own definition. Stirner's concept of the creative ego is also said to have influenced Marx's concept of praxis. Source; originally a chapter in The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx; David McLellan, MacMillan Press, UK, 1980. ^^ CB; Praxis is defined in the First Thesis on Feuerbach in which Marx activates the subject -ego. I The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity. Hence, in The Essence of Christianity, he regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and fixed only in its dirty-judaical manifestation. Hence he does not grasp the significance of “revolutionary”, of “practical-critical”, activity. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Fictitious capital and the transition out of capitalism - Loren Goldner
Subject: Fictitious capital and the transition out of capitalism - Loren Goldner Fictitious capital and the transition out of capitalism - Loren Goldner Submitted by libcom on Nov 17 2005 An exploration of the growing fictitious dimension of the economy and its implications for class struggle. This text is from theBreak Their Haughty Power web site at http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner Fictitious Capital and the Transition Out of Capitalism (Loren Goldner) The following is a thought experiment which attempts to see fictitious capital in relation to the end of capitalism. By pursuing the concept of fictitious capital as far as we can, by illuminating the unbelievable distortions it has fomented in what is called economic development on a world scale, we can highlight the nature of contemporary struggles as well as explain why there are not more struggles. We can also address the reasons why a society beyond capitalism seems such a remote possibility at present. In discussing fictitious capital, we must never forget that it is subordinate to, and derivative from, capital generally. It is important not to foment the illusion that the struggle is against fictitious capital, leaving real capital itself unexamined. But at the same time, it is indispensable to sort out the fictitious dimension of the contemporary economy, if only conceptually. Many people today, including people on the radical left, regard contemporary capitalism as functioning normally, more or less the way it always has. I could not disagree more. Perhaps, as contemporary ideologies assert, capitalism has reinvented or is reinventing itself, as it has done several times in the past. Be that as it may, the post-1973 period presents one of the strangest, if not the strangest phases in the history of capitalism. What, then, is fictitious capital? Fictitious capital is, on first approach, paper claims on wealth (in the form of profit, interest and ground rent) in excess of the total available surplus value, plus available loot from primitive accumulation. There is $33 trillion in outstanding debt (Federal, state, local, corporate, personal) in the U.S. economy, three times GDP. (No one knows how much is tied up in the international hedge funds and derivatives.) The state (including Federal, state and local levels) consumes 40% of GDP. The net U.S. debt abroad is $3 trillion ($11 trillion held by foreigners minus $8 trillion in U.S. assets abroad) That amount is growing by $500 billion a year at current rates. Foreigners hold an increasing percent of U.S. government debt; the four major Asian central banks (Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan) alone hold over $1 trillion. It is the Federal government's debt which makes possible the reflationary actions of the Federal Reserve Bank. If Doug Noland's notion of financial arbitrage capitalism is right, the old conceptualization of the role of the banking system and the Fed's (apparent) ability to expand and contract credit availability through it, is superceded; increasing amounts of virtual credit are created by securitized finance independent of banks. One must also consider the government-linked entities (Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae), which backed the reflation of mortgages of the past 4 years, leading to an incredible housing bubble. This entire edifice depends on 1) low inflation in the U.S., as higher inflation would scare off foreign lenders; 2) the willingness of U.S, consumers to go more and more heavily into debt (with debt service now taking 14% of incomes, as opposed to 11% a few years ago) 3) the willingness and ability of foreigners to go on re-lending U.S. balance-of-payments deficits back to the U.S. Let's shift to another level altogether: the extent of unproductive labor and unproductive consumption in the U.S. economy. Marx defines the state debt as fictitious; he defines labor performed for revenue (as opposed to capital) as unproductive. Many Marxists would agree that military expenditure performed for the revenue of the state is unproductive labor, even if it produces a profit for an individual capitalist. One can extend that paradigm, I think, much farther in terms of other goods and services commanded by state revenue, and/or the fictitious capital of the state debt. To be productively consumed, surplus-value that is concretely means of production (Dept. I) or means of consumption (Dept. II) must RETURN to C or V for further expanded reproduction; by that criterion, it would seem that unproductive consumption in the U.S. economy must be enormous. Now perhaps for the most controversial point: what do individual reported corporate profits mean in such a situation? Do they really correspond to a proportional amount of surplus-value? The amount of profit from interest and ground rent relative to profit from manufacture grows every year. Even within profit of manufacture, what does this mean when companies like
[Marxism-Thaxis] What is the Crisis About? Fictitious Capital or the Destruction of Wealth?
What is the Crisis About? Fictitious Capital or the Destruction of Wealth? michael perelman This short essay briefly describes the financial side of my interpretation that the crash reflected a disconnect between the underlying investment in the economy and its financial representation -- what Marx called fictitious capital. The stock market people call this realignment, destruction of wealth, even though what is destroyed is the illusion of wealth. The illusion may have been capable of purchasing valuable things so long as other people accept that illusion. Long ago people accepted the illusion as an illusion and went on with their business. Here is what a former governor of Illinois wrote: Ford, Thomas. 1854. History of Illinois (Chicago: S. C. Griggs and Co.). 227: Our Whig friends contended that the continual and violent opposition of the democrats to the banks destroyed confidence; which, by-the-bye, could only exist when the bulk of the people were under a delusion. According to their views, if the banks owed five times as much as they were able to pay and yet if the whole people could be persuaded to believe this incredible falsehood that all were able to pay, this was 'confidence'. Ordinary people understood what was happening. Here is an incident from Chicago about the same time. More at: http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com/2009/03/11/what-is-the-crisis-about-fictitious-capital-or-the-destruction-of-wealth/ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] rah, rah team fight
Comment In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement. _http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm_ (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm) ^^^ CB: So, don't aim for a communist polarity. ^ The communist goal is first and above all victory to the workers in their current struggle. That is the communist goal - Job 1, at all times. To make the immediate and long term goal of communists the abolition of private property outside the field of victory to the workers in their current struggle is just silly thinking. ^ CB: To make it the immediate goal is silly. To make it the long term goal is right out of the manifesto you just quoted. Communists do not have separate demands from various segment of the working class. IN fact it is these real world demands that creates the line of march. Here is how Marx and Engels defined the task and role of communists. ^^^ CB: So, stop talking about a communist polarity ^^ In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole. ^ CB: i.e. including the poorest sections of the working class but not only the poorest sections of the working class The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement. (End quote) Here is where Marx deploy the communist concept of the line of march. What is wrong with formulating the goal of communists as abolition of private property, is a failure to advance on the basis of the here and now. ^^ CB: Correct. Don't raise aboltion of private property now. That's the ultimate goal,not the current line of march ^^ If comrades are involved in the struggle for unemployment, and they are, that is the goal. For instance, when communist are involved in a strike, the goal is not abolition of private property but to resolve the strike in favor of the workers on strike. When the communist fought for Civil Rights and industrial unions the goal was not to abolish private property but the realization of Civil Rights and industrial unions. Why would this not be the case today? ^^ CB: Correct : do not raise abolition of private property today. Support the trade union's aims, which are united behind the O admin. ^^ The idea that establishing a communist polarity means fighting for the abolition of private property makes no sense and is hopelessly sectarian. As if communist have interest outside the proletariat. CB: The idea of establishing a communist polarity separate from the current struggles of the working class is sectarian. Polarity means separation from some other pole, like the social democratic pole, or the DP pole. No polarity, unity. ^ The real issue is my refusal to praise winning a concession. I see no need for genuflecting. CB: It's not genuflecting. It's cheerleading. It's expressing support, rallying the working class in each of its little victories. Comrades and workers , come rally. not genuflecting. cheerleading for each first down, each basket. ^ There are far to many other concessions to be fought for and won, than to pause and praise the Obama administration for unemployment benefit extensions. ^^^ CB: First of all this is not the only one to cheer. There's stem cell research. I don't know why you never have anything to say about pay equity for working women. There's declaration of out of Iraq, etc, etc. Part of winning the future battles is rallying and cheering for the wins we have already. As Ravi on Pen-l said it's rah,rah ! rah rah we want a touchdown ^^ Now that not taxing a portion of unemployment has been put into effect, we might consider abolition of all taxes on unemployment, a policy change that begin under the Carter administration. We communists opposed taxing unemployment checks back when the Carter administration implemented this new taxation. We still oppose such. We have not changed our attitude in favor of somehow fighting - detached from the mass of proletarians, a fight to abolish private property. ^ CB; Sure but, we aren't there yet. The
[Marxism-Thaxis] rah, rah team fight
Waistline2 Communists do not have separate demands from various segment of the working class. IN fact it is these real world demands that creates the line of march. Here is how Marx and Engels defined the task and role of communists. ^^^ CB: So, stop talking about a communist polarity Comment Do you support the American invasion of Afghanistan? Do you support the demand of the antiwar movement to remove US troops from Afghanistan? ^^ CB: No, I'm for urging the O admin to modify their position, and move to withdrawing from Afghanistan. ^^^ To speak of unemployment and the fight against it as the cornerstone of the communist polarity and will always be talked about on a Marxist list serv. CB: No. I didn't say anywhere cornerstone I specifically said as one of many Here's what I said, explicitly _not_ unemployment comp as a cornerstone: First of all this is not the only one to cheer. There's stem cell research. I don't know why you never have anything to say about pay equity for working women. There's declaration of out of Iraq, etc, etc. Part of winning the future battles is rallying and cheering for the wins we have already. As Ravi on Pen-l said it's rah,rah ! rah rah we want a touchdown ^^ the other hand I deeply respect those who are not communist and the non-communists have just as much of a right to put forth their views. I believe the dividing line on a Marxist List serv is between communism and anti-communism. The communist polarity in American society is objective. It is not a subjective disposition or ideology. Those sectors of the working class more than less shut out of the civic society of the bourgeoisie are an objective communist formation, because their spontaneous demands are for socially necessary means of life. In a word welfare. The fight for welfare is the communist polarity in American society with a huge section of the working class slowly warming to the idea that government must provide for the people when the free market capitalist fails and it is failing big time. That is the communist polarity and it is going to be talked about on a Marxist List serv. ^ CB: Staking out a communist polarity in only one sector of the working class contradicts the sections of the Manifesto that _you_ quoted. You are setting up sectarian principles of your own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement. Exactly what you pointed out Marx and Engels recommended against. ^^ Communism is not to be understood as an ideology but rather the historic movement of people - real human beings, that emerged with the emergence of classes as a property expression, in human history. As long as communism is understood as some kind of conspiracy on the part of individuals . . . the bourgeois point of view, the deepening revolution in the mode of production makes no sense. We have entered an era of revolution. * CB: Correct. Don't raise aboltion of private property now. That's the ultimate goal,not the current line of march Comment Don't raise abolition of private property now? I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. ^^ CB: The statement is quite clear. ^^ Abolition of private property is not a demand, reform or a concession to be sought from the bourgeoisie. . ^^^ CB: It's a fundamental goal and aim of the movement. Here it is in the Manifesto. The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few. _In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. _ (emphasis added -CB) We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence. Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily. Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property? But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism. To be a capitalist, is
[Marxism-Thaxis] Obama opens up stem cell work, science inquiries
Obama opens up stem cell work, science inquiries By SETH BORENSTEIN and BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writers Seth Borenstein And Ben Feller, AP – President Barack Obama signs an Executive Order on stem cells and a Presidential Memorandum on scientific … WASHINGTON – From tiny embryonic cells to the large-scale physics of global warming, President Barack Obama urged researchers on Monday to follow science and not ideology as he abolished contentious Bush-era restraints on stem-cell research. Our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values, Obama declared as he signed documents changing U.S. science policy and removing what some researchers have said were shackles on their work. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda — and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology, Obama said. Researchers said the new president's message was clear: Science, which once propelled men to the moon, again matters in American life. Opponents saw it differently: a defeat for morality in the most basic questions of life and death. The action by the president today will, in effect, allow scientists to create their own guidelines without proper moral restraints, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said. In a crowded ornate East Room, there were more scientists in the White House than Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science had seen in his 30 years in Washington. More happy scientists than I've seen, he added. The most immediate effect will allow federally funded researchers to use hundreds of new embryonic stem cell lines for promising, but still long-range research in hopes of creating better treatments, possibly even cures, for conditions ranging from diabetes to paralysis. Until now, those researchers had to limit themselves to just 21 stem cell lines created before August 2001, when President George W. Bush limited funding because of fundamental questions about the beginnings of life and the ends of science. Science, politics and religion have long intertwined and conflicted with each other. In his actions Monday, especially with the stem cell decision, Obama is emphasizing more the science than the religion, when compared with his predecessor, science policy experts say. But they acknowledged politics is still involved. Don't expect stem cell cures or treatments anytime soon. One company this summer will begin the world's first study of a treatment using human embryonic stem cells, in people who recently suffered spinal cord injuries. Research institutions on Monday were gearing up to ask for more freely flowing federal money, and the National Institutes of Health was creating guidelines on how to hand it out and include ethical constraints. It will be months before the stem cell money flows; the average NIH stem cell grant is $1.5 million spread out over four years. Scientists focused on a new sense of freedom. I think patients everywhere will be cheering us on, imploring us to work faster, harder and with all of our ability to find new treatments, said Harvard Stem Cell Institute co-director Doug Melton, father of two children with Type I diabetes who could possibly be treated with stem cells. On a personal level, it is an enormous relief and a time for celebration. ... Science thrives when there is an open and collaborative exchange, not when there are artificial barriers, silos, constructed by the government. Opponents framed their opposition mostly, but not exclusively, on moral grounds and the scientifically contested claims that adult stem cells work just as well. Said Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America: President Obama's order places the worst kind of politics above ethics. Politics driven by hype makes overblown promises, fuels the desperation of the suffering and financially benefits those seeking to strip morality from science. In Congress, Reps. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., and Mike Castle, R-Del., said they would seek a quick vote on legislation to codify Obama's order in federal law, after failing twice in the past to overturn Bush's restrictions. DeGette said she doesn't want stem cell research to become a pingpong ball going back and forth between administrations. But Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., chairman of the Republican study committee, said the president's new policy would force taxpayers to subsidize research that will destroy human embryos. De Gette and Castle said their legislation tries to minimize destruction of embryos. Stem cells are typically derived from fertility clinic surplus, destined for destruction. Obama also said the stem cell policy is designed so that it never opens the door to the use of cloning for human reproduction. Such cloning, he said, is dangerous, profoundly wrong, and has no place in our society or any society. In addition to
[Marxism-Thaxis] A Backlash Against Obama's Budget ; which side are you on
There's a big class battle brewing. Which side are you on ? http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_11/b4123016507664.htm BusinessWeek BusinessWeek Exchange Search all of BusinessWeek.com: NEWS MarBusinessWeek BusinessWeek Exchange Search all of BusinessWeek.com: NEWS March 5, 2009, 5:00PM EST A Backlash Against Obama's Budget Businesses from startups to global giants to drugmakers and farmers are gearing up to fight the President's spending plan with ad campaigns and public protests ch 5, 2009, 5:00PM EST A Backlash Against Obama's Budget Businesses from startups to global giants to drugmakers and farmers are gearing up to fight the President's spending plan with ad campaigns and public protests ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Obama gets high marks in the latest NEWSWEEK poll,
It's the People vs the Business class. Which side are you on ? CB ^^^ Newsweek Honeymoon In Hell Amid all the gloom, Obama gets high marks in the latest NEWSWEEK poll, with the GOP in the doghouse. Michael Hirsh Newsweek Web Exclusive Despite the tumbling economy, Barack Obama continues to enjoy a honeymoon with the American public in the face of the most trying crisis any newly inaugurated president has encountered since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The GOP, meanwhile, is viewed by a majority of Americans as the party of no, without a plan of its own to fix the economy, and even rank-and-file Republicans are concerned about the party's direction, according to the first NEWSWEEK Poll taken since Obama assumed office. People give Obama credit for reaching out to Republicans, but they don't see Republicans reciprocating, says pollster Larry Hugick, whose firm conducted the survey. A surprising number said bipartisanship is more important than getting things done. Overall, 58 percent of Americans surveyed approve of the job Obama is doing, while 26 percent disapprove and one in six (16 percent) has no opinion. Although his approval ratings are down from levels seen a few weeks ago in other polls, 72 percent of Americans still say they have a favorable opinion of Obama— a higher rating than he received in NEWSWEEK Polls during the presidential campaign last year. The president's rating in this poll is consistent with estimates provided by other national media polls in the last week. On the most important issue of the day, the NEWSWEEK Poll shows that close to two thirds (65 percent) of the public say they are very or somewhat confident that Obama will be successful in turning the economy around. That's down just a little from the 71 percent who felt that way before he took office. Still, overall perceptions of the economy remain solidly negative, with 84 percent saying the national economy is in poor shape and just 3 percent viewing things positively. The public is also dubious about some of the president's programs. Majorities of Americans think too much has been spent so far to help rescue large banks in danger of failing and domestic auto companies facing bankruptcy. A somewhat surprising majority (56 percent) supports nationalizing large banks at risk of failing—a policy the Obama administration has shied away from. And fewer than half of those polled (49 percent) say they support Obama's proposal to allow the expiration of tax cuts for those with incomes above $250,000 at the end of next year. (Forty-two percent say they oppose ending these cuts.) Even so, faith in Obama personally has apparently carried over into optimism about the future. More than a third (37 percent) of the public expect economic conditions to improve in the next 12 months, compared with 29 percent who think things will be worse. Another big plus for the president's policies is that a huge majority of Americans (73 percent) favor his plan to remove most U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of next year. The biggest problem for the GOP, according to the poll, may be that 58 percent of Americans believe that Republicans who have opposed Obama's economic-rescue plans have no plan of their own for turning the economy around. With the Republicans having lost the White House and both houses of Congress, public identification with the party has dropped to a recent low point of 26 percent, after running at or near 30 percent for most of the last 15 years. That's the lowest level since the Watergate era and a striking loss of stature for the party, considering that self-described conservatives continue to outnumber liberals in the country by nearly two to one (39 percent vs. 20 percent). Many Republicans express concern about where their party is headed and whether GOP leaders in Congress are in touch with their constituents. Asked about the direction of their party, 45 percent of rank-and-file Republicans say it is moving in the right direction, while more than a third (35 percent) think it is going in the wrong direction. This is in sharp contrast to what a NEWSWEEK Poll found in 1999 after the Clinton impeachment hearings. At that time, 65 percent of Republicans said their party was headed in the right direction. Some of these results spring from discontent over Republican leadership; other survey respondents indicate the party is ideologically lost. More than half of Republicans today (52 percent) say they don't think GOP congressional leaders are in touch with what the average Republican thinks. While four in 10 Republicans (39 percent) think the GOP is about right in terms of ideology, another 38 percent believe it is not conservative enough, and only 20 percent think it is too conservative. Apart from Obama himself, however, the Democratic Party can hardly crow about these results.
[Marxism-Thaxis] weather in Detroit
Yea, its kind of nice down here in Florida . . .76. WL. ^^ CB : My bad. When you said you hated the weather in Detroit, I thought you were in it visiting. (smile) In a message dated 3/6/2009 3:23:39 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, cdb1003 at prodigy.net writes: Man, I hate the weather in Detroit. WL. ^ CB: In the ex-motor city,it's been a really cold winter, with record snow, but today it's like spring ! Feels good ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Are you really a champion of the poorest sectors of the ...
