Final thoughts on the Nader campaign

2000-07-14 Thread Louis Proyect
Characterized by catastrophism from its birth, American ultraleftism has been ill-equipped to understand and relate to leftwing third party initiatives. If capitalism is on its last legs, wouldn't an electoral effort amount to a diversion at best, or betrayal at worst? In reality, American

Long overdue needs

2000-07-14 Thread Louis Proyect
The Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 30, 2000 Friday HOUSE OKS COLOMBIA DRUG AID, BUT NO FOOD FOR CUBA; Leaders resolved a last-minute snag yesterday and whisked through the House an $11.2 billion emergency package bearing money for Colombia's drug war, the Pentagon and storm victims at home.

Jimmy Hoffa Junior

2000-07-14 Thread Louis Proyect
The Nation, July 24/31, 2000 Where's Hoffa Driving the Teamsters? by MARC COOPER There was a time when the very word "Teamsters" evoked some pretty dark images: a bloated and notoriously corrupt union president, carried into the Teamsters convention on a gilded sedan chair by men dressed as

Red New York

2000-07-14 Thread Louis Proyect
The Nation, July 24/31, 2000 A City That Worked by ROBERT W. SNYDER The New York of 1945 was the victorious city of the New Deal and World War II, one that can barely be glimpsed today beneath postmodern towers and billboards for dot-com enterprises. New York was a metropolis with a strong

Re: To glib or not too glib?

2000-07-14 Thread Timework Web
JKSCHW wrote, there are tens of millions of business bankruptcies a years, and a handful of bailouts. The market real does create incentives to be efficient . . . Circular argument. If we ASSUME that the bankruptcies resulted from inefficiencies, then their occurance may be taken as

Re: Re: To glib or not too glib?

2000-07-14 Thread Ken Hanly
Why would there only be state patronage and bailout in a planned system? At least before the system in the USSR broke down people had a life expectancy of 69 as compared to 59 now, in spite of bailouts and patronage in the planned system. So are tens of millions of bankruptcies efficient? It

Conservative Party concedes tax rises

2000-07-14 Thread Chris Burford
There has been a slight but significant shift of the political centre in Britain this week. As the two main parties adjust their positions ready for the first general election following Blair's 1997 massive victory, the British Conservative Party, under the influence of the new caring Michael

The Rise and Future Demise of World-Systems A

2000-07-14 Thread Rod Hay
I think, although I may be wrong, that democratic control can be as or more effective than markets in providing information and a corrective to the mistakes of planning. You seem to assume a centralized bureaucratic planning a la the USSR. If adequate democratic controls are designed, managers

Re: The Rise and Future Demise of World-SystemsAnalysis

2000-07-14 Thread Ricardo Duchesne
Mine Aysen Doyran wrote: Anthony DCosta wrote: Wallerstein writes, irrespective of what others write. He doesn't listen--to paraphrase some of his students (who are my friends) and colleagues! Cheers, ohh, definetly, he is very persistent of his own position. That is

FW: Apartheid's Killer Legacy

2000-07-14 Thread Michael Keaney
K Content-type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Forwarded from another list: Apartheid's Killer Legacy. By David Kenvyn Matlaweng Mohlala began working at Cape's Penge mine when he was only twelve. For fourteen years he packed asbestos fibre

Re: The Rise and Future Demise of World-Systems Analysis

2000-07-14 Thread Ricardo Duchesne
Anthony DCosta wrote: Wallerstein writes, irrespective of what others write. He doesn't listen--to paraphrase some of his students (who are my friends) and colleagues! I am not surprised. There's no one iota of an idea which one could extract out of that future demise thing. Beyond that,

RE: Re: M once again

2000-07-14 Thread Brown, Martin (NCI)
John Roemer, John Roemer Oh yeah, I remember him. Berkeley, 1969. Undergraduate math major and head of local Progressive Labor Party chapter. "People's Park are a bunch of reactionary hippies stealing parking spaces from the working class." Also, get other people to front for you and get

