William S. Lear wrote:
I think Doug makes a mistake of too easily letting the tobacco
companies off the hook for helping to shape preferences for smoking.
I've never let them off the hook. I said that anyone who believes that
people smoke only because evil tobacco companies manipulate us into
Is there a Marxist theory of desire, or to use the word Foucault preferred
(because it's nonteleological), pleasure?
Doug
Desire? I don't have the foggiest idea. It certainly doesn't sound like the
kind of thing you'd take a vote on in a preconvention discussion. That's
for darned sure.
Louis
On 10 Aug 98 at 13:04, Gil Skillman wrote:
On behalf of a colleague, I'm forwarding a question for any PEN-r who's had
cause to think about these things. Any help would be appreciated.(I'm
not sure that URPE membership numbers would offer a precise answer to the
question._
Thanks in
Mike Yates mentioned soldiers and smoking. The troops in the trenches
during WW I were give free ciggies. Then Freud's famous double nephew,
Edward Bernays, had the debutants march in the Easter parade, identifying
smoking with freedom.
This period is expecially interesting. Now Louis says
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I heard a wonderful story from someone who sent this to me. A cannot find
anything on Neckham in the Berkeley library. Does anyone know how to track this
down? The punch line is that the peasants were ahead of
Friends,
Preferences are always formed within a social setting, and this social setting
can be altered by political struggle. So, in this sense, preferences are
concerns of radical thinkers and activists. We surely do not want to get into
bed with Friedman and his ilk, saying that we are "free
Mike Yates wrote: Preferences are always formed within a social setting,
and this social setting can be altered by political struggle. So, in this
sense, preferences are concerns of radical thinkers and activists. We
surely do not want to get into bed with Friedman and his ilk, saying that
we
Paul Phillips:
Nevertheless, Bhoddi is right in the sense that even if we
restored to all the aboriginals all that we have expropriated
since the original treaties, and even allocated all or most of
the unallocated crown lands, it would do little now to bring
the native peoples up to a decent
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BLS DAILY REPORT, MONDAY, AUGUST 10, 1998:
Nonfarm payroll employment rose by a
On 10 Aug 98 at 16:17, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
It seems to me that lost in the invective of this debate is some
of the history of the 'expropriation of the aboriginal commons', at
least as I understand it in the NA context.
First, with regard to the intermingling of the (mercantile)
Jim:...shouldn't we add "plus the benefits of welfare-state programs such as
unemployment insurance benefits" ?
then, the wage struggle is about (1) real after-tax private wages plus (2)
the real net social wage (welfare-state benefits minus taxes on wages).
IMHO, pushing to raise both of these
Bodhistava,
I have read most of your posts on this thread simply because you
have courage to present what is a minority point of view on pen-l.
But I wonder, how can you separate forces of production from the
relations of production? I think forces of production are usually
dominated by
=== Here is part of a 10K PSN post on Iraq. I have left in the frank
anonymous comment of a UN staffer and a long but still incomplete
list of embargoed items, many of them ridiculously pedestrian,
that presumably have not been available to Iraq from any
external source
Now, everyone has limits on how far individual choice is permitted. Some
would limit pornography, cannibis, tobacco, alcohol, prostitution, leaf
blowers, etc. These discussions usually occur is the framework of
questions of morality. I am only suggesting that we frame these questions
in a
It seems to me that lost in the invective of this debate is some
of the history of the 'expropriation of the aboriginal commons', at
least as I understand it in the NA context.
First, with regard to the intermingling of the (mercantile) capitalist
mode of production with the aboriginal domestict
William S. Lear wrote:
Perhaps the swerve of the American consumer to steering
hefty SUVs, from the dangerous (hence liberating) "limit experiences"
generated by piloting smaller caves about town, is a signal of our
(ever) increasing domestication, a further turn from the wild side of
unions,
Friends,
It seems to me that the tobacco companies must bear a lot of responsibility
for cigarette addiction and its many attendent evils. For one thing they do
target young people in their advertising, because they know that it will be
difficult for teenagers to stop as adults once the
On Mon, August 10, 1998 at 13:43:35 (-0400) Doug Henwood writes:
William S. Lear wrote:
I think Doug makes a mistake of too easily letting the tobacco
companies off the hook for helping to shape preferences for smoking.
I've never let them off the hook. I said that anyone who believes that
Louis Proyect wrote:
The problem with
discussing preferences for Coca-Cola (originally made with cocaine),
tobacco, alcohol, sugar and coffee in the abstract is that this is of
little interest to Marxists. Political economy is supposed to be what
interests us, not what is "politically correct."