Waistline2 The issue is always what is wrong rather than who is wrong. Labeling people haters . . . left haters, who do not support Obama the person and the Obama presidency in a country where the working class is so and devisive and sectarian that the majority refuse to vote at all, is what is wrong. ^^ CB: I was responding to you writing about me ( who) was penning away about Obama's increasing unemployment benefits. One good criticism of who deserves another (smile) As far as left-haters, on these lists the issue of motive in interpreting the events since O's election is pertinent. I regularly read posts that interpret the glass as half empty when it could be interpreted as half-full. ^ I see no reason what so ever to praise (my exact word) Obama or his administration for extending unemployment benefits to the exact same degree and the exact same way done under the Bush W. administration. ^^^ CB: I do. It's what's going on on these 'left lists these days. It's just another praise added to opening up stem cell research, pay equity for women, the budget reversing Reaganism, announcement of the withdrawal of the troops from Iraq, stimulus package. That's the context. The unemployment thing is not isolated. Also, O's admin did two things Bush didn't do. $25 more per week, and no tax on first $2,500. Plus, they did it right away. And it is very important to keep up popular support for Obama, counter the propaganda from Kramer and the Wall Street mouthpieces, Limbaugh. We're in an ongoing struggle, campaign. It didn't end with the election campaign. The little things are like little pieces of campaign literature handed out at the polls or door to door. So, I'd say you're wrong on what is do be done right now. ^^^ The issue I wrote about was not an addition $100 a month, but deals with a completely different realm: a measure of what took place under the Bush W. administration, CB: So, why would you criticize the praise of the $100 a month and the tax break , which was more than what Bush did. Plus, I don't think Bush did it at the beginning of his presidency. I have to check. No reason to criticize the praise of Obama for doing something good 'cause Bush did it. ^^^ the precedence of the past and the art of the possible. It is imperative that communist always stay one step ahead along the path the working class must travel as its spontaneous movement and its self discovery of itself as a class. The LENS to use in traveling this path is that if the lowest section of the workers as their interest intersect and find expression in the political sphere. ^ CB: In this case. one step ahead along that path is to rally the working class to support Obama. In case you didn't notice the bourgeoisie are rallying against his first pro-working class moves. The ultra-left is stumbling into joining Kramer, Santelli and Limbaugh ^^ What is wrong is praising the Obama administration and the one hand; and condemnation of comrades - let haters, whose opinion might disagree with someone's else opinion. ^^ CB: See above. See discussion several weeks ago posts on Lenin's polemics against the ultra-left. We have the same task today. ^^ To begin with it is impossible to save capital without saving those workers connected to it as the unity of productive forces and production relations. To preserve this unity it is necessary to increase demand and I shall never approach or suggest negotiating from a standpoint that my enemies are doing me or mine a favor, . . with a concession, as such. . ^ CB: You have a different attitude toward the Obama event than I do. I think we should rally the working class in support of him. It's true it's because it's the best we have right now, but , there you go. It's sort of like supporting Coleman Young as Mayor. ^ ^ . The real issue is over concentrating on private sector jobs - as government spending or socially necessary means of life. The pouring of trillions of dollars down the rabbit hole of modern speculative finance is designed to starve the workers of these needed funds. ^ CB: Well, yeah, that more later The issue is not me or who I am, rather the issue is how are comrades to frame the current struggle of the working class. Towards this end a doctrine is being put forth as the strategy and tactics of using class intersection as a measure of the complex fight unfolding. This is what is missing in assessments of the Obama administration and the existing correlations of forces in the Senate. Further comrades cannot be sectarian for fighting to establish a communist polarity in the political sphere. Which side are you on is not a conception of Democrats or Republicans but workers and capitalist. WL. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list
[Marxism-Thaxis] How Cash Starved States Can Create their Own Credit
How Cash Starved States Can Create their Own Credit
by Ellen Brown
Global Research (March 03 2009)
He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils;
for time is the greatest innovator. --- Francis Bacon
On February 19 2009, California narrowly
escaped bankruptcy, when
Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger put on
his Terminator hat and held the
state senate in lockdown mode until they signed a very controversial
budget {1}. If the vote had failed, the state
was going to be reduced to
paying its employees in IOUs. California avoided bankruptcy for the time
being, but 46 of fifty states are insolvent
and could be filing Chapter
Nine bankruptcy proceedings in the next two years {2}.
One of the four states that is not
insolvent is an unlikely candidate
for the distinction - North Dakota. As Michigan management consultant
Charles Fleetham observed last
month in an article distributed to his
local media:
North Dakota is a sparsely
populated state of less than 700,000, known
for cold weather, isolated farmers and a hit movie - Fargo. Yet, for
some reason it defies the
real estate cliche of location, location,
location. Since 2000, the state's GNP has grown 56%, personal income has
grown 43%, and wages
have grown 34%. This year the state has a budget
surplus of $1.2 billion!
What does the State of North Dakota
have that other states don't? The
answer seems to be: its own bank.
In fact, North Dakota has the only
state-owned bank in the nation.
The state legislature established the
Bank of North Dakota in 1919. Fleetham writes that the bank was set up
to free farmers and small businessmen
from the clutches of out-of-state
bankers and railroad men. By law,
the state must deposit all its funds
in the bank, and the state guarantees its deposits. Three elected
officials oversee the bank: the governor,
the attorney general, and the
commissioner of agriculture. The bank's stated mission is to deliver
sound financial services that promote
agriculture, commerce and industry
in North Dakota. The bank operates as a bankers' bank, partnering with
private banks to loan money to farmers,
real estate developers, schools
and small businesses. It loans money
to students (over 184,000
outstanding loans), and it purchases
municipal bonds from public
institutions.
Still, you may ask, how does that
solve the solvency problem? Isn't the
state still limited to spending only
the money it has? The answer is no.
Certified, card-carrying bankers are
allowed to do something nobody else
can do: they can create credit with
accounting entries on their books.
A License to Create Money
Under the fractional reserve lending system,
banks are allowed to
extend credit (create money as loans)
in a sum equal to many times their
deposit base. Congressman Jerry Voorhis,
writing in 1973, explained it
like this:
[F]or every $1 or $1.50 which people -
or the government - deposit in a
bank, the banking system can create
out of thin air and by the stroke of
a pen some $10 of checkbook money
or demand deposits. It can lend all
that $10 into circulation at interest just
so long as it has the $1 or a
little more in reserve to back it up. {3}
That banks actually create money with
accounting entries was confirmed
in a revealing booklet published by the
Chicago Federal Reserve titled
Modern Money Mechanics {2}. The
booklet was periodically revised until
1992, when it had reached fifty pages
long. On page 49 of the 1992
edition, it states:
With a uniform ten percent reserve
requirement, a $1 increase in
reserves would support $10 of additional
transaction accounts [loans
created as deposits in borrowers' accounts] {4}.
The ten percent reserve requirement is
now largely obsolete, in part
because banks have figured out how to
get around it with such devices as
overnight sweeps. What chiefly limits
bank lending today is the eight
percent capital requirement imposed
by the Bank for International
Settlements, the head of the private global central banking system in
Basel, Switzerland. With an eight
percent capital requirement, a state
with its own bank could fan its revenues
into 12.5 times their face
value in loans (100 ÷ 8 = 12.5). And
since the state would actually own
the bank, it would not have to worry about shareholders or profits. It
could lend to creditworthy borrowers
at very low interest, perhaps
limited only to a service charge covering
its costs; and it could lend
to itself or to its municipal governments
at as low as zero percent
interest. If these loans were rolled over
indefinitely, the effect would
be the same as creating new, debt-free money.
Dangerously inflationary? Not if the
money were used to create new goods
and services. Price inflation results only
when demand (money) exceeds
supply (goods and services). When they
increase together, prices
remain stable.
Today we are in a dangerous deflationary
spiral, as lending has dried up
and asset values have plummeted. The
monopoly on
[Marxism-Thaxis] Obama says US may reach out to Taliban
Obama Says US May Reach Out to Taliban http://news.aol.com/article/obama-afghanistan-taliban/373693 CB:If I was Obama , I'd say to the Taliban look bros, obviously, you are some bad motherfuckers because even Alexander couldn't conquer y'all, or was it that Alexander was the only one who conquered y'all. Whatever. But look , don't you realize that chimpanzees have more sense than you do in that they know that you can't disrespect females like you are. You dig ? You are dumber than apes when it come to the girls. So why not drop the extraordinary anti-women total bullshit and peace out ? ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Are you really a champion of the poorest sectors of the
...Ralph Dumain Charles lost his mind a long time ago. But he has gotten really bad in recent months. After you have partaken too much of what the CP is serving, you get the itis. A lot of words are wasted wrangling in sectarian environments. ^^^ CB: Ah Ralph has been caused to take up the issue of sectarianism. Guess where his mind got to that. (smile) Perhaps some people feel the need to prove they're not being fooled, by denouncing bourgeois politicians. Others, proving they are not sectarian, act as if self-deception and confusion is the way to act practically and make necessary compromises. But once one knows a bourgeois politician is a bourgeois politician, one can move on to delineate clearly and precisely the situation to be dealt with. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Which side are you on ?
The real issue is over concentrating on private sector jobs - as government spending or socially necessary means of life. The pouring of trillions of dollars down the rabbit hole of modern speculative finance is designed to starve the workers of these needed funds. ^ CB: Well, yeah, that more later WL: The issue is not me or who I am, rather the issue is how are comrades to frame the current struggle of the working class. ^^ CB: Well, yeuuuh. Is you is or is you ain't ain't the issue. I figured that out 30 years ago. And some comrades around here are not framing the current struggles of the working class correctly. when they fail to see that Obama is the leader of the working class right now. Stuff like O is the CEO of the capitalists is bad framing. Hisotric, maybe world historic erroneous framing. ^ Towards this end a doctrine is being put forth as the strategy and tactics of using class intersection as a measure of the complex fight unfolding. This is what is missing in assessments of the Obama administration and the existing correlations of forces in the Senate. ^ CB: Reiterate ^ Further comrades cannot be sectarian for fighting to establish a communist polarity in the political sphere. ^^ CB: Yes they can. A communist polarity is premature and sectarian right now. We need a popular front, all peoples front. ^^ Which side are you on is not a conception of Democrats or Republicans but workers and capitalist. WL. ^^^ CB: Wrong. Right now the Democrats of Obama is the side to be on. Which side are you on ? ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Are you really a champion of the poorest sectors of the
...Waistline2 at aol.com Waistline2 at aol.com Sat Mar 7 14:46:29 MST 2009 * Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Are you really a champion of the poorest sectors of the ... * Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Are you really a champion of the poorest sectors of the ... * Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] CB: You have a different attitude toward the Obama event than I do. I think we should rally the working class in support of him. It's true it's because it's the best we have right now, but , there you go. It's sort of like supporting Coleman Young as Mayor. Reply What is the Marxist perspective of our current economic, social and political environment of which Barack Obama is a part? ^ CB: It's do what you can to help O. ^ What correlation of class forces and intersection allowed for Obama to be elected president? ^^ CB: A significant anti-racist, White , Brown and Black, pro-working people ( working class and middle class) coalition. An anti-war, anti-rightwing, anti-Bush, anti-Reaganite coalition. What is the practice of the working class movement forming the framework by which Obama the person as President to be weighed, measured and assessed? ^^^ CB: Electoral practice, which must be converted to People's lobbyist practice. Not so much the person but the leader , the emblem can be weighed as heavy, measured as breaking through a quantitative barrier , and capable of breaking through more. Assessed as high reformist potential. ^6 ^^ What are the spontaneous demands of that section of the working class in motion that President Obama and the entire institutional political sphere responding to? ^ CB: Anti-war, anti-racist, the rational kernel of American humanism. ^^ What phase of the process of social revolution currently exists? ^ CB: Very early social rev, moderate reformism but potentially radical because of deep pentup contradictions for at least 30 years, with few reformist resolutions in at least 30 years. ^ What is the role of communists in the social process? ^ CB: In the concrete circumstance join the Obama crowd and don't stand out. Mingle and go with O-flow ^^ America is undergoing a profound political, economic and social collapse. Collapse does not mean no one is working or that the political system and social relations have been shattered and no longer operate. When a society undergoes collapse . . . . revolutionary collapse, this means the old ways of doing things and the old social relations of the previous period is undergoing transformation. Specifically the old platform or infrastructure relations that held society together is straining and collapsing as society attempts to leap to a new infrastructure relations. ^^ CB Uhhuh ^ This was the case with the Civil rights movement, which in the first and last instance, had as its impetus the tractor or the mechanization of agriculture and pushing 11 million sharecroppers off of the land and first into Southern small towns and cities and then to the North where these folks would take their place in the industrial social order. The tractor was introduced by International Harvester in 1939. One can shift backwards through history and see - in retrospect, how every deepening quantitative boundary in the mechanization of agriculture had its corresponding and intensifying advance in the political struggle as the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights movement was a social movement for economic and social justice; for the expansion of political liberty. The old society constituted on the basis of Jim Crow segregation collapsed. First this old society was breached, then shattered and finally swept away by a cross section of American society (class intersection), but all of this was dependent upon and corresponded with changes in the means of production. ^^ CB: And executed in the last especially by the Johnson Democratic Party. ^^ The Marxist conception of collapse and revolutionary collapse is not the ideology of any damn thing can happen or one damn thing after another but transformation; the dialectic of the leap or the transition from one kind of society configuration to another. This Marxist understanding gives us the ideological conviction to wage the never ending struggle with the bourgeois power. ^ CB: Well, at some point we aim to end it... in the final conflict ^^ America is undergoing the early stages of revolutionary collapse. CB: Revolutions are not collapses. Collapses hold potential for revolution to be made out of them, if the ruling class can't rule in the old way and the ruled won't be ruled any longer in the old way. We aren't there yet. But the masses are mulling over the situation in ways that are no reflected much in the
[Marxism-Thaxis] Work Ethic
Marxism in the Realm of Necessity as negation of the attitudes toward work in the classical European period I happened to read the below and it occurred to me that a lot of Marx's fundamental concepts on work and labor are almost simple negations of the attitudes toward them in the European classical periods. In standing Hegel off his head onto his feet they were doing the same to classical philosophy. For Marxism , the Realm of Freedom, communism, is a negation of this negation, as work becomes a combination of the source of material wealth and the ancient notion of leisurely on a different level at the same time. It is productive of necessities , but not toil. CB http://www.coe.uga.edu/~rhill/workethic/hist.htm Attitudes Toward Work During the Classical Period One of the significant influences on the culture of the western world has been the Judeo-Christian belief system. Growing awareness of the multicultural dimensions of contemporary society has moved educators to consider alternative viewpoints and perspectives, but an understanding of western thought is an important element in the understanding of the history of the United States. Traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs state that sometime after the dawn of creation, man was placed in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it (NIV, 1973, Genesis 2:15). What was likely an ideal work situation was disrupted when sin entered the world and humans were ejected from the Garden. Genesis 3:19 described the human plight from that time on. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return (NIV, 1973). Rose stated that the Hebrew belief system viewed work as a curse devised by God explicitly to punish the disobedience and ingratitude of Adam and Eve (1985, p. 28). Numerous scriptures from the Old Testament in fact supported work, not from the stance that there was any joy in it, but from the premise that it was necessary to prevent poverty and destitution (NIV; 1973; Proverbs 10:14, Proverbs 13:4, Proverbs 14:23, Proverbs 20:13, Ecclesiastes 9:10). ^^ CB: For Marx material labor is essential to human existence, of course Capital I: So far therefore as labour is a creator of use value, is useful labour, it is a necessary condition, independent of all forms of society, for the existence of the human race; it is an eternal nature-imposed necessity, without which there can be no material exchanges between man and Nature, and therefore no life. ^^ The Greeks, like the Hebrews, also regarded work as a curse (Maywood, 1982). According to Tilgher (1930), the Greek word for work was ponos, taken from the Latin poena, which meant sorrow. Manual labor was for slaves. The cultural norms allowed free men to pursue warfare, large-scale commerce, and the arts, especially architecture or sculpture (Rose, 1985). ^^ CB: Contrast this with Marx's attitude to material or manual labor above. ^^ Mental labor was also considered to be work and was denounced by the Greeks. The mechanical arts were deplored because they required a person to use practical thinking, brutalizing the mind till it was unfit for thinking of truth (Tilgher, 1930, p. 4). ^ CB: Consider Marx's Second Thesis on Feuerbach wherein he declares that the of the truth of theory is practice. Marx , in contrast with the above concept makes practical thinking essential to thinking the truth. ^^ Skilled crafts were accepted and recognized as having some social value, but were not regarded as much better than work appropriate for slaves. Hard work, whether due to economic need or under the orders of a master, was disdained. It was recognized that work was necessary for the satisfaction of material needs, but philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle made it clear that the purpose for which the majority of men labored was in order that the minority, the élite, might engage in pure exercises of the mind--art, philosophy, and politics (Tilgher, 1930, p. 5). ^ CB; This seems related to Engels' focus on the contrast between materialism and idealism's attitude to the relationship between thought and being. ^^ Plato recognized the notion of a division of labor, separating them first into categories of rich and poor, and then into categories by different kinds of work, and he argued that such an arrangement could only be avoided by abolition of private property (Anthony, 1977). ^ CB: Which argument Marx and Engels make in the _Manifesto of the Communist Party_ ^^ Aristotle supported the ownership of private property and wealth. He viewed work as a corrupt waste of time that would make a citizen's pursuit of virtue more difficult (Anthony, 1977). Braude (1975) described the Greek belief that a person's prudence, morality,
[Marxism-Thaxis] Work Ethic 2.0: Attention Control
http://www.internetnews.com/commentary/article.php/3793561 Work Ethic 2.0: Attention Control Commentary: A person who works with total focus has an enormous advantage over a workaholic who's multi-tasking all day, answering every phone call, constantly checking Facebook and Twitter, and indulging every interruption. December 29, 2008 By Mike Elgan: More stories by this author: The industrial revolution didn't arise out of nowhere, and it didn't arise everywhere. It was made possible by the emergence of a set of personal values that came to be known as the work ethic. The idea behind this meme -- inconceivable 400 years ago -- is that hard work is good for its own sake. Hard work makes you a better person. With hard work, our parents told us, we could grow up to become anything. Work hard, and we could get good grades, elite-school acceptance and scholarships. We could invent things, launch businesses and change the world. Genius, Thomas Edison told us, is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. This industrial-age work ethic has its variants, including the Protestant work ethic, the American work ethic, and the Asian work ethic to name a few. The success or failure of regions, nations and subcultures has been massively influenced by the degree to which populations embrace the value of hard work. And that's why the idea is hammered into kids in school, and lauded and rewarded in the workplace. When the information age started replacing the industrial age, hard work seemed more important than ever. Until the 1980s, to use a computer was to program it. Silicon Valley corporate culture, from tiny startups to the massive Googleplex, emphasizes long hours and feverish work. RELATED ARTICLES Information Overload: Is There a Cure? Is it Too Late to Pay Attention? Is There a Cure for the 'Distraction Virus'? Gates: Info Glut Killing Businesses For more stories on this topic: But since the turn of the new millennium, the nature of work has evolved to the point where hard work is becoming less important to a successful work ethic than another, more useful value: attention. The New Work Ethic Columnist David Brooks, commenting in the Dec. 16th New York Times about Malcolm Gladwell's latest book called Outliers, made a statement as profound as it was accurate: Control of attention is the ultimate individual power, he wrote. People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them. But why is that truer now than ten or twenty years ago? Why will it be truer still ten or twenty years from now? As I wrote in May, Internet distractions evolve to become ever more distracting all the time -- like a virus. Distractions now seek you out. Distractions mask the toll they take on productivity. Everyone finishes up their work days exhausted, but how much of that exhaustion is from real work, how much from the mental effort of fighting off distractions and how much from the indulgence of distractions? Pundits like me are constantly talking about Facebook, Twitter, blogs and humor sites, not to mention old standbys like e-mail and IM. One gets the impression that we should be following these things all day long, and many do. So when does the work get done? When do entrepreneurs start and manage their businesses? When do writers write that novel? When do IT professionals keep the trains running on time? When does anyone do anything? The need for attention, rather than hard work, as the centerpiece of the new work ethic has arisen along with the rise of distractions carried on the wings of Internet protocol. In one generation, we've gone from a total separation of work from non-work to one in which both work and play are always sitting right in front of us. Now, we find ourselves with absolutely nothing standing between us and a universe of distractions -- nothing except our own abilities to control attention. Porn, gambling, funny videos, flirting, socializing, playing games, shopping -- it's all literally one click away. Making matters worse, indulging these distractions looks just like work. And it's easy to work and play at the same time -- and call it work. These new, increasingly compelling distractions get piled on to older ones -- office pop-ins, e-mail, IM, text messages, meetings and others. Kids now grow up with the whole range of distractions, from big-screen TVs to video games to cell phones to PCs in their rooms. They're addicted to screens before they even start high school. Their attention spans have been whittled down to seconds, and their expectations for constant amusement are highly developed. In a world in which entire industries bet their businesses on gaining access to our attention, which value leads to better personal success: hard work or the ability to control attention? A person who works six hours a day but with total focus has an enormous advantage over a 12-hour-per-day
[Marxism-Thaxis] weather in Detroit
Man, I hate the weather in Detroit. WL. ^ CB: In the ex-motor city,it's been a really cold winter, with record snow, but today it's like spring ! Feels good ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Human language gene's origin not as recent as thought
This implies that language originated earlier in human evolution than thought. CB http://www.babelsdawn.com/babels_dawn/ The Neanderthal genome includes the human version of the FOXP2 gene. In my most recent post on that finding (see: Narrowing Down the Suspects) I said: The original dating of the appearance of the FOXP2 gene in its human form put it between 200 and 100 thousand years ago. Many arguments about the recency of language have claimed authority based on that date, and now find their cards are very weak. ... In November 2006 this blog reported on a paper presented at a conference in Stellenbosch, South Africa claiming that the original dating effort on FOXP2 had been grossly in error and the true date of the human version of the gene was 1.8 to 1.9 million years ago. ... I have emailed the paper’s main author, Karl Diller, to ask for an update on his work, but have not yet had a response. Now I have gotten a response. In a nutshell, he is sticking by his earlier findings: It is true that the [original] date for FOXP2 was widely cited before the Neanderthal results, but I would say that hardly anyone believes anymore that the FOXP2 mutations were recent. The accepted date for the common ancestor with Neanderthals is ~660,000 years ago. We stand by the genomic evidence and our date of 1.8 or 1.9 million years ago for the FOXP2 mutations. More Carl Zimmer reminds me of a letter Molecular Biology and Evolution (here) arguing that the Neanderthal gene is a contaminant from inbreeding with Homo sapiens. These things will be argued for some time, and as I said in my Narrowing Down the Suspects post: ... all dates on this gene are likely to be taken with several grains of salt without multiple, independent confirmations. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] FOXP2 and the Evolution of Language
FOXP2 and the Evolution of Language Alec MacAndrew Introduction This article addresses the history and the significance of the discovery of the relevance of FOXP2 in the development of speech. It is a remarkable scientific detective story that has been in the making for some time. In its earlier stages, there was serious disagreement within the scientific community about how the scientific findings should be interpreted, and this was set against a background of sensationalist reporting by the popular press. Background Background The story goes like this: The KE family were brought to the attention of the scientific community in about 1990. Over three generations of this family, about half the family members suffer from a number of problems, the most obvious of which is severe difficulty in speaking, to such an extent that the speech of the affected people is largely unintelligible, and they are taught signs as a supplement to speech as children. It is a complicated condition including elements of impairment in speech articulation and other linguistic skills, and broader intellectual and physical problems. From the outset it seemed quite likely, from the pattern of inheritance, that the disorder is associated with a mutation in a single autosomal-dominant gene. It is rather surprising that such a diffuse condition should be linked to a single genetic defect, but it turned out to be so for reasons that we shall see later. From the beginning, there has been a range of views in the professional scientific community with regard to whether the gene in question is a `language' or a `grammar' specific gene. Those disagreements continue in a somewhat abated form today. http://www.evolutionpages.com/FOXP2_language.htm ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] The Language of Looting
What Nationalize the Banks and the Free Market Really Mean in Today's Looking-Glass World The Language of Looting By MICHAEL HUDSON Banking shares began to plunge Friday morning after Senator Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who is chairman of the banking committee, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television that he was concerned the government might end up nationalizing some lenders “at least for a short time.” Several other prominent policy makers – including Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina – have echoed that view recently.” --Eric Dash, “Growing Worry on Rescue Takes a Toll on Banks,” The New York Times, February 20, 2009 How is it that Alan Greenspan, free-market lobbyist for Wall Street, recently announced that he favored nationalization of America’s banks – and indeed, mainly the biggest and most powerful? Has the old disciple of Ayn Rand gone Red in the night? Surely not. The answer is that the rhetoric of “free markets,” “nationalization” and even “socialism” (as in “socializing the losses”) has been turned into the language of deception to help the financial sector mobilize government power to support its own special privileges. Having undermined the economy at large, Wall Street’s public relations think tanks are now dismantling the language itself. Exactly what does “a free market” mean? Is it what the classical economists advocated – a market free from monopoly power, business fraud, political insider dealing and special privileges for vested interests – a market protected by the rise in public regulation from the Sherman Anti-Trust law of 1890 to the Glass-Steagall Act and other New Deal legislation? Or is it a market free for predators to exploit victims without public regulation or economic policemen – the kind of free-for-all market that the Federal Reserve and Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) have created over the past decade or so? It seems incredible that people should accept today’s neoliberal idea of “market freedom” in the sense of neutering government watchdogs, Alan Greenspan-style, letting Angelo Mozilo at Countrywide, Hank Greenberg at AIG, Bernie Madoff, Citibank, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers loot without hindrance or sanction, plunge the economy into crisis and then use Treasury bailout money to pay the highest salaries and bonuses in U.S. history. Terms that are the antithesis of “free market” also are being turned into the opposite of what they historically have meant. Take today’s discussions about nationalizing the banks. For over a century nationalization has meant public takeover of monopolies or other sectors to operate them in the public interest rather than leaving them so special interests. But when neoliberals use the word “nationalization” they mean a bailout, a government giveaway to the financial interests. Doublethink and doubletalk with regard to “nationalizing” or “socializing” the banks and other sectors is a travesty of political and economic discussion from the 17th through mid-20th centuries. Society’s basic grammar of thought, the vocabulary to discuss political and economic topics, is being turned inside-out in an effort to ward off discussion of the policy solutions posed by the classical economists and political philosophers that made Western civilization “Western.” Today’s clash of civilization is not really with the Orient; it is with our own past, with the Enlightenment itself and its evolution into classical political economy and Progressive Era social reforms aimed at freeing society from the surviving trammels of European feudalism. What we are seeing is propaganda designed to deceive, to distract attention from economic reality so as to promote the property and financial interests from whose predatory grasp classical economists set out to free the world. What is being attempted is nothing less than an attempt to destroy the intellectual and moral edifice of what took Western civilization eight centuries to develop, from the 12th century Schoolmen discussing Just Price through 19th and 20th century classical economic value theory. Any idea of “socialism from above,” in the sense of “socializing the risk,” is old-fashioned oligarchy – kleptocratic statism from above. Real nationalization occurs when governments act in the public interest to take over private property. The 19th-century program to nationalize the land (it was the first plank of the Communist Manifesto) did not mean anything remotely like the government taking over estates, paying off their mortgages at public expense and then giving it back to the former landlords free and clear of encumbrances and taxes. It meant taking the land and its rental income into the public domain, and leasing it out at a user fee ranging from actual operating cost to a subsidized rate or even freely as in the case of streets and roads.