Wallerstein

2000-07-14 Thread Rod Hay
Ricardo Could you please criticize Wallerstein without the personal attacks. His arrogance is irrelevant. I have met him and had a reasonable and civil conversation with him. He did not react with hostility to criticism and disagreements that I put forward, and was quite willing to discuss his

Re: Wallerstein

2000-07-14 Thread Ricardo Duchesne
Rod Hay wrote: Ricardo Could you please criticize Wallerstein without the personal attacks. His arrogance is irrelevant. I have met him and had a reasonable and civil conversation with him. Didn't you read my comments on his Future Demise? You tell me where I go wrong in those comments,

Re: Red New York

2000-07-14 Thread Timework Web
"In Freeman's view the mortal blow to this city on a hill was not McCarthyism but the fiscal crisis of the seventies, which undermined New York's miniature welfare state." Being neither a historian of New York nor a New Yorker, I offer my opinion with some trepidation. But I would have thought

Re: Re: Re: AM once again

2000-07-14 Thread Charles Brown
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/13/00 05:10PM you miss my point. I wasn't saying that so-called "Leninists" are more bureaucratic than others. Rather, I was saying that the word "correct" is associated with one bureaucratic trend, which goes beyond "Leninism" to include the purveyors of political

Markets and socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Louis Proyect
About three years ago I attended a panel at the Socialist Scholars Conference on markets in socialist economies. It was chaired by Al Campbell, an ex-Trotskyist who now teaches economics at the University of Utah, which is quite an anomaly. The economics department there is reputed to be one of

Re: Hong Kong economic stability

2000-07-14 Thread Michael Hoover
Although there is an undercurrent of protests against the reime of the Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, the economic position of Hong Kong has stabilised. "The fall in property prices from the ludicrous levels of 1997 has hurt many owners." That sounds fine to me. It suggests that the

Re: Markets and socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Michael Perelman
Excellent post, Louis. I would add only one minor point. My understanding was that the Soviet economy continued to grow during the 70s, but that the rate of growth declined quite a bit. The Star Wars hoax made the Soviets think that they would have to significantly increase military

Re: Re: Re: The Rise and Future Demise of

2000-07-14 Thread Michael Hoover
Louis Proyect wrote: One other key element of the demise of AM is the market socialism they often upheld. When the Gorbachev experiment failed, when the CCP went off the deep end welcoming in Nike, etc., when Yugoslavia imploded, it made it more difficult to talk about the benefits of

Re: Wallerstein

2000-07-14 Thread Michael Perelman
Thank you, Rod. Rod Hay wrote: Ricardo Could you please criticize Wallerstein without the personal attacks. His arrogance is irrelevant. I have met him and had a reasonable and civil conversation with him. He did not react with hostility to criticism and disagreements that I put forward,

wsa, again

2000-07-14 Thread christian11
So if in a decade Mexico, Brazil, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic are in the position that SK and Taiwan are now, you will conclude... what? Brad DeLong Why wait a decade? Mexico and South Korea have roughly the same per capita GNP ($8300 for Mexico and $8500 for South Korea).

Re: Re: To glib or not too glib?

2000-07-14 Thread Jim Devine
Justin wrote: In a market system, most enterprises lack the power that, e.g., Chrysler could bring to bear to avoid the consequences of its decisions. Bankruptcy is far more common than bailouts--there are tens of millions of business bankruptcies a years, and a handful of bailouts. bankruptcy

Re: Markets and socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Jim Devine
At 10:11 AM 07/14/2000 -0400, you wrote: It was chaired by Al Campbell, an ex-Trotskyist who now teaches economics at the University of Utah, which is quite an anomaly. The economics department there is reputed to be one of the most Marxist-friendly in the country, while the state of Utah is also

Humpty Dumpty, deja vu

2000-07-14 Thread Timework Web
Schwartz wrote, LP and its linguistic phil outliers came apart after 1950 and by 1975, Humpty Dumpty was all in pieces. This is when I started college. It was exciting; there was a sense we were going to get it right this time. and then he wrote, However, 25 years later, things have

Re: Re: Markets and socialism

2000-07-14 Thread michael
The story I got was that Utah wanted to show that it was not just a bunch of Yahoos, so they gave a space to the econ. department. Now, they have been told, no more lefties. Hire conventionally. I do not think that there is a single major department that would intentionally hire a lefty today.

