I wrote:
However, this is a reactive, after-the-fact morality, based on
extrapolations which have already occurred
That should be:
However, this is a reactive, after-the-fact morality, based on
extrapolations from events which have already occurred...
It could of course be the case, that a
Tales from the Left Coast: True Stories of Hollywood Stars and Their
Outrageous Politics
By James Hirsen
Hardcover
It's about time someone popped the balloon on Hollywood's elitist
liberalism. Most of us are aware of it, but for the first time James Hirsen,
a NewsMax.com columnist, uncovers just
Hi Ken,
I have a reply, I have put in some headings to help you to see the substance
of Wolfowitz's argument. Obviously, I cannot go into full depth at this
point, I cannot claim to give a fully objective interpretation, because time
is at a premium and I have to write now what I can, even if
BRUSSELS, July 23 (AFP) - The European Commission foresees Germany's deficit
hitting four percent of GDP this year, in breach of EU rules, and France's
heading towards that level, according to a document obtained Wednesday by
AFX News, AFP's financial news subsidiary. In a briefing note for the
: Eubulides [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 7:36 AM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] A story of nickel and dimes
- Original Message -
From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED]
You get all these Marxists talkin' about the Leninist theory of party
building, stuff
Jim,
This may help:
Any cognitive scientist who seeks to describe the conservative and liberal
worldviews is constrained by at least two adequacy conditions. First, the
worldviews must makle the collection of political stands on each side into
two natural categories. For example, the liberal
In the armed forces, they teach you to handle a gun, and identify your
target carefully, before taking aim and shooting, but now Wolfowitz has a
new idea...
Posted on Mon, Jul. 28, 2003
Wolfowitz: U.S. Must Act on 'Murky' Info
WILLIAM C. MANN
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon's
1. NUCLEAR TESTS NOT UNHEALTHY
The French President, Jacques Chirac, claims that decades of controversial
nuclear tests in the South Pacific did not give Pacific Islanders cancer.
On the eve of his first trip to French Polynesia since ordering the last
round of tests in 1995, Mr Chirac told a
Just to show that there's different ways of supporting workers in uniform,
and that the issue must be handled thoughtfully, here's an insightful clip
from USA in Review, dated April 1, 2003 (April Fool's Day).
An Open Letter to Supporters Concerning Our First Visit to the Wounded at
Bethesda
France's Five Cardinal Sins Over Iraq
André Glucksmann
International Herald Tribune
February 22, 2003
PARIS: The usual trans-Atlantic spats are growing into a full-blown divorce.
It is time everyone swept off his own doorstep and closely examined his
government's responsibilities. In my view,
A brief review of : Penser la violence, by André Glucksmann (Editions Robert
Laffont, 2002)
The end of the Cold War did not mean the end of History, but the beginning
of the new era. The tragic events of the 11th of September dramatically
confirm the triumph of Nihilism. Indeed, ancestral
Remember how I reported that CEO Scott Hand of Inco Ltd. chief of the Goro
nickel mining project in New Caledonia, thanked Jacques Chirac at a mining
conference in Kone for the supportive attitude of your officials in
addressing French participation in providing financial support for the
project
I was reading a simplistic economic paper very critical of Cuban government
economic policy at:
http://lanic.utexas.edu/la/cb/cuba/asce/cuba9/rbetan.pdf
Has any learned friend of ours come across literature which suggests a
specific constructive mix of government policies which would improve the
...the issue is not more versus less government [or big government versus
small government], but rather to whose interests the government gives
effect. Thus, a movement from more to less stringent requirements for the
emissions of polluting firms is not a move from more to less government
I found: Fewer Jobs, Slower Growth: Military Spending Drains the Economy
by David Gold and A Prop, Not a Burden: The U.S. Economy Relies on
Militarism by James Cypher, in Dollars Sense, issue 242, July/August
2002.