[Marxism-Thaxis] Finance Capitalism Hits a Wall
Finance Capitalism Hits a Wall The Oligarchs' Escape Plan By MICHAEL HUDSON The financial “wealth creation” game is over. Economies emerged from World War II relatively free of debt, but the 60-year global run-up has run its course. Finance capitalism is in a state of collapse, and marginal palliatives cannot revive it. The U.S. economy cannot “inflate its way out of debt,” because this would collapse the dollar and end its dreams of global empire by forcing foreign countries to go their own way. There is too little manufacturing to make the economy more “competitive,” given its high housing costs, transportation, debt and tax overhead. A quarter to a third of U.S. real estate has fallen into negative equity, so no banks will lend to them. The economy has hit a debt wall and is falling into negative equity, where it may remain for as far as the eye can see until there is a debt write-down. Mr. Obama’s “recovery” plan, based on infrastructure spending, will make real estate fortunes for well-situated properties along the new public transport routes, but there is no sign of cities levying a windfall property tax to save their finances. Their mayors would rather keep the cities broke than to tax real estate and finance. The aim is to re-inflate property markets to enable owners to pay the banks, not to help the public sector break even. So state and local pension plans will remain underfunded while more corporate pension plans go broke. One would think that politicians would be willing to do the math and realize that debts that can’t be paid, won’t be. But the debts are being kept on the books, continuing to extract interest to pay the creditors that have made the bad loans. The resulting debt deflation threatens to keep the economy in depression until a radical shift in policy occurs – a shift to save the “real” economy, not just the financial sector and the wealthiest 10 per cent of American families. There is no sign that Mr. Obama’s economic advisors, Treasury officials and heads of the relevant Congressional committees recognize the need for a write-down. After all, they have been placed in their positions precisely because they do not understand that debt leveraging is a form of economic overhead, not real “wealth creation.” But their tunnel vision is what makes them “reliable” to Wall Street, which doesn’t like surprises. And the entire character of today’s financial crisis continues to be labeled “surprising” and “unexpected” by the press as each new surprisingly pessimistic statistic hits the news. It’s safe to be surprised; suspicious to have expected bad news and being a “premature doomsayer.” One must have faith in the system above all. And the system was the Greenspan Bubble. That is why “Ayn Rand Alan” was put in charge in the first place, after all. So the government tries to recover the happy Bubble Economy years by getting debt growing again, hoping to re-inflate real estate and stock market prices. That was, after all, the Golden Age of finance capital’s world of using debt leverage to bid up the book-price of fictitious capital assets. Everyone loved it as long as it lasted. Voters thought they had a chance to become millionaires, and approved happily. And at least it made Wall Street richer than ever before – while almost doubling the share of wealth held by the wealthiest 1 per cent of America’s families. For Washington policy makers, they are synonymous with “the economy” – at least the economy for which national economic policy is being formulated these days. The Obama-Geithner plan to restart the Bubble Economy’s debt growth so as to inflate asset prices by enough to pay off the debt overhang out of new “capital gains” cannot possibly work. But that is the only trick these ponies know. We have entered an era of asset-price deflation, not inflation. Economic data charts throughout the world have hit a wall and every trend has been plunging vertically downward since last autumn. U.S. consumer prices experienced their fastest plunge since the Great Depression of the 1930s, along with consumer “confidence,” international shipping, real estate and stock market prices, oil and the exchange rate for British sterling. The global economy is falling into depression, and cannot recover until debts are written down. Instead of doing this, the government is doing just the opposite. It is proposing to take bad debts onto the public-sector balance sheet, printing new Treasury bonds give the banks – bonds whose interest charges will have to be paid by taxing labor and industry. The oligarchy’s plans for a bailout (at least of its own financial position) In periods of looming collapse, wealthy elites protect their funds. In times past they bought gold when currencies started to weaken. (Patriotism never has been a characteristic of cosmopolitan finance capital.) Since the 1950s the International Monetary Fund has made loans
[Marxism-Thaxis] Capitalism, Socialism and Crisis
OK . . . fair enough. Maybe later. It was so bad I was embarrassed to actually comment on it. WL. ^^ CB: You haven't been too embarrassed to post bad stuff yourself in the past. When did you get to be so sensitive ? (smile) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Capitalism, Socialism and Crisis
Capitalism, Socialism and Crisis By Prabhat Patnaik http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/8201/ Original source: People's Democracy (India) A common view of the current financial crisis of capitalism holds that it is essentially an aberration. Some attribute this aberration to specific mistakes committed in the past, for instance by the US Federal Reserve with regard to monetary policy. Some hold the lack of adequate regulatory mechanism as being responsible for this aberration. Paul Krugman, the current year’s Nobel laureate, blames it on insufficient supervision of the financial system. And even Joseph Stiglitz, the well-known radical economist and Nobel laureate, characterizes it as a “system failure,” a term which makes the crisis a phenomenon that in principle could have been avoided with impunity. This entire perception however is untenable. The crisis is a result not of the failure of the system but of the system itself; it is a part of the mode of operation of contemporary capitalism rather than being unrelated or extraneous to it. Massive speculation In a “free market” regime, asset markets tend to be subject to speculation. Speculators buy assets not because of the yield on these assets but because they expect its price to appreciate in the coming days. They have no long term interest in the assets and are concerned exclusively with capital gains. Since buying today to sell tomorrow entails carrying the asset during the intervening period for which a “carrying cost” has to be incurred, the assets most suitable for speculation are those whose carrying costs are low; and these are typically financial assets which have virtually zero carrying costs (requiring only a few taps on computer keys to effect all necessary transactions). Financial asset markets therefore are always subject to massive speculation. Speculation generates bouts of euphoria or “speculative excitement” which have the cumulative effect of pushing up asset prices. An initial rise in some asset prices, caused no matter how, gives rise to expectations of a further rise, and hence to an increase in the demand for the assets in question which actually raises their prices further; and so the process feeds upon itself and we have asset price “bubbles.” Such “bubbles” typically characterize financial assets, which, as already mentioned, are particularly prone to speculation; but they are not confined to financial assets alone (as the housing market “bubble” in the United States has just demonstrated). Such “bubbles” have an obvious impact on the real economy. The rise in asset prices fed by speculative euphoria improves for individuals who own these assets the estimation of their wealth position, and hence causes an increase in their consumption expenditure, and thereby in employment. Likewise such a rise in asset prices, where the assets in question are producible, causes an increase in investment expenditure on these assets, which leads to their larger production, and hence to larger employment. In short, speculative euphoria in the asset markets makes the boom in the real economy, stimulated by whatever had caused the initial rise in asset prices, more pronounced and prolonged. Precisely because of this however if for some reason the asset price increase wanes or comes to a halt, speculators attempt to get out of the assets in question causing a crash in the asset prices. This causes a fall in aggregate expenditure on goods and services; a collapse in the state of credit, as banks face insolvency; and a possible collapse even in the inclination of depositors for holding bank deposits (since they fear banks’ insolvency), as had happened during the Great Depression. In short there is a collapse of the state of confidence all around, and hence a corresponding increase in liquidity preference; i.e. there is a disinclination to hold any asset other than pure cash, or in extreme cases only currency, and of course claims upon the government, which is considered to be the only safe and reliable borrower. Not all crises display this severity; but to a greater or lesser extent these features mark any crisis. Speculation therefore has the effect of making the boom more pronounced and prolonged; but it has also the effect of precipitating a severe crisis, as distinct from a mere cyclical downturn. In the absence of speculation the boom in the real economy will be a much more truncated and tame affair. But precisely because it is not a tame affair, it is followed by a crisis. Two conclusions follow from the above analysis. First, since speculation is endemic to modern capitalism, where financial markets play a major role, speculation-engendered euphoria and the consequent pronounced booms, together with the crises that invariably follow, are also endemic to modern capitalism. “Bubbles” constitute in other words the mode of operation of the
[Marxism-Thaxis] Obama , getting money to the working class pronto
Obama , getting money to the working class, pronto 3/3/09 Notice of Certain Benefits Unemployed Workers May Be Eligiole For Under the Economic Stimulus Package. 1)Extra $25 per week in unemployment benefits 2)Period for Collecting Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extended 3)Partial (first $2,400)Suspension of Federal Income Tax On Unemployment Benefits for Tax Year 2009 Obama , Obama , Obama ! ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Capitalism, Socialism and Crisis
Waistline2 at aol.com Capitalism, Socialism and Crisis By Prabhat Patnaik _http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/8201/_ (http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/8201/) is one of the worse, if not the worst economic analysis, I have read (under the banner of Marxism) in perhaps the past decade. WL. ^^ CB: This is one of the worst unsupported, conclusory assertions I've seen since Ralph's embarrassing posts a couple of days ago. An empty outburst, with no thought in it whatsoever. Who cares what you think without any argumentation ? ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] James Petras' critique of the Communist Manifesto
James Petras' critique of the Communist Manifesto * To: pe...@xxx, marxism-internatio...@xx, cm15...@xxx * Subject: James Petras' critique of the Communist Manifesto * From: Louis Proyect l...@ * Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 09:57:28 -0500 The sequence of capitalist expansion, destruction of traditional bonds and global integration was, according to Marx, the process of creating a unified working class, conscious of its class interests and linked across national boundaries. His chain of reasoning lacks a clear understanding of the importance traditions and social bonds preceding capitalism played in creating social solidarity for confronting capitalism and sustaining class consciousness. When Marx describes the bourgeoisie as reducing human relations to the cash nexus as a prelude to the development of class consciousness, he is essentially describing the condition of the U.S. working class--probably the least willing and able to identify its source of exploitation let alone struggle against it. The stripping of older beliefs--what Marx and Engels unfortunately called philistine sentimentalism--includes the sense of community and not necessarily belief in a natural superior. Thus the assumption that the everlasting insecurity and agitation that the Manifesto's authors associate with capital's revolutionizing of the means of production does not necessarily compel [man] to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind. In fact, economic processes are having the opposite effects in deepening reaction, atomizing labor, stimulating ethnic warfare and undermining a vast swath of economic production throughout Latin America, Africa, the ex-USSR and elsewhere. Thus the centrality of tradition and culture and community in defining the formation of class consciousness is lost before Marx and Engels' sweeping and uncritical celebration of the revolutionary potential of the development of the forces of production. Similarly, the savaging of the Third World labor force occurring under the aegis of the internationalization of capital has not led to greater class consciousness or civilized behavior. One look at free trade zones should dissuade anyone of that notion. Instead, it has broken class ties and fostered greater deference and servility. Bourgeois globalization has not created a world in its own image as Marx and Engels argued. Today these are the sentimental pieties printed out in World Bank public relations handouts trumpeting the modernization of the Third World. [And LM TV documentaries, I might add.] Their lack of a sense of class consciousness directly related to the producers and not derived from the capitalist process of production explains the difficulties many Marxists have in creating an alternative to capitalism. Today capitalists don't call into existence the men who will wield the weapons to deal a death blow to capitalism. They create millions of frightened, uncertain, temporary workers, tied to the cash nexus. To become a Marxist in the sense of realizing the goals of the Manifesto, one must reject Marx and Engels' false assumptions about the revolutionary role of the bourgeoisie. To move toward working class action, their conception of the transformation of workers into a revolutionary class must be subjected to the harshest criticism. Where Marx and Engels say that man's consciousness changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life the changes that capitalism has wrought have undermined the construction of a revolutionary consciousness at every point. The notion that the bourgeoisie revolutionizes production through competition and in the course forces workers to confront their conditions and subsequently join together is false on all counts. The most important change is not the revolutionizing of production, but the transformation of political and social relations throughout the world in a fashion that undermines the possibility of material recognition of proletarians. To speak of the Manifesto today, one must move from the brilliant economic analysis to the revolutionary conclusions by constructing a new theory of revolutionary action. The passage above appears in James Petras' article The Manifesto's Strength and Flaws, which is part of a symposium on the relevance of Marxism on the 150th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto published in the latest New Politics, Winter 1998. I highly recommend this issue. For ordering information, check www.wilpaterson.edu/~newpol. Louis proyect ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Obama: The brother from another planet
Waistline2 Waistline2 Obama as a uniter is an interesting Marxist approach. ^ CB: Marxist as in Workers of all nations and races , unite ! ^ Perhaps if all of us was raised by a white parent and white grandparents, we too would be uniters. ^ CB: Makes sense. It would engender need for unity on a personal level for peace of mind. His mother seems to have taught him Black history type respect for Black people. He seems to have somewhat consciously constructed a Black identity of high integrity. Going to the hood to live, like an anthropologist joining his own culture. Now he's an interesting character. To coin a phrase, he seems to be in the Presidential world , but not of it. Somehow he comes across as confident in the sense of not worried, in the face of an extraordinary mess but not arrogant and not aloof. Engaged with horrific crises, but not scared and not in the bliss of ignorance. I'm like more power to ya, Barry. So far, so good. Comment/Reply I tend to prefer a Marxist approach rather than psychological speculation and race theory. ^ CB: The Marxist approach to an individual's personality would be a psychological approach too. To conceive Obama personality traits as a call for Workers of all nations and races , unite ! is an interesting proposition. CB: He said he's a uniter not a divider, Given he's Black , and of course that is a prominent feature of the public situation, race unity is strongly suggested. So, it fits with workers uniting. In the US racial unity is an important version of the famous unity slogan. Further, I reject the concept that humanity is divided into races. ^ CB: You are ignoring social and historical actuality. What do you think the Civil Rights movement was directed at ? An illusion ? ^^ I am convince with every fiber of my being that those who cling to race and its usage will inevitably fail to approach issues from a class point of view, because a false theory of biology cannot be reconciled with a science of class and economic relations. CB: Race is an invalid biological concept Unfortunately, it is a real social, political economic and historical category. It inflects class. ^ Obama does not unite back and white people, devoid of any class conception of society. CB: When I mention Workers of the all nations and races unite I am referring to his impact on uniting people in relation to a class conception of society. That should be obvious. ^^^ Pardon, but whites in America are not united amongst themselves because class - economic interest, stratification, status and perception of class, divides them and have always divided them, along with a morality of what is right and wrong about our society ills. ^^^ CB: Yes, but that doesn't mean White and Black workers haven't been divided too. ^^^ Barack's personal qualities, which I most certainly have never ignored, which cast him a uniter, is a class thing also: to unite or maintain the polarizing unity that is the productive forces and social relations of American society. CB: Maybe. We'll see what happens. ^ That is his J.O.B. ^^ CB: So, far the effect of his campaign has not been to do that job. ^^ Obama's personal cool has more in common with Frank Sinatra rather than Miles Davis with the latter expressing a contempt and demeanor characteristic of the black middle class militant profoundly aware of the structural barriers of Jim Crow. Personal qualities are important but should not overshadowed class; and in Obama case, his set of polices designed to protect the unity of the productive forces and social relations. The race to the bottom, has nothing to do with biological race, and will not stopped or be halted by any of Obama's polices. The character of who hits bottom first, from the standpoint of the color factor, is rooted in slavery and its aftermath. CB: You introduced the issue of individual personality by your idea that he has an immigrant personality. I'm not trying to override class with personality. I'm pointing to the impact of his campaign in contributing to more unity between races, including between White, Black and Brown workers, especially. Reduction of racism in the middle strata enhances the racial unity of the working class as well. His mixed racial background logically helps him in leading a movement that unites sections of the social classes. As to whether he does what you say, we shall see. So, far it's not like that His budget proposals to reverse Reaganism and pledge to fight its opponents is the opposite of what you predict. It is fighting for the working class versus the rich. ^ It is interesting to state that Obama went to live in the hood, when most Negroes in America were born in the hood. The point being that this anthropologist joining his own culture,
[Marxism-Thaxis] Lenin's discussion of monopoly and speculation
Brown http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch01.htm “Even in the purely economic sphere,” writes Kestner, “a certain change is taking place from commercial activity in the old sense of the word towards organisational-speculative activity. The greatest success no longer goes to the merchant whose technical and commercial experience enables him best of all to estimate the needs of the buyer, and who is able to discover and, so to speak, ‘awaken’ a latent demand; it goes to the speculative genius [?!] who knows how to estimate, or even only to sense in advance, the organisational development and the possibilities of certain connections between individual enterprises and the banks. . . .” Translated into ordinary human language this means that the development of capitalism has arrived at a stage when, although commodity production still “reigns” and continues to be regarded as the basis of economic life, it has in reality been undermined and the bulk of the profits go to the “geniuses” of financial manipulation. At the basis of these manipulations and swindles lies socialised production; but the immense progress of mankind, which achieved this socialisation, goes to benefit . . . the speculators. We shall see later how “on these grounds” reactionary, petty-bourgeois critics of capitalist imperialism dream of going back to “free”, “peaceful”, and “honest” competition. Half a century ago, when Marx was writing Capital, free competition appeared to the overwhelming majority of economists to be a “natural law”. Official science tried, by a conspiracy of silence, to kill the works of Marx, who by a theoretical and historical analysis of capitalism had proved that free competition gives rise to the concentration of production, which, in turn, at a certain stage of development, leads to monopoly. Today, monopoly has become a fact. Economists are writing mountains of books in which they describe the diverse manifestations of monopoly, and continue to declare in chorus that “Marxism is refuted”. But facts are stubborn things, as the English proverb says, and they have to be reckoned with, whether we like it or not. The facts show that differences between capitalist countries, e.g., in the matter of protection or free trade, only give rise to insignificant variations in the form of monopolies or in the moment of their appearance; and that the rise of monopolies, as the result of the concentration of production, is a general and fundamental law of the present stage of development of capitalism. -clip- Thus, the principal stages in the history of monopolies are the following: (1) 1860-70, the highest stage, the apex of development of free competition; monopoly is in the barely discernible, embryonic stage. (2) After the crisis of 1873, a lengthy period of development of cartels; but they are still the exception. They are not yet durable. They are still a transitory phenomenon. (3) The boom at the end of the nineteenth century and the crisis of 1900-03. Cartels become one of the foundations of the whole of economic life. Capitalism ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Evgeny Pashukanis