Re: Up a Hayek in a kayak without a paddle

2000-07-14 Thread Doug Henwood
Timework Web wrote: That is unless one wants to go all the way back to 1946 and the very trenchant observation that the fashion for Hayek has nothing to do with objections to planning per se -- corporations do it all the time -- it is selectively an objection to DEMOCRATIC planning on behalf of

Question for Henwood

2000-07-14 Thread Timework Web
I have the superficial impression that second quarter earnings reports coming out are remarkably strong. Any idea what's going on here, Doug? Temps Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant

Harry Magdoff on market socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Louis Proyect
A letter from Harry Magdoff to Frank Roosevelt and David Belkin, the editors of "Why Market Socialism", appears in the May 1995 Monthly Review. In explaining why Monthly Review chose not to review the new book, the MR editors state in a preface to Magdoff's letter that the perspective on the

BLS Daily Report

2000-07-14 Thread Richardson_D
BLS DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, JULY 13, 2000 TODAY'S RELEASE: "U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes - June 2000" indicates that the U.S. Import Price Index increased 0.8 percent in June. The increase was attributable to a rise in petroleum prices; prices for nonpetroleum imports were

Re: Markets and socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Timework Web
michael perelman wrote, Now, they have been told, no more lefties. Hire conventionally. Presumably it was "the free market in ideas" that told them and not some bureaucratic command structure. Or am I feigning naivety? Temps Walker Sandwichman and

Re: Re: Re: Re: Up a Hayek in a kayak without apaddle

2000-07-14 Thread Doug Henwood
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Carrol, haven't you heard of efficient market theory? There are no inefficiencies in a capitalist market economy. Those two sentences use two different meanings of "efficient." The second uses it in the colloquial sense, of minimizing waste. The first uses it in the

Re: wsa, again

2000-07-14 Thread Jim Devine
At 11:02 AM 7/14/00 -0400, you wrote: As Joan Robinson once reputedly said (I've never found the reference), the only thing worse than being exploited by capital is not being exploited by capital. the Joan Robinson quote: "As we see nowadays in South-East Asia or the Caribbean, the misery

Re: Re: Re: Markets and socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Jim Devine
Bell Labs was a major innovator for many decades, but as soon as the phone companies were broken up, Bell Labs switched to market research from pure science or engineering. so Lucent (nee Bell Labs) has shifted dramatically away from fundamental research (as I've suspected)? Jim Devine

Re: Harry Magdoff on market socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Jim Devine
Harry Magdoff wrote: The underlying assumption of the essays in 'Why Market Socialism' is that central planning inevitably requires bureaucratic control over every detail of production and distribution. IMHO, the role of central planning should be greatest for the most abstract and general

Re: Re: The Rise and Future Demise of World-Systems A

2000-07-14 Thread Jim Devine
At 11:49 AM 7/14/00 -0400, you wrote: The Hayek arguments assume only enough centralization to have a system count as planned. Democracy would, if anything, make the problems worse, because there woiuld be more information to coordinate and more pressure groups to accommodate. so we're

Re: Question for Henwood

2000-07-14 Thread Timework Web
What I meant was: is there any way to distinguish between the economic cake and the strategic accounting icing in these earnings reports? I'm wondering if the icing -- if there's more of that than usual this qtr. -- might have to do with worries about future prospects for financing. Temps

Re: Re: Re: Re: Markets and socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Michael Perelman
very much so, but not to market research, but to market-oriented research. Jim Devine wrote: Bell Labs was a major innovator for many decades, but as soon as the phone companies were broken up, Bell Labs switched to market research from pure science or engineering. so Lucent (nee Bell

