Re: : withering away of the state
And hello again, Charles. CB: This is a problem for you because of your utopianism. Marx predicted that the Paris Commune would be a folly of dispair, but also knew that it was the beginning of actual socialism, with all its faults, and advanced his theory of socialism based on it. Similarly , the USSR to the 20th power. The whole idea of praxis is to do with shared learning in shared action, no? Whilst I agree with you that it wouldn't be fair to test a post-bellum society for its adherence to all 'the' communist criteria (this ignores the reality of the 'getting from here to wherever there is' problem), this doesn't mean that the SU was necessarily the beginning of actual socialism. It only was if we've learned from its needless flaws (and separating the needless from the historically enforced can be hard), and the likes of Luxemburg and Trotsky make for valuable reading on this, I reckon. Many Trots reckon the SU was on the path, but that it had become distorted. I think they go this route to keep Lenin and the Bolsheviks beyond criticism, and the consequence is the view that all the SU needed was a political revolution to get back to its socialist essence. A more structural criticism (one that doesn't put the blame for what went wrong on a couple of big personalities during the '20s, esp. Unca Joe) might have it that the party, constituted and legitimised as it was, could be expected to 'substitute itself for the class' to the point it became a ruling class insofar as it enjoyed decisive political economic power, became ever more distanced (materially) from its purported constituency, and developed material interests that were specific to it and inimical to workers. That would indicate that a social revolution, rather than a political one, would be needed even to get the SU on the right road. Whatever, the SU is gone, and it is probably one of the harshest capitalist systems on the face of a benighted planet. The aparat is now uncontentiously the bourgeoisie, and the workers are exploited so intensely as to reduce life expectancies to what used to be called third world levels. We've already seen that Trotsky (himself often, but not always, of the Bolshevik persuasion) saw a lot of this in the SU he saw in the thirties. All in all, I take the view that Leninism has to be investigated with the possibility in mind that some of its flaws were profound, regardless of the invidious position in which the early revolutionaries were confronted. So I reckon you *can* be a non-Utopian non-Leninist, and that there is nothing at all dogmatic about such a position. So there. Rob.
Re: Re: Genderization (fwd)
Sorry! Sam Pawlett's definition of sex is sexist. It is not simply sexist because of the "penetration" thing (since intercourse is necessary). so why is it sexist then? first, sexual activity is constructed in his language as an activity "initiated" by men, so women are presented as powerless and relegated to the level of sexual insignifigance. second, the sole purpose of sexual activity is reduced to getting women pregnant and injecting male sperm into women's bodies. as i said before, there is no reason to assume biological motherhood. We are not living hunting gathering societies where reproduction was somewhat necessary for small bands to maintain their species.Time has changed; sexual roles have changed. We are not living in stone ages. I reject to see the sole purpose of sex as reproduction. Many women prefer not to have children, and I don't see the reason why they should!!! Mine Sam Pawlett wrote:Well, it is necessary that the male penetrate the female or the species will fail to reproduce itself. ...except for the occasional turkey-baster. Why not say "it is necessary for the female to engulf the male sperm . . ."? How do you determine whether A penetrates B or B engulfs A? Carrol
Re: Re: Re: Genderization
Greetings Economists, I agree with what Mine raises about the sexist point of view that Sam Pawlett put forward as his view of human reproduction. Sam had made that remark in the context of discussing essentialism, and I would just add to what Mine wrote that, Sam's remarks show how an essentialist view of human sex fails to account for the reality of human social relations. An essential description from Sam's point of view, would be that without some property P something is no longer essential. In this case penetration of the woman to have human reproduction is essential as a conception for Sam. Essentialism cannot take into account how sex between two people has no essential to it, but is plastic and changeable, and mutual when not one sided as Sam thinks it ought to be thought of. Sexism flows out of exactly making one part of the act essential in some aspect. Sam may not make love as he thinks it ought to be theoretically understood of course, one more contradiction to resolve. One of many times where essence fails to help us understand even the most prosaic of human activities. Which is why in current research the classical point of view is in trouble explaining human minds. thanks, Doyle Saylor