Evgeny Pashukanis From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Evgeny Bronislavovich Pashukanis (February 23, 1891[1] – 1937) was a Soviet legal scholar, best known for his work The General Theory of Law and Marxism. Contents[hide] * 1 Early life and October Revolution * 2 The General Theory of Law and Marxism * 3 Latter years * 4 Notes * 5 External links [edit] Early life and October Revolution Pashukanis was born in Staritsa, in the Tver Oblast in the Russian Empire. Influenced by his family, particularly his uncle, he joined the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party (RSLDP) in Saint Petersburg at the age of 17. In 1909, he started studying jurisprudence in Saint Petersburg. As a result of his socialist activism, the Czarist police threatened Pashukanis with banishment, so he left Russia for Germany in 1910. He continued his studies in Munich. During World War I, he returned to his native Russia. In 1914, he helped draft the RSLDP resolution opposing the war. Following the 1917 October Revolution and the establishment of the Soviet Union, Pashukanis joined the Russian Communist Party, the Bolshevik wing of the RSLDP, after its founding in 1918. In August 1918, he became a judge in Moscow. Meanwhile, he launched his career as a legal scholar. He also held a post in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was an adviser to the Soviet embassy in Berlin, helping to draft the Rapallo Treaty of 1922. In 1924 he was transferred to full-time academic duties as a member of the Communist Academy.[2] He was a cousin of publisher Vikentiy Pashukanis (1879-1920). [edit] The General Theory of Law and Marxism In 1924, Pashukanis published his seminal work, The General Theory of Law and Marxism. This is best knows for Pushkanis' formulation of the Commodity Exchange Theory of Law. This theory was built on two pillars of Marxist thought: (1) in the organization of society the economic factor is paramount; legal and moral principles and institutions therefore constitute a kind of superstructure reflecting the economic organization of society; and (2) in the finally achieved state of communism, law and the state will wither away. If communism is achieved, morality as it is typically understood will cease to perform any function. [edit] Latter years From 1925 to 1927, Pyotr Stuchka, another Soviet legal scholar, and Pashukanis compiled an Encyclopedia of State and Law and started a journal named Revolution of Law. In 1927, he was elected a full member of the Communist Academy, eventually becoming its vice-president. He and Stuchka started a section on the General Theory of State and Law at the Academy. However, in 1930, Nikolai Bukharin was attacked by Stalin, because he insisted that the state must wither away to bring forth communism, as Marx had advocated, and stripped of all his political posts. Pashukanis soon came under pressure from the government as well. As a result, Pashukanis started to revise his theory of state. He stopped working with his friend Stuchka. It is unclear whether Pashukanis's transformation was simply the result of fear for his safety, or whether he actually changed his mind. He was rewarded by being made director of the Institute of Soviet Construction and Law in 1931. In 1936, he was nominated Deputy Commissar of Justice of the USSR and was proposed for membership in the Soviet Academy of Sciences.[3] However, Pashukanis, like Nikolai Krylenko and others, was denounced as part of a band of enemies by Andrey Vyshinsky, the Prosecutor General of the USSR and mastermind of Stalin's Great Purge. The philosopher Pyotr Yudin was also active in attacking Pashukanis. In 1937, Pashukanis was arrested and Vyshinsky replaced him at the Institute of Soviet Construction and Law. Alfred Krishianovich Stalgevich, a longtime critic of Pashukanis, took over his courses at the Moscow Juridical Institute.[4] Pashukanis, after publishing many 'self-criticisms', was eventually denounced as a trotskyite saboteur in 1937, and executed.[5] [edit] Notes ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity 6/end
Waistline2 Obama as a uniter is an interesting Marxist approach. ^ CB: Marxist as in Workers of all nations and races , unite ! ^ Perhaps if all of us was raised by a white parent and white grandparents, we too would be uniters. ^ CB: Makes sense. It would engender need for unity on a personal level for peace of mind. His mother seems to have taught him Black history type respect for Black people. He seems to have somewhat consciously constructed a Black identity of high integrity. Going to the hood to live, like an anthropologist joining his own culture. Now he's an interesting character. To coin a phrase, he seems to be in the Presidential world , but not of it. Somehow he comes across as confident in the sense of not worried, in the face of an extraordinary mess but not arrogant and not aloof. Engaged with horrific crises, but not scared and not in the bliss of ignorance. I'm like more power to ya, Barry. So far, so good. ^^^ Why not just read his book - Dreams from my father? ^ CB: I did. ^ And then describe how being raised, during his formative years, where he was raised mirror the life of blacks in American Northern or Southern cities and country side. I do not write Obama is an immigrant. His story - meaning the story that he tells, and to a large degree the live he has lived, is that of the story of the immigrant and their first generation offspring. ^ CB: Maybe sort of half, but the other half is pretty American native. I will say that he's sort of like a brother from another planet. More like an immigrant from ancient Egypt or something, somekind of higher civilization than America. His mother was an anthropologist, and he lived in Indonesia for a while, which might give him some ability to view American culture objectively like an immigrant, but his grandfather was a traveling salesman and his grandmother worked in a bank, real regular Americans from Kansas He's _sui generis_, a phenomon, breaking through a new quantitative boundry in personality type. He's got a lot of character, and, well../\. intelligence social intelligence and abstract intelligence. If you disagree with an interpretation why not simply state something to the effect that my interpretation is unless you are saying what Obama means is I was raised by one white parent and white grandparents and therefore I am a uniter, with the small physiological disposition of the descendants of Southern slavery. Without question he is African American, but that does not really tell much. CB: See above Uniter! Trust me on the following: Obama is CEO for the capitalist class. WL. ^^ CB: So were Lincoln and FDR. From my observations, that's dogmatic ,formulaic thinking ,and in this situation, there keep arising more indications that something new is going on here. Need to try to think dialectically on this one. Again the first indicator is getting all those White people to vote for him. That's breaking a quantitative barrier. Then his first month as Pres is realistic , but making some changes that are possible in this context , despite all the left haters say. I could list the actions , but I'm not going to exert myself for the haters. Fuck em. The big crisis/problem is Afghanistan, and ,of course Palestine He's going to have to be Houdini on that. I can't see how he'll do it. Unless he just pretty soon , after this assessment he can get something like broker both a treaty with Hamas and a treaty with the Taliban et al not to facilitate, and to hinder any attack on the US by the bin Laden group. I don't know how he gets out of the obligation to capture bin Laden, Barack Obama wonderful book, Dreams from My Father, is the immigrant story, a black immigrant, rather than the history of the Negro People, and his acute awareness of this living history accounts for his unique and individual ability to cross the color line. When Obama writes, My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn’t, couldn’t, end there, what is meant is that my identity is not defined on the basis of the color factor in American history. The words of Obama reveals why no self respecting Marxist, born and reared as part of the baby boomers, can deploy the concept race, other than the petty bourgeois intellectuals unable to fully digest dialectics without opportunist sauce. ^ CB: Obama's words don't mean that. Unlike most Black people he was raised by White parents and grandparents. This gave him an unusual ability to understand both aspects of his Duboisian double consciousness. It allows him to be a uniter, not a divider. Obama is not an immigrant. He had little contact with his immigrant father. He was raised by US natives ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
[Marxism-Thaxis] Massacre of Chilean students in Florida panhandle
[Marxism] Massacre of Chilean students in Florida panhandle * Subject: [Marxism] Massacre of Chilean students in Florida panhandle * From: Joaquin Bustelo jbust...@gmail.com * I guess xenophobic murder is becoming so common in the United States it's become a dog-bites-man non-story -- at least for the Anglo press. This time the victims were Chilean students participating in a work-study program and staying at the Florida panhandle seaside town of Miramar Beach. They were having a social when someone opened up on the people inside house through a window. Two were killed, three more injured, one remained in critical condition according to the most recent information. The perp was one Dannie Baker, a white 60-year-old Bush-Cheney volunteer in the 2004 election campaign who also appears to have been active in religious affairs. It took place 48 hours ago as I write this, shortly before 2AM Thursday morning, but the first report in the U.S. outside local media came out early Friday morning, and that only on Spanish language TV. At that point there are exactly eight stories on the event on the web in English that Google News knew about, but only three appeared to be original reporting, the others are rewrites. There are now 8 more articles in English, pretty much all updates by the same news outlets. If you look at the web site stories on the case, you will see how gingerly they dance around the motive. The perp is described as having written radical and disturbing emails, being eccentric, and various other things. But only if you read to the very end of one dispatch (or watch the video) do you get some clear idea of what went down: Neighbor Crystal Lynn says 'he did come up to me one time and asked me if I was ready for the revolution to begin and if I had any immigrant in my house to get them out, channel 7 WJHG reported. By contrast, a Google News search in Spanish (news.google.es) reveals a couple of hundred articles, including coverage by various news agencies, AFP, Notimex and Prensa Latina among them. There are articles in Spanish language newspapers from LA to Tierra del Fuego and from New York to Patagonia in Argentina. And unlike the English stories, most had no problem describing what happened *accurately* -- a murderous attack on Latinos by an Anglo (American.) Nor placing it in context, explaining this was one MORE in a series of murders and other attacks on Latinos that have taken place recently in the United States. Most striking to me is that the U.S. outlet that has had the most coverage has been CNN's Spanish-language network, but I can find no trace of CNN's main domestic (English-language) network or web site having even mentioned the story. Similarly, El Herald had a substantial story, the English-language Miami Herald ignores the story. Joaquin ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] John Bellamy Foster interview on the financial crisis
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/foster270209.html ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama 1
Ralph:Yes, this is a crossroads . . . a conjuncture of the election of the first black president and a major crisis of capitalism. Those two facts are interdependent, interrelated, and quite important, but I've yet to see an insightful elucidation of the nature of that importance. Decisive in this is not the election of a black president, but the fact that Cracker America, almost half of the white electorate, voted for McCain and is out for Obama's blood. I saw a documentary last night on HBO: Right America: Feeling Wronged: a survey of white Americans who hate Obama. These aren't just white people, these are the whitest people you ever saw, the redneck kind that make your blood run cold. The kind not shy about telling you what they think about niggers. Granted, they are dinosaurs, and hopefully they will die out soon, but not soon enough. Now the question is: how will Cracker America react to 'socialist' Obama's handling of the economic crisis? ^^ CB; The racists are a danger, but the important factor in this election is the great mass ofWhite Americans who voted _for_ Obama.That's what is new. The racists have alwaysbeen here. This election was a point of tipping from the racists' majority to an anti-racist majority of the electorate. The racists are a danger. This is a crossroads, a crisis for the American system with, of course, danger and opportunity, massesof Whites with new thinking and openness. Which side are you on ? ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: The election of Barack Obama 1
Now that American society is undergoing a profound revolution in the society machinery ^^^ CB: What is the evidence and argument that _society_ is going through a profound revolution in machinery ? What characteristics of today's new machinery make the revolution _profound_ in comparison with the revolutions in machinery in the last 100 years ? Why is American society undergoing this and not the whole world ? If it is the whole world then why not say the whole world ? ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4
The most noteworthy aspect of taking the high road is that Obama can appear, and probably believes he is, totally nonpartisan, bipartisan, or whatever, CB: Well isn't he ? That's basically what you say here. all along being forced to take more liberal or social democratic measures to correct the heinous state of affairs he has bequeathed. A shift in the overall political direction of the country won't depend on him, but if popular pressure forces him to move to the left, he would do so. ^^ CB: Which is what he says. Changes comes from the bottom up. And that's the only way any president gets anything done, whether it be Lincoln, FDR, or LBJ, the only presidents good for anything since the Founding Fathers. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Definition of symbolic
Another crucial element is that human language is symbolic: the sound of words (or their shape, when written) bear no relation to what they represent.[64] In other words, their meaning is arbitrary. That words have meaning is a matter of convention. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture#Biological_Anthropology:_the_Evolution_of_Culture Linguists Charles Hockett and R. Ascher have identified thirten design-features of language, some shared by other forms of animal connunication. One feature that distinguishes human language is its tremendous productivity; in other words, competent speakers of a language are capable of producing an infinite number of original utterances. This productivity seems to be made possible by a few critical features unique to human language. One is “duality of patterning,” meaning that human language consists of the articulation of several distinct processes, each with its own set of rules: combining phonemes to produce morphemes, combining morphemes to produce words, and combining words to produce sentences. This means that a person can master a relatively limited number of signals and sets of rules, to create infinite combinations. Another crucial element is that human language is symbolic: the sound of words (or their shape, when written) bear no relation to what they represent.[64] In other words, their meaning is arbitrary. That words have meaning is a matter of convention. Since the meaning of words are arbitrary, any word may have several meanings, and any object may be referred to using a variety of words; the actual word used to describe a particular object depends on the context, the intention of the speaker, and the ability of the listener to judge these appropriately. As Tomasello notes, ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 4
The huge mass that was once dubbed the reserve army of labor, was called such precisely because it was a reserve to be thrown into the battle for production during peak period of production. No level of production and consumption today can throw this huge mass of labor into the production process, because of what Marx called the progress of industry. This mass of labor has been rendered superfluous to the production of capital as an expanded value in the absolute sense. Here is the 800 lb. gorilla in the living room many deny exist, with other claiming it is not really a gorilla at all. From reserve army to a permanent caste of proletarians shut out the civic society of the bourgeoisie. ^^ CB: True. But there never is a time when there hasn't been mass unemployment, even in the boom phase of cycles. Bourgeois economics defines fullemployment as 4% unemployment. Maybe the lowest percentage will get bigger under your analysis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Black History Month 2009 Change and continuity: 6/end
Barack Obama wonderful book, Dreams from My Father, is the immigrant story, a black immigrant, rather than the history of the Negro People, and his acute awareness of this living history accounts for his unique and individual ability to cross the color line. When Obama writes, My identity might begin with the fact of my race, but it didn’t, couldn’t, end there, what is meant is that my identity is not defined on the basis of the color factor in American history. The words of Obama reveals why no self respecting Marxist, born and reared as part of the baby boomers, can deploy the concept race, other than the petty bourgeois intellectuals unable to fully digest dialectics without opportunist sauce. ^ CB: Obama's words don't mean that. Unlike most Black people he was raised by White parents and grandparents. This gave him an unusual ability to understand both aspects of his Duboisian double consciousness. It allows him to be a uniter, not a divider. Obama is not an immigrant. He had little contact with his immigrant father. He was raised by US natives ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Forward from Rosa Lichtenstein
This article does not raise the issue of symbols. It turns on imitative learning. But my anaylsis assumes that animals can imitate - monkey see, monkey do. It is symboling that they can't do. They can't understand the concept of representation; or at least not abstractly enough to do it tens of thousands of times readily. A chimp can learn to sssoicate a limited number of words with their referants. Even a dog can learn to associate a few words with referents. It's name, commands like sit , rollover. fetch. but they don't seem to be able to generalize to the concept of word enough to build the giant vocabularies that humans readily achieve. sit, rollover fetch etc. are built up through conditioned learning links between words and behaviors CJ can help me to elaborate on the characteristics of full language http://animals.howstuffworks.com/animal-facts/animal-culture-info.htm On a grassy slope above the shore of Lake Tanganyika in the east African nation of Tanzania, two male chimpanzees spot a hole in the ground, into which a long column of ants is marching. The chimps pause for a moment beneath the light drizzle of an early morning rain and then amble to the hole—the entrance to the ants' nest—for a closer inspection. The chimpanzees, lifetime residents of Tanzania's Gombe Stream National Park, expertly select several long sticks and sit down beside the nest. Slowly, each of them extends a stick into the hole and watches as some of the ants swarm up the probe. As soon as either of the chimps gauges that the lower half of the stick has become covered with ants, he extracts it from the nest. He then quickly gathers the tasty insects from the stick with his free hand and pops them into his mouth. Across the continent in the Tai Forest of western Africa's Ivory Coast, two other male chimps have also discovered a nest of ants. They each find a suitable tool—a short stick, rather than the long probes favored by the Gombe chimps-and begin dipping it into the nest entrance to fish for a meal. After the ants guarding the nest climb up the sticks, the chimps sweep the sticks directly across their smacking lips and, without using their hands, draw the ants into their mouths. At the same time that the chimps are enjoying their morning snacks, two other mealtime rituals are being played out by other primates (the order of mammals that includes humans, apes, and monkeys) far to the west. In St. Louis, Missouri, two human families—one whose ancestors came from Asia and the other whose forebears originated in Europe—sit down to dinner at separate tables in a Chinese restaurant. Both families order their favorite dish of spicy orange chicken. When the food is served, the Asian family begins eating its meal with chopsticks, while the other family picks up forks. Since the dish could be eaten with either chopsticks or forks, the preference for one type of utensil over another is simply a reflection of cultural differences between the two families. There's nothing unusual about that. But what about the differences in the ways the Gombe and Tai chimpanzees perform ant fishing? Could those individual preferences also reflect differences in culture? Since all of the chimps are of the same species, it is unlikely that genetic differences could account for the variations in behavior. Thus, the different approaches to a similar task, ant fishing, are likely to be learned behaviors within the Gombe and Tai social groups. That means that knowledge may have been passed from one chimp to another. In other words, the chimps seem to be exhibiting behavior that could be called culture. Social scientists have long maintained, however, that only humans are capable of possessing culture. Are they wrong? Do chimpanzees—and perhaps even other animals, such as monkeys, whales, and birds—also possess a form of culture? Many scientists in 2000 believed that the answer to that question is yes. But others insisted that culture is a purely human phenomenon. What Do Scientists Mean By “culture?” Scientists have debated whether animals have culture at least since the late 1800's, when the British physiologist and psychologist George Romanes proposed that some animals display behaviors that indicate a high degree of intelligence and an ability to learn. Other scientists, however, disagreed with this conclusion, believing that animal behavior is hard-wired in the brain. Over the years, scientists on both sides of the issue divided themselves into two camps, the culturalists and the anticulturalists. The culturalists contend that animals are a lot smarter and more adaptable than most people think. The anticulturalists argue that animals, regardless of their intelligence, are incapable of culture. Central to this debate is defining what exactly is meant by culture. One requirement for culture that is accepted by scientists on both sides of the issue is imitation, or learning
[Marxism-Thaxis] Symbols as unique in human learning (was Forward from Rosa Lichtenstein)