Re: Markets and socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Hans Ehrbar
We at the Econ Department at the University of Utah have been taking turns, sometimes hiring neoclassical economists or econometricians, and sometimes radicals. Whenever a mainstream position has to be filled, the hiring committee works very hard to get someone congenial with the heterodox

Re: Re: M once again

2000-07-14 Thread Jim Devine
At 06:00 PM 7/13/00 -0400, you wrote: There are no [analytical philosophy] figures of the stature of Russell or Wittgenstein, or even Quine or Sellars. The field is treading water. This is not just the case with analytical philosophy. "Contintental" philosophy isn't going anywhere either. I

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Up a Hayek in a kayak without a paddle

2000-07-14 Thread Carrol Cox
Doug Henwood wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Carrol, haven't you heard of efficient market theory? There are no inefficiencies in a capitalist market economy. Those two sentences use two different meanings of "efficient." The second uses it in the colloquial sense, of minimizing waste.

Costa Rica

2000-07-14 Thread Jim Devine
from a CHOICE review of Marc Edelman's book, _Peasants against Globalization_ (Stanford, 1999): "Edelman argues that the decision by the Costa Rican government to turn toward neoliberal and global market policies in the 1980s sparked a wave of peasant movements He shows that Costa Rican

Re: Markets and socialism

2000-07-14 Thread JKSCHW
Frank is a Solidarity member, friend of mine, teaches at U-Mich. His usual work is extremely technical. I can follow most economist's math, but not Frank's. I am glad to hear that he is now doing some empirical work. Lou P writes: Some professor named Frank Thompson, whose work I was not

Re: Re: Markets and socialism

2000-07-14 Thread JKSCHW
Actually, Matthew Evangelista has established that the Star Wars hoax did not induce the Soviets to increase military expenditures. Soviet growth rates are a vexed matter. Your statement of the matter represents the normal view as of, say, 1985, and it still may be right, but there were other

Re: Re: Markets and socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Jim Devine
At 02:18 PM 7/14/00 -0400, you wrote: Frank is a Solidarity member, friend of mine, teaches at U-Mich. His usual work is extremely technical. I can follow most economist's math, but not Frank's. I am glad to hear that he is now doing some empirical work. He's a friend of mine, too, and I'm

Re: Re: Re: To glib or not too glib?

2000-07-14 Thread JKSCHW
Jim D says: bankruptcy _is_ a form of bail-out. Quite right, from a legal point of view. It's supposed to give the debtor either a chance to reorganize or a fresh start, while giving the creditors a fair id meagre settlement. However, and this is the point, it shuts down or reorganizes

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Rise and Future Demise of World-Systems Analysis

2000-07-14 Thread Doug Henwood
Brad De Long wrote: So if in a decade Mexico, Brazil, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic are in the position that SK and Taiwan are now, you will conclude... what? That history has reversed itself? That 5 countries out of over 200 in the World Bank's World Development Indicators don't

Re: Humpty Dumpty, deja vu

2000-07-14 Thread JKSCHW
I don't need these gratutiouus insults. I will explain just once, then if Temps can't be any more civil or any smarter, I will ignore him. In 1975, analytical philosophy was exciting because it seemed that we were putting an impressive but wrongheaded project (logical positivism) behind us,

Analaytical Philosophy

2000-07-14 Thread JKSCHW
Well, AP is _now_ just clear thinking, but it is so in a certain tradition, the one I described in my posts that derives from Russell and Wittgenstein, the positivists, Quine, etc. AP is self-defined in part by reference to others who refer to these writers and each other. So, for example, I

More n' More Cap's in CCP

2000-07-14 Thread Stephen E Philion
Friday, July 14, 2000 SCMP Capitalists infiltrating party, article warns JASPER BECKER Too many private businessmen are joining the Communist Party, an article in the party's monthly ideological magazine, Zhongliu, has warned. In some coastal areas, half of the new members in small towns and