Regrettably these are not available on-line, surprising in the light of the
Mr Shemano:
Thanks for the humour, I haven't gone out today. I am not aware that you are
a conservative, other than in the sense that we are all conservatives in
some aspects of our lives, or at some point in time when we run out. If you
read the story that you posted yourself, you will see that
Michael P.,
I don't know anything about Brad DeLong, but what is the difference between
centristism and centrism anyhow ? Traditionally, socialist centrism
means oscillating between revolutionary (radical) and reformist positions,
seeking to occupy an intermediate political space; bourgeois
not qualify as an anarchist--more an aspiring
member of the Young Hegelian Gun Club.
--- Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Very wise ! Don't think we have had a point of
genuine disagreement yet,
except you're older and more streetwise than me, I
don't underestimate you
at all
Question: In modern information age capitalism, under what conditions is a
slave a slave ?
J.
The number of young people in the world has risen
BY JOAQUIN ORAMAS
THE world's population is on the rise, highlighted by an increasing number
of young people. Adolescents count for one sixth of the planet, and in the
industrialized nations over 40% of the population is under 20 years old.
The
Peacekeepers arrive in Solomons
An Australian-led peacekeeping force has started to arrive in the Solomon
Islands to restore order and disarm ethnic gangs.
The first Hercules C-130 landed at Honiara airport shortly after dawn on
Thursday, with other soldiers landing from the amphibious assault
The most coveted jobs in Cuba are now in a tourist sector that is the
country's biggest earner. The dollar became a legal currency in 1993 as
Castro sought to refloat an economy which had been propped up by the old
Soviet Union. It rules supreme, at least in the minds of many Cubans.
Those who
It's a bit difficult to give suggestions if one doesn't know what themes you
are covering. Paul Hirst Grahame Thompson, Globalisation in Question (2nd
edition) provides good clear discussion of empirical magnitudes in the
international movement of capital, goods and services. There are also some
The reason why you cannot trust someone like Horowitz is because his
integrity is highly questionable. He was once a convinced Marxist who
delighted in the company of various wellknown Marxist intellectuals. Indeed
he edited a Monthly Review publication on Marxist economics. Now he prances
around
Michael P.,
When I flew to Switzerland end of April, I noticed in the UK Financial Times
a special report on Intellectual Property issues (Wednesday April 30, 2003,
p. I-IV). Thought I would draw your attention to that.
J.
. it was interesting.
Jurriaan Bendien wrote:
Michael P.,
When I flew to Switzerland end of April, I noticed in the UK Financial
Times
a special report on Intellectual Property issues (Wednesday April 30,
2003,
p. I-IV). Thought I would draw your attention to that.
J.
--
Michael Perelman
World military expenditure, which has been increasing since 1998,
accelerated sharply in 2002, increasing by 6% in real terms to $794 billion
in current prices, accounting for 2.5% of world GDP, and $128 per capita.a
The current level of world military expenditure is 14 per cent higher in
real
At this moment I use socialist in the sense of the list of tasks I shall set
myself to do, to get to the other word.
Yes, diet is important. No man lives by PEN-L alone.
J.
Is there any recent serious literature on the multiplier effect of
military expenditure ? One can strike a ratio between military budgets and
GDP etc., but it is virtually impossible to isolate a specifically military
industry from net output data, since there are relatively few contractors
whose
Regulation is not popular in America. But it could regain its popularity,
if the alternative is a continual loss of jobs in every
state.
Even so, the Bush administration has in reality regulated a lot. As
mentioned in a previous PEN-L post, regulations governing US business
reached an all-time
Hi Mike,
Great you're back again. I don't think that Jim should eat insects. But look
at it this way, if present trends continue, then within a few hundred years
there might be little else to eat. A Toronto research institute did research
on this, and found that if you fry them properly, certain
...the issue is not more versus less government [or big government versus
small government], but rather to whose interests the government gives
effect.
Hi Ian, of course you are correct here, your point is excellent, this is
what I like to call excellent reframing, I continue to marvel at your
meek rats and roaches inheriting the
Earth, yes quite possible, as long as most humans
persist in fetishizing commodity production.
Hi-ho,
Mike B)
--- Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hi Mike,
Great you're back again. I don't think that Jim
should eat insects. But look
Louis,
You are correct. Ceteris paribus, slavery (formal or de facto) in modern
capitalism is bound to increase in the future. This has to do not just with
combined and uneven development, but with the quantitative extent of the
unevenness and the exploitability of the whole human being with
(Julio Huato ask me to forward this to PEN-L List)
Ronald Coase's work deals with issues that bourgeois economics had
previously swept under the rug. So it effectively reintroduces them into
modern economics. How effectively is another matter. These are issues we
usually associate with Marx.
- US National Debt
I never said nor meant to imply that
anything you said was (or is) stupid.
mbs
-Original Message-
From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Jurriaan
Bendien
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2003 2:56 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Question - US
Quitting the rat race to get a life
New Zealand Herald, 20.07.2003
By GEOFF CUMMING
On John Clark's website is a eulogy to his wife, Jude, who died suddenly in
April. Life hangs by a thin thread, it concludes. Procrastinate at your
peril.
Ten years ago, Clark walked away from a six-figure income
(If you liked Stanley Kubrick's last movie, Eyes Wide Shut, check out this
story from The Observer).
A woman's touch
Girls-only strip clubs, porn films directed by women, handbag-friendly
dildos and bedroom toys that are not for the boys... The past five years
have seen an extraordinary shift in
I'm famous again, for not doin' anything, check out this PEN-L recycler at
Golems Class Struggle Portal (they interpreted it as a bummer):
http://g0lem.net/HTH/phpnuke/modules.php?name=Newsfile=articlesid=57
It may also give the Chinese Government some extra bargaining strength in
the controversy over North Korea.
J.
Thanks Max. I guess I asked a stupid question, but your answer is good !
What it proves to me, at the very least, is that the disregard many
Americans show for politics (leading to electoral shambles at the most basic
level) can be very costly for them. But the question we then have to ask,
given
(note: 1 NZ dollar = 0.57 US dollar)
Down and out on the Poor List
New Zealand Herald, 19.07.2003
By TIM WATKIN
The annual parade of elite wealth hit the streets yesterday as the business
weekly National Business Review published its latest list of the country's
wealthiest 183 individuals and
NZ brothel law condemned at UN
19.07.2003
By HELEN TUNNAH, deputy political editor
Members of a key women's committee at the United Nations have asked the New
Zealand Government to overturn the law to decriminalise prostitution.
Hungarian Kristina Morval told the UN committee prostitution
Probably some of both, I would say - although in order to understand this,
one would need to do an investigation beyond a legal verdict of homicide and
suicide. It's dreadful, regrettable news, but even so, it never ceases to
amaze me how, in bourgeois society, a social and political issue (in
Another material basis might be, where the employment contracts of higher
executives are based, in part or as a whole, on performance, and this
performance may be evaluated according to the ability of the executive to
solve new problems which arise in the conduct of business. Therefore, the
The Boskin Commission found that the CPI is overstated by as little as .6%
and as much as 1.5%, from what I can figure out, the upward bias being
probably in the range of 0.65 percent, down from 1.1 percent for the
1995-6 period..
I haven't read Robert Gordon's paper though, and the percentage
The Concord coalition has some useful articles on overstatement and
understatement, see e.g.
http://www.concordcoalition.org/entitlements/cpi0598.html
Does anyone know of literature where an attempt is made to express the
current magnitude of the US National Debt (and more specifically total
local/central government internal/external debt, and total private
internal/external debt) in comprehensible, meaningful comparisons ?
Doing a rough
I discussed the concept of the virtual company with a Marxist friend once,
and he had an idea. He said, you know how Marx sketches the capitalist
production process as the circuit:
M-C(MP+LP)-P-C'-M'
[_]
Well, he said, the virtual company is the same formula, but then it goes
A few weeks ago, wrote Wendy Murphy, a professor at Harvard Law School, I
asked my students (all women) to raise their hands if they believe in social
equality for women: they all raised their hands. Then I asked if they
believe in economic equality for women: they all raised their hands. Then I
How about this one:
Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims.
Frederic Bastiat, author of Economic Harmonies, criticised by Karl Marx.
Oops I googled to check if I got it correct. To my great surprise, I as a
naive young socialist was one day accosted in New Zealand
As far as I understand it, a theme in the controversy about mercantile
capitalism was whether you could call a society such as 18th century Holland
with developed commercial relations (but still a large rural population;
industrialisation took off late in Holland, namely in the last quarter of
the
I thought that a recession was a reduction in real GDP growth and a
depression or slump negative real growth.
As far as I know, real GDP growth without employment growth is not new, this
happened as well in some years in the 1980s or 1990s.
Personally, I consider the discussion petty useless
Does anybody have any data on the trend in real net new investment in the US
economy in recent years ? I am referring here to net additions to fixed
assets, adjusted for inflation, in total and for the major economic sectors
(manufacturing, agriculture, services etc.), this is sometimes referred
Is that like a mid-life crisis ? :)
J.
- Original Message -
From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2003 11:45 PM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] It's over !
Jurriaan Bendien wrote:
I thought that a recession was a reduction in real GDP growth
Thanks a lot Max, that is helpful ! I am just not so familiar with US
sources. To be honest, I am impressed by the quality of presentation of NIPA
data sets you refer me to. When I was a Phd student in New Zealand in the
1980s, I had to go on my bicycle to the Stats Dept to get a print-out of the
Max,
One other thing: I do not ask this question to play silly buggers -
according to the Bendien theory, a much more sensitive indicator of actual
real growth, and real growth prospects, is the current level of real net
additions to fixed assets in strategic sectors of the economy. The snag
is,
Revolt spreads as more bills go out
New Zealand Herald, 18.07.2003
By BERNARD ORSMAN and ANNE BESTON
The ratepayer revolt against Auckland Regional Council rates is building,
and the first bills will arrive in letterboxes south of the Harbour Bridge
next week.
Thousands of homes in the western
or for the U.S.?
mbs
-Original Message-
From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Jurriaan
Bendien
Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2003 6:51 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Question on real net new invesment in the US
Max,
One other thing: I do not ask this question to play
France - A wave of working class mobilisation
The period between mid-March and 19 June saw the largest wave of industrial
protests in France since the Winter of 1995, when a railway strike developed
into a
Thanks Louis for the ref !
J.
ill lead the way?
Song: Its a Scandal! Its An Outrage!
Band: Rodgers And Hammerstein
Album: Oklahoma! Broadway Musical
[Peddler]
Oh!
Trapped!...
Tricked! ...
Hoodwinked! ...
Ambushed! ...
[Men]
Friend,
Whut's on yer mind?
Why do you walk
Around and around,
With yer hands
Folded behind,
And yer
In Holland it is sometimes trendy in management circles to hire professional
philosophers as consultants - philosophy provides freedom for critical
thought, hence a philosopher might identify or reframe problems in a way
which a more narrow-minded business approach might fail to do, through a
Hope you are OK ? Anything I can do, just ask.
J.
- Original Message -
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 7:02 PM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Back to slavery
My writing is totally incoherent. Here's what I meant to say:
Contrary to
.
Regards
Jurriaan
- Original Message -
From: Eubulides [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 9:36 PM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Back to slavery
- Original Message -
From: Jurriaan Bendien [EMAIL PROTECTED]
In Holland it is sometimes trendy in management
Two web sites launched in Granma
. One on Martí's ideas and the Moncada action and the other for the 14th Pan
American Games.
Can be found at:
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/marti-moncada
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/eventos/14panam
BY RAISA PAGES-Granma daily-
TWO new web sites, one dedicated to
As far as I know, you are incorrect. Luxemburg coined the slogan, the idea
was expressed first by Engels.
J.
- Original Message -
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2003 3:41 AM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] John Nichols on James Weinstein on
In 1848 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels argued in the Communist Manifesto
that the historic fight between the oppressor and oppressed ended 'either in
a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of
the contending classes'. Engels said that 'bourgeois society stands at
Chris:
Marxdoes not say that profit and wages are a true zero sum game, this is
an inadequate description. This zero-sum game is only a special case, namely the
case in which the value product is constant or declining. If the value product
is increasing, then both wages and profits can
Hi there Jurriaan --
I don't know much about you, personally, having only recently rejoined
Michael's list after an absence of some 6-7 years or so...
But I wanted to express my appreciation for your posts. Obviously, that
means I agree with you on most of what you write. :)
Aside from
Parliament goes wireless for bloggers' summit
Matthew Tempest, political correspondent
Monday July 14, 2003
Westminster is to hold a world-first tonight, when around 120 bloggers
descend on parliament for a discussion on how politicians can best use the
blogosphere to further policy and public
The Marxian value product is an alternative measure
to the conventional "value added" (net output). The value product comprises
total variable capital (roughly, salary and wage income of productive
labourincluding social wage levies, but net of income tax)plus total
surplus value (roughly,
Thank y'all for finally agreeing with me. Of course it is not simply a
matter of hope, it is also a matter of will. Some factors promote a clearly
and purposively focused will, other factors erode that will. If, for example
a person does not feel loved or accepted, or if he feels his honour and
As an example, he said, researchers making revisions to price indexes may
have been pushed to understate inflation, as such a change would result in
smaller liabilities in the Social Security system when the baby-boom
generation retires. In reality, those kinds of things do play some role.
I
considering its unfavorable resource base. Its distribution system
was not up to par. For many crops, Soviet yields were superior to those
of the US, but not their output/hour.
On Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 09:00:32AM +0200, Jurriaan Bendien wrote:
According to former actor and US president Ronald
The Dutch Financial Daily (10 July, p. 2) interviewed Clyde Prestowitz,
author of Rogue Nation - American unilateralism and the failure of Good
Intentions (Basic Books, 2003). Chief of a rightwing thinktank and
born-again Christian, Prestowitz has got himself something of a reputation
as an expert
As far as I know, reinterpretations of Hobson and JS Mill (in other words,
any theory about imperialism which is not Marxist, i.e. which does not say
that imperialism is a bad thing) were already occurring in the 1990s, they
are just becoming more prominent now, as I predicted in the 1990s (i.e.
]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 1:11 AM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Clyde Prestowitz on the meaning of neoconservatism
Jurriaan Bendien wrote:
So Lenin was actually making a specific
political intervention in an ongoing discussion, basing himself on ideas
current in his time
Critics argue that options can encourage entrepreneurs, but in many cases
during the dot.com boom, they spurred executives to bend the rules in
order to keep share prices flying. Because restricted shares have a higher
inherent value, companies give far less to employees than they would
options -
According to former actor and US president Ronald Reagan, the superior
productivity of American farming, compared to Soviet farming, was a decisive
argument for the superiority of capitalism as a social and economic system.
Yeah.
J.
- Original Message -
From: Michael Pollak [EMAIL
Me too :) Note however that slavery existed in parts of Africa before the
Western slave trade really got going.
Before addressing the economic articulations of slavery and the parameters
of slave exploitation, it is worth first emphasizing that the role of the
slave has always been defined in
Religious justification for political action in terms of God's will is, in
my opinion, the last resort of a scoundrel, who is unable to honestly
specify any reasonable relationship between political means and ends, as an
inspiration for his own actions in the political field, or acknowledge a
Sociologically, the proletarian credentials of Trotsky and Stalin were
zero, except that you can say than in some respects, their lifestyle was
proletarian for a while. But I would not exaggerate that either. To
appreciate this more fully, investigate how they actually lived, and this is
mostly on
The Howard Dean phenomenon in the USA just mirrors the Pim Fortuyn saga in
the Netherlands. The official bourgeois parties no longer do anything much
to improve the lot of the people, their themes no longer appeal, and they
are too rich and intellectually too lazy to worry about it. On the other
Well, this shows you the problem-fraught nature of genuine internationalism,
I start making comparisons which don't really hold up. In which case, I
shouldn't really be commenting on American politics and economics.
Of course I am vitally interested in America, it has an enormous influence
on the
"This was
sent to the wrong place. Sorry. By proletarian logic what is meant is that was a
person writes."
That is a
fairly intelligent comment, I would say.
"I have in
mind books like Marxism and the National Colonial Question edited by Lenin as
well as the dozen or so books and
Well there's a few slips in what I wrote. I do not exactly know how many
people Fletcher Challenge employ in New Zealand nowadays, I would need to
look it up, but it would be at least 5 percent or so. They are a very large
multinational by now, like, they would own forests in Canada and Chile etc.
I referred to non-profit local government work, that is obviously a wrong
formulation, since many local government functions are privatised,
semi-privatised or contracted out to private enterprise. It is just that
where I worked, it was mainly non-profit.
Local government agencies often have low
I have just starting reading Hilary's autobiography. Here's a snippet:
Back in 1959, I wanted to become a teacher or a nuclear PHYSICIST. Teachers
were necessary to TRAIN young citizensand without them you wouldn't have
much of a country. America needed SCIENTISTS because the RUSSIANS have
about
Actually, my sister didn't work for a Fletcher Challenge company in
Christchurch, but rather for a Brierley Investments company, a bookstore
called Whitcoulls, originally Whitcombe Tombs.
Brierley was an authorative expert in the rationalisation of capital in New
Zealand. His method of primitive
Hi Chris,
I do not necessarily hold that against you!
It is just that the song refers to the word divine and some of our more
astute readers might draw a link to Jim Devine.
But I prefer not to try to think of any correspondent as my friend,
because
you can't agree with somebody about
Hi Chris,
Good points, but I am feeling a bit gruff just now, excuse the language.
But in technical terms there is a
substantial problem about selecting information and communicating.
Correct. In the Leninist party of the type Ernest Mandel envisaged once, the
party itself would be like an
Utrecht, 1 July 1993
After a continuously declining workload, workers are increasingly more
satisfied about development, promotion and remuneration opportunities. This
is shown by a survey of the Central Bureau of Statistics among employed
people about their judgement of working conditions.
In
Oops, I forgot to acknowledge my source for the CBS story I posted. I got it
from the Dutch Tiscali website and translated it, but now I cannot find it
back again.
J.
http://www.investorwords.com/cgi-bin/getword.cgi?1604
Here come old flattop he come grooving up slowly
He got joo-joo eyeball he one holy roller
He got hair down to his knee
Got to be a joker he just do what he please
He wear no shoeshine he got toe-jam football
He got monkey finger he shoot
Hi Chris,
Have you considered that it might in fact be very difficult for the
directors of large companies to tell the truth, in view of the multifaceted
nature of the reality they are responsible for, and the social
contradictions of an economy based on private enterprise ? As regards the
Mah fellow Americans,
Tonight I wood like the opportoonity to talk to you about an isshoe that is
of great concern to the American pipple, and I am not talking about Enron
ever again, I promiss. The isshoe I wood like to address, er, talk about
tonight, concerns, concerns, eh, plagiarism.
My
The Paradox of American Power
Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone
JOSEPH S. NYE, Jr.
What role should America play in the world? What key challenges face
us in the century to come, and how should we define our national
interests? These questions have been given electrifying new
I think you should distinguish between Foucault and his writings on the one
hand, and the reception/interpretation of his writings in various
intellectual milieus on the other. I would think Foucault was to the left
of Althusser, politically, all along. Blaming post-modernist subjectivism
on
I think you should distinguish between Foucault and his writings on the one
hand, and the reception/interpretation of his writings in various
intellectual milieus on the other. I would think Foucault was to the left
of Althusser, politically, all along. Blaming post-modernist subjectivism
on
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