This subsection of the wikipedia article on culture, brings in the concept of symbols as a distinguishing characteristic of human culture. This author distinguishes imitative from emulative Using imitative differently than I have been using it. Emulative would be monkey see, monkey do. The kind of learning characteristic of human children is “Imitative learning,” which “means reproducing an instrumental act understood intentionally.”[38] Human infants begin to display some evidence of this form of learning between the ages of nine and twelve months, when infants fix their attention not only on an object, but on the gaze of an adult which enables them to use adults as points of reference and thus “act on objects in the way adults are acting on them.” [39] This dynamic is well-documented and has also been termed “joint engagement” or “joint attention.”[40][41] Essential to this dynamic is the infants growing capacity to recognize others as “intentional agents:” people “with the power to control their spontaneous behavior” and who “have goals and make active choices among behavioral means for attaining those goals.”[42] Culture is “the imposition of arbitrary form upon the environment.” CB: The following is what I try to get at when I say with a symbol something is represented by something that it is not. There is an arbitrary relation between the sign and the signified: “In the preparation of the stick for termite-eating, the relation between product and raw material is iconic. In the making of a stone tool, in contrast, there is no necessary relation between the form of the final product and the original material.”[60] CB http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture#Biological_Anthropology:_the_Evolution_of_Culture Biological Anthropology: the Evolution of Culture The taxonomic relationships of Hominoidea Discussion concerning culture among biological anthropologists centers around two debates. First, is culture uniquely human or shared by other species (most notably, other primates)? This is an important question, as the theory of evolution holds that humans are descended from non-humans. Second, how did culture evolve among human beings? Gerald Weiss noted that although Tylor’s classic definition of culture was restricted to humans, many anthropologists take this for granted and thus elide that important qualification from later definitions, merely equating culture with any learned behavior. This slippage is a problem because during the formative years of modern primatology, some primatologists were trained in anthropology (and understood that culture refers to learned behavior among humans), and others were not. Notable non-anthropologists, like Robert Yerkes and Jane Goodall thus argued that since chimpanzees have learned behaviors, they have culture.[10][11] Today, anthropological primatologists are divided, several arguing that non-human primates have culture, others arguing that they do not.[12][13][14][15] This scientific debate is complicated by ethical concerns. The subjects of primatology are non-human primates, and whatever culture these primates have is threatened by human activity. After reviewing the research on primate culture, W.C. McGrew concluded, [a] discipline requires subjects, and most species of nonhuman primates are endangered by their human cousins. Ultimately, whatever its merit, cultural primatology must be committed to cultural survival [i.e. to the survival of primate cultures].[16] McGrew suggests a definition of culture that he finds scientifically useful for studying primate culture. He points out that scientists do not have access to the subjective thoughts or knowledge of non-human primates. Thus, if culture is defined in terms of knowledge, then scientists are severely limited in their attempts to study primate culture. Instead of defining culture as a kind of knowledge, McGrew suggests that we view culture as a process. He lists six steps in the process: A new pattern of behavior is invented, or an existing one is modified. The innovator transmits this pattern to another. The form of the pattern is consistent within and across performers, perhaps even in terms of recognizable stylistic features. The one who acquires the pattern retains the ability to perform it long after having acquired it. The pattern spreads across social units in a population. These social units may be families, clans, troops, or bands. The pattern endures across generations.[17] McGrew admits that all six criteria may be strict, given the difficulties in observing primate behavior in the wild. But he also insists on the need to be as inclusive as possible, on the need for a definition of culture that casts the net widely: Culture is considered to be group-specific behavior that is acquired, at least in part, from social influences. Here, group is considered to be the species-typical unit, whether it be a troop,
[Marxism-Thaxis] Putting The Social Back Into Language : Marx, Vološinov and Vygotsky reexamined
Putting The Social Back Into Language: Marx, Vološinov and Vygotsky reexamined Marnie Holborow Dublin City University Studies in Language Capitalism 1, 2006: 1 – 28 [Studies in Language Capitalism is a peer-reviewed online journal that seeks to promote and freely distribute interdisciplinary critical inquiries into the language and meaning of contemporary capitalism and the links between economic, social and linguistic change in the world around us. http://languageandcapitalism.info ] Abstract: Language as autonomous system, cut free of the social world, is seeing a revival through the popularity of genetic explanations about the origins of language. It is therefore timely to reassess the input of society into language. This article seeks to do this through a reexamination of the writings of Marx on the subject of language and consciousness. Within this framework, it then examines the contribution of the Russian linguist, Vološinov who took Marx’s initial insights further and developed a rounded social theory of language which included the interplay between language and ideology and the making of language through social relations. Finally, the article briefly examines the contribution of another early twentieth century Russian Marxist, Vygotsky, who identified linguistic signs as the social tools of communication. The article makes the claim that these interpretations of the social nature of language are necessary to account for the dynamic and unpredictable nature of language. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Symbols as unique in human learning (was Forward from Rosa Lichtenstein)
In this famous passage, Marx distinguishes human labor from that of animals by the existence of imagination, plan and purpose. This fits with the very interesting wikipedia article on culture, which claims that human children's learning in imitation of adults is focused on learning the intent and mental purpose of the adult, in contrast with chimp children who focus on the objective activities of the adult they imitate. If Marx is correct about the the uniqueness of imagination and mental purpose in the human labor process, this supports the idea that that process is mediated by symbols unlike animal labor processes. Charles ^ We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman’s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried on, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his attention is forced to be. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Forward from Rosa Lichtenstein
CB: On your comments below, notice I said language and culture. Material culture might be thought of as the products of gestures. In my hypothesis , the nature of symbols as the use of something to represent something it is not is critical. The critical communication is not between living humans, except that between adults and children, but the communication between living and dead generations. More specifically I am thinking symbols allow the dead generation to teach the living generation ( or the living generation to teach the unborn generations) in a way that teaching through imitation cannot occur. Birds and monkeys and humans can learn by imitation - monkey see, monkey do. But only humans can through symbols, whether speech, gestures or material cultural items. Symbols can cross the boundary between the living and the dead ( in a non-mystical sense), in a way that imitations cannot. Why ? Because the dead are no longer present themselves to be imitated. But if the dead are represented, if the experineces of the dead are represented by something that is not the dead, by a symbol, then the something that is not the dead , that is not dead, can get across the death barrier. Language actually is the most efficient of these death barrier crossers. However, language need not be _spoken_, it can be gestures, i.e. sign language. Or it could be a form of written, but non- alphabetical language, as in abstract use of material objects as the symbolic elements, tokens. Anyway, my hypothesis suggest spoken or sign language had to be very early at the origin of our species, because, story tellikng would be the most effective death barrier crosser. This is why I think Rosa's opposition between representation and communication can be happily resolved at the origin of language and human thinking, because originally language was representational or symbolic in order to be communicative across generations, between dead and living. CeJ jannuzi Interesting that Rosa should mention Lamarckianism in this context, as I have argued that culture and language give humans a Lamarckian-like adaptive mechanism. Culture and language , symboling, allow inheritance of acquired, extra-somatic , characteristics. I think that would be a genetic mutation, except a genetic mutation really only seems to transcend soma, and doesn't actually (Lamarck and Lysenko weren't completely wrong). The ability to gesture complexly emerged from our biology and brain capacity, and this ability to systematize, embed meaning and communicate symbolically then colonized our well-developed phonetic abilities (we could chatter like the birds and then we learned to communicate). Instead of asking what separates us from the apes, we ought to ask what separates us from a mockingbird or parrot? Corballis's fascinating book could have been made better had he collaborated with an articulatory phonologist, like someone at Haskins Laboratory. Michael Corballis is a psychologist with a strong interest in lateralization, handedness, and the origins of language. In this book, he puts these interests together with a solid and comprehensive survey of other background material relevant to the origins of language. The book also pushes Corballis' own specific hypothesis, that human languages were implemented mainly in manual gestures until about 50,000 years ago, at which point largely vocal language took over as an invented cultural innovation. This is an argument about the medium in which linguistic messages were expressed. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ?
Ralph Dumain Total idiocy, delusional nonsense, senseless gibberish, from first word to last. CB: This is wishful and lazy thinking a childish , whining critique, because you can't make a good argument. You are stumped, trumped and checkmated. Pitiful really. You should be embarassed. ^^ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Forward from Rosa Lichtenstein
Interesting that Rosa should mention Lamarckianism in this context, as I have argued that culture and language give humans a Lamarckian-like adaptive mechanism. Culture and language , symboling, allow inheritance of acquired, extra-somatic , characteristics. CB The 'Lamarckian' Origin Of Speech On a related topic, despite the fact that most of what Parrington and Holborow say undermines the role that language plays in communication -- reinforcing the view that language serves to 'represent' things to us in our heads (even if this process is filtered through our own idiosyncrasies, social situations, prevailing ideologies, etc., etc.) --, they appear to believe that human beings developed language because of a need to communicate. This is how Holborow puts it: The genesis of language is in human labour…. Communication is not therefore just one of the functions of language; on the contrary, language presupposes both logically and de facto the interaction among people. Language only arises from the need to communicate with other humans. It is quintessentially social. [Holborow (1999), p.20.] Parrington clearly concurs: Crucially labour…developed within a co-operative and social context. It was this that led, through the need to communicate while engaging in co-operative labour, to the rise of the second specifically human attribute -- language. [Parrington (1997), p.122.]88 While I do not wish to question the role that co-operative labour has played in the development of language and thought (quite the opposite, in fact), several other aspects of the above quotations seem highly dubious, especially the idea that human beings invented language because of a need to communicate. To be sure, we use language to communicate, but the claim that this arose because of a specific need to do so is highly questionable -- except, that is, for Lamarckians. Of course, the word need is ambiguous itself. We use it in a variety of different ways. Consider just a few of these: N1: That cake needs more sugar. N2: This strike needs widening. N3: Car owners need to put oil in their engines. N4: We need a pay rise. N5: The giraffe needs a long neck to browse tall trees. N6: That drunk needs to go home. N7: Plants need water. N8: The state needs to be smashed and the ruling class needs overthrowing. N9: Tony Blair and George W Bush need prosecuting as war criminals. N10: Comrades need to shout louder on paper sales.89 Precisely which of the above senses of need these two comrades were using is unclear -- several of them relate to what can only be called felt needs, or conscious needs (e.g., N4, and possibly N2), expressed perhaps as part of an agent's aims, goals or intentions. Others refer to the causal concomitants or prerequisites of a flourishing organism, successful revolution, strike, comeuppance for Bush and Blair, paper sales or well-run engines -- all of which are largely, if not totally, unfelt. Some of course, cannot be felt. Nevertheless, it is patently obvious that human beings could not have invented language as a result of a felt need to communicate (unless, that is, we assume they could think before they had developed language -- which would naturally imply that thought is not a social phenomenon, dependent on collective labour), since such a need would presuppose the very thing it was aimed at explaining. The idea that this type of necessity mothered that sort of invention would imply that the first human beings to talk had earlier formed the thought: I/We need to communicate (or something equivalent in their proto-language). Clearly, such a felt need to communicate could only be expressed if language already existed. On the other hand, if the thought (or its equivalent) that supposedly motivated the need to communicate was not in fact linguistic, then little content can be given to the notion that human beings once possessed such a need without being able to give voice to it. Indeed, how would it be possible to form the thought We need to communicate if the individual or individuals concerned had no idea (yet) what communication was. That would be like saying that we can (now) form the thought We need to schmunicate when none of has a clue what schmunicate means. [In fact, it is worse, since we are already sophisticated language users.] It could be objected to this that such a need could be a biological one (analogous to that expressed, say, in N5). However, there are two problems with this response. First, reference to the biological needs of organisms to explain the origin of adaptation is Lamarckian, not Darwinian. Secondly, and far worse, this alternative in fact completely undermines the view that language is a social phenomenon.89a ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe
[Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ?
CB, you a damn lawyer, why do I have to write this and continuously explain the most elementary understanding of the Marxist approach to the state!!! ^^^ Waistline, I'm willing to discuss this with you but , you know, _on the surface_ at least, your discussion doesn't have the appearance of a clear understanding of what you are explaining. I'm willing to give you the benefit of a doubt , that you have some significant understanding from your many years of study and direct experience with capitalism from the standpoint of a socialist conscious proletarian. But you've got to give some consideration to my many years of experience as a predominantly mental laborer, writer, etc. Yea, I am a lawyer, and a long time student of materialism, so that means I got some good understanding of the state from Marx, Engels and Lenin's point of view. Lenin's fundamental discussion of the state relies especially upon Engels' anthropological book _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_. I'm a lawyer, and a student of anthropology and Marxist political economy and materialism. It was _The State and Revolution_ that was important in bringing me to Marxism. Lenin was a lawyer, etc., etc. So, what is it that you want to explain to me about the state ? And remember. You better come correct. Perhaps we should serialize _The State and Revolution_. Actually, I'm thinking these days the issues Lenin emphasizes in that book, non-electoral path to socialism are significantly turned into their opposite in our concrete circumstance. We might study _The State and Revolution_ to negate its thesis. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is not the path for the U.S. It is _Imperialism_ and _Leftwing Communism_ that are most pertinent to our right here, right now The US state is too loaded for bear, including nukes, and the US population is too stupified with anti-Communism from the Cold War travesty/tragedy to build toward insurrection or a direct assault to take the state power. The US cannot be confronted into socialism. It will take a backdoor , bourgeois self-negating route. The capitalists will have to be allowed (as if we had a choice, and can stop them , smile) to take capitalism to such an extreme such that it turns into its opposite, on its own. In other words, the super dictatorship of the bourgeoisie/finance capitalists ( and it is important always to discuss the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie when discussing the dictatorship of the proletariat) will self-negate, turn into its opposite. Rather than the capitalists selling us the rope with which we hang them, we give them enough rope to hand themselves. We are seeing that now, as super imperialism is imploding. Amazingly, it is bourgeois and capitalist journalists , economist intellectuals and high bureaucrats who see we are all socialists now, want nationalization of the financial monopolies, see Marx as rising from the dead and call on him to save themselves from themselves, redbait themselves, almost begging for socialism. The bourgeois bureaucracy is in a mood for suicide, expropriating itself. Marx in The Historical Tendency of the Capitalist Mode of Production chapter of _Capital_ , and _Imperialism_ note how the monopoly-centralization-one capitalist kills many of capitalism is preparation for socialism. Emphaisis on discussion of the government function of the state is part of the anti-thesis of that of _The State and Revolution_. Rather than elections only being a measure of the maturity of the working class, they are where its at for, including going into the Democratic Party, that most despised proposition on the childish Left. That's a main lesson of the Obama tactic. More later ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ?
--- On Mon, 2/23/09, Phil Walden Date: Monday, February 23, 2009, 7:26 PM Phil Walden: It was a bourgeois state because it was part of a world system of bourgeois relations - all states extracting a surplus from their populations. Thus the Soviet Union could not have been some form of workers state. But it wasn't capitalist because the surplus extracted in the Soviet Union was not surplus value. ^^^ CB: Extracting surplus use-values ? I don't know if you are analyzing this based on the Marxist classics, but I believe that they contemplate that there are still surpluses generated during socialism, but that these are used to provide for social welfare funds for the eldersly, children, childcare, sick,intellectual workers, soldiers, etc. ^ CB: Why use the term bourgeois if it wasn't form of capitalism ? -Original Message- From: marxism-thaxis-boun...@lists.econ.utah.edu [mailto:marxism-thaxis-boun...@lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Charles Brown Sent: 23 February 2009 14:06 To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? Phil Walden I would agree with Jim F that present day Russia is some form of state capitalism. On the nature of the former Soviet Union I think it was none of the alternatives offered by Jim (and by Trotskyism in the post-war period). It was a bureaucratic bourgeois state in which a surplus was extracted from the peasantry and workers but not surplus value (so it could not have been a form of capitalism). It ceased to be a degenerated workers state when the possibility of a democratic opposition to Stalin within the CPSU based on Trotskyists/Bukharinists expired (1930). I had been thinking of doing work on globalisation since the 1970s because none of the Trotskyist groups seems to understand what has happened or its significance. But then I realized that I have to go even further back to the Cold War, because post-war Trotskyism tried to impose its own schemas onto it and unfortunately no group built a developed understanding of the Cold War. Adam Westoby's COMMUNISM SINCE WORLD WAR TWO is however a good start, despite faults. Phil Walden ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Review of Sokal's Beyond the Hoax
Ralph Dumain I thought Proyect hated Sokal. ^ CB: I don't know about that. I think he doesn't hold much truck with post-modernism ^ The review is hardly brilliant but it is to the point. I am sure Sokal got all his information about India from Meera Nanda, who has written numerous books and articles on the subject. I haven't read Sokal's books, though I have always been in sympathy with his aims. However, judging from the review, there comes a point where one ends up beating a dead horse to death. CB: Yeah you right, comrade, but there are probably some potential converts to Marxism among among post-modernists who get their heads straight. And some young thinkers who witness the debates may go more directly to materialism. Understanding of truth derives from correction of error. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ?
--- On Sat, 2/21/09, Jim Farmelant farmela...@juno.com wrote: From: Jim Farmelant farmela...@juno.com The Socialist Workers Party (USA) has long been insistent that Russia remains a kind of workers state. Their formulations strike me as nutty, but I think that they have stumbled on to a facet of post-Soviet life that merits further exploration, which is that many aspects of the Soviet system have managed to survive the collapse of the Soviet Union. Indeed, given the recent economic downturn which has now begun to impact Russia, it is quite possible that we might see Russia reverting back to Soviet-style economic and social policies in order to maintain order. It also seems to be the case that the same is true for some of the other former Warsaw Pact countries as well. The Czech Republic for instance has since 1989 been governed mostly by rightwing governments that have been avowedly committed to neoliberal economic policies, and yet I have read that much of the social safety net that was built up under the Communist regime has remained more or less in place since 1989. That indeed it has been the continuing existence of this social safety net that made it possible for the post-Communists governments to gain the acquiescence of the Czech masses in the creation of a market economy there. ^^ CB: It is interesting that the social safety net remained, because as I understand it, neo-liberalism is supposed to strip away welfare and the social safety net. So, perhaps the name was neoliberalism but the facts on the ground were not so neo-liberal. It really will be interesting to see what happens now if the world wide recession/depression batters what ever free-market institutions that were actually established in Eastern Europe, Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union. Their stock markets are likely to be more fragile and limited than those in the US and Western Europe. A crash of neo-phyte stock markets could be their end or lead to their permanent limitation. Besides the social safety net, how far could they really go in privatizing basic means of production and basic necessities industries, such as food, utilities, mass transit, water, gas, electricity, telephone? Those are only half private in the US. It probably wouldn't be a very big step to nationalize them - permanently. The same with the banking system. In Eastern Europe, and countries like Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania with no Russian troops there anymore, there may be little reason to resent socialist organization, socialist _self_organization and self-determination. Perhaps socialism will come as a negation of the negation of the first experience of socialism. They don't have to call it socialism or communism Just call it economic democracy and freedom or social democracy or democratic socialism. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither
What is socialism? ^ CB: Abolition of private property in the basic means of production. ^ ...we could start or continue our conversation having a clear and Communist understanding of socialism in this particular moment. What do you think? Let me know if you are interested so we could base our discussion on the soviet experience on solid ground...materialist ground...for example: under which conditions the State whiter away? Were those conditions given in 1917? Are there historical evidence of the existence of communist minorities interpretations of that particular moment of human history? Why events had developed the way they did? Let me know if we could deepen our debate on different grounds... ^^^ CB: Tell us what different grounds. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ?