At 11:46 AM 8/10/98 -0500, Bill Lear wrote:
But, I'm also keenly aware that the beef that McDonald's buys is heavily
subsidized by the state, their advertising is tax-deductible, that there is
such a thing as health problems associated with the vast quantities of
cheap fatty and sugary foods (my
At 01:04 PM 8/10/98 -0400, you wrote:
Louis writes: ... The problem with discussing preferences for Coca-Cola
(originally made with cocaine), tobacco, alcohol, sugar and coffee in the
abstract is that this is of little interest to Marxists. Political economy
is supposed to be what interests us,
On behalf of a colleague, I'm forwarding a question for any PEN-r who's had
cause to think about these things. Any help would be appreciated.(I'm
not sure that URPE membership numbers would offer a precise answer to the
question._
Thanks in advance,
Gil Skillman
For something I'm
On Mon, August 10, 1998 at 09:11:19 (-0700) [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
...
Now, maybe Bhoddi is saying something deeper that I realize. To say, let
them eat cake [drink coke] because it tastes good sounds to me to be
something like saying let the multinationals determine our relations with
the
Maybe I am dense. I cannot figure out the difference between Bhoddi's
response to the thread on Coke and the standard neo-liberal line.
I would characterize the thrust of the rest of us to be wrestling with the
idea that while outright theft is wrong, other forces offer the possiblity
of either
James Devine wrote:
BTW, Doug, didn't you quote someone sometime sneering at those who put
single words in quotes (not to mention in "quotes")?
Don't think I did, but who knows?
As I explained in a later post, I meant the quotes around "victims" to draw
a distinction between those "victimized"
from then internet:
A helicopter was flying around above Seattle yesterday when an electrical
malfunction disabled all of aircraft's electronic navigation and
communication equipment. Due to the clouds and haze the pilot could not
determine his position or course to steer to the airport.
The
This is the sort of post that helped to sink the Spoons mailing-list. It
also reminds me why it is pointless to have a conversation with the
"enlightened one." Find somebody else to make stupid baiting comments to,
Mr. "Enlightened One."
At 02:26 AM 8/10/98 EDT, you wrote:
To whom...,
So let me get this straight: Makak whaling good, Norwegian
whaling bad? Isn't this obviously absurd? Isn't the issue how many
whales - our common property - are killed?
There are a few dozen saw mill operators in the Pacific Northwest
To whom..,
Now we can laugh at farmers who use hoes because they don't use
discers, integrated pest management, and no-till farming. We can laugh at
them because they are wasting their time and breaking their backs for
nothing. We can laugh at them because they are
C. Proyect,
This is about as socialist as a Microsoft commercial.
Why don't you go and try to make your living hunting Caribou.
peace
To whom,
At $50,000 per adult Yanomami, what kind of price tag are we talking?
How about $100,000? How about a point or two of the net? the gross? What
do the Yanomami, themselves, expect to gain from their land rights? Do they
really want to live in the
To whom...,
And it doesn't matter a damn to the Microsoft market capitalization
that this software is being pirated because their fotune lies in the fact
that when they come out with their *next* program, people will have to buy it
and their competitors won't be able
To whom...,
The struggle to liberate people from economic oppression is not a
John Ford movie. The primary problem facing the proletariat is not
ranchers, for god's sake. Sure ranchers and their cousins the "family
farmer" are petit bourgeoisie (and often
To whom...,
The issue is that multi-nationals are not following the
illuminating wisdom of the great capitalist philosopher Meyer Lansky who
said "A problem that can be solved with money is not a problem." There
are some Inuit who live north of the Arctic National
C. Proyect,
Your problem is that you live in a fantasy world. When power
companies dam waterways to create hydropower they are creating something
that is quite simply more valuable than the fish. It's an ugly reality,
but there it is. As for the drinking water,
Eugene P. Coyle wrote:
To me it sounds as if Doug has embraced the theory of consumer behavior of
the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. "People want to smoke." They do, but
they don't assess the long-term costs very well. The short-term gain is
clear to them.
[etc.]
Yes, learned behavior, but
"Finally the day we were bringing the proofs to the printer, Grove
consented to act as distributor. To pull a total solo trip, including
distribution, would have been neat, but such an effort would be doomed from
the start. We had tried it before and blew it. In fact, if anyone is
interested in
In other words, I think the argument is misplaced --- let's argue
about endogenous preference formation and how it leads the market to
(among other things) provide too much of goods with negative
externalities, too little "public" goods, and (perhaps) too much
grease, sugar, and tobacco.
Bill
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