Re: Re: Re: Genderization (fwd)
Mine, there are many many people on this list who believe that women should have children and that it is their only purpose in life. So, the argument you make is bound to be very controversial. I understand that Sam is also for keeping women bound barefoot in the kitchen...for shame! Steve On Thu, 18 May 2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: second, the sole purpose of sexual activity is reduced to getting women pregnant and injecting male sperm into women's bodies. as i said before, there is no reason to assume biological motherhood. We are not living hunting gathering societies where reproduction was somewhat necessary for small bands to maintain their species.Time has changed; sexual roles have changed. We are not living in stone ages. I reject to see the sole purpose of sex as reproduction. Many women prefer not to have children, and I don't see the reason why they should!!! Mine Sam Pawlett wrote:Well, it is necessary that the male penetrate the female or the species will fail to reproduce itself. ...except for the occasional turkey-baster. Why not say "it is necessary for the female to engulf the male sperm . . ."? How do you determine whether A penetrates B or B engulfs A? Carrol
Re: Re: Re: Genderization (fwd)
true, Doyle.. Mine -- Forwarded message -- Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 23:28:47 -0700 From: Doyle Saylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:19269] Re: Re: Re: Genderization Greetings Economists, I agree with what Mine raises about the sexist point of view that Sam Pawlett put forward as his view of human reproduction. Sam had made that remark in the context of discussing essentialism, and I would just add to what Mine wrote that, Sam's remarks show how an essentialist view of human sex fails to account for the reality of human social relations. An essential description from Sam's point of view, would be that without some property P something is no longer essential. In this case penetration of the woman to have human reproduction is essential as a conception for Sam. Essentialism cannot take into account how sex between two people has no essential to it, but is plastic and changeable, and mutual when not one sided as Sam thinks it ought to be thought of. Sexism flows out of exactly making one part of the act essential in some aspect. Sam may not make love as he thinks it ought to be theoretically understood of course, one more contradiction to resolve. One of many times where essence fails to help us understand even the most prosaic of human activities. Which is why in current research the classical point of view is in trouble explaining human minds. thanks, Doyle Saylor
Re: Re: Re: Genderization (fwd)
I don't wanna be controversial, but why? Mine Mine, there are many many people on this list who believe that women should have children and that it is their only purpose in life. So, the argument you make is bound to be very controversial. Steve
Re: Re: Re: : withering away of the state (fwd)
I have read everything. Rod [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What did you read about Soviet socialism? Mine Interesting musings Carrol, but words have meanings, and what most people mean by the word socialism is not what was seen in the USSR. You can call it what you want, but I don't call it socialism. Rod Carrol Cox wrote: Rod Hay wrote: Perhaps Marx was utopian. But we will have to wait until we have a socialists society, in order to find out. The Soviet Union called itself socialist but it wasn't. This I think is utopian. Socialism is a movement, not a platonic form against which you can measure any state and say it is or isn't "socialist." It would seem to me wrong to assume that there will not be many more episodes in the socialist movement which will go greatly astray in one way or another, many more defeats. THe struggles of 6 billion people and their descendants to find their way out of capitalism will almost certainly contain episodes at least as unpleasant as the USSR at its worst. The struggle for socialism has to be essentially g self-justifying at each step, regardless of the (temporary) final outcomes of each struggle. If the only or even the chief reason to fight for socialism is the achievement of the socialism for our great-grandchildren, then socialism is a bust. This is *not* to disagree with Rosa Luxemburg that the final goal is everything, the struggle is nothing. The role of that final goal is the understanding we achieve through it of the present. Hence the struggle depends on the final goal *independently* of whether or not we ever achieve that final goal. Marx, as I understand him, did not propose the classless society and the withering away of the state as a prize to reward us at the end. He saw that just as feudalism could be understood from the perspective of capitalism, so capitalism could only be understood from the perspective of communism. We can only understand the capitalist state (and therefore organize our struggle against it) by seeing it from the perspective of the society in which the state has withered away. [I really think it would help if a larger proportion of marxists suffered from depression. That would help dampen the galloping optimism that blithely says the USSR was not socialist -- for the implication of that evaluation is that socialism of just the sort we want will be easily attainable if we just have the right ideas. Horse Feathers!] The evil at the heart of capitalism (or of any social order of which the market is the central institution) is that Reality becomes the Future, while the past and present become mere appearance. I began to see this by reading and re-reading Plato's *Republic* and attempting to explain it to undergraduates. In Plato's timarchy (in effect a landed aristocracy of some sort) the Past is the Real. The present is merely a recapitulation of the past and is emptied of reality. In what he called an oligarchy (a state ruled by those whose motive was the accumulation of wealth [=money?], the past was non-existent, and the present only the shadow of the future. Action becomes meaningless in itself, since it cannot exhibit ambition (which is the struggle to maintain what the past has given us) nor can it be its own end. Since anything resembling capitalism was still nearly 2000 years away, it was remarkable that even in the piddling financial manipulations of his day Plato could see this. The core capitalist metaphor, that of *investment* catches up this trivialization of the present by the future. The *demos* Plato discarded with contempt: they *chose* (he implies) to live only in the present, their lives dominated by a lowly lust for immediate satisfaction. (One of the many modern equivalents of this is the accusation that unwed mothers have babies in order to make money off of public aid.) There would have been no way to theorize this in Plato's world, for that depended on the development of wage labor under capitalism and its theorization in Marx's conceptions of surplus value and alienation. The working class, by definition, is that class which *must* live in the present (that being the main thrust of the assumption that labor power is purchased at is value). And it is this (unavoidable) attachment of the working to the present (which implicitly is also a valuation of the past such as the investor dare not allow him/herself) which makes the working class a *potentially* revolutionary class. Its revolutionary task is to free humanity from the tyranny of the future. Carrol -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive
Re: Re: Marx Engels, was Re: Marx and Malleability
The problem with the "Dialectics of Nature" is that Engels tries to turn dialectics into a formal system, and thus destroys the meaning of the word. This synthesis-antithesis-synthesis crap does not appear in Hegel or in Marx. Rod Rob Schaap wrote: G'day Charles, You say "Materialist dialectics was Engels' , and not Marx's." I rteckon we have to be very explicit and specific here. I thought, for instance, that you and I had come to agree that materialism is not the same as physicalism? Social *relations* are material for Marx, and, indeed, the basis of what he called his materialist conception of history. Freddy's *Anti-Duhring* has some beaut bits in it, but, as I've tried to show you elsewhere, is difficult to nail on exactly what is meant by 'dialectic'. Stalin ended up with a view that finds support in Anti-Duhring, but so does, say, Fromm - and those two chaps would've agreed on bugger-all. Cheers, Rob. -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
Re: Re: Re: : withering away of the state (fwd)
for example? Mine I have read everything. Rod [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What did you read about Soviet socialism? Mine Interesting musings Carrol, but words have meanings, and what most people mean by the word socialism is not what was seen in the USSR. You can call it what you want, but I don't call it socialism. Rod Carrol Cox wrote: Rod Hay wrote: Perhaps Marx was utopian. But we will have to wait until we have a socialists society, in order to find out. The Soviet Union called itself socialist but it wasn't. This I think is utopian. Socialism is a movement, not a platonic form against which you can measure any state and say it is or isn't "socialist." It would seem to me wrong to assume that there will not be many more episodes in the socialist movement which will go greatly astray in one way or another, many more defeats. THe struggles of 6 billion people and their descendants to find their way out of capitalism will almost certainly contain episodes at least as unpleasant as the USSR at its worst. The struggle for socialism has to be essentially g self-justifying at each step, regardless of the (temporary) final outcomes of each struggle. If the only or even the chief reason to fight for socialism is the achievement of the socialism for our great-grandchildren, then socialism is a bust. This is *not* to disagree with Rosa Luxemburg that the final goal is everything, the struggle is nothing. The role of that final goal is the understanding we achieve through it of the present. Hence the struggle depends on the final goal *independently* of whether or not we ever achieve that final goal. Marx, as I understand him, did not propose the classless society and the withering away of the state as a prize to reward us at the end. He saw that just as feudalism could be understood from the perspective of capitalism, so capitalism could only be understood from the perspective of communism. We can only understand the capitalist state (and therefore organize our struggle against it) by seeing it from the perspective of the society in which the state has withered away. [I really think it would help if a larger proportion of marxists suffered from depression. That would help dampen the galloping optimism that blithely says the USSR was not socialist -- for the implication of that evaluation is that socialism of just the sort we want will be easily attainable if we just have the right ideas. Horse Feathers!] The evil at the heart of capitalism (or of any social order of which the market is the central institution) is that Reality becomes the Future, while the past and present become mere appearance. I began to see this by reading and re-reading Plato's *Republic* and attempting to explain it to undergraduates. In Plato's timarchy (in effect a landed aristocracy of some sort) the Past is the Real. The present is merely a recapitulation of the past and is emptied of reality. In what he called an oligarchy (a state ruled by those whose motive was the accumulation of wealth [=money?], the past was non-existent, and the present only the shadow of the future. Action becomes meaningless in itself, since it cannot exhibit ambition (which is the struggle to maintain what the past has given us) nor can it be its own end. Since anything resembling capitalism was still nearly 2000 years away, it was remarkable that even in the piddling financial manipulations of his day Plato could see this. The core capitalist metaphor, that of *investment* catches up this trivialization of the present by the future. The *demos* Plato discarded with contempt: they *chose* (he implies) to live only in the present, their lives dominated by a lowly lust for immediate satisfaction. (One of the many modern equivalents of this is the accusation that unwed mothers have babies in order to make money off of public aid.) There would have been no way to theorize this in Plato's world, for that depended on the development of wage labor under capitalism and its theorization in Marx's conceptions of surplus value and alienation. The working class, by definition, is that class which *must* live in the present (that being the main thrust of the assumption that labor power is purchased at is value). And it is this (unavoidable) attachment of the working to the present (which implicitly is also a valuation of the past such as the investor dare not allow him/herself) which makes the working class a *potentially* revolutionary class. Its revolutionary task is to free humanity from the tyranny of the future. Carrol -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic
[Fwd: new viruses...] (fwd)
-- Forwarded message -- Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 16:47:07 +0530 From: S DE [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Fwd: new viruses...] Dear user, There are a large no. of viruses active now-a-days, including "I LOVE YOU" virus. The list is given below, if you see any of these mails then delete immediately. Regards. -System Administrator Description There are a growing number of variants of this worm being transmitted via email attachment. The most common are: SUBJECT: "ILOVEYOU" MESSAGE: "kindly check the attached LOVELETTER coming from me." ATTACHMENT: "LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs" SUBJECT: "Virus ALERT!!!" MESSAGE: A long message that pretends to be information from Symantec Corp. about VBS/LoveLetter.worm ATTACHMENT: "protect.vbs" SUBJECT: "Dangerous Virus Warning" MESSAGE: "There is a dangerous virus circulating. Please click attached picture to view it and learn to avoid it." ATTACHMENT: "virus_warning.jpg.vbs" SUBJECT: "Joke" MESSAGE: NONE ATTACHMENT: "VeryFunny.vbs" SUBJECT: "Important ! Read carefully !!" MESSAGE: "Checked the attached IMPORTANT coming from me !" ATTACHMENT: "IMPORTANT.TXT.vbs" SUBJECT: "Mothers Day Order Confirmation" MESSAGE: "We have proceeded to charge your credit card for the amount of $326.92 for the mothers day diamond special. We have attached a detailed invoice to this email. Please print out the attachment and keep it in a safe place.Thanks Again and Have a Happy Mothers Day!" ATTACHMENT: " mothersday.vbs" SUBJECT: "Susitikim shi vakara kavos puodukui..." MESSAGE: "kindly check the attached LOVELETTER coming from me." ATTACHMENT: "LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.VBS" This worm attempts to send copies of itself through mIRC to the IRC channels and through Outlook to all address book entries. It then attempts to overwrite several types of files, including .jpg and .mp3. VBS/LoveLetter.worm also attempts to download and install an executable file that will email any cached passwords it finds to a predetermined address.