--- On Sun, 2/22/09, Jim Farmelant wrote: Well in Russia the state renationalized most of the energy industry several years ago. Putin, as president, went a long way towards reestablishing the leading role of the state in the management of Russia's economy. The state is a major stockholder in many of Russia's largest companies. One of Putin's big achievements was to rein in the oligarchs who had taken control of much of Russia's economy under Yeltsin. All this course takes us back to a lot of the old debates over the nature of the former Soviet Union: was it socialist? was it state capitalist? a degenerate workers state? a bureacratic collectivism? And to those old debates we can now can add debates over the nature of contemporary post-Soviet Russia. The post-Soviet regimes of Yeltsin and Putin had the avowed aim of restoring capitalism, but it seems that the reality there is perhaps more complex. They never could entirely obliterate Soviet-era institutions and practices, and now, I suspect, that the current world economic practice may force the current government of Medvedev and Putin to revive many of the old Soviet policies. I suppose that we might characterize the current Russian economy as a kind of state capitalism with some socialist characteristics. Jim F. CB: The overall historical process might be zig-zagging toward socialism, rather than moving in a straight line. One step forward two steps backward...one step right two and a half steps to the left. You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around. That's what it's all about. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ?
Also, notice the Soviet state did not kill a lot of people when it went away. That's another characteristic of the process that fits the term whither. Away not with a bang but a whimper. CB --- On Sun, 2/22/09, Jim Farmelant farmela...@juno.com wrote: From: Jim Farmelant farmela...@juno.com Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ? To: cdb1...@prodigy.net, marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Cc: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Date: Sunday, February 22, 2009, 12:53 AM On Sat, 21 Feb 2009 16:35:43 -0800 (PST) Charles Brown cdb1...@prodigy.net writes: --- On Sat, 2/21/09, Jim Farmelant farmela...@juno.com wrote: From: Jim Farmelant farmela...@juno.com The Socialist Workers Party (USA) has long been insistent that Russia remains a kind of workers state. Their formulations strike me as nutty, but I think that they have stumbled on to a facet of post-Soviet life that merits further exploration, which is that many aspects of the Soviet system have managed to survive the collapse of the Soviet Union. Indeed, given the recent economic downturn which has now begun to impact Russia, it is quite possible that we might see Russia reverting back to Soviet-style economic and social policies in order to maintain order. It also seems to be the case that the same is true for some of the other former Warsaw Pact countries as well. The Czech Republic for instance has since 1989 been governed mostly by rightwing governments that have been avowedly committed to neoliberal economic policies, and yet I have read that much of the social safety net that was built up under the Communist regime has remained more or less in place since 1989. That indeed it has been the continuing existence of this social safety net that made it possible for the post-Communists governments to gain the acquiescence of the Czech masses in the creation of a market economy there. ^^ CB: It is interesting that the social safety net remained, because as I understand it, neo-liberalism is supposed to strip away welfare and the social safety net. So, perhaps the name was neoliberalism but the facts on the ground were not so neo-liberal. It really will be interesting to see what happens now if the world wide recession/depression batters what ever free-market institutions that were actually established in Eastern Europe, Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union. Their stock markets are likely to be more fragile and limited than those in the US and Western Europe. A crash of neo-phyte stock markets could be their end or lead to their permanent limitation. Besides the social safety net, how far could they really go in privatizing basic means of production and basic necessities industries, such as food, utilities, mass transit, water, gas, electricity, telephone? Those are only half private in the US. It probably wouldn't be a very big step to nationalize them - permanently. The same with the banking system. Well in Russia the state renationalized most of the energy industry several years ago. Putin, as president, went a long way towards reestablishing the leading role of the state in the management of Russia's economy. The state is a major stockholder in many of Russia's largest companies. One of Putin's big achievements was to rein in the oligarchs who had taken control of much of Russia's economy under Yeltsin. All this course takes us back to a lot of the old debates over the nature of the former Soviet Union: was it socialist? was it state capitalist? a degenerate workers state? a bureacratic collectivism? And to those old debates we can now can add debates over the nature of contemporary post-Soviet Russia. The post-Soviet regimes of Yeltsin and Putin had the avowed aim of restoring capitalism, but it seems that the reality there is perhaps more complex. They never could entirely obliterate Soviet-era institutions and practices, and now, I suspect, that the current world economic practice may force the current government of Medvedev and Putin to revive many of the old Soviet policies. I suppose that we might characterize the current Russian economy as a kind of state capitalism with some socialist characteristics. Jim F. In Eastern Europe, and countries like Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania with no Russian troops there anymore, there may be little reason to resent socialist organization, socialist _self_organization and self-determination. Perhaps socialism will come as a negation of the negation of the first experience of socialism. They don't have to call it socialism or communism Just call it economic democracy and freedom or social democracy or democratic socialism
[Marxism-Thaxis] Review of Sokal's Beyond the Hoax
[Marxism] Brilliant review of Alan Sokal's Beyond the Hoax To: arch...@xx Subject: [Marxism] Brilliant review of Alan Sokal's Beyond the Hoax From: Louis Proyect l...@x Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:09:40 -0500 User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 (Windows/20081209) http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue46/Touger46.htm ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Sokal: law as a heuristic for natual science
Hoax and Reality Jerold Touger Suppose I am asked to pick a number from 1 to 99,999,999,999. I claim to have a method for getting it right on the first try despite seemingly insuperable odds. If I then proceed to do so, it gives my claim enormous credibility. If others claiming the same method likewise get it right, or pick numbers clustering closely around the correct one -- perhaps differing only in the last one or two places -- it does not in a strictly logical sense prove my claim is correct, but makes the case for it compelling, as our legal system would put it, beyond a reasonable doubt. This, in essence, is what happens when an experimental measurement of the electron's magnetic moment agrees with what theory predicts to eleven decimal places. This outcome, as Sokal says, would be utterly miraculous if quantum mechanics were not saying something at least approximately true about the world [and] . . . if electrons did not really exist in some sense or another. ^^^ CB: as our legal system would put it, beyond a reasonable doubt. Here we go again with a natural scientist using the law as a heuristic. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Did the Soviet state whither away ?
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/02/social-collapse-best-practices.html Someone named Orlov says in the essay linked above: When the Soviet system went away, many people lost their jobs, everyone lost their savings, wages and pensions were held back for months, their value was wiped out by hyperinflation, there shortages of food, gasoline, medicine, consumer goods, there was a large increase in crime and violence, and yet Russian society did not collapse. Somehow, the Russians found ways to muddle through. How was that possible? It turns out that many aspects of the Soviet system were paradoxically resilient in the face of system-wide collapse, ^ CB: Evidently, the SU had more of a grass roots and democratic society , working class people's world there all along than a lot of observers and critics, West and East , thought. Was this a paradox or was it proof that working people ran things more than critics claimed ? That the author evidently didn't expect this, suggests he didn't quite understand fully what was going on at the base of his country. ^ many institutions continued to function, and the living arrangement was such that people did not lose access to food, shelter or transportation, and could survive even without an income. The Soviet economic system failed to thrive, and the Communist experiment at constructing a worker's paradise on earth was, in the end, a failure. ^ CB: Or maybe the collapse of the Soviet state was the state whithering away, as Marx prognosticated. And what is left is closer to the free association of free producers, or whatever, Since Marx didn't predict a workers paradise, maybe this author is looking for the wrong thing, and what is there is closer to what Marx envisioned than he thinks. Since the collapse of the Soviet state, I've always been interested in the reports like this one that people continued to survive without income or wages. That means that the money system, the wage system went poof ! That's what is supposed to happen in communism. Very interesting. ^^ But as a side effect it inadvertently achieved a high level of collapse-preparedness. ^^ CB: Maybe it wasn't so inadvertent. Maybe the big ,bad Soviet state was a protective, scary mask worn to ward off the vicious imperialist system, and the real future society was grown on purpose underneath, with hardy roots. It is not likely an accident that the society he describes survived and functions. You can be sure that they are growing a lot of local food in gardens. ^ In comparison, the American system could produce significantly better results, for time, but at the cost of creating and perpetuating a living arrangement that is very fragile, and not at all capable of holding together through the inevitable crash. Even after the Soviet economy evaporated and the government largely shut down, Russians still had plenty left for them to work with. ^ CB: My estimate is that he is mistaken that this was inadvertent. It was not a paradise, but it was a place where the working class was empowered and running their own lives. ^^ And so there is a wealth of useful information and insight that we can extract from the Russian experience, which we can then turn around and put to good use in helping us improvise a new living arrangement here in the United States – one that is more likely to be survivable. ^^ CB: Hopefully. But unfortunately, we don't have socialism, and they did. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Guatemala apologizes to Cuba for Bay of Pigs
Fox 40 KTXL TV/DT Sacramento Guatemala apologizes to Cuba for Bay of Pigs By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ HAVANA (AP) — Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom apologized to Cuba on Tuesday for his country's having allowed the CIA to train exiles in the Central American country for the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. Today I want to ask Cuba's forgiveness for having offered our country, our territory, to prepare an invasion of Cuba, Colom said during a speech at the University of Havana. It wasn't us, but it was our territory. He added that he wished to apologize as president and head of state, and as commander in chief of the Guatemalan army. About 1,500 Cuban exiles trained under CIA guidance in Guatemala before invading the island beginning April 17, 1961, in an unsuccessful bid to overthrow Fidel Castro's communist government. The invasion ended after less than three days, with about 100 invaders killed and more than 1,000 captured by Cuban forces. Colom, whose government is considered center-leftist, said he was asking Cuba's forgiveness as a sign of solidarity and that times are changing, and to reaffirm my idea that Latin America is changing. At the height of the Cold War, the Guatemalan military government of Miguel Ramon Ydigoras Fuentes allowed the CIA to train an exile force in the rural province of Retalhuleu. Known as the 2506 Brigade and comprising mostly Miami-area Cuban exiles, the group was determined to overthrow Castro's government — which had brought the Soviet bloc closer than ever to the continental United States by seizing power in Cuba 28 months before. The invaders landed at Playa Larga at the innermost part of the Bay of Pigs, on the southern coast of central Cuba. The fighting later moved south, to Playa Giron, where Castro's forces triumphed after less than 72 hours, when U.S. President John F. Kennedy failed to provide air support. Colom said Tuesday that Cuba deserves its own destiny, a destiny that you all built with this revolution of 50 years. Defend it, he said, referring to the guerrilla uprising that brought Castro to power on Jan. 1, 1959. Defend it like you have always done. Colom's comments drew sustained applause from his Cuban audience. Like Cubans, Guatemalans harbor a deep resentment toward the United States for past violence. The CIA helped topple the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 and Washington backed a series of hardline military and civilian governments during that country's 36-year civil war, in which 200,000 Guatemalans died or disappeared before peace accords were signed in December 1996. During a visit to Guatemala in March 1999, President Bill Clinton said any U.S. support given to military forces or intelligence units that engaged in violent and widespread repression was wrong. And the United States must not repeat that mistake. During Colom's state visit to Havana, he awarded his country's highest honor to Castro, though it was unclear if he would meet with the ailing, 82-year-old former president, who has not been seen in public since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006. The Guatemalan president's was the latest in a string of recent visits to Havana by regional leaders, including Panama's Martin Torrijos and Rafael Correa of Ecuador. Fidel Castro, who ceded power to his younger brother Raul about a year ago, met with two other visiting Latin American presidents, Cristina Fernandez of Argentina and Chile's Michelle Bachelet. Photographs of him with each of the presidents were later released by their respective governments, and a series of photos featuring Castro and Bachelet appeared in Cuba's communist newspaper Granma on Tuesday. Link: http://www.fox40.com/pages/landing_world_news/?Guatemala-apologizes-t... ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] In Defense of Washington and Wall Street
In Defense of Washington and Wall Street Robert Fitch 1. The Crisis of 2007-2008 THE VERY ELDERLY ARE PRONE TO FALL. And unlike infants who also tumble frequently, each time seniors stumble, they risk a disabling or even a fatal injury. On August 9th 2007, after an unparalleled quarter century long expansion, which had been checked in the developed countries only mildly and briefly, capitalism finally tripped and lost its balance with predictable results: banks tottered, while credit and commercial paper markets writhed in paralysis. After about a month, though, notwithstanding the failure of the markets to unfreeze, the crisis was declared over. The palsied patient was deemed well enough to resume normal activity -- a diagnosis apparently confirmed when two months later, on October 9th, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached 14,164, an all time high. The March 2008 meltdown of two hedge funds belonging to Bear, Stearns suggested otherwise. A pillar of the shadow banking system that had emerged over the last two decades, Bear was forced into liquidation, sold to J.P. Morgan for $256 million. Scarcely more than a year earlier it was said to be worth $68.7 billion. Yet this stunning write-down barely moved Wall Street's needle. The market continued to move choppily until September 14th 2008, when Mr. FIRE (as in finance, insurance and real estate) fell again, with even more dire consequences. That Sunday, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. Later in the day, Merrill, Lynch announced its liquidation. Just two days later, AIG, the world's largest insurance company, was taken over by the government. This time, Wall Street had suffered the equivalent of a broken neck. Even in the immediate aftermath of the 1929 Crash, the biggest Wall Street banks didn't fail. They continued to lend. (The wave of failures by thousands of heartland banks came later.) But in 2008, it was precisely the big banks which formed the leading vector of the collapse. Within a period of 200 days, the five biggest U.S. investment banking houses -- the institutions that since the Reagan era had given Wall Street its swagger and identity -- had either gone bankrupt, or forced to find a merger partner or re-organized themselves as bank holding companies. Whenever the spinal cord is severed at the top two vertebrae, i.e., at the neck, the greatest immediate peril is that the victim stops breathing. The September 2008 crisis was marked by increasingly desperate measures to keep big FIRE from asphyxiation. The measures taken included flooding the system with liquidity -- almost unlimited loans and loan guarantees. The Bush Administration came up with a $700 billion plan to deleverage the banks (i.e., raise their dangerously low ratio of equity to debt) by buying their bad mortgage-backed securities. And when that didn't work, passed legislation which amounted to a semi-nationalization of the remaining big banks -- the equivalent of cutting a hole in the patient's trachea. By October's end FIRE was breathing, albeit with a tube provided by the U.S. guarantee of inter bank loans. But breathing is not walking. A financial system in which banks lend only to other banks refusing to act as intermediaries to the non-financial sector-- is still non-functional. In the midst of the anarchy, the headline Capitalism in Convulsion appeared not in The Militant or The People's World, but in the August, salmon colored pages of The Financial Times.1 Unlike the Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) crisis or the dot.com bust which were more or less confined to the G-7 countries, or the Asian, Mexican, Argentinean crises -- which remained localized within the Third World -- the crisis of 2007-8 was truly global. It spread from America to Europe to Latin America to Asia and even to remote Iceland which was all but officially bankrupt and forced to await rescue from the IMF. Nor was the crisis confined to capitalism's financial sub-system. Production was shrinking, consumption was off. Even foreign trade, the main driver of the world economy, was contracting. There is a real possibility of a real, deep, international depression, said one senior monetary official at a G20 meeting in Dubai who spoke on the condition of anonymity, calling the crisis the worst in 100 years.2 2. The Meaning of the Meltdown IN 1989, THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL was widely interpreted as a failure of the Communist system. But not by its supporters. They favored minimalist interpretations. Liberal Stalinists saw it as a reaction to certain overzealous GDR officials in the security apparatus; conservatives as the failure of those same officials to contain the illegal exodus. Still others blamed Soviet Premier Gorbachev's blundering efforts to deregulate the Soviet system, which they insisted was still fundamentally sound. Similarly, the present crisis can be interpreted in various ways. Not as the
[Marxism-Thaxis] unemployment
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn02132009.html Every president since Reagan, particularly Clinton, has jimmied the unemployment criteria to produce an undercount. The actual number for the two months is nearer one and three quarter million. The actual total unemployment rate, according to statistician John Williams, by pre-Reagan criteria, rose to 18 per cent in January, from 17.5 per cent in December. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Up and out of poverty, now
The Marxist reform solution for getting us out of crisis depression is up and out of poverty ,now ! Unrestrict the consumption of the masses ! CB ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Ukrainian workers occupy a farming machinery plant
http://red-news.livejournal.com/1462.html Ukrainian workers occupy a farming machinery planthttp://red-news.livejournal.com/1462.html ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Alain Badiou
Ruthless Critic of All that Exists : Full: http://mondediplo.com/2009/02/17sarkozy Alain Badiou's book on Sarkozy reveals the philosopher's own advocacy of change based in reality, which is beginning to displace the old 'new philosophy' of Bernard-Henri Lévy et al By Christopher Bickerton From Wikipedia: [Alain Badiou (born 17 January 1937 in Rabat, Morocco) is a prominent French philosopher, formerly chair of philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS). Along with Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Zizek, Badiou is a prominent figure in an anti-postmodern strand of continental philosophy. Particularly through a creative appropriation of set theory from his early interest in mathematics, Badiou seeks to recover the concepts of being, truth and the subject in a way that is neither postmodern nor simply a repetition of modernity. He was politically active very early on, and was one of the founding members of the Unified Socialist Party (PSU). The PSU was particularly active in the struggle for the decolonization of Algeria. He wrote his first novel, Almagestes, in 1964. In 1967 he joined a study group organized by Louis Althusser and grew increasingly influenced by Jacques Lacan. The student uprisings of May 1968 reinforced Badiou's commitment to the far Left, and he participated in increasingly radical communist and Maoist groups, such as the UCFML. In 1969 he joined the faculty of University of Paris VIII (Vincennes-Saint Denis), which was a bastion of counter-cultural thought. There he engaged in fierce intellectual debates with fellow professors Gilles Deleuze and Jean-François Lyotard, whose philosophical works he considered unhealthy deviations from the Althusserian program of a scientific Marxism. In the 1980s, as both Althusserian Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis went into decline (with Lacan dead and Althusser in an asylum), Badiou published more technical and abstract philosophical works, such as Théorie du sujet (1982), and his magnum opus, Being and Event (1988).] ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] WHY THE U.S. STIMULUS PACKAGE IS BOUND TO FAIL
WHY THE U.S. STIMULUS PACKAGE IS BOUND TO FAIL DAVID HARVEY Much is to be gained by viewing the contemporary crisis as a surface eruption generated out of deep tectonic shifts in the spatio-temporal disposition of capitalist development. The tectonic plates are now accelerating their motion and the likelihood of more frequent and more violent crises of the sort that have been occurring since 1980 or so will almost certainly increase. The manner, form, spatiality and time of these surface disruptions are almost impossible to predict, but that they will occur with greater frequency and depth is almost certain. The events of 2008 have therefore to be situated in the context of a deeper pattern. Since these stresses are internal to the capitalist dynamic (which does not preclude some seemingly external disruptive event like a catastrophic pandemic also occurring), then what better argument could there be, as Marx once put it, for capitalism to be gone and to make way for some a lternative and more rational mode of production. I begin with this conclusion since I still find it vital to emphasize if not dramatize, as I have sought to do over and over again in my writings over the years, that failure to understand the geographical dynamics of capitalism or to treat the geographical dimension as in some sense merely contingent or epiphenomenal, is to both lose the plot on how to understand capitalist uneven geographical development and to miss out on possibilities for constructing radical alternatives. But this poses an acute difficulty for analysis since we are constantly faced with trying to distill universal principles regarding the role of the production of spaces, places and environments in capitalism's dynamics, out of a sea of often volatile geographical particularities. So how, then, can we integrate geographical understandings into our theories of evolutionary change? Let us look more carefully at the tectonic shifts. In November 2008, shortly after the election of a new President, the National Intelligence Council of the United States issued its delphic estimates on what the world would be like in 2025. Perhaps for the first time, a quasi-official body in the United States predicted that by 2025 the United States, while still a powerful if not the most powerful single player in world affairs, would no longer be dominant. The world would be multi-polar and less centered and the power of non-state actors would increase. The report conceded that US hegemony had been fading on and off for some time but that its economic, political and even military dominance was now systematically waning. Above all (and it is important to note that the report was prepared before the implosion of the US and British financial systems), the unprecedented shift in relative wealth and economic power roughly from West to East now under way will continue. full: http://grupodapiedade.posterous.com/radical-europe-fwd-moneybanksc ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Ian Angus on Charles Darwin
Ian Angus on Charles Darwin http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=366 February 6, 2009 Charles Darwin and Materialist Science http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=366 *By Ian Angus. *February 12, 2009 is Darwin Day, the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. His masterwork, /On the Origin of Species/, was published 150 years ago, in November 1859, initiating a revolution in science that continues to this day. Although Darwin’s political views were far from radical, his insights became the central weapons in the battle to establish materialist science as the basis for our understanding of the world, and contributed to the development of Marxism. Charles Robert Darwin was, to say the least, an unlikely revolutionary. His father was a prominent physician and wealthy investor; his grandfather was Josiah Wedgwood, founder of one of the largest manufacturing companies in Europe. He could have lived a life of leisure — instead he devoted his life to science. After graduating from Cambridge in 1831, 22-year-old Charles Darwin boarded the British survey ship /HMS Beagle/ as an unpaid naturalist, subsidized by his doting father. When he returned after five years, he had thousands of pages of scientific observations, over 1,500 carefully preserved specimens — and growing doubts about the dominant scientific and religious ideas of his day. *A heretical conclusion* At that time, Darwin wrote in his 1861 introduction to /Origin/, “the great majority of naturalists believed that species were immutable productions, and had been separately created.” Biblical literalists and deists alike agreed that species were fixed by divine law. Dogs might vary in appearance, but dogs don’t give birth to cats. After five years of travel and two years of study at home, Darwin came to a heretical conclusion: species were not immutable. All animals were descended from common ancestors, different species resulted from gradual changes over millions of years, and God had nothing to do with it. It is difficult, today, to understand how shocking this idea would be to the middle and upper classes of Darwin’s time. Religion wasn’t just the “opium of the masses”— it gave the wealthy moral justification for their privileged lives in a world of constant change and gross inequality. The world was unfolding according to God’s wishes, and anyone who questioned that endangered the very fragile social order. Nevertheless, by the 1830s educated people knew that the /Genesis/ creation story couldn’t be literally true. The rise of capitalism in the 1700s had led to booms in mining and canal building: those works exposed geological layers and ancient fossils that clearly contradicted the idea of a recently-created earth. In the same period, imperialism led to global exploration and the discovery of more varieties of plant and animal life than any European had ever imagined. Why had the Creator been so extravagant? And why, if each animal was created separately, were their underlying structures so similar — why do bats’ wings, whales’ flippers, lions’ paws and human hands all contain the same bones? Many attempts were made to preserve a central role for God and creation in the face of this evidence. Perhaps the most sophisticated was developed in the 1850s by Richard Owen, head of natural science at the British Museum and inventor of the word “dinosaur.” He argued that all animals are variations on ideas — “archetypes” — in God’s mind. God “foreknew all variations” on those archetypes, and made them real in forms that would suit various environments or situations over time. At the opposite end of the philosophical spectrum, the great French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck offered a non-religious explanation. He proposed that there is a “chain of being,” a ladder of life, with single-celled animals at the bottom and humans at the top. Nature constantly and spontaneously creates new creatures that have an innate drive to climb the ladder, becoming more complex, or perfect, over time. As they climb, they also adapt to environmental changes: giraffes have long necks because their ancestors had to stretch to reach high leaves, while fish that live in caves are blind because their ancestors’ vision declined as a result of disuse. This concept was not central to Lamarck’s theory, but “inheritance of acquired characteristics” has since become inextricably connected to his name. *A materialist explanation* While Lamarck and others just /speculated/ that species changed over time, Darwin provided convincing /evidence/. More important, he showed that it happened by natural processes, without any help from gods or mysterious progressive forces. That is, his explanation of evolution was /materialist/. In Darwin’s theory, three factors combine to create new species: variation, inheritance, and natural selection. There are many differences between the members of
[Marxism-Thaxis] The Jewishness of Jews Without Money
http://www.jbooks.com/interviews/index/IP_Buhle_Gold.htm The Jewishness of Jews Without Money By PAUL BUHLE Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the 1996 edition of Jews Without Money (originally published in 1930) was how the political wrangling of the past had slipped into history, leaving behind one of the most magnificent of Jewish-American sagas. Alfred Kazin’s introduction to the new edition almost skipped over Michael Gold’s better-known reputation as polemicist for the Daily Worker and its literary counterparts through some thick and much thin, all the way to Gold’s death in 1967. Jews Without Money had been written as Gold’s own personal story of Jewish slum life with a heroic-political ending as brief and irrelevant as the ending of a Hollywood melodrama. The real thing was the rest of the saga. And what a saga! The Yiddish short-story writer and dramatist Leon Kobrin became known, mainly by virtue of his stories in the Forverts, as the “Jewish Zola,” chronicler of misery and impoverishment. If the sobriquet had not already been earned, Gold would have had the best claim. Original Sin is not the problem of the Lower East Side inhabitants; poverty sinks into every corpuscle of their collective blood. The Sin is real, but it belongs to the bullies and the braggarts. Generations before Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors roasted the hypocritical figures among the Jewish-American arrivistes, Gold lacerated the diamond-wearing matrons, the slum lords, the sweatshop kings, and others who had scant mercy for their own people (and wanted to be accepted by the Gentiles, preferably rich Gentiles, more than anything). Not all the villains were Jews, by any means. Gold was keen on the Irish cops of New York who took pride in drawing blood with their clubs at any Jewish labor activity, especially if they could bash a young radical woman. He took in the others, boxers to politicians, who were part of Jewish life but not of it. But Gold was more interested in human consequences. In one of his famous phrases, “America is so rich and fat, because it has eaten the tragedy of millions of immigrants.” Gold wrote, in his own introduction to the book, that he could not accept America’s gods because he had his own idol: his mother. If this sounds amazingly saccharine for an avowed atheist and revolutionary, it is nevertheless the deepest sentiment in the novel and the one that rings the truest after all these years. A wife: a “buttinski” and reformer, self-sacrificing for anyone in trouble, literal midwife for home births, defender of neighbors threatened by drunken husbands, also proud to be Jewish in no small part because antisemitism showed how low and animalistic the haters were—all this thanks to a marriage broker. Jewish also because the memory of Europe, the relatives left behind in Europe, one might suggest the 800 years of Yiddishkayt, was inextricably part of her sense of family and self. What would a Jew be without that memory, or the generosity of spirit toward the poor that his mother represented? Jews Without Money, the testimony of Michael Granich aka Mike Gold, is alive as long as Jewish-American immigrant history plays a vivid role in collective memory—and that shows no sign of dissipating. For all Gold’s particularities, it’s certain that the election of Barack Obama with the overwhelmingly enthusiastic support of Jewish voters is one more reminder that if poverty is the real sin, reform offers redemption. Mike Gold knew it a long time ago. Paul Buhle's latest project is Yiddishland, a comic-art volume collaboration with Harvey Pekar and others. Reprinted with permission from the journal Sh'ma (January 2009) as part of a larger conversation about Jews and Money (www.shma.com). ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom
From Anti-Duhring With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organization. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then, for the first time, man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature, because he has now become master of his own social organization. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face-to-face with man as laws of Nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man's own social organization, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by Nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have, hitherto, governed history,pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, more and more consciously, make his own history — only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Marxism and Humanism; Laborious Humanism
CB: In Althusser's terms, ^^^ CB: As far as I know, Althusser doesn't say what I say below. It is an extension, by me, of Althusser's basic argument in his famous essay beyond what he says. I believe Althusser concludes that there is no humanism in the mature Marx. I am disagreeing with Althusser , a sort of negation of his negating humanism in Marx ^^^ the mature Marx significantly relocates humanism and essentialism, philosophical anthropology to human labor in that it is a main source of value; and there is a sense of human essence in the abstract equality of all abstract human labor. It's homogeneous and uniform. It exists in the organism of every ordinary individual. It's human labour pure and simple. , identically abstract ( and abstractly identical, human labor generally ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Why is history a history of class struggles ? Critique of Althusser
Charles Brown Althusser says: In 1845, Marx broke radically with every theory that based history and politics on an essence of man. This unique rupture contained three indissociable elements. (1) The formation of a theory of history and politics based on radically new concepts: the concepts of social formation, productive forces, relations of production, superstructure, ideologies, determination in the last instance by the economy, specific determination of the other levels, etc. (2) A radical critique of the theoretical pretensions of every philosophical humanism. (3) The definition of humanism as an ideology. ^ CB: By at least 1848 with the _Manifesto of the Communist Party_, we can infer that Marx has relocated the essence of humans , his humanism in Althusser's sense, in human labor. ^ CB: However, Althusser does _not_ say what I am saying here about 1848 and Marx relocating human essence in human labor. ^^ This is in part the reason that history is a history of class struggles. For exploitation of labor triggers a human instinct in exploited laborers to recover and enjoy all the fruits of their labor, appropriate all the products of their work. History progesses as exploited laborers win victories restructuring the immense superstructure with each revolution. CB: Althusser doesn't say this , though. I do. ^^ Althusser's claim that Marx's radical new theory is scientific is correct because the new theory deals with _necessary_ connections in human society. Labor is necessary for human life. Capital I: So far therefore as labour is a creator of use value, is useful labour, it is a necessary condition, independent of all forms of society, for the existence of the human race; it is an eternal nature-imposed necessity, without which there can be no material exchanges between man and Nature, and therefore no life. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] from the kingdom of necessity
From Anti-Duhring With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organization. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then, for the first time, man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature, because he has now become master of his own social organization. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face-to-face with man as laws of Nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man's own social organization, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by Nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have, hitherto, governed history,pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, more and more consciously, make his own history — only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Douglass and Feuerbach
Ralph D: And here's an atheist treat: Letter to Ludwig Feuerbach from Ottilie Assing about Frederick Douglass http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/dougls1.html ^ CB: Cool , Ralph ! ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] socialism icon needed
Ralph Dumain Aside from the hammer-and-sickle, and photos of Marx or other iconic figures, what other emblem of socialism can you think of? ^^^ CB: The color red. red flag ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Locus of material necessity in human society and history
This is a reworking and expansion of a thesis I have been developing on Thaxis Charles Materialism, Necessity and Freedom: Rehearsal of the Fundamentals of Marxism By the _Manifesto of the Communist Party_ every Marxist knows the A,B,C's of historical materialism or the materialist conception of history. The history of hitherto existing society, since the breaking up of the ancient communes, is a history of class struggles between oppressor and oppressed. Classes are groups that associate in a division of labor to produce their material means of existence. Why are class struggles fundamental in determining the whole of society's laws and rules, it's history and culture, the super-structure ? Because exploited classes are coerced into producing surpluses for exploiting classes by making supply of the physiological necessities of life to the exploited classes conditional upon their producing those surpluses. Not only do exploited classes produce the physiological and derivative material necessities of life for society , but they are denied the fruits of their labor unless they supply the bosses, the ruling classes with super fruits. Ruling class coerce this exploitation by control of the state power or special repressive apparatus In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels implied this elementary anthropological or human natural rationale for this conception of class relations determining substantially the shape of society as a whole. In a section titled History: Fundamental Conditions, they say: *life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life. Production and economic classes are the starting point of Marxist analysis of human society because human life, like all plant and animal life must fulfill biological needs to exist as life at all. It is an appeal to biologic (which I support, all of the anti-vulgar materialist critiques to the contrary notwithstanding, but that's my other paper). Whatever humans do that is higher than plants and animals, we cannot do if we do not first fulfill or plant/animal like needs, physiological necessities. Marx and Engels define scientific analysis as tracing the materially or objectively _necessary_ connections in a phenomenon. Thus, the scientific understanding of human society must be based in the materially necessary connections of human society. Fulfillment of physiological or biological requirments are the materially necessary connections for humans. These biological necessary connections exist in all human societies. But it is only in' class divided society that , as said above, surpluses are extorted from exploited classes by ruling classes by employment and threat of deployment of the forces of destruction and violenced, standing bodies of armed men , against the exploited and ruled classes less they disgorge the surplus fruits of their labor to the ruling classes. For not only is supply of food, shelter, air etc. biologically and materially necessary for living. The _absence_ of being killed or bodily harmed by armed men is materially necessary to live. Thus, the mode of destruction is as central to the necessary connections of human society as the mode of production. The mode of destruction as critical in ruling class coercion and extortion of the ruled classes is a mode of necessity in human society and history. Thus the mode of necessity in human society consists in both the mode of production and the mode of destruction. On Materialism ( speaking of Mao), there are two levels of the relationship between thought and being: economics and physics. While society remains in the Realm (or kingdom) of Necessity , society during its class divided history, ruling classes control masses by conditioning fulfillment of the _material_ needs of the exploited classes on the exploited classes ' producing surpluses for the ruling , exploiting classes. The materialism (determinism by the material) at this level derives from the coercive use of conditional provision of material needs. In all societies, including those in the Realm (kingdom of Freedom ( socialist, communist future and ancient) , all people must , of course, obey the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, physiology, objective reality etc. physics, in the general sense. The higher (cultural, semiotic. super-structrual, social conditioning traditions, super-natural, aesthetic, artistic etc.) human activities are limited or negatively determined ( See Marshall Sahlins' _Culture and Practical Reason_ on biological limits of
[Marxism-Thaxis] kingdoms of necessity and freedom
--- On Sat, 2/14/09, Charles Brown cdb1...@prodigy.net wrote: From: Charles Brown cdb1...@prodigy.net Subject: kingdom of necessity To: cdb1...@prodigy.net Date: Saturday, February 14, 2009, 8:31 PM From Anti-Duhring With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organization. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then, for the first time, man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature, because he has now become master of his own social organization. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face-to-face with man as laws of Nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man's own social organization, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by Nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have, hitherto, governed history,pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, more and more consciously, make his own history — only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Insert for Locus of material necessity in human society and history
I didn't finish these thoughts in what I posted CB The Second Thesis on Feuerbach - the test of theory is practice - is also rooted in or expresses the determination of ideas by material practice, practical- critical , revolutionary,activity (from the First Thesis on Feuerbach) Theory, a system of ideas, is proven true or changed when it is used to guide material practice in both physics and economics. Social theory or ideology that guides real practice gives rise to contradictions that react back to change the theory, disproveit, if it contradicts material necessity even if only in the long run as in human history. Theb proof of the pudding is in the eating. The disproof of capitalism's theory or ideology, is in the continuous immiseration of masses and the periodic crises, wars and pollution. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Marxism and Humanism; Laborious Humanism
CB: In Althusser's terms, the mature Marx significantly relocates humanism and essentialism, philosophical anthropology to human labor in that it is a main source of value; and there is a sense of human essence in the abstract equality of all abstract human labor. It's homogeneous and uniform. It exists in the organism of every ordinary individual. It's human labour pure and simple. , identically abstract ( and abstractly identical, human labor generally and physiologically and ESSENTIALLY the expenditure of human brain, nerves, muscles, c. Both the value creating character , and the use-value creating character of labor ( see below), are essentially human Marx's is a laborious humanism, in _Capital_ Capital I: The labour, however, that forms the substance of value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour power. The total labour power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labour power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units. Each of these units is the same as any other, so far as it has the character of the average labour power of society, and takes effect as such; that is, so far as it requires for producing a commodity, no more time than is needed on an average, no more than is socially necessary. ...But the value of a commodity represents human labour in the abstract, the expenditure of human labour in general. And just as in society, a general or a banker plays a great part, but mere man, on the other hand, a very shabby part,[14] so here with mere human labour. It is the expenditure of simple labour power, i.e., of the labour power which, on an average, apart from any special development, exists in the organism of every ordinary individual. ...While, therefore, with reference to use value, the labour contained in a commodity counts only qualitatively, with reference to value it counts only quantitatively, and must first be reduced to human labour pure and simple... ..On the one hand all labour is, speaking physiologically, an expenditure of human labour power, and in its character of identical abstract human labour, it creates and forms the value of commodities... The general value form is the reduction of all kinds of actual labour to their common character of being human labour generally, of being the expenditure of human labour power. For, in the first place, however varied the useful kinds of labour, or productive activities, may be, it is a physiological fact, that they are functions of the human organism, and that each such function, whatever may be its nature or form, is essentially the expenditure of human brain, nerves, muscles, c. CB:There is even an essential human natural equality of the use-value creating character of labor. Capital I: So far therefore as labour is a creator of use value, is useful labour, it is a necessary condition, independent of all forms of society, for the existence of the human race; it is an eternal nature-imposed necessity, without which there can be no material exchanges between man and Nature, and therefore no life. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Marx's laborious humanism, species-being
Here is more elaboration of human essence in labor in the abstract, human species-being. For Marx, labor is human creative essence. Making is essentially human ( as is making out; smile) Of course human leisure, play, recreation is of species-being , and human essence , too. In this sense, philosophy of football is not an improper usage. CB ^^ The Labour-Process and the Process of Producing Surplus-Value THE LABOUR-PROCESS OR THE PRODUCTION OF USE-VALUES http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives \ the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman’s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the nature of the work, and the mode in which it is carried on, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his attention is forced to be. The elementary factors of the labour-process are 1, the personal activity of man, i.e., work itself, 2, the subject of that work, and 3, its instruments. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Why is history a history of class struggles ?
Althusser says: In 1845, Marx broke radically with every theory that based history and politics on an essence of man. This unique rupture contained three indissociable elements. (1) The formation of a theory of history and politics based on radically new concepts: the concepts of social formation, productive forces, relations of production, superstructure, ideologies, determination in the last instance by the economy, specific determination of the other levels, etc. (2) A radical critique of the theoretical pretensions of every philosophical humanism. (3) The definition of humanism as an ideology. ^ CB: By at least 1848 with the _Manifesto of the Communist Party_, we can infer that Marx has relocated the essence of humans , his humanism in Althusser's sense, in human labor. This is in part the reason that history is a history of class struggles. For exploitation of labor triggers a human instinct in exploited laborers to recover and enjoy all the fruits of their labor, appropriate all the products of their work. History progesses as exploited laborers win victories restructuring the immense superstructure with each revolution. Althusser's claim that Marx's radical new theory is scientific is correct because the new theory deals with _necessary_ connections in human society. Labor is necessary for human life. Capital I: So far therefore as labour is a creator of use value, is useful labour, it is a necessary condition, independent of all forms of society, for the existence of the human race; it is an eternal nature-imposed necessity, without which there can be no material exchanges between man and Nature, and therefore no life. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Toolmaking and use as an aspect of the human labor and essence
Benjamin Franklin defines humans as toolmakers, Franklin anthropology. Control of fire, chemistry, is toolmaking, and Promethean anthropology. CB http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm An instrument of labour is a thing, or a complex of things, which the labourer interposes between himself and the subject of his labour, and which serves as the conductor of his activity. He makes use of the mechanical, physical, and chemical properties of some substances in order to make other substances subservient to his aims. [2] Leaving out of consideration such ready-made means of subsistence as fruits, in gathering which a man’s own limbs serve as the instruments of his labour, the first thing of which the labourer possesses himself is not the subject of labour but its instrument. Thus Nature becomes one of the organs of his activity, one that he annexes to his own bodily organs, adding stature to himself in spite of the Bible. As the earth is his original larder, so too it is his original tool house. It supplies him, for instance, with stones for throwing, grinding, pressing, cutting, c. The earth itself is an instrument of labour, but when used as such in agriculture implies a whole series of other instruments and a comparatively high development of labour. [3] No sooner does labour undergo the least development, than it requires specially prepared instruments. Thus in the oldest caves we find stone implements and weapons. In the earliest period of human history domesticated animals, i.e., animals which have been bred for the purpose, and have undergone modifications by means of labour, play the chief part as instruments of labour along with specially prepared stones, wood, bones, and shells. [4] The use and fabrication of instruments of labour, although existing in the germ among certain species of animals, is specifically characteristic of the human labour-process, and Franklin therefore defines man as a tool-making animal. Relics of bygone instruments of labour possess the same importance for the investigation of extinct economic forms of society, as do fossil bones for the determination of extinct species of animals. It is not the articles made, but how they are made, and by what instruments, that enables us to distinguish different economic epochs. [5] Instruments of labour not only supply a standard of the degree of development to which human labour has attained, but they are also indicators of the social conditions under which that labour is carried on. Among the instruments of labour, those of a mechanical nature, which, taken as a whole, we may call the bone and muscles of production, offer much more decided characteristics of a given epoch of production, than those which, like pipes, tubs, baskets, jars, c., serve only to hold the materials for labour, which latter class, we may in a general way, call the vascular system of production. The latter first begins to play an important part in the chemical industries ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] The Concept of Aura and the Question of Art in Althusser, Benjamin and Greenberg
Gary Tedman (unregistered) wrote, in response to bing: Hi, Yep, very interesting. I agree about Marx and his concept of human nature, and sexuality, and what you say. But it is different to the classical humanist essence (very). I did write about this (sort of) in an essay in RM (Subjectless Aesthetics). Marx's idea of species being is very subtle and underestimated, in my view. Despite all the arguments against Althusser that have passed, I think his critique of humanism (essay Marxism and Humanism) is an excellent contribution to Marxist theory. In my view what today forms the core of bourgeois ideology, which does not have to be consistent, is a sort of amalgamation of positivism and humanism. Yes, I agree there are progressive moments in humanism, but I also think the great majority of it is harmful and confusing, at least to those wanting to understand the difference of Marxism to other notionally critical 'alternative positions'. --- um, I guess I think and have argued that social realism is the embodiment of humanism in art, which goes further than Althusser. ciao! ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Political Affairs Magazine - The Concept of quot; Auraquot; and the Question of Art in Althusser, Benjamin and Greenberg
:Picking up on Jim F's discussion below it seems to me that the structuralist and other objections to humanism are objections to individualism. That is humanism/individualism as a failure to understand Marx's notion that human in individuals are an ensemble of their social relations. The human individual is a highly social individual. An extreme example of what here is being termed humanism would be Margaret Thatcher's claim that there is no such thing as society. Her implication being that we are just a collection of individuals. Another term for this is reductionism as if' human society can be reduced to the interaction of all the individuals who have specific human individual natures or individual natural instincts , self-interests, etc. In bourgeois economics the natural individual is the rational man and what Marx criticizes as the Robinsonade. In bourgeois law it's the reasonable man. It is a fundamental tenet of the various Social Darwinisms. A fundamental critique of individualism is that it is actually a socially determined' ideology of the bourgeoisie. It is to reduce the social whole to the sum of its parts. The Briitsh Marxist philosopher Christopher Cauldwell has several essays critiquing this very well. Ted Winslow of several lists here calls it external relations when 'reality is in the form of internal relations He follows Whitehead on this, and his debates with Bertrand 'Russell. This takes it out of the realm of human society to the whole of reality. So, reducing wholes to the sum of their parts in general. Jim Farmelant fOn Sat, 7 Feb 2009 05:30:54 -0800 (PST) Mehmet Cagatay mehmetcagatayaydin at yahoo.com writes: Mr. Dumain, would you please clarify why you regard Althusserian anti-humanism as a kind of epater les bourgeois? The whole debate seems peculiarly French to me. In France since the 19th century humanism was seen as something that was closely tied to the bourgeoisie. Even someone like Sartre struggled over whether he was a humanist or not. He eventually decided that his existentialism was a kind of humanism, but one that was different from the kinds of humanism that the bourgeoisie typically embraced. In Sartre's case, I think he identified conventional bourgeois humanism with essentialism. Those humanisms posited a human essence, whereas for Sartre, existence preceded essence. In the French debates over humanism in the 1960s and 1970s, structuralists and poststructuralists like Levi-Strauss, Louis Althusser, and Michel Foucault attempted to push the critique of humanism much further than Sartre had been willing to go. Sartre's existentialism, as he realized, was still a humanism. He placed free will at the center of his conception of man. People, regardless of the circumstances that they might find themselves in, still retained their freedom, if only the freedom to redefine their situation in alternative ways. The French anti-humanists questioned this view in light of such developments in the human sciences like structural linguistics (which Levi-Strauss to generalize into a complete anthropology), psychoanalysis (i.e. the work of Lacan which enjoyed great currency in this period), and of course, Marxism. Althusser, was of course, a Marxist and long time member of the PCF. Foucault, who had been a student of Althusser, was a member of the PCF for a brief period of time. By the 1950s, he had renounced Marxism in favor of Nietzscheanism, although his work was still very much influenced by Marxism. Levi-Strauss, I believed, identified himself at this time as a Marxist, although his work doesn't strike me as being particularly Marxist. There were certainly differences in viewpoints between these people. Althusser doesn't seem to have been particularly enamored with Levi-Strauss's work, and he didn't like being called a structuralist. However, all these people's work, whether drawing from Saussure, Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, or Heidegger, all had certain themes in common. They all rejected the Sartrean emphasis on human freedom, instead emphasizing the extent to which human behavior is determined by structures of various sorts, whether these be linguistic structures, kinship structures, structures of epistemology (Foucault in this *The Order of Things*), social structures as represented by the mode of production and associated superstructures (i.e. Althusser), and so forth. They all rejected the traditional humanist idea that their exists an unchanging human essence which provides the basis for freedom and equality and human rights. For the French antihumanists, this conception was rejected as being ideological and/or metaphysical, and they drew variously upon Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, in their critiques of humanism. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] The Concept of Aura and the Question of Art in Althusser, Benjamin and Greenberg
The Concept of Aura and the Question of Art in Althusser, Benjamin and Greenberg By Gary Tedman click here for related stories: science 1-28-09, 10:33 am I think we should not expect Marxism to produce a scientific (correct) theory of art, which would be like a Marxist theory of biology attempting to replace Darwinism. Instead, the theory must come from within the realms of art and be internal to that gamut of practices. Of course, Marxism has an input to make on this subject, and, in the absence of a universally accepted theory, it is obliged to take a position on art, to pick a side, so to speak. It is also obliged to champion those theories of art it thinks are the most progressive and scientific. I am not convinced that Marxism has done this in the past at all times. The Marxists Louis Althusser, Walter Benjamin and Clement Greenberg have, I would argue, produced the most progressive theories of art, sometimes almost as an aside to their more pressing concerns. This essay critiques their contributions and also seeks to amalgamate them into a new and radical whole. It will help us to start this investigation by thinking of visual art as visual philosophy. Art, if it is not simply decorative, entertainment, or utilitarian, communicates deep and fundamental ideas, just like philosophy. I realize, of course, that “What is philosophy?” is no easy question. The Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser (1918-1990) has, however, made it an easier one for us. For Althusser, philosophy is class struggle in the field of theory. It battles over the status of the sciences. Thus, the practice of science is distinguished from the practice of ideology. Art, however, differs from philosophy in that, while philosophy (at least as commonly understood) deals with the rational via writing, art specializes in “feelings,” taking feeling to mean both emotion and sensory perception, using its materials in subtle ways to affect the senses. Linking art and philosophy in this way has the benefit of revealing a hitherto hidden aspect of art: As Althusser said, all philosophy interpellates us as subjects. The same can be said about art. “Interpellation is a concept Althusser developed in his theory of ideology. For Althusser, ideology (even a system of false ideas such as bourgeois ideology) participates in the ongoing reproduction of the already existing social conditions of production. As any child knows, Althusser said, all societies must reproduce themselves. Ideology is necessary in order to reproduce the right kind of human subject with the right kind of mentality for functioning properly in capitalist society. The bourgeois state has organized modern education to manage this task, a task which once had been the function of religious institutions. Part of this reproduction process is the “interpellation of the subject.” Althusser’s example is the French police way of hailing: “Hey you there!” Such hailing functions so that the subject recognizes he or she really is a responsible individual subject to ideology. For Althusser, the ruling philosophy always interpellates subjects, it always has a particular world view, and it hails its subjects to recognize its authority. However, all interpellation by the state must be materialized. It can never just consist of pure ideas floating from one brain to another. It must therefore exist in actual practice. We act out ideology, or to put it another way, because practice always comes before theory, ideology legitimizes practices that already exist (e.g., ideology legitimated the Iraq war after the war had already been started). But, as Althusser said, bourgeois philosophy “lives by its denegation, the promise of an objective knowledge of what philosophy is, as a practice, which is offered by Marxism, is always denegated, or disavowed, by bourgeois philosophers, who assert that such knowledge is impossible. This denial of status is crucial to the ruling ideology. The bourgeois world view, for example, sees itself as just because it is universal, which means beyond all partisan positions. Because of this it may/can be forceful, resort to violence, etc. The professional art teacher is similarly obliged to deny real knowledge of their practice. The phrase there's no accounting for taste is one of the unwritten commandments of modern art education. This reflects the bourgeois notion that art (ultimately) cannot be scientific or subjected to scientific analysis. In this, the ruling philosophy has decided what science and art is, but at the same time (absurdly) it holds there can be no definite (scientific) knowledge of it. It also asserts this of its own practice of philosophy. According to the ruling philosophy, we cannot know what philosophy does, as a practice. All of this is a function of the classical bifurcation thesis, the great separation of the humanities from the sciences, which runs through all
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] What are the CPUSA’s views on the USSR?
--- On Sat, 2/7/09, juan De La Cruz ballist...@yahoo.com wrote: From: juan De La Cruz ballist...@yahoo.com Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] What are the CPUSA’s views on the USSR? To: cdb1...@prodigy.net Date: Saturday, February 7, 2009, 2:15 PM ...I think or want to recommend to start our critical study of the exussr by using the concept revolutionary tentative in order to correctly understand that particular historical moment. One of the historical documents that demonstrates that the revolutionary proletariat was defeated during the 1917-1923 international wave of proletarian action is found in Lenin's Collective Works: The Eighth Party Congress and a decree stopping revolutionary action against private property Lenin's himself acknowledge during its intervention in the Party's Congress that Soviets had been transformed into government's administration organs for the proletariat.In the second document he signed a decree calling the direct action against private property to be stopped and those structures to merged with the Soviets, that were already organs of capital's administrationWe shall not forget the international invasion that followed to consolidate the new form of capital's dictatorship in contradiction with other fraction of capital...until all contradictions exploited in 1938(9): the second generalized capital war. Also, we could see and learn more historical evidence of the proletariat defeat in the files of the Third International. with revolutionary salutations, ballista ^ Is it your conclusion that the great october revolution was not really that great ? --- On Mon, 2/2/09, Charles Brown cdb1...@prodigy.net wrote: From: Charles Brown cdb1...@prodigy.net Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] What are the CPUSA’s views on the USSR? To: a-l...@lists.econ.utah.edu, marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Date: Monday, February 2, 2009, 5:15 PM What are the CPUSA’s views on the USSR? The subject of the USSR is a complex one. There was certainly an insufficiently developed democracy, but to dismiss over 70 years of their history developing socialism as completely undemocratic is a gross oversimplification. They practiced forms of economic democracy and worker involvement unknown in this country. They offered citizens many essential benefits that the drive to capitalism has destroyed. When the solution is worse than the problem, it is not a solution. Capitalism has made life for the vast majority in the former Soviet Union and other former socialist countries much worse. All indicators of social health are deteriorating, such as the sharp rise in infant mortality, the decrease in longevity rates, levels of malnutrition and starvation, decreasing health care for most of the population, inadequate and overwhelmed social security and welfare programs. The problems they faced would have had a better chance of being solved by more socialism, not less! I recommend six books to help deepen your knowledge of the accomplishments and shortcomings of the Soviet Union: Heroic Struggle, Bitter Defeat by Bhaman Azad from International Publishers, 2000, Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti from City Light Publishers. These are both valuable contributions to the discussion of what happened in the Soviet Union, why, and how that connects to the history of Soviet policies. About issues of human rights and socialist development in the Soviet Union, see Human Rights in the Soviet Union by Albert Szymanski, Zed Books, 1984. An earlier book of his, Is the Red Flag Still Flying, included an afterward that is a (very incomplete) start at an historical materialist analysis of Stalin’s role. (Symanski was an economist and a Maoist who set out to prove the Maoist thesis of capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union, but on examining the statistics and realities, came to the conclusion that the Maoists were wrong, that the Soviet Union was still primarily run in the interests of the working class. He used statistics and facts as reported by right-wing academicians, arguing that facts as reported by anti-communists could be used to prove progressive points with greater believability by anti-communist readers.) Soviet Women ( Ramparts Press, 1975) and Soviet But Not Russian (Ramparts Press, 1985) by William Mandel and The Siberians by Farley Mowat are useful responses to the barrage of anti-communism directed at the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. (Note that for writing this particular book, Farley Mowat was barred from entering the United States in the 1980s! He wrote a short funny book about his experiences. The U. S. State Department finally backed down, at which time Mowat refused to enter! Other world-famous authors have been refused entry into the U.S. as undesirable aliens, including Nobel Literature Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez.) http://www.cpusa.org/article/static/511/#question27 ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list
[Marxism-Thaxis] Revoke Krugman's Nobel Prize!
Barkley Rosser is a Thaxis alum. CB ^^^ Revoke Krugman's Nobel Prize! by Barkley Rosser Yes, I know, not only has no Nobel Prize ever been revoked for anything, but they certainly do not do so for idiotic statements made by winners after they have won. However, as the first winner of the prize for international trade in 31 years, I find it appalling that Paul Krugman has come out for the buy American provision in the fiscal stimulus package now under consideration in the US Senate, a provision not supported by President Obama, and roundly denounced by pretty much everybody outside the US, a provision that would violate promises made in November in Washington not to engage in protectionist actions for at least a year, with at its worst the nightmare possibility of a rerun of the trade war of the 1930s following the US Smoot-Hawley tariff that exacerbated the Great Depression. While some may dismiss such a possibility now, the standing of the US in the world on economic policy may have never been worse, given the role of the collapse of our sub-prime market in the current troubles, and with world merchandise trade dropping at an annualized rate of nearly 45% in November. This is not the time to be playing with such irresponsible fire. http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2009/02/revoke-krugmans-nobel-prize.html ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Russia agrees to Afghan request for defence aid
Russia agrees to Afghan request for defence aid Mon Jan 19, 2009 3:13pm IST By Sayed Salahuddin KABUL (Reuters) - Russia has accepted a request from President Hamid Karzai to provide military aid to Afghanistan, the Afghan government said on Monday. The move comes amid complaints by many Afghans that NATO and the United States, who have thousands of troops in Afghanistan, have been slow to equip Afghan national forces to fight the Taliban. Afghanistan has largely relied on NATO and the United States to bankroll its security needs and the economy since U.S.-led troops overthrew the Taliban government in 2001. But despite receiving some military equipment from NATO, Afghanistan still uses Russian-made weapons and aircraft, left over from the former Soviet Union's 10-year occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Karzai, who has led Afghanistan since the Taliban's removal, made the request by a letter to Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev in November 2008, the presidential palace said in a statement. Medvedev, in a letter addressed to Karzai, has said that Russia is ready to help Afghanistan in the defensive sectors, the statement said. Medvedev said defensive ties between Kabul and Moscow would result in effective cooperation on both sides and in the restoration of security in the region, the statement said. Russia was keen for cooperation with Afghanistan in other areas too, the statement quoted Medvedev as saying in the letter. Chief presidential spokesman Humayun Hamidzada said despite Karzai's call on Russia for defensive aid, Afghanistan was committed to its ties with NATO and the United States. The equipment of our national army, our helicopters and tanks are Russian-made so this (request) has a technical aspect. We have strategic commitment to NATO and the United States, Hamidzada told Reuters. Some 70,000 foreign troops under NATO and U.S. military command are stationed in Afghanistan, and Washington is expected to send up to 30,000 extra forces by summer to the country, where the al Qaeda-backed Taliban have made a comeback since 2005. U.S.-led and Afghan troops overthrew the Taliban government after it refused to hand over al Qaeda leaders wanted by Washington for masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. More than seven years on, Taliban and al Qaeda leaders are still at large and many Afghans believe foreign forces are more focussed on pursuing their own regional agendas, rather than helping Afghanistan. The United States and its allies have not given any time frame for the withdrawal of their forces and say the soldiers will remain in Afghanistan for the long haul and until national security forces can stand on their own feet. © Thomson Reuters 2008. All rights reserved ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Kyrgyzstan starts moves to close U.S. airbase
Kyrgyzstan starts moves to close U.S. airbase Wed Feb 4, 2009 3:04pm EST By Olga Dzyubenko BISHKEK (Reuters) - Kyrgyzstan's government asked parliament on Wednesday to approve the closure of a U.S. military air base which supplies U.S.-led troops fighting in Afghanistan. The decision by the Central Asian state, a former Soviet republic and a traditional Russian ally, sends a tough signal and challenge to new U.S. President Barack Obama as he plans to send additional troops to Afghanistan. But Moscow said it would be flexible to U.S. requests to transit supplies across Russia. It gave no details. The Manas base is an important staging post for the U.S.-led military campaign against the Taliban and becomes more so as Washington seeks to reinforce supply routes that bypass Pakistan, where supply convoys face security risks. Analysts said the move could be a signal to Obama that Moscow wants to ensure it is consulted in any diplomatic decisions in a region where it has traditional influence but the United States has sought to increase its presence. I have a feeling Russia wants to offer a new format for cooperation, in which Russia will speak on behalf of the region in contacts with the United States, said Arkady Dubnov, an independent analyst. Bargaining could be conducted on this footing. Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev said the base would be shut after he secured Russian financial aid at talks in Moscow on Tuesday. Adakhan Madumarov, secretary of the Kyrgyz Security Council, said in Moscow the U.S. military would be given 180 days to close its operations and leave once the two sides had exchanged formal diplomatic notes outlining the intention. Moscow denied any connection between the $2 billion package to combat an economic crisis -- the equivalent of about half of Kyrgyzstan's gross domestic product -- and Bishkek's decision. That was a sovereign and very well thought over decision of the Kyrgyz leader, said Russia's deputy foreign minister, Grigory Karasin. U.S. SUPPLY ROUTES Closing Washington's only military outpost in Central Asia would pose a challenge for U.S. supply lines in the region, particularly after militants severed the main route into Afghanistan by blowing up a bridge in Pakistan this week. The U.S. State Department said by early Wednesday it had still not been informed officially of the decision. We have seen many statements in the media but we have not received any notification through the appropriate diplomatic channels on this, said spokesman Gordon Duguid. Many in Kyrgyzstan have criticized the presence of U.S. troops, prompting Washington to explore possibilities in other parts of Central Asia including Uzbekistan which evicted U.S. troops in 2005. Ties have eased since then. Moscow, which operates its own airbase in Kyrgyzstan a few dozen kilometers away from Manas, has been irritated by Manas's existence and has put pressure on Kyrgyzstan to close it, though on Wednesday said it would offer the U.S. support. We positively reacted to the request of the United States for the transit through Russia of goods and materials to Afghanistan, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin told reporters. We will be flexible in many other ways which will support our joint success in Afghanistan -- that would be the basic school of thinking from which we will proceed. BUSINESS AS USUAL Outside Bishkek, business appeared to go on as usual at the airbase, viewed from behind a ring of barbed wire encircling the facility, home to more than 1,000 U.S. military personnel. At its main gate, three servicemen, all clad in uniforms and looking stern, refused to talk to reporters as they verified registration plates on vehicles entering the base. Outside Manas, surrounded by swathes of empty, snow-blanketed land, a Kyrgyz sheep herder said he supported closing the base -- partly because he wanted more grazing land. I support this move. We think this airbase only harms our nature, said Ulan, a bearded man of about 50. Although many Kyrgyz have mixed feelings about the presence of U.S. troops, particularly after a U.S. airman shot dead a Kyrgyz man in a 2006 incident, Bakiyev critics said the nation could ill-afford to lose such an important ally as Washington. U.S. officials said while the Manas base was important, any decision to close it would not halt operations in Afghanistan. The United States has 32,000 troops in Afghanistan and U.S. officials have said the planned build-up could grow to include as many as 30,000 troops over the next 12 to 18 months. © Thomson Reuters 2008 ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Etta James Doles Out Harsh ‘La st’ Words for Beyonce, Obama
Evidently, Etta James agees with Ralph (smile) http://h30405.www3.hp.com/print/pdf/2EJYDHE7CMAC/news Etta James Doles Out Harsh ‘Last’ Words for Beyonce, Obama (Feb. 5) - Etta James sure can hold a grudge, that much is certain after the RB icon vented her gripes about singer Beyonce Knowles and President Barack Obama during a recent concert in Seattle. The 71-year-old diva is steaming mad over Beyonce’s performance of ‘At Last,’ her signature tune, at Obama’s first inauguration party. The President and First Lady Michelle Obama danced to the legendary ballad (see photos below). The fiery rant, in which she threatens to beat up “that woman” and openly mocks “the one with the big ears,” has been leaked on TMZ. Hear Etta’s Concert Ramblings: “You guys know your president, right? You know the one with the big ears?” she said to the crowd, unsure of what lay ahead. “Wait a minute, he ain’t my president, he might be yours, he ain’t my president. You know that woman he had singing for him, singing my song — she’s going to get her ass whipped.” Beyonce played James on the big screen recently, in ‘Cadillac Records.’ Now, we have an idea what the elder singer thinks of her movie version. She continued at the concert: “The great Beyonce. I can’t stand Beyonce,” she told the crowd. “She has no business up there, singing up there on a big ol’ president day, gonna be singing my song that I’ve been singing forever.” James is best known for ‘At Last,’ released in 1961 on Chess Records, but she has scores of other hits including ‘Trust in Me’ and ‘Fool That I Am.’ Beyonce ruffled the sequins of another diva last year when at the Grammy Awards she introduced Tina Turner, and not Aretha Franklin, as “The Queen.” Her royal highness the Queen of Soul was not pleased by the diss, and called it a “cheap shot.” ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