Chinese new left

2000-07-14 Thread Louis Proyect
Louis Proyect wrote: In spring the daily CP newspaper published letters from students at the University of Peking denouncing their professors, whom they considered to be too liberal. Anti-globalization nationalists, part of the new left, are very critical towards social inequalities, which

Re: Re: Re: Re: Up a Hayek in a kayak without a paddle

2000-07-14 Thread JKSCHW
Jim says: The problem with [the Hayek argument] is that it's not talking about a real-world situation but instead about ideal models inside economists' heads. I am presenting the argument abstractly, but I think it is amply confirmed the real world experience of planning. Market

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Rise and Future Demise of World-Systems

2000-07-14 Thread JKSCHW
I never denied Michael's point. I don't knwo enough about this. But in the Schweickart model I advocate, new investment is planned, so if there is a problem there with markets, we need to worry about it in market socialism of that variety. --jks In a message dated Fri, 14 Jul 2000 12:27:44 AM

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Rise and Future Demise of World-Systems Analysis

2000-07-14 Thread JKSCHW
As I dsaid, in the Schweickart model, investment is planned, so this wouldn't be a problem with socialist markets. In a message dated Fri, 14 Jul 2000 12:35:07 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: At 12:04 AM 07/14/2000 -0400, you wrote: What system provides

Re: Re: To glib or not too glib?

2000-07-14 Thread JKSCHW
Yoshie says: That the market rations resources "efficiently" through bankruptcies doesn't sound like an attractive argument for market socialism with which to appeal to working people, no? So you would keep in business enterprises that waste time and other resources and make stuff nobody

Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: M once again

2000-07-14 Thread JKSCHW
Well, I would not want to be held accountable fdor some of the dumb shit that I pulled as a student radical long ago. Would you? --jks In a message dated Fri, 14 Jul 2000 2:45:51 PM Eastern Daylight Time, "Brown, Martin (NCI)" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: No, just his character.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Harry Magdoff on market socialism

2000-07-14 Thread JKSCHW
Luo says that the "general desire for a better life" is enough of an incentive for everyone to tell the truth, even if that means making oneself work harder with fewer resources, or voting to disrupt your life by shutting down an inefficient enterprise or even a line of work (think of

Re: Re: Re: Re: Harry Magdoff on market socialism

2000-07-14 Thread JKSCHW
Oh, I agree with you entirely. It's arguing with people who have not heard about the calculation problem that drives me to rhetorical excesses. It's a bit late in the day to wake up to the idea that there may be a problem with planning. The problems with markets we (at least) know. --jks In a

Re: Re: Re: Markets and socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Eugene Coyle
Larry Summers has discovered "the new natural monopolies" -- where monopoly profits are required to motivate investment. See his speech in early May -- "The New Wealth of Nations" Remarks by Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers Hambrecht Quist Technology Conference San Francisco, CA Brad

Re: Re: Up a Hayek in a kayak without a paddle

2000-07-14 Thread Eugene Coyle
Doug Henwood wrote: Timework Web wrote: That is unless one wants to go all the way back to 1946 and the very trenchant observation that the fashion for Hayek has nothing to do with objections to planning per se -- corporations do it all the time -- it is selectively an objection to

Re: Re: RE: Re: M once again

2000-07-14 Thread Michael Perelman
Yes, Justin. It is better to argue on merits of ideas. I can tell some very positive stories about Roemer as a person told to me by former students who went to Davis without accepting his ideas. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And this means what? That his arguments are defective? --jks --

Re: Re: Re: Markets and socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Michael Perelman
Incidentally, Bill Casey got the Saudis to jigger the oil price in exchange for military weapons, further disrupting the Soviet economy. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Actually, Matthew Evangelista has established that the Star Wars hoax did not induce the Soviets to increase military

Re: To glib or not too glib?

2000-07-14 Thread Michael Perelman
Or to break union contracts. Doug Henwood wrote: It also is a way to handle firms that may be operationally ok, but which have been saddled with debt by financial parasites. Or a way - e.g. Manville - to avoid paying damage claims. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State

Re: Re: Re: Up a Hayek in a kayak without a paddle

2000-07-14 Thread Doug Henwood
Eugene Coyle wrote: Both ends of this marvelous corporate decision-making totally missed the mark. Low prices led to no orders. Now high prices lead to voluminous orders. Odd. So much for the market and the taking into account of prices and demand. Gosh, I don't know how capitalism has

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Harry Magdoff on market socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Jim Devine
Justin wrote: But the argument is general, and it is confirmed by all kinds of planning experiences, capitalist (think of the Pentagon!), monopologtsic, as well as state socialist. actually, the Pentagon does a very good job at planning, to serve the military and the arms manufacturers. We

Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: M once again

2000-07-14 Thread Jim Devine
I don't know John Roemer well at all, but more than one person I've talked to has said that his personality didn't change at all going from being a high-powered PL leader to being a high-powered academic. At 03:49 PM 7/14/00 -0400, you wrote: Well, I would not want to be held accountable fdor

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Rise and Future Demise of World-Systems Analysis

2000-07-14 Thread Jim Devine
At 03:43 PM 7/14/00 -0400, you wrote: As I dsaid, in the Schweickart model, investment is planned, so this wouldn't be a problem with socialist markets. if investment is planned, then the Hayek critique applies and the Schweickart model falls apart, right? or maybe the Hayek critique isn't as

RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: M once again

2000-07-14 Thread Brown, Martin (NCI)
Yes, I am fully accountable. End of discussion. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, July 14, 2000 3:50 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:21690] Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: M once again Well, I would not want to be held accountable fdor

RE: Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: M once again

2000-07-14 Thread Brown, Martin (NCI)
Ah, someone got the point! -Original Message- From: Jim Devine [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, July 14, 2000 4:22 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:21700] Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: M once again I don't know John Roemer well at all, but more than one person I've talked to

Re: Harry Magdoff on market socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Michael Perelman
My main complaint about the idea of market socialism is that it does nothing to go beyond the sort of incentives that contaminate life in a capitalist economy. I would prefer to take a chance that people can go beyond the limited incentives of selfishness that dominate market society. I may

Re: Re: Re: Re: Markets and socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Michael Perelman
Wow! Summers has discovered Schumpeter! Eugene Coyle wrote: Larry Summers has discovered "the new natural monopolies" -- where monopoly profits are required to motivate investment. See his speech in early May -- "The New Wealth of Nations" Remarks by Treasury Secretary Lawrence H.

Re: Up a Hayek in a kayak without a paddle

2000-07-14 Thread Yoshie Furuhashi
Gosh, I don't know how capitalism has survived all these centuries, eliminating all rival systems, if the capitalists can't do anything right. I think capitalism's critics and enemies will have to do a lot better than come up with single examples of bad decisions. This is the corollary of

3/5 off a man: a step back with the

2000-07-14 Thread Michael Perelman
Under the new census rules, I understand that a black from the inner city sentenced to a rural prison will be counted as a resident of that community. As a result, the rural communities will get more funds relative to the inner city. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State

Re: Re: Harry Magdoff on market socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Doug Henwood
Michael Perelman wrote: My main complaint about the idea of market socialism is that it does nothing to go beyond the sort of incentives that contaminate life in a capitalist economy. I would prefer to take a chance that people can go beyond the limited incentives of selfishness that

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Rise and Future Demise of World-Systems Analysis

2000-07-14 Thread JKSCHW
I have long troubled over investment planning. It is a weak point in Schweickart's theory from an efficiency point of view. I think we may have to suffer those inefficiencies for equity reasons. Without denocratic control of new investment, it is hard to see how you have socialism at all. But

Re: Re: The Rise and Future Demise of World-Systems Analysis

2000-07-14 Thread Carrol Cox
Rod Hay wrote: Actually I think the Hayek-Mises critique of planning is quite easy to answer. The problem is not information. The problem is designing institutions which provide the incentives for technological improvements. The premise that technological improvements (in the abstract)

Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: M once again

2000-07-14 Thread JKSCHW
Great for you. I'm not. I did some pretty stupid things when I was younger. Of course, now that I am older and wiser, I can be accountable. --jks In a message dated Fri, 14 Jul 2000 4:31:39 PM Eastern Daylight Time, "Brown, Martin (NCI)" [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Yes, I am fully

market socialism, etc.

2000-07-14 Thread Jim Devine
1. Justin writes: Please show me how the Hayekian argument I have been running depends on any particular features of planning that are peculiar to a Soviet-style planning process. It doesn't. The argument is abosolutely general. Waving the words "decentralized" and "democratic" doesn't expalin

Re: Re: Harry Magdoff on market socialism

2000-07-14 Thread JKSCHW
Well, if you want socialism to transform humans into a purer sort of creature, maybe that is a problem. What I hope for is that socialism would feed the hungry, cloth the naked, shelter the unhoused, and make work available to all and reasonably decent for many people for whom it is a torment

$145 billion fine for Tobacco Capital !

2000-07-14 Thread Chris Burford
Glory and Honour to Stanley and Susan Rosenblatt, lawyers for the class action against tobacco capital in winning the judgement today from a Florida Court of exemplary punitive damages of $145 billion for 700,000 sufferers! No matter that the companies will haggle, if allowed, for the next 75

Re: Re: Re: Harry Magdoff on market socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Louis Proyect
How do you propose to get to a nonmarket socialism? Seems to me the only hope is to bend, push, modify, transform what exists now, which means, in Diane Elson's phrase, socializing markets. It seems abstract and adventurist to talk about any postmarket socialism as if you could just pull it

Re: Re: Up a Hayek in a kayak without a paddle

2000-07-14 Thread Doug Henwood
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Gosh, I don't know how capitalism has survived all these centuries, eliminating all rival systems, if the capitalists can't do anything right. I think capitalism's critics and enemies will have to do a lot better than come up with single examples of bad decisions.

Re: Re: Re: Markets and socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Brad De Long
Actually, Matthew Evangelista has established that the Star Wars hoax did not induce the Soviets to increase military expenditures. Soviet growth rates are a vexed matter. Your statement of the matter represents the normal view as of, say, 1985, and it still may be right, but there were other

Re: Re: Re: Harry Magdoff on market socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Michael Perelman
Doug, Of course I have no specific proposals at this time. Changes would require a great deal of experimentation. So far no society has had the opportunity to really make such experiments, without tremendous outside pressures. Neither Cuban nor the Soviet Union had such a chance. Doug

Re: Re: Re: Re: Markets and socialism

2000-07-14 Thread JKSCHW
No. You can use it, but it's public domain. I'd appreciate acknowledgements if it's that good. --jks "... as usual with planned economies, no good and accurate information was available." Oh, that's cruel! Oh, that's mean! I'm going to have to remember that. May I purchase intellectual

Re: Re: Re: Re: Harry Magdoff on market socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Doug Henwood
Louis Proyect wrote: What does it mean to "socialize markets"? This sounds like Chris Burford's idea. It can't work, needless to say. Reforms like the Tobin Tax, etc. are all well and good, but socialism has a completely different agenda. It involves dissolving the old state apparatus,

Re: Harry Magdoff on market socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Yoshie Furuhashi
Michael Perelman wrote: My main complaint about the idea of market socialism is that it does nothing to go beyond the sort of incentives that contaminate life in a capitalist economy. I would prefer to take a chance that people can go beyond the limited incentives of selfishness that

RE: $145 billion fine for Tobacco Capital !

2000-07-14 Thread Brown, Martin (NCI)
A not too-well recognized hero in this whole struggle is Stanton Glantz at Stanford University. He has been instrumental in bringing secret corporate documents of the big tobacco companies into the light of day and also in promoting the perspective that anti-smoking means a critique of corporate

Re: Up a Hayek in a kayak without a paddle

2000-07-14 Thread Yoshie Furuhashi
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: You also wrote a while ago: Someone with an income of $25,000 is richer than 98% of the world's population; even the bottom decile of USers have incomes higher than 2/3 of the world's population. Sounds like a fatal defect, from the point of view that deplores relative

Re: RE: $145 billion fine for Tobacco Capital !

2000-07-14 Thread Michael Perelman
Martin, I did not know that Glantz was part of your group. Yes, he showed enormous integrity. What is more surprising is that his case was perhaps the only time I know of where the administration of the University of California acted with integrity and courage. "Brown, Martin (NCI)" wrote: A

Re: Chinese new left

2000-07-14 Thread Stephen E Philion
Henry wrote: The importance of this development is that the youths of China have finally rediscover the right path, unlike the misguided students in Tiananmen Square in 1989. This sounds like hyperbole to me. None of the Marxists I know in China in their correspondences with me are seeing a

RE: Re: RE: $145 billion fine for Tobacco Capital !

2000-07-14 Thread Brown, Martin (NCI)
A sister group at Stanford. Both groups published "expose" pamphlets about UC and Stanford respectively. You know, youthful indiscretions we should now be ashamed of. I think you are right that he is now at UC not Stanford. -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [mailto:[EMAIL

Re: Harry Magdoff on market socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Yoshie Furuhashi
How do you propose to get to a nonmarket socialism? Seems to me the only hope is to bend, push, modify, transform what exists now, which means, in Diane Elson's phrase, socializing markets. It seems abstract and adventurist to talk about any postmarket socialism as if you could just pull it

Re: Re: Re: Harry Magdoff on market socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Michael Perelman
Justin, where you see socialism, I see the market. I do not trust any kinds of markets to "feed the hungry, cloth the naked, shelter the unhoused, and make work available to all and reasonably decent for many people for whom it is a torment or a deadening bore." [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Re: market socialism, etc.

2000-07-14 Thread JKSCHW
Jim: Attacking Hayek for being too neoclassical is like attacking Marx for being too neoclassical. Hayek, Mises, and the Austrians dislike NCE for many of the same reasons that Marxists do: it's a poor description of actual markets (this is more Hayek than Mises) and does not correctly model

Re: Re: Up a Hayek in a kayak without a paddle

2000-07-14 Thread Doug Henwood
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Well, the first Marxist lesson is that what looks like "'economic'/technical" issues can't be divorced from what looks like "social/political/moral" ones. The system couldn't have reproduced and expanded itself economically without state repression of various kinds

Re: Re: market socialism, etc.

2000-07-14 Thread michael
A paper at the History of Economics session connected Hayek with A. Carr-Saunders, an important eugenicist, who apparently inspired much of Hayek's thinking on spontaneous order. I also used C.-S., many years ago, because I was impressed with his analysis of pre-industrial women's ability to

Re: Re: Re: Re: Up a Hayek in a kayak without a paddle

2000-07-14 Thread Eugene Coyle
Doug, any reader of the Wall St. Journal could multiply examples like this by some large exponent. But it wasn't my point to argue from this that Capitalism is about to topple. My point is that markets aren't all that omniscient -- or anything like even perceptive. Gene Coyle Doug Henwood

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Harry Magdoff on market socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Louis Proyect
Oh right, struggle is what matters. The institutional arrangements will take care of themselves if a properly righteous attitude is applied to the problem. Doug What are institutional arrangements? I am afraid we are speaking different languages. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list:

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Harry Magdoff on market socialism

2000-07-14 Thread Doug Henwood
Louis Proyect wrote: Oh right, struggle is what matters. The institutional arrangements will take care of themselves if a properly righteous attitude is applied to the problem. Doug What are institutional arrangements? I am afraid we are speaking different languages. How do get food on

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