Marx and Malleability (fwd)
"J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 05:11PM Mark, So, was this utopian or not? We certainly did not see any withering away of the state, not in the former USSR, not in the PRC, not anywhere that was or is ruled by a self-labeled Communist Party (or some variation on that). Would that it were not so. ))) CB: Barkley, in the Marxist theory of the state, the state does not whither away until the second phase, communism, at a time when there are no longer any bourgeois states to defend against. The state is not supposed to whither away in the USSR, PRC or elsewhere, because there remain bourgeois states. CB
Re: Re: withering away of the state
"J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 06:14PM Jim, I did not mean that the vision was pathetic. I meant that the actual outcome in light of the vision/ (forecast) was pathetic. _ CB: It was not Marx's vision that the state would whither away until there were no more capitalist states to defeat ( by the working classes from within). USSR, PRC therefore not pathetic within Marx's "vision". He was much less utopian than you are about. Didn't promise a rose garden in socialism. CB
Re: : withering away of the state
And now the latest hits from the Holier than Thou Marxist Chorus: Perhaps Marx was utopian. But we will have to wait until we have a socialists society, in order to find out. The Soviet Union called itself socialist but it wasn't. I did not mean that the vision was pathetic. I meant that the actual outcome in light of the vision/ (forecast) was pathetic. -- Interesting musings Carrol, but words have meanings, and what most people mean by the word socialism is not what was seen in the USSR. You can call it what you want, but I don't call it socialism. Actually, isn't it a big part of our problem that what _most people_ DO mean by "socialism" what they had in the USSR?
end of big oil + the mendacity of the US govt
Jean Laherrere's paper delivered today at the energyresources2000 on-line conference underscores something which has been obvious to anyone who has attempted to make sense of reports on oil/energy put out by various US government agencies in recent years (principally the annual reports of the Dept of Energy, the Energy Information Agency and US Geological Service (USGS)). This is that the US government is basing its energy strategy on a gigantic fraud. This is why the hard science never quite matches the soft policy conclusions, and why the figures for reserves, production and consumption do not match up, to the extent now where it's not just their stats that are lousy: the USGS seems no longer capable even of simple arithmetic, as Laherrere points out. According to Ft.com, oil spot prices today reached another post-Gulf war high. The 'price spike' is turning out to be something more, and the systematic mendacity of government is no longer sufficient to hide the reasons why. The plain fact is that even if it wants to, Opec is probably no longer capable of supplying the world's hunger for oil, at a time when Asia is on the rebound and while Nopec production in the North Sea, Mexico, Canada and of course the US itself, is declining as reserves diminish and the Hubbert peak arrives. The fraud perpetrated by US government has two main and several subsidiary targets: complacency about reserves and about the capacity of the global energy system to meet demand (it's not just oil, it's electricity, too) is encouraged (a) to stop American consumers and motorists from panicking and (b) to discourage Opec from asserting its market clout (forlorn hope, obviously). The Hubbert Peak in world oil may come this year or several years down the line; it really doesn't matter, because the consequences are already being felt. As the CEO of Arco said recently, We've embarked on the beginning of the Last Days of the Age of Oil. Emerging geopolitical crises in the Persian Gulf and Caspian basin will be one clear manifestation; others will be queues at filling stations, price-shocks and a radical reordering of the world's monetary and financial flows. The longer term consequences will be still more profound. Laherrere's paper is archived at the Crashlist site: http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList Mark Jones
Re: [Fwd: new viruses...] (fwd)
folks, please do not open the attachments then. I have just realized this. I can not guarantee the status of the attachments. it was sent by the wsn system administrator to the list as a warning of new viruses.. I don't think a virus is attached to his post, since he is a serious person...but you decide..actually, you can read the text without opening the attachments. Mine -- Forwarded message -- Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 07:54:41 -0600 From: Paul [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Fwd: new viruses...] (fwd) Virus warