Re: Regulation, state, economy
Hi Ian, But didn't they offload these costs [create a beneficial set of externalities-for them] precisely because using their own security became a drain on their cash? Armies/Navies as the vanguard of socialism due to economies of scale? This was Frederic Lane's thesis in Profits from Power from which the notion of protection rents flows, Charles Tilly scooped up the idea and put it to mischievous uses. If it helps, see I. Wallerstein's essay in States and Sovereignty in the Global Economy [ Ed. by David Smith, Dorothy Solinger and Steven Topik] as his analysis is similar to yours regarding the possible future of 'the new mercenarism. Thanks for the references. The main point I am making is that whether or not security costs become a drain and who pays for those costs is not something structurally given by the capitalist mode of production in Marx's view. This is important to understand in these debates about state regulation. Doug argues capitalism is inconceivable without state regulation, I am saying it is conceivable, it is happening, and it happened already in history. If you think that the Dutch East India Company was simply a mercantile outfit you are wrong, because they established factories and plantations, and traded in slaves, in South Africa, Japan and Indonesia. Admittedly this early multinational gained its franchise from the Dutch state, but having obtained it, it was more or less a law onto itself. That is, there is no structural reason inherent in the capitalist mode of production, why security must necessarily be organised by the state, and funded through taxes. I am not trying to be dogmatically Marxist here, by referring to Marx, I am just saying that Marx was well aware of the phenomena of mercantilism, he studied a lot of history. When you look at the Dutch, English, French, German etc. bourgeois revolutions, then the striking thing is that the bourgeoisie takes over the absolutist state apparatus, and then modifies it in line with its requirements, for the rest the state stays more or less the same for quite a while. You can even discover this in legal codifications, which date back to precapitalist times. Thus, even today, the bourgeois state combines feudal institutional principles with capitalist ones. The basic class priorities of the bourgeoisie were (1) defence of private property, (2) control over the levying of tax funds and the utilisation of those funds, (3) the unification of the national market, (4) privatisation of commonly held assets, usually in that order. Obviously, the state in settler colonies emerged in a somewhat different way, even so, it modelled itself on the home country. Accumulation of private capital occurred for centuries prior to industrialisation, just as wage labour did, but if private capital could be confiscated by feudal lords or by a state, through debt, robbery or overtaxing, as frequently happened, then a cumulative dynamic of economic growth obviously could not occur. The protection of private property is therefore the most fundamental interest of the bourgeoisie, deeply rooted in its history. In Europe, there was something like an academic Marxist state derivation debate which sought to derive state forms from the logic of capital but this debate has more in common with Parsonian structural-functionalism than with Marx, because it is woefully ahistorical in its approach. It ignores what I have just said, and lacks a real understanding of primitive (more correctly, as Marx himself calls it, original) accumulation processes, and therefore is mystified by the bourgeois character of bourgeois revolutions. In their cartoon Marxism, a bourgeois revolution would be a revolution which inaugurs capitalist industrialisation, but this has nothing to do with reality, or with the real history of the bourgeoisie as a class, hence they doubt the validity of the concept again. Similar fallacies are perpetrated by the regulationist schools in France even today, in analysing structural requirements of a regime of accumulation in an ahistorical way (which often abstracts from politics or class conflicts). So anyway the capitalist mode of production (capitalism) doesn't imply any specific state form in particular, as a distinctive inherent characteristic, with a specific legal system of rights and obligations. It is the other way round: the state form is adapted to the historically contingent requirements of capital accumulation, i.e. it is an outcome of class struggles in which different fractions of the possessing classes with different interests search for a modus vivendi that happens to suit them, and this form can mutate with new organisational forms. There are security costs, faux frais of production, externalities and external costs to consider, but there is no natural law which says that those costs must be offloaded onto the state. It is just a question of what is cheaper, who has power at the time, what the development needs and
Re: Dubya and farcical Keynesianism
Thanks for the comment, Shane... You seem to have forgotten that the Keynesian and [neo]classical views are totally incompatible I think you are correct, in the 1930s depression Keynes was faced precisely with the problem of mobilising capital for employment-generating investment, but, I would draw a distinction between Keynes and some of his epigones. But I haven't got the literature handy here to m,ake the argument (I am not a professionale economist who can do it off the top of my head). Incidentally, I profited from reading your Phd Thesis in 1985, but we've come a long way since then, isn't that so... Jurriaan
Re: Getting there (was: Critical support to King George?)
On Mon, 25 Aug 2003, Jurriaan Bendien wrote: What would Lenin say if he was alive today ? He would say, the real problem is different, it is, how can you mobilise a very large mass of people for the purpose of instating a governmental power that can begin the transition to socialism ? If you just forget about rhetoric, and put the question this way, three prerequisites are rather obvious: for that mobilisation to occur, (1) you need to know what would actually appeal to and consciously unite that large mass, as they really are, You say that Lenin would say the problem is different. Is that really so? Are we not, in some ways, closer to the conditions of 1917 then we were in 1987? There is the question of foreign capital with its interference which was an issue for the workers in St.Petersburgh just as it is now for SE Asian peasant farmers fighting against the WTO, GM seed and foreign imports as well as for US car and steel workers fighting against foreign imports. Mobilise a large mass of people - that has been happening over the last ten years against meetings of the WTO, IMF etc. The Return to the Streets demo in Lndon got Blair really worried - indeed the previously mentioned demos provoked a reaction in Genoa which was reminiscent of the Czar's reaction to demonstrations. However, in all those demos, socialists were not at the centre, did not organise and mobilise the masses - no socialist message came out clearly. People talk about ATTAC or Bov, but not about socialism. (2) you need to have a clear understanding of where you want to take that mass to, exactly; And _show_ you have a clear understanding. That was the genius of Lenin and Trotsky and is the genius of Castro. To be able, not just to write, but to stand up speak clearly and banter. Some socialists parties have an answer for every issue but no clear strong line. The extreme right win more votes than the left becuase of their unashamed clarity. (3) you need to devise an overall strategy and organisational forms, which take that mass from where they are now, to your goal. ouch that hurt! We have econmoic recession, high unemployment and a disastrous war and we are unprepared. It may sound a very simplistic rule of thumb, but the overwhelming bulk of radical thinking is not systematically oriented to these questions, and that is the main reason why socialist movements fail, although of course we can invent millions of reasons for failure. Indeed if you deconstruct what they are actually doing, you find that they focus mainly on strategies of failure and apologies and moralisms, rather than going systematically, step by step, through the requirements, on the basis of the most advanced knowledge we have for the purpose of solving these problems, in order to devise strategies for success. Yes, look at success. Bov burns down a McDonalds, goes to jail for it, leads and talks at anti-globalisation demos but how many people could even name the leader of the PCF in france or the PDS in Germany despite the fact that they had a prescence in parliament, but Bov had none? Because people can understand what he says and what he is talking about. If we now consider the international working class statistically or culturally, we can easily conclude that, whatever be the process of cultural homogenisation resulting from the internationalisation of capital, and whatever be the social-structural similarities of the positions of workers, a worker in China lives in a completely different world from a German worker, and from the point of view of a Chinese worker, the German worker might well be perceived as a member of the bourgeoisie, given the cultural and economic gap involved. But they both enjoy kung-fu films etc. Culture used to be our strong point. Ken Loach could do much better than he does already if had the backing of more sponsors. The problem? too fragmented. We need a cultural programme and that could really be global - as Hollywood and even Hong Kong and Bollywood have discovered. Maybe our artists should re-think the value of small workshops and film projets and consolidate and solidarise on a larger scale? Because that is where values are being taught - in films and, believe it or not, still in literature. Why hasn't anyone grabbed the copyright of Donovans song The Universal Soldier and re-released it just before the Iraq war? And that was just an example so don't harp on my choice! In a world of the internet, mass media and mobile phone communication, communications become highly reflexive, and the utilisation of conscious awareness changes, the psychological changes are profound. The classical distinction between statements about objective facts or events, and (inter-) subjectively meaningful statements becomes blurred or disappears. Once again - clarity or the K.I.S.S. principle (keep it simple stupid) Lenin would recognise the world we are in - and realise at
Re: Dubya and farcical Keynesianism
Jim, At this point, I don't think military Keynesianism is a big thing. It's hardly enough to cancel out all the cut-backs by the states. But Iraq War II may become a full-scale quagmire... I saw figures suggesting military expenditure in the vicinity of 500 billion (?) but that would be over a number of years ? in Marx himself, the distinction between saving and investment is not emphasized. The issue is more one of overproduction and the non-realization of surplus-value. Let us say it is implicit in the theory of primitive accumulation. But you are correct, he doesn't develop it. I am suffering from an overproduction of emails... It is natural of course that Marx wouldn't approach economics from a savings-consumption model, because that is the point of view of the owners of capital only. That would disregard all those who don't own any capital, or almost nothing. Regards J.
Re: Regulation, state, economy
Doug argues capitalism is inconceivable without state regulation, I am saying it is conceivable, it is happening, and it happened already in history. If you think that the Dutch East India Company was simply a mercantile outfit you are wrong, because they established factories and plantations, and traded in slaves, in South Africa, Japan and Indonesia. Admittedly this early multinational gained its franchise from the Dutch state, but having obtained it, it was more or less a law onto itself. No. You confuse primitive accumulation -- the nakedtaking by force of labor and raw materials -- with its product in the world system, capital. What makes that stuff capitsl is its relation, primarily legal relations, in a web of connections establishing rights and obligations. What makes a bunch of people a company? What makes this stuff here made by the workers its assets? What makes this gold its profits? What makes that gold (or scrip) the wages? How do these papers with marks on them constitute a note payable on demand or ata specific time? None of that is even conceivable -- Doug is right -- without a social system, a state of some sort to constitute and enforce those obligations and rights, and laws and rules saying what they are. You make the same mistake that David Shemano makes, _the_ fundamental error of ideology, in treating all this as natural. __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
pensions, redux
Pension age to rise in Italy and Germany Sophie Arie in Rome and Ben Aris in Berlin Wednesday August 27, 2003 The Guardian The Italian and German governments risked a public outcry yesterday by proposing that people should work, and make pension contributions, for up to five years longer to help pay for their ever-growing number of pensioners. The proposals come as countries across Europe struggle to defuse the demographic timebomb of falling birthrates and rising life expectancy. The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, said Italians should retire at 62, five years later than the average. Under the current system, he said, Italy began each year with a ?36bn (£25bn) pension deficit. In Italy people retire on average at 57. It means unsustainable costs and an annoying loss of talent, which could end up sinking us, he told the rightwing newspaper Libero. He proposed that the retirement age should be gradually raised to 60 by 2010, and after that to 62. The welfare minister, Roberto Maroni, tried to sweeten the pill yesterday by suggesting that rather than being forced to keep working, Italians should be enticed with a 30% cut in pension contributions over the last five years. But the idea has not gone down well. Savino Pezzotta, secretary general of the Italian Confederation of Workers' Trade Unions, said: If they tear apart our pensions system, we'll fight them. And Mr Berlusconi's rightwing coalition allies Gianfranco Fini and Umberto Bossi have expressed concern about the plan. In Germany a government commission has recommended raising the average retirement age to 67 and increasing pension contributions by 2.5%. It also suggested that no one should be allowed to retire before the age of 64. Italy and Germany are under growing pressure to overhaul their pensions systems in an effort to meet EU budget deficit regulations. Both had more deaths than births in 2002, and their national workforces are unable to pay for the growing numbers of pensioners. Italy has one of the oldest populations in the world, together with Greece and Japan, and one of the lowest birthrates, second only to Spain's. Pensions cost Italy about 15% of its GDP and have been a growing strain on the struggling economy for the past decade. But when Mr Berlusconi last tried to talk Italians into working longer - during his fleeting first government in 1994 - it was met by a million protesters on the streets, and it contributed to the collapse of his coalition government after less than eight months. The German recommendations put further pressure on the government, implying that its attempt to reform the pension scheme in 2001 has been a flop. But having watched France being brought to a halt by huge strikes against similar pension reform proposals earlier this year, German politicians are wary. Both the Social Democrat government party and conservative Christian Democrats opposition have criticised the commission's proposals, without offering alternatives. Germany's problem is exacerbated by the fact that school hours are so short that mothers are forced to stay at home rather than work. German children spend four and half hours a day at school. Last year, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder introduced a five-year, ?4bn package to fund all-day schools, as well as providing money for creches and tax breaks for young parents, but it has yet to have any impact. The dwindling number of children has led schools to cut the number of classes, and some will be closed because of the lack of pupils. The Italian welfare undersecretary, Grazia Sestini, suggested in an interview with the newspaper La Repubblica yesterday that Italians must be encouraged to make more babies as well as work longer. On top of an ?800 baby bonus for every newborn child, she said, the state should follow France and offer child benefits of ?140 a month for the first three years.
Re: Regulation, state, economy
Jurriaan Bendien wrote: Doug argues capitalism is inconceivable without state regulation, I am saying it is conceivable, it is happening, and it happened already in history. If you think that the Dutch East India Company was simply a mercantile outfit you are wrong, because they established factories and plantations, and traded in slaves, in South Africa, Japan and Indonesia. Admittedly this early multinational gained its franchise from the Dutch state, but having obtained it, it was more or less a law onto itself. Yes, but that was long long ago. Think of Enron trading on political connections - via George Bush in Argentina or Bill Clinton in india - to cut nice deals. These days, even the most pious free marketeer needs friends in high places. And that's leaving aside all the macro stuff the World Bank and IMF have done in the interests of imperialism in recent decades. Doug
Re: Regulation, state, economy
- Original Message - From: andie nachgeborenen [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2003 5:41 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Regulation, state, economy Doug argues capitalism is inconceivable without state regulation, I am saying it is conceivable, it is happening, and it happened already in history. If you think that the Dutch East India Company was simply a mercantile outfit you are wrong, because they established factories and plantations, and traded in slaves, in South Africa, Japan and Indonesia. Admittedly this early multinational gained its franchise from the Dutch state, but having obtained it, it was more or less a law onto itself. No. You confuse primitive accumulation -- the nakedtaking by force of labor and raw materials -- with its product in the world system, capital. What makes that stuff capitsl is its relation, primarily legal relations, in a web of connections establishing rights and obligations. What makes a bunch of people a company? What makes this stuff here made by the workers its assets? What makes this gold its profits? What makes that gold (or scrip) the wages? How do these papers with marks on them constitute a note payable on demand or ata specific time? None of that is even conceivable -- Doug is right -- without a social system, a state of some sort to constitute and enforce those obligations and rights, and laws and rules saying what they are. You make the same mistake that David Shemano makes, _the_ fundamental error of ideology, in treating all this as natural. === Could it not have been, [sorry, thinking through counterfactuals can be fun :-)] regarding the legal revolution[s] that occurred, which really just needed an enforcer/adjudicator of last resort, very different as Heinrich Spruyt and, to a lesser extent, Janice Thomson have asserted? The Westphalian system was by no means a 'big bang' kind of deal, no? The commodification of law, esp. commercial and private law make trouble for Realist theories of the State and interState system which has been co-evolving for some 400 years and is morphing in weird ways even now under a hopefully growing, cohering web of social movements that need to confront the contradictions of 'the best governments money can buy.' The DEIC and it's correlatives from England etc.blurred the State-Capital binary in bizarre ways if one looks at them from a 'delegative' theory of property rights pov. Once they started to explore, extract, expropriate and enslave, they did have endogenous enforcement powers out 'on the periphery.' They created Cities Without Citizens as Engin Isin puts it and were de facto sovereigns. When I try to think through that binary I visualize a Necker Cube to break out of the State centric ontologies we have internalized. When legal adjudication didn't work the guns and cannon were fired, the costs going up with each conflict, hence the struggle today to replace warfare with lawfare and legal theorists like Guenther Teubner etc. wondering about convergences and divergences in contract law etc. even as we still have lots of vestiges of mercantilism scattered throughout the polities of the planet, CEOs dream of having islands/continents where the Corps. are the sovereigns and the Economist magazine brings up the issue of City-States as a possible future every now and then on its pages. Law and State are contingently co-evolved performances and there is no reason they cannot part ways in the future. *** http://www.versobooks.com The Myth of 1648 Class, Geopolitics and the Making of Modern International Relations Benno Teschke The Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 is widely interpreted as the foundation of modern international relations. Benno Teschke exposes this as a myth. In the process he provides a fresh re-interpretation of the making of modern international relations from the eighth to the eighteenth century. Inspired by the groundbreaking historical work of Robert Brenner, Teschke argues that social property relations provide the key to unlocking the changing meaning of international across the medieval, early modern, and modern periods. He traces how the long-term interaction of class conflict, economic development, and international rivalry effected the formation of the modern system of states. Yet instead of identifying a breakthrough to interstate modernity in the so-called long sixteenth century or in the period of intensified geopolitical competition during the seventeenth century, Teschke shows that geopolitics remained governed by dynastic and absolutist political communities, rooted in feudal property regimes. The Myth of 1648 argues that the onset of specifically modern international relations only began with the conjunction of the rise of capitalism and modern state-formation in England. Thereafter, the English model caused the restructuring of the old regimes of the Continent. This was
shipping
[ins't piracy enjoying a Renaissance too? :-)] Freight shipping rides the crest of a wave Improved rates and higher volumes have swelled container profits Terry Macalister Thursday August 28, 2003 The Guardian A slowdown in large world economies such as the US, Japan and Germany normally means stormy seas for global container shipping but the maritime sector is booming. P O Nedlloyd is heading for a decent profit this year after losing £86m in 2002 and is again dusting down plans for a stock market flotation. This week Denmark's AP Moller-Maersk, the biggest liner operator in the world, saw a huge rise in first-half shipping profits from DKr66m (£6m) to DKr1.4bn. Yesterday the Singapore arm of China's biggest shipping group Cosco announced it had returned to the black in the second quarter and forecast significantly higher annual profits. The bounce-back for the highly cyclical maritime business - at a time when the world's main economies remain becalmed - is attributed to better freight rates and higher volumes. PO says that rates were up 7% year on year in the first six months and profits would have been higher if it were not for high fuel costs due to oil hovering around $29 per barrel plus a weak US currency reducing dollar-denominated income. So why is there more trade in the world at a time when gross domestic product in America grew only 2.3% in the year to the second quarter of 2003 and actually fell in Germany? The answer lies partly in a better supply and demand situation: shipbuilding has slowed so fewer new vessels have been coming into the market. The other main reason for growth is booming output from China plus more manufacturing being outsourced to lower cost Asian countries. China reported a 17% growth in industrial production during June only slightly ahead of the 16% reported by Malaysia the month before. China's demand for raw materials such as iron ore has almost single-handedly led to a revival in the bulk carrier shipping market while it needs containers to export finished goods such as computers, clothes and furniture. It is able to find markets for these goods even when economies in the west are depressed because it can offer ever cheaper supplies. The decision by Dyson to switch manufacturing of hi-tech washing machines from Malmesbury in Wiltshire to Malaysia is typical of another trend that is boosting shipping. In fact the hollowing-out of western economies - following a trend first seen in Japan - is partly a result of the very cheap transport available via ships which are often owned in Europe but crewed by low-cost Asians. Manufacturers such as Dyson know they can ship their finished goods back to Britain for next to nothing. PO is not just benefiting on the liner front, but its shares have soared 40% this year because its core ports operation is taking advantage of these new trends. The company, led by chairman Lord Sterling, has been investing heavily in China and witnessed a 30% year-on-year increase in container volumes through its terminals at Qingdao and Shekou. Lord Sterling was in China alongside the prime minister, Tony Blair, during a top level political and commercial visit which saw PO sign a deal to increase output at Qingdao. The port already handles 1.3m containers a year but when the plans are complete this figure will have ballooned to 6m making it bigger than Southampton and Felixstowe docks combined. PO is happy with this, given it achieved a 12% return on capital from ports last year when the shipping arm was in negative territory. PO Nedlloyd, which has a 200-strong fleet, expects conditions to improve up to 2005 but cheap financing is encouraging shipowners to order new vessels. Almost 500 are contracted to be built - representing 30% of the existing worldwide fleet - and some industry experts fear operators could once again be heading for the rocks. To this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for originality. There aren't any. [Les Paul]
RES: [PEN-L] Getting there (was: Critical support to King George?)
-Mensagem original- De: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] nome de Ben Pincas Enviada em: quinta-feira, 28 de agosto de 2003 05:51 Para: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Assunto: Re: [PEN-L] Getting there (was: Critical support to King George?) On Mon, 25 Aug 2003, Jurriaan Bendien wrote: What would Lenin say if he was alive today ? that large mass, as they really are, Ben Pincas: You say that Lenin would say the problem is different. Is that really so? Are we not, in some ways, closer to the conditions of 1917 then we were in 1987? I think that socialists are fighting against globalisation, in each nation attacking the question in nationalist terms, when our internationalist origins and goals should push us to fight for a democratisation of globalisation. The triumph of revolutionary socialism today, and even of reformist social democracy, depends on the creation of supranational entities that will regulate the international flux of capital and work against global inequalities. For instance, a world governmente with one person, one vote. Renato Pompeu --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.512 / Virus Database: 309 - Release Date: 19/08/03
Independent: We begin mortaring in 45 minutes
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=437505 The Independent (UK) 27 August 2003 Spy chief undermines key plank of case for war By Kim Sengupta and Paul Waugh One of the crucial claims in the Government's case for the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein could threaten the West within 45 minutes with chemical and biological weapons was seriously undermined at the Hutton inquiry yesterday. John Scarlett, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, which was in charge of compiling the Iraq weapons dossier, revealed that the alleged threat related not to long-range missiles, which could hit the West, but battlefield mortar shells or small-calibre weaponry that did not threaten Britain or even Iraq's neighbours. In last September's dossier, the 45-minute claim was made alongside details of Iraq's alleged possession of al-Hussain missiles that could strike British bases in Cyprus. Ministers and officials repeatedly stressed that this meant Iraq was a direct and imminent threat to British interests. In his report on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Andrew Gilligan had said his source believed that the 45-minute intelligence related to warheads for [long-range] missiles. But Mr Scarlett said it was not. The 45-minute warning related to smaller range munitions, a fact that may have caused David Kelly the subject of the Hutton inquiry to be in a state of genuine confusion about what the report actually said. The disclosure by one of the most senior intelligence chiefs in Britain is the first official statement on the exact nature of the threat. Lord Hutton himself said to Mr Scarlett that Dr Kelly had suggested the source of the 45-minute claim may have confused it with a multiple barrelled weapon. Weapons experts said yesterday that the normal definition of an international WMD threat would exclude battle-field mortar shells and small-calibre weaponry, even if they had chemical or biological stocks attached. Such small-calibre arms represented no threat to Britain, they said. Last night, Doug Henderson, a former armed forces minister, said it was extraordinary that the 45-minute claim referred to munitions rather than missiles. The news today is that the weapons that were being referred to were quite different. They were battlefield weapons, he said on the BBC's Newsnight programme.
Re: Regulation, state, economy
Justin wrote: You confuse primitive accumulation -- the naked taking by force of labor and raw materials -- with its product in the world system, capital. You must think I am thick or something ! I am not confusing this at all, it is 95 percent of Marxists who confuse it, by identifying primitive accumulation (a bad translation of Marx's ursprungliche Akkumulation, relying on the German Ur [=primordial, ancestral], whereas ursprunglich really means simply initial or original or primary in English) exclusively with the taking by force of labour and raw materials. I have not yet written my book about this, in fact I have had to spend much more time trying to defend my mental health against Dutch predators. But anyway original accumulation do not simply mean the taking by force of labour and raw materials, and Marx makes this perfectly clear in considering forms of unequal exchange, usury capital etc. I distinguish very carefully between original accumulation and its result, in fact I wrote a long mail on it recently, I think Jim Devine has it. Most Marxists just don't know any history, or very little, and they have a primitive idea of original capital accumulation, that is the real problem, their primitivism about primitive accumulation. They think Marx exhaustively discussed this, whereas just about every chapter of Marx's book could be expanded into a book in its own right, discussing many more variations than Marx could, in taking Britain as the locus classicus of capitalist industry. The establishment of the capital-relation can occur in all sorts of ways, and modern technology creates even more options. Long before Immanuel Wallerstein invented his theory of the world system (a dubious construct, since he fails to specify what is systematic about it), Leon Trotsky, Ernest Mandel and to some extent Rosa Luxemburg, Rudolf Hilferding, Nikolai Bukharin and Vladimir Lenin had already examined this whole problem, and provided the basic concepts for understanding it. Mandel's own Traite d'Economie Marxiste was completed in 1960 (ironically, if he had not been so preoccupied with this book, he would have been able to intervene better in the great Belgian general strike which happened just when he had finished it !). What makes that stuff capital is its relation, primarily legal relations, in a web of connections establishing rights and obligations. No. Capital is primarily a SOCIAL relation, ultimately, summed up in the phrase capital buys labour. Whether the labour is slave labour, semi-free labour, indentured labour, free labour, serf labour etc. is not essential to the definition. This is a class relationship of power and force, and the precise way in which this is established and legally institutionalised can vary, this legal institutionalisation is moreover not essential to the definition of it, and Marx himself nowhere suggests that any specific legal form is required, even although property rights of some type are normally codified in law. A robber baron operating some kind of mafia empire, or a military general operating some kind of military empire, can regulate the capital relation without much resort to legality at all - step out of line and you're dead, that is the law in that case. An exceedingly simple example of a modality of original accumulation not mentioned by Marx explicitly as such, is debt: if owners of capital lend out money which the borrower cannot pay back, then the borrower is reduced to destitution and may be forced to work for the owner of capital because there is no other option for survival. Susan George gives many examples of how just exactly this works. Another simple example of primitive accumulation is development aid. Teresa Hayes gives many examples of just how this works. Another example of primitive accumulation is the violation of privacy so that you can rob somebody's ideas through espionage, if those ideas are worth cash. And so on. Marx just says that free wage labour is typical of the capitalist mode of production, but even the modalities of free wage labour itself are historically relative and should not be narrowly conceived, as Prof. Marcel van der Linden has pointed out with reference to a great detail of research done internationally. The inability to understand the full range of modalities of original accumulation leads directly to the inability to understand the meaning of imperialism and its historical dynamics. Many Marxists want to say that imperialism is the result of capitalist industrialisation, whereas, in historical reality, the development of industrial capitalism is PREDICATED upon imperialism, and imperialism is strongly implicated in the very origins of capitalist industrialisation, i.e. this industrialisation is a result BOTH from internal causes (technological inventions, changing class relations, indigenous processes of original accumulation, etc.) AND external causes (trade in the world market, the plunder and enslavement of other
Re: Repub's and race- National Colonial Question made simple
American from its genesis was a Southern country. Slavery and the slave economy of this Southern country - fundamental to our development, distorted everything America proclaimed it stood for. The Northern states, manufacturing the necessities for the slave system, grew as an appendage to the South. In the North the working class was formed from European immigrants. As this Union of South and North evolved and developed, the North entered into an economic revolution from manufacture to industry. The base of the laboring class in the South that made the South wealthier than the North - up to the time of the Civil War, was composed of a slave class imported in chains from Africa and small farmers immigrants from Europe. The huge slave class - men and women in black, made the South Southern to the exact same degree that the European immigrants of the North made it Northern. Two nations one Union, with various Native Bands of people increasingly driven Northward. The development of giant industrial enterprises and new concentration of money did call into question the political dictatorship of the agricultural South. Industry, more productive than manufacture, caused the North to break its economic dependence upon and come into political contradiction with the Southern slave oligarchy. The slave oligarchy and its Northern supporters controlled the purses of government, the legislature, and judiciary and executive branches. The Southern dominated Senate, Supreme Court and Presidency refused to pass harbor, railroad, and canal and tariff appropriations necessary to the growth of the North, but not in the interest of the slave owning agricultural South. The new productive forces of the North came into conflict with the productive relations of slavery in the South. Such historic contradictions of different economic forces cannot be fought out in the economic base of society but is fought out as ideology and political struggle to shape government. As these economic contradictions became political antagonism, the South militarily attacked the North to whip it back under its centuries old control. Its aim was to reorganize the entire country and eventually the entire hemisphere on the basis of slavery. The North responded with a war to whip the South back into the union under its domination and convert their profitable industry of sugar, tobacco and cotton into a financial reserve of the North. The South of course wanted the North to remain its appendage. Two nations, one Union caught in the irresistible conflict. The North could not defeat the South so long as the South had the vast manpower reserve of slaves. At least in theory every Southern white that chose so could become a front-line soldier of the Rebels since primarily slaves were doing the support work of the war effort. There of course was large-scale resistance to the slave oligarchy throughout the South as a region because it would not pay taxes and reserved the best lands for itself. On the other hand many people in the North were unwilling to fight for the Union with slavery; they advocated letting the South secede and "go to hell with their slaves." The industrial empire of the North was based on the cotton of the South. It was not in the interest of the industrial financial oligarchy of the North - the Wall Street boys, to abolish slavery. Their aim was to abolish the political supremacy of the slave power that had ruled America since its birth. Yet, the war could not be decisively won without the abolition of slavery. Abe Lincoln put forward several compromises offering to compensate the slave oligarchy by gradually abolishing slavery. The military and radical political leaders of the plantation South and many in the North - tied to Wall Street money and the slave system, would not accept Lincoln's plan so Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The abolition of slavery was a social revolution that forever destroyed the slave form of labor in America. However this social revolution had no economic legs to stand on. That is, the instruments of production of the agricultural plantation South - the Black Belt nation, did not advance, but the Northern nation imposed a revolution in social relations upon the Black Belt with the freeing of the slaves. This contradiction shaped American politics and society for the next stage of our history. Two nations one Union realigned under the military, economic and political domination of the Northern nation. Here is the essence of the national and colonial question as it played itself out on American soil. Intertwined with and an intimate aspect of every facet of our history was the color question or color factor as the ideological rationale for slavery in the first place. Race theory confuses the obvious. Melvin P.
Halliburton
Halliburton's Deals Greater Than Thought By Michael Dobbs Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, August 28, 2003; Page A01 Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Cheney, has won contracts worth more than $1.7 billion under Operation Iraqi Freedom and stands to make hundreds of millions more dollars under a no-bid contract awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to newly available documents. The size and scope of the government contracts awarded to Halliburton in connection with the war in Iraq are significantly greater than was previously disclosed and demonstrate the U.S. military's increasing reliance on for-profit corporations to run its logistical operations. Independent experts estimate that as much as one-third of the monthly $3.9 billion cost of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq is going to independent contractors. Services performed by Halliburton, through its Brown and Root subsidiary, include building and managing military bases, logistical support for the 1,200 intelligence officers hunting Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, delivering mail and producing millions of hot meals. Often dressed in Army fatigues with civilian patches on their shoulders, Halliburton employees and contract personnel have become an integral part of Army life in Iraq. Spreadsheets drawn up by the Army Joint Munitions Command show that about $1 billion had been allocated to Brown and Root Services through mid-August for contracts associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Pentagon's name for the U.S.-led war and occupation. In addition, the company has earned about $705 million for an initial round of oil field rehabilitation work for the Army Corps of Engineers, a corps spokesman said. Specific work orders assigned to the subsidiary under Operation Iraqi Freedom include $142 million for base camp operations in Kuwait, $170 million for logistical support for the Iraqi reconstruction effort and $28 million for the construction of prisoner of war camps, the Army spreadsheet shows. The company was also allocated $39 million for building and operating U.S. base camps in Jordan, the existence of which the Pentagon has not previously publicly acknowledged. Over the past decade, Halliburton, a Houston-based company that made its name servicing pipelines and oil wells, has positioned itself to take advantage of an increasing trend by the federal government to contract out many support operations overseas. It has emerged as the biggest single government contractor in Iraq, followed by such companies as Bechtel, a California-based engineering firm that has won hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. Agency for International Development reconstruction contracts, and Virginia-based DynCorp, which is training the new Iraqi police force. The government said the practice has been spurred by cutbacks in the military budget and a string of wars since the end of the Cold War that have placed enormous demand on the armed forces. But, according to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and other critics, the Iraq war and occupation have provided a handful of companies with good political connections, particularly Halliburton, with unprecedented money-making opportunities. The amount of money [earned by Halliburton] is quite staggering, far more than we were originally led to believe, Waxman said. This is clearly a trend under this administration, and it concerns me because often the privatization of government services ends up costing the taxpayers more money rather than less. Wendy Hall, a Halliburton spokeswoman, declined to discuss the details of the company's operations in Iraq, or confirm or deny estimates of the amounts the company has earned from its contracting work on behalf of the military. In an e-mail message, however, she said that suggestions of war profiteering were an affront to all hard-working, honorable Halliburton employees. Hall added that military contracts were awarded not by politicians but by government civil servants, under strict guidelines. Daniel Carlson, a spokesman for the Army's Joint Munitions Command, said Brown and Root had won a competitive bidding process in 2001 to provide a wide range of contingency services to the military in the event of the deployment of U.S. troops overseas. He said the contract, known as the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or LOGCAP, was designed to free uniformed personnel for combat duties and did not preclude deals with other contractors. Carlson said the money earmarked for Brown and Root was an estimate, and could go up or down depending on the work performed. The Joint Munitions Command provided The Washington Post with an updated version of a spreadsheet the Army released to Waxman earlier this month, giving detailed estimates of money obligated to Brown and Root under Operation Iraqi Freedom. Estimates of the company's revenue from Iraq have been increasing steadily since February, when the Corps of Engineers announced the
Re: Auto and the South
Published August 28, 2003 http://www.freep.com/money/autonews/org28_20030828.htm MIGRATION FROM THE MOTOR CITY: UAW a hard sell in Southern comfort BY JENNIFER DIXON FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- For eight years, Pat Saltkill has struggled to do what has never been done before -- start a union at a foreign-owned auto factory in the South. Now, he's so burned out and so discouraged that he's retiring as president of the Labor Council of Nashville and Middle Tennessee, a coalition of 47 unions. And as he gets ready to move on, Saltkill says he is convinced there is nothing the labor movement can do to persuade thousands of workers at auto plants from Nissan Motor Co.'s new factory in Canton, Miss., to Toyota Motor Corp.'s 15-year-old plant in Georgetown, Ky., to join the UAW. "It's just not our time," Saltkill, 46, says with anguish in his voice. Across the South, workers at the German and Japanese auto plants say they've heard labor's pitch for the past two decades -- and most say they are just not interested in risking their jobs to support a union from Detroit. These 24,000 workers make good money, and many of them live large on their paychecks from Honda Motor Co., Toyota, Nissan, BMW and DaimlerChrysler AG's Mercedes-Benz plant. The best-paid Southern autoworkers can make as much as $60,000 or $70,000 a year, with overtime and bonuses. Compare that to the median household income of $44,223 ina place like the Nashville metropolitan area -- where Nissan has a plantin Smyrna. Autoworkers in the South are buying custom-built or lakefront homes, farmland and horses. Some of the most fortunate can be found enjoying remarkable amenities like in-ground swimming pools, four cars in the driveway or three tractors in the barn. Others are raising miniature horses, Black Angus cattle, even zebras in the hills and hollows of northern Kentucky. They see nothing to gain by joining a union, or even talking about why the UAW is not attractive. Some call the UAW -- which fought throughout much of the 20th Century to lift assembly workers at the car plants into the middle class -- a dinosaur of the 21st Century. "The mentality here is laid-back and scared to take chances," Saltkill says in an interview at a scuffed desk in his windowless union-hall Nashville office. A half-hour away is the Nissan plant in Smyrna, where workers voted twice to reject the UAW, the second time in 2001 it was a stinging 2-to-1 defeat. The anguished organizer As president of the labor council, Saltkill, a member of the United Steelworkers union, helped with the second campaign to organize the Nissan plant. He ran up against antiunion forces who painted labor leaders as Mafia and fat cats. They hinted that if the workers voted for the UAW, "people from Michigan would come down and get your jobs," Saltkill recalls. "They'd say, 'You don't want people from the North telling you what to do.' " And in the South, Saltkill says, that kind of message "sells; it sells real well." Besides that, Saltkill says, the law favors the employer. Some of the automakers have so-called captive-audience meetings at their plants. They teach the workers about the company's culture and history, and how its profits and pay scales stand up to the rest of the industry. Workers say they also are shown video clips in break rooms of past auto strikes and headlines about layoffs at unionized automakers or factories closer to home. But if union organizers want to talk to factory workers one-on-one, they have to knock on doors in the evening, and Southerners don't like that, Saltkill says. It's also a logistical nightmare; autoworkers can live 60 miles in every direction from a plant. And there are few places to hand out literature near these sprawling auto plants, with their multiple gates. In Smyrna, the biggest parking lot near the plant is a Wal-Mart Superstore. Wal-Mart is nonunion itself and doesn't like to see the organizers recruiting there, Saltkill says. The second vote at Nissan was shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and the economy was in shambles. In a videotaped message played in the plant shortly before the election, Nissan's chief executive, Carlos Ghosn, said the company would be making decisions on where future growth would occur in the United States. "It is without reservation to say that bringing a union into Smyrna could result to making Smyrna not competitive, which is not in your best interest, or Nissan's," Ghosn said, according to a transcript released by the UAW. "For this reason, I urge you to vote for your future and for your opportunities at Nissan." Nissan spokesman Fred Standish says the company views "communications between management and employees as internal, so we will not comment on what the UAW alleges Mr. Ghosn said." Like the domestic automakers seven decades ago, foreign automakers have traditionally opposed the UAW. The foreign manufacturers say they don't need a third party
Re: Regulation, state, economy
Jurriaan Bendien wrote: Doug argues capitalism is inconceivable without state regulation, I am saying it is conceivable, it is happening, and it happened already in history. If you think that the Dutch East India Company was simply a mercantile outfit you are wrong, because they established factories and plantations, and traded in slaves, in South Africa, Japan and Indonesia. Admittedly this early multinational gained its franchise from the Dutch state, but having obtained it, it was more or less a law onto itself. Doug writes: Yes, but that was long long ago... also, the Dutch East India Company and similar organizations _merged_ the functions of a privately-owned enterprise with those of a state (a monopoly of force within the geographical area). So the DEIC didn't need state regulation since it was a state. Just as procounsel Bremer is sponsored by the US state, the DEIC was sponsored by the Dutch state. That kind of organization fits with the general trend in the period of Absolutism/Mercantilism from feudalism to liberal capitalism: under the former, state force and economic enterprise were merged (as when the feudal lord applied direct coercion to the serf), while under the latter, they were largely separated (except when the boss hires goons to beat up striking workers, etc.) since the threat of the reserve army of labor and the separation of workers from the means of production and subsistence made direct coercion much less necessary. (The latter, of course, was the result of primitive accumulation.) Jim
good looks count...
[Finally, I know why my course evaluations are so low! of course, good looks are only skin deep...] ECONOMIC SCENE The Hunk Differential By HAL R. VARIAN BEING beautiful pays off. Economists have found that men with above-average looks are paid about 5 percent more than those with average appearance, while those who are below average in looks have wages 9 percent below the mean. But is this because of discrimination or productivity? Clearly, being attractive is part of the job description for some occupations - think of supermodels or television anchors. On the other hand, one might think that beauty would not have much effect on the productivity of, say, newspaper reporters or professors. However, research by two economists, Daniel Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle, has found that beauty has a substantial payoff across a variety of occupations, even those where it doesn't seem to be inherently valuable. Perhaps beauty contributes to productivity in subtle and indirect ways. Homely sales representatives might not be able to sell products as effectively as attractive ones, while good-looking reporters might have an easier time finding willing news sources. On the other hand, it might be that bosses award beautiful people with pay raises independently of performance. It's hard to disentangle these two hypotheses. If attractive people are able to work better with customers, colleagues and clients, thereby producing more value for employers, one might argue that it is appropriate to reward beauty. But if there is little relationship between measures of job performance and beauty, then higher wages for attractive people would amount to discrimination based on irrelevant characteristics. To decide between the productivity hypothesis and the discrimination hypothesis one needs data on job performance. Recently Mr. Hamermesh, a labor economist at the University of Texas at Austin who has long studied beauty and labor markets, wrote a paper with an undergraduate economics major, Amy Parker, that investigates the effect of beauty on a particular measure of performance: teaching evaluations for college professors. The economists collected teaching evaluations for 463 courses taught by 94 faculty members at the University of Texas at Austin, along with some characteristics of the instructors, like sex, race, whether they were on tenure track, and whether they were educated in an English-speaking country. They asked six undergraduate students to rate the photographs of the professors on a 10-point scale and used the average measure as a beauty score. The student ratings on the beauty scale were highly correlated with one another, suggesting that they were measuring the same aspects of appearance. According to the economists' statistical analysis, good-looking professors got significantly higher teaching scores. The average teaching evaluation was 4.2 on a 5-point scale. Those at the bottom end of the attractiveness scale received, on average, a teaching evaluation of about 3.5, while those on the top end received about 4.5. Other variables that positively influenced teaching ratings were being a native English speaker, being a non-tenure-track faculty member, and being male. The first fact is hardly surprising, the second is explained by the fact that non-tenure-track faculty members are often selected primarily for their teaching ability, but the third is a bit surprising. On closer investigation the economists found that good looks were significantly more important for men than women in producing high teaching evaluations. The same effect was found in earlier research relating wages to beauty: being good-looking, or at least not being bad-looking, is significantly more important for men than for women. There are various ways these results might be biased. Suppose professors who are well organized and tidy put more care both into choosing their photos and in organizing their courses. Then better-looking photographs would be correlated with higher teaching ratings. To check for this sort of problem, the authors separated out formal pictures (men with neckties, women with jacket and blouse) from informal ones. The results didn't change. There are even more subtle effects that might be present. Maybe those who value beauty want to take art appreciation courses, and this love of beauty influences their subsequent ratings of their professors. Luckily, several of the courses were taught by multiple instructors, so the authors could examine differences in ratings while controlling for the courses selected. Again, the results stayed essentially the same. The bottom line is that better-looking professors get higher teaching scores, all else being equal. To the extent that teaching is an important component of job performance, and to the extent that teaching evaluations accurately measure performance, basing salary on measured teaching performance implies a significant wage premium for beauty, even for college
US auto industry doomed?
The Road to Nowhere Is the U.S. auto industry doomed? By Daniel Gross Updated Tuesday, August 26, 2003, at 2:53 PM PT [from Microsoft SLATE] The U.S. auto industry is driving straight off a cliff. Or so we're being told. The problem is an industrywide strategic failure, argues New York Times reporter Micheline Maynard in her new book, The End of Detroit. Amid the prosperity of the 1990s, the Big Three focused on SUVs and high-margin trucks while neglecting technology, quality, and design. As her publisher notes: Maynard predicts that, by the end of the decade, one of the American car makers will no longer exist in its present form. Or maybe it's a structural financial problem, as longtime auto analyst Maryann Keller suggests. Their market share is going down and their costs are not competitive, she said in an Aug. 18 New York Times article that described how production at one of Ford's most productive U.S. plants may be phased out. This is the 11th hour for the auto industry. No, it's an actuarial problem, says Gary Lapidus, a Goldman Sachs analyst. (Goldman has performed investment banking for Ford and, even in this new era, doesn't cavalierly dump on clients.) In a report, cited in the Financial Times last week, Lapidus suggested that Ford, General Motors, and DaimlerChrysler were understating their collective unfunded pension liability by $40 billion. Should investors factor this information fully into the companies' stock prices, the prices might sag between 20 percent and 70 percent, Lapidus suggested. In fact, it's all of the above, says Jeffrey Garten, dean of the Yale School of Management, in his latest Business Week column. Before this decade is over, the U.S. auto business may go through some of the agonizing downsizing and even bankruptcies seen lately in steel and airlines, he writes. He then sketches the broad outlines of the inevitable bailout: Health-care benefits for current workers and obligations to retirees would be gradually cut back; outsourcing would be limited; and Washington would provide certain tax breaks and loan guarantees and it would assume some pension and health-care obligations. Do all these declinists know something that investors don't? After all, for dying companies, the Big Three enjoy remarkably large market caps: $21.5 billion for GM, $20.3 billion for Ford, and $37.5 billion for DaimlerChrysler. Throw in all the money that has been lent to the companies, and you have to come to the conclusion that either there's an awful lot of stupid money invested in the survival of the U.S. auto industry or the declinists are mere alarmists. Certainly, it would be folly to ignore the evidence in favor of decline. Global excess capacity and intense price competition have made it difficult for companies with high fixed costs and obligations to make cars profitably. Meeting all pension and health-care obligations will sap an immense amount of the Big Three's resources. And the demographics will make the problem worse over the coming decade, not better. General Motors has 2.5 retirees for every worker on the job. But historically, declinist prophecies (a staple of business journalism) have more often than not paved the way for that other staple of business journalism, the comeback story. David Halberstam's The Reckoning, which described a foundering Ford and an ascendant Japan, appeared in 1986, and Roger Me, Michael Moore's gloomy tour through a ravaged Michigan, appeared in 1989-nicely setting the stage for the 1990s boom. So, what are today's declinists missing? To begin with, many of the Big Three's competitors are in far worse shape, particularly basket cases like Korea's Daewoo and Italy's Fiat. Excess capacity is already (slowly) being wrung out of the global car industry. Second, internal restructuring is already underway. This year's labor negotiations-to replace the boom-era labor contracts inked in 1999-are likely to produce disappointing results for hourly workers. Yes, the United Auto Workers union possesses a great amount of leverage-things are so tight that no company can afford to risk a strike. But given the economic and political climate-manufacturing is in a long-term secular decline in this country-the Big Three are unlikely to seal their own near-term doom for the sake of short-term labor peace. It's safe to assume that the companies will gain the upper hand in negotiations and that tomorrow's workers won't be eligible for anywhere near the amount of benefits that yesterday's workers are. Meanwhile, as big business continues to embrace the idea of big government, plans like the new Medicare drug benefit may lessen the Big Three's legacy obligations. Most important, the Big Three have more ballast than they did in the 1980s. It is true that recent auto company profits have more to do with financial engineering than automotive engineering. General Motors Corp., for example, earned more than three times as much from selling mortgages in the past
Re: Regulation, state, economy
In a message dated 8/28/03 4:35:13 AM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Justin wrote: You confuse primitive accumulation -- the naked taking by force of labor and raw materials -- with its product in the world system, capital. You must think I am thick or something ! I am not confusing this at all, it is 95 percent of Marxists who confuse it, by identifying "primitive accumulation" (a bad translation of Marx's ursprungliche Akkumulation, relying on the German "Ur" [=primordial, ancestral], whereas "ursprunglich" really means simply initial or original or primary in English) exclusively with the "taking by force of labour and raw materials". "The so-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production. It appears as primitive, because it forms the pre-historic stage of capital and of the mode of production corresponding with it." "In the history of primitive accumulation, all revolutions are epoch-making that act as levers for the capital class in course of formation; but, above all, those moments when great masses of men are suddenly and forcibly torn from their means of subsistence, and hurled as free and "unattached" proletarians on the labor market. The expropriation of the agricultural producer, of the peasant, from the soil, is the basis of the whole process. The history of this expropriation, in different countries, assumes different aspects, and runs through its various phases in different orders of succession, and at different periods." (Capital Volume 1) "primitive accumulation . . .is . . . the historical process of . . .the capital class in course of formation; . . .expropriation of the agricultural producer, . . .from the soil, is the basis of the whole process. ' "But the accumulation of capital pre-supposes surplus-value; surplus-value pre-supposes capitalistic production; capitalistic production presupposes the pre-existence of considerable masses of capital and of labor-power in the hands of producers of commodities. The whole movement, therefore, seems to turn in a vicious circle, out of which we can only get by supposing a primitive accumulation (previous accumulation of Adam Smith) preceding capitalistic accumulation; an accumulation not the result of the capitalistic mode of production, but its starting point." (Capital Volume 1) In America and for the Americas this meant the slaughter of the Native Bands - peoples, the taking of their land and the early slave trade or rather New World slavery from roughly the 14th century to the early 17th century or so.
Re: good looks count...
- Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] [Finally, I know why my course evaluations are so low! of course, good looks are only skin deep...] == :-) http://www.botox.com/site/ :-) Ian
Re: good looks count...
Botox isn't enough. A full-scale slash and burn approach seems needed. Luckily, Beverly Hills is just down the road from here, what with all its plastic surgeons. I wonder if my HMO will pay... I don't know about other cities, but the front section of the alternative entertainement weekly newspaper (the L.A. WEEKLY, owned by the New York VILLAGE VOICE) is loaded with plastic surgery ads. (The back section has sex-related ads.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Eubulides [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2003 9:06 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] good looks count... - Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] [Finally, I know why my course evaluations are so low! of course, good looks are only skin deep...] == :-) http://www.botox.com/site/ :-) Ian
Protest UN/IMF/WB/Donors Conferences in Europe
Take a look at how the United Nations is helping the IMF/WB/Donors/Multinationals, as well as the US government, privatize Iraq. US activists should be working with Belgian, Spanish, and other European activists to protest the UN/IMF/WB preparatory conference in Brussels on September 3 and the UN/IMF/WB/Rich Donor Nations' Governments conference in Madrid on October 23-24. * U.N., IMF, World Bank to discuss Iraqi needs Reuters, 08.22.03, 4:42 PM ET UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N., World Bank and IMF officials will meet in Belgium early next month to lay the groundwork for a conference in Spain on raising money to help rebuild Iraq, a U.N. official said Friday. Delegates from more than 50 countries are expected to attend the later Oct. 23-24 gathering in Madrid of world governments interested in contributing to the cost of Iraqi reconstruction. A preparatory conference for the Madrid meeting will take place Sept. 3 in Brussels, U.N. chief spokesman Fred Eckhard said. . . . Eckhard said work has almost been completed on the needs assessment, which is being prepared by the the World Bank, the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund with help from other agencies and the European Union. http://www.forbes.com/iraq/newswire/2003/08/22/rtr1064870.html * Cf. * Iraq: The United Nations Presence The International Monetary Fund (IMF) The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is supporting institution-building in Iraq and has sent a series of missions, including on monetary matters and fiscal affairs, which have been working on draft legislation for a new central bank law and bank licensing, among others. The fiscal affairs group has also been examining public expenditure management and development of a consolidated budget framework. . . . . . . Although Iraq does not have any outstanding loans from the IMF, it does have arrears of close to $72 million. Fund officials have been in regular contact with the Coalition Provisional Authority and the people in the central bank of Iraq and the Finance Ministry, as well as with donors or potential donors for a possible conference, likely to be held in the next few months. Although there is some concern about a lack of a formal relationship, i.e., a recognized government, this has not precluded the IMF from beginning the first step in institution-building. This is not unique, however. Similar situations had been the case in the Balkans following the conflict there, as well as in Afghanistan, where the IMF had been working closely with the World Bank and UN organizations, as well as other international bodies and Governments. . . . http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/section/080103_imf.asp * * Financial Times (London) August 22, 2003, Friday London Edition 2 SECTION: MIDDLE EAST AFRICA; Pg. 7 LENGTH: 526 words HEADLINE: World Bank will complete cost assessment on time BYLINE: By EDWARD ALDEN DATELINE: WASHINGTON BODY: The World Bank said yester-day it would still complete on time a critical assessment of the costs of rebuilding Iraq's economy, in spite of a decision to pull the bank's staff out of Baghdad following Tuesday's lethal bomb attack. . . . Joseph Saba, the World Bank's country director for Iraq, told reporters yesterday that the decision to relocate staff to Amman, the Jordanian capital, would not prevent the completion by the end of September of a needs assessment for Iraq. The assessment, which focuses on 14 sectors, will be the core document for a conference of international donors in October that the US is hoping will result in billions of dollars in new pledges for rebuilding the country. The fact that we took some efforts this week in the light of this rather murderous blast to protect our employees does not mean in any way that we have abandoned the purpose we set out for in Iraq, Mr Saba said. . . . The International Monetary Fund, which saw all six of its staff in Iraq injured in the blast, said that it would continue work for the moment from outside the country. The World Bank has gone further in ending its presence in the country entirely, removing all 15 staff. The bank said in a statement yesterday that the evacuation would be temporary while it reassesses the security situation. The bank stands ready to return to Iraq when appropriate security arrangements to ensure the safety of staff can be made, it said. . . . * -- Yoshie * Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/ * Calendars of Events in Columbus: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html, http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php, http://www.cpanews.org/ * Student International Forum: http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/ * Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/ * Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio * Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/
Re: Regulation, state, economy
Okay then, I will post my original letter to Paul (22 August 2003): Hi Paul,How's things ? I was reading some more discussion about primitiveaccumulation on OPE list, and I have a question. When I read Marx's Capitalin German, I never found any place in which he uses the term "primitiveaccumulation", rather, he uses the term "ursprungliche Akkumulation", thatis to say, the initial or original accumulation.Do you have any source or evidence, which proves that Marx uses the specificwords "primitive accumulation" himself, rather than original accumulation ?As far as I am am concerned, in these type of discussions, several differentissues are continually theoretically confused and conflated, maybe becauseof some metaphorical motive, I don't know, but anyway, little sense comesout of it.The issues concerning "ursprungliche Akkumulation" are:(1) The origins of capital as such(2) The historical evolution of the forms of capital, prior to, up to, andwithin the capitalist mode of production(3) The origins of the capitalist mode of production itself(4) The initial accumulation of capital, within the capitalist mode ofproduction itself, as an ongoing processMainly what is conflated in the discussion I think is the origins of capitalas such, and the gradual subordination of the entire production process of asociety or economic community under the laws of capital (which of courserequires the separation of labour power from the means of production, andthe privatisation and trade in means of production, leaving asidesuperstructural requirements). This leads to schoolboy errors, such as thatMarx's value theory applies only to the capitalist mode of production, andso on.In each of these 4 "moments" I mention, capital may originate from unequalexchange, legitimate merchant trade, capitalist or non-capitalistproduction, usury, plunder, piracy, conquest, theft, enslavement, credit andindebtedness or other forms of expropriation, etc. but all moments assumethe existence of trade and money.In his chapter on original accumulation (part 8, chapter 26), the problemthat Marx is actually dealing with is the initial conditions of thecapitalist MODE OF PRODUCTION, and not of capital as such. He says, Ialready have shown in my earlier discussion of the pure economic forms, andabstracting from unequal exchange, how "money is changed into capital" and"how capital generates surplus-value" which forms more capital. But he says,in discussing the forms of capital and surplus-value with reference toproduction, I have assumed that there already exists a mass of capital, andthere already exists exploitable labour-power (he had referred to usurycapital and merchant capital as sources of investment capital, and so on).Likewise, in discussing simple and expanded reproduction, he says, I haveshown how capitalist production can itself reproduce the conditions for itsown existence and perpetuation on an ever broader scale; in other words,how, in the production of surplus-value, the capitalistic social relationsof production themselves are simultaneously reproduced. That is WHY "thewhole movement seems to turn into a vicious circle" and to explain theorigins of the CAPITALIST MODE OF PRODUCTION as an historically separatemode of production, we can only get out of the vicious circle, by supposingan original accumulation, or what Adam Smith calls "previous accumulation",which is not the result of the CMP, but an external starting point.What you have to explain, is how the growth of trade can transform theproduction process into a capitalist production process, and Marx says, thatis something I have not done so far, because I assumed the existence ofexploitable labour-power, and I assumed a stock of money which could beinvested in means of production and labour-power. I have examined the socialrelations and property relations which allow this to happen, but I have notexplained where those social relations originate from (a requirement of thematerialist conception of history).Marx's basic concern is to dissociate the concept of Smithian "previousaccumulation" from the concept of "saving up money", such as occurs here andthere on an ongoing basis, and delineate the origins of the CMP firmly inEXPROPRIATION of one sort or another (of which the current conquest of Iraqprovides a striking example). And it is this, which sets the theme for theremaining chapters of Volume 1. And by that very fact, the capitalisticsocial relations of production are intrinsically class relations, involvingthe domination of the possessing classes over the other classes in thepopulation, and the extension of this domination; moreover theyintrinsically involve crime, not just in the sense of the violation ofprivate property (expropriation of capital by other capital, or by thepropertyless), but the forcible privatisation of public or foreign property(resources of any kind) through expropriation in some or other
Re: Regulation, state, economy
Hi Jim, The LORD is my shepherd, isn't that what they say ? Check out Estelle Reyna. also, the Dutch East India Company and similar organizations _merged_ the functions of a privately-owned enterprise with those of a state (a monopoly of force within the geographical area). So the DEIC didn't need state regulation since it was a state. Just as procounsel Bremer is sponsored by the US state, the DEIC was sponsored by the Dutch state. Well, that is just to say that it is sometimes mighty difficult to tell the difference between a corporation and a state. The point is that the corporations established the initial conditions for subsequent colonial administrations, and formal annexation by another state. Incidentally, Ernest Mandel estimated from a bit of quick additive arithmetic that the capital represented by the gold, silver, slaves etc. robbed from foreign lands by European adventurers exceeded the entire capital invested in manufactories in Western Europe around the year 1800 AD. That kind of organization fits with the general trend in the period of Absolutism/Mercantilism from feudalism to liberal capitalism: under the former, state force and economic enterprise were merged (as when the feudal lord applied direct coercion to the serf), while under the latter, they were largely separated (except when the boss hires goons to beat up striking workers, etc.) since the threat of the reserve army of labor and the separation of workers from the means of production and subsistence made direct coercion much less necessary. (The latter, of course, was the result of primitive accumulation.) Yep, indeed in certain cases, Dutch, English and French sea captains could get contracts from the bourgeois state legalising piracy... flying the national flag, not the skull-and-bones. I came across that in my youth, because I took a lively interest in naval history. Your remark relates really to the power relations to which I summarily referred, which partly influence, and partly are influenced by, the actual equilibrium situation that is established (As Freeman, Carchedi, Giussani and others pointed out, the neo-classical economics notion of equilbrium relies on a static, unwarranted view of economic stability or economic balance, in which not many real captains of industry would follow them). Jurriaan
Re: Protest UN/IMF/WB/Donors Conferences in Europe
. . . Although Iraq does not have any outstanding loans from the IMF, it does have arrears of close to $72 million. I don't believe that figure. How are those arrears accounted for ? Are these arrears owing to the IMF ? One thing I have noticed is that there are some mighty peculiar forms of accountings going on these days... J.
Re: Regulation, state, economy
Title: Re: Regulation, state, economy Jurriaan wrote: ...When I read Marx's Capital in German, I never found any place in which he uses the term primitive accumulation, rather, he uses the term ursprungliche Akkumulation, that is to say, the initial or original accumulation. Do you have any source or evidence, which proves that Marx uses the specific words primitive accumulation himself, rather than original accumulation ? In English, primitive and original, in the strictest sense of both words, are synonymous. In Cassel's German-English dictionary, the preferred equivalent of ursprunglich is primitive, followed by primordial. original comes fifth. Shane
Re: Regulation, state, economy
I don't see how this has anything to do with whether stateless capitalism is possible. jks --- Shane Mage [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jurriaan wrote: ...When I read Marx's Capital in German, I never found any place in which he uses the term primitive accumulation, rather, he uses the term ursprungliche Akkumulation, that is to say, the initial or original accumulation. Do you have any source or evidence, which proves that Marx uses the specific words primitive accumulation himself, rather than original accumulation ? In English, primitive and original, in the strictest sense of both words, are synonymous. In Cassel's German-English dictionary, the preferred equivalent of ursprunglich is primitive, followed by primordial. original comes fifth. Shane __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
Re: Regulation, state, economy
In a message dated 8/28/03 10:08:58 AM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Hi Paul, How's things ? I was reading some more discussion about primitive accumulation on OPE list, and I have a question. When I read Marx's Capital in German, I never found any place in which he uses the term "primitive accumulation", rather, he uses the term "ursprungliche Akkumulation", that is to say, the initial or original accumulation. Do you have any source or evidence, which proves that Marx uses the specific words "primitive accumulation" himself, rather than original accumulation ? As far as I am concerned, in these type of discussions, several different issues are continually theoretically confused and conflated, maybe because of some metaphorical motive, I don't know, but anyway, little sense comes out of it. The issues concerning "ursprungliche Akkumulation" are: (1) The origins of capital as such (2) The historical evolution of the forms of capital, prior to, up to, and within the capitalist mode of production (3) The origins of the capitalist mode of production itself (4) The initial accumulation of capital, within the capitalist mode of production itself, as an ongoing process Mainly what is conflated in the discussion I think is the origins of capital as such, and the gradual subordination of the entire production process of a society or economic community under the laws of capital (which of course requires the separation of labour power from the means of production, and the privatisation and trade in means of production, leaving aside superstructural requirements). This leads to schoolboy errors, such as that Marx's value theory applies only to the capitalist mode of production, and so on. Comment It is interesting how one can arrive at the same propositions using different languages and approaches. I concur that primitive - in the context of this discussion, mean "initial" and never understood it different. The brand of Marxism I evolved from stated this as such in several documents outlining the evolution of American history roughly thirty years ago. Your insight on the various forms of labor that enter the sphere of commodity production has always been a sore point for American Marxism and is refreshing. I most certainly agree with the base of the propositions in your additional comments on this matter, especially the important you attract to gold as it became a level, indicator and _expression_ of the transformation in the form of wealth that accelerates universal exchange - commodity exchange, or what was simply scattered products being exchange assuming the commodity form, but not yet on a universal scale. I further agree that it is a serious mistake to proceed from a point of view that the value form or what is or was the same - the commodity form of the products, is limited to that identified as the capitalist mode of production or the bourgeois property relations - "Marx's value theory applies only to the capitalist mode of production." Perhaps, one of the most classic or rather popular book that deals wtith the state and trade and the bourgeois property relations, that influenced a generation of Marxist in America is Karl Polanyi's "The Great Transformation: the political and economic origins of our time." As such it has remained a fixture in my personal library. For several years these theory terms were used but no one in American agree on the concept of the "market pattern" - or anything else, including who is going to win the next football game. For reasons of my own personal history I was lead t- choose, to approach history from the evolution of the value form - the development of commodity production (form) as distinct from its interactivity with the bourgeois property relations, as it was impacted and accelerated by the transitions in the form of wealth and the universal rise of gold as a medium of money and money/capital. In my opinion these question and issues concerning the evolution of the value form and the commodity form that apparently arose together as a unity, which overlap but are not identical and become separate and antagonistic aspects of the same process - only at a certain point in the development of the means of production, is timely and necessary in light of the current changes taking place in our world. I must admit that digital money - or rather digital currency, has me stumped in terms of its impact on the commodity form. Several months of work on this have yielded zero results. On another list, brother Henry Lieu will be consulted. I do admint that number four: "The initial accumulation of capital, within the capitalist mode of production itself, as an ongoing process" caused my right eyebrow to rise slightly. An initial process can no longer reproduce itself within the framework of the process it gives rise to one the new law system becomes operational on its own basis, even if it appears so. This is so because it acquires a new
Re: Regulation, state, economy
In a message dated 8/28/03 12:25:29 PM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I don't see how this has anything to do with whether stateless capitalism is possible. jks A stateless property relations is not possible and this includes public property. There is a real question as to whether a classless society is possible without being stateless. From here we go into the meaning of class and the meaning of "the state" and armed bodies of men and women versus government functions and how the societal infrastructure is administered and the role of computers and the form of democracy. Marxism and socialism as theory and doctrine has been pigeoned holed by the legacy of its birth. What about us - at the apex of world power? What of the most imperial peoples of all peoples who in the last instance are going to impact earth in a big way? Peace Melvin P.
Turkey: Subimperial dreams
Dear All, Below is an article by Emrah Goker, a sociology PhD student at Columbia University and a member of the Peace Initiative/Turkey, based in New York. Since we recommend on the A-List that post should be made in plain-text format, I converted his document to that, and in due course, his footnotes were lost. Those of you who are interested in the original article, with the footnotes, can write to me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] to get his Word Document. I have been contemplating about writing a summary of my observations I made during my visit home, as well as some other developments after I came back to the US, but Emrah summary is so good that I feel no urge to write my own. However, I would like to say a few words before I let you read Emrah's article. In a short note that I sent to the A-List and PEN-L from Turkey, I claimed that Turkey was on the road to fascism. I know some of you might object to my usage of this term on theoretical grounds but I leave it to the experts to further their debates on what fascism is. I had two coalitions in mind: 1) The currently power, and corporate media supported, conservative-democratic coalition, or our domestic neo-cons, as Ergin Yildizoglu put it in a recent article in the Turkish daily Cumhuriyet. This coalition consists of the Erdogan lead sections of the governing Islamic-Christian-Democrat Justice and Development Party, the pro-American, and the more powerful, section of the Military and the Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen Association centered Istanbul bourgeoisie. 2) Their anti-American antagonists, consisting of national leftists, fascist nationalists, orthodox Kemalists and the anti-American, and the less powerful, section of the Military. They are calling for a Military takeover to overthrow of the coalition currently in power. In either case, what we are looking at is what Nestor called the Re-Ottomanization of Turkey. And, unfortunately, the political will of the progressive forces that may stop the above two is not there. They appear to be just watching helplessly, if we ignore for a while the never-ending sectarian fights they seem to enjoy since way back when! Here is Emrah's article. Best, Sabri Conscripting Turkey: Imperial Mercenaries Wanted Emrah Goker On December 30th, 1900, amidst the heated debates about US military campaigns in Asia and the Philippines and about the burden on the shoulders of British gentlemen serving the Empire in her savage colonies, Mark Twain bitterly saluted the new century: I bring you the stately matron called Christendom returning bedraggled, besmirched and dishonored from pirate raids in Kiaochow, Manchuria, South Africa and the Philippines; with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her soap and a towel, but hide the looking-glass. Give her the glass; it may from error free her / When she shall see herself as others see her. Twain's words, unfortunately, reach out to us even after a hundred years. Of course, the contemporary culprit of imperialist agony and bloodletting is not and was not, a hundred years ago an abstract theological entity. Those who have been resisting the US army-state continue to inform the world, tirelessly, about the destructive activities of the institutions, financial groups, think-tanks, politicians, etc. that are collectively managing the war without end. Still, the question remains: Can the Empire, which expands by shaping the savage/rogue/terrorist/unruly elements enclosed within the imperium in its own image, be made to see itself as its victims see it? Surely, challenging capitalist imperialism with a mirror to expose its orientalist and civilizing delusions is only but one step in the political struggle. Nevertheless, it is still a vital step, if we consider the material effects of the imperial civilizing will on peripheral states like the Turkish one, whose imagination of the Middle East, of the Arab, and of its very own Kurdish citizens imitate that will. As the occupation of Iraq unfolds, democracy and social justice are being further undermined in Turkey: The political and (im)moral economy of the expanding imperium is most fitting for the power-hungry agendas of the military and business fractions of the Turkish bourgeoisie, albeit not for the same ends. In this essay, I want to touch upon the most recent debate on sending Turkish troops to Iraq, revived once again since the parliament's rejection (days before the invasion began) of allowing US troops inside the country. Looking into this ongoing episode in Turkey will allow me to reflect upon two related topics the dangerous erosion of democratic principles in my country, triggered by the war on terrorism, and the Turkish construction of the Middle East as a sickly cross-breed of the Ottoman and Anglo-American colonial projects. Our strategic interests... Within two weeks following the July 4th Sulaymaniyya controversy where
Re: Regulation, state, economy
this discussion of terms is missing the key distinction between two types of primitive accumulation or whatever you want to call it: 1) the sort emphasized by the bourgeois economists, in which today's inequality of wealth is a result of some people being more thrifty than others at some point in the past. 2) that of Marx, in which the structure of inequality (class relations) are result of a violent process of expropriation of the direct producers by the post-feudal/early-Absolutist ruling classes. whether or not primitive accumulation continues or can continue after the period discussed by Marx is another issue. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine -Original Message- From: Jurriaan Bendien [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2003 1:26 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Regulation, state, economy Thanks for your comment, Shane. I do not want to get into a drawnout semantic dispute about this (statistically, I guess that a word - especially a noun or concept - in the German language, on average just has a somewhat larger number of conventionally used meanings or nuances than in English, and the intended meaning thus tends to depend on context more, at least traditionally or in scholarship). Point is that ursprunglich is used in German to refer to the initial situation, initial cause, the original source (Ursprung) and usually carries a connotation of a time sequence, hence also the connection with primordial, so that Ursprunglichkeit could refer to primordiality, genuinely pristine creativity and so forth. My claim is not that the term primitive accumulation is not necessarily wrong formally speaking, but misleading, suggesting a counterposition of primitive and developed, complex, sophisticated and so on, whereas primitive accumulation processes are often not primitive at all, of course. But more importantly, I consider that ursprungliche Akkumulation in Marx's critique of political economy ought to refer to ALL TYPES of original accumulation, and not merely to the separation of people from their means of production (privatisation processes). The suggestion of Marxists is that first you have primitive accumulation and then you have capitalism and after that the primitive accumulation is finished; and this is just nonsense, no serious analyst believes that. Original accumulation can occur without any wage-labour being involved, for example, even although, if this is the case, it is still possible for capital to buy labour services, i.e. in virtue of this property ownership it is still possible to effect some form of unequal exchange or appropriation or alienation of labour, de facto or explicitly. Part of the critique of modern corporate capitalism would be, for example, that it simply blocks original accumulation for many people, notwithstanding all the odes to competition as a stimulant for innovation. Jurriaan In English, primitive and original, in the strictest sense of both words, are synonymous. In Cassel's German-English dictionary, the preferred equivalent of ursprunglich is primitive, followed by primordial. original comes fifth. Shane
Re: Regulation, state, economy
In a message dated 8/28/03 1:26:55 PM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The suggestion of Marxists is that first you have primitive accumulation and then you have capitalism and after that the primitive accumulation is finished; and this is just nonsense, no serious analyst believes that. Original accumulation can occur without any wage-labour being involved, for example, even although, if this is the case, it is still possible for capital to buy labour services, i.e. in virtue of this property ownership it is still possible to effect some form of unequal exchange or appropriation or alienation of labour, de facto or explicitly. Part of the critique of modern corporate capitalism would be, for example, that it simply blocks original accumulation for many people, notwithstanding all the odes to competition as a stimulant for innovation. Actually Marx coinded the term Primitive acculations as translated by Engels - according to my edition and he states its meaning. "But the accumulation of capital pre-supposes surplus-value; surplus-value pre-supposes capitalistic production; capitalistic production presupposes the pre-existence of considerable masses of capital and of labor-power in the hands of producers of commodities. The whole movement, therefore, seems to turn in a vicious circle, out of which we can only get by supposing a primitive accumulation (previous accumulation of Adam Smith) preceding capitalistic accumulation; an accumulation not the result of the capitalistic mode of production, but its starting point." Capital Volume 1 You of course raise the profound question of transition or "the big man" against the "little man," or the less economically developed in terms of the commodity form verus the more developed man with a more developed commodity form. As I understand matters, original or primitive accumulation by definition occurs without or rather in front - as a change wave, of the emergence of wage labor as a universal systematic relations, and is accelerated in the person of the merchant or merchant capital. Aye, the merchant - this man with acceptable means of exchange taking place primitively - originally, amongst the ruling class, who as an abstraction and in real life purchased items from scattered producers across the land - spices and fabric, and present them for sell to the most noble ones. No superior knowledge is claimed of Marx Capital Volume 3 on the system of credit capital and the role of the merchant or in my readings of history and the evolution and emergence of exchange five thousand years ago. Part of the critique of modern capitalism is how the corporation - not its form, but its actual organizations of production and production of material wealth and commodities on the basis of the bourgeois property relations is impacted and affected by the revolution now underway in the means of production. Don''t get me wrong, the changes in the technology cannot - not, affect the form of the corporations and the form of the state. To a rather large degree are we not fighting over the form - politics and superstructure relations of something that has arisen "new?" The suggestion of Marxists where I grew up (it is understood that we all grow up in different neighborhoods, cites and regions and countries) is that first you have an initial - "primitive," accumulation of capital and then the emergence of the bourgeois property relations. Because change takes place by definition in a wave, the biggest wave hits those who are located closest of the beach on which the wave is traveling. Change waves are waves because they rise and fall only to emerge again and further change the sands on the beaches of history. Nothing ever happens all at one time. T he Marxists you accused of saying that all "things basically happen all at one time" did not live in my neighborhood. None of them said that an original - primitive, acccumualtion of capital in a remote area was not overcome and defeated by an older system of capital reproduction that had an army to implement its rule and meaning. This meaning was basically, you will buy from me and in the last instance work to buy from me which is to work for me. In America the slave was owned by the slave master but produced cotton of the English industry . . . hery .. . my brother just came over and I would rather hang out with him right now. It is 5:05 Detroit and I am out. Peace. Melvin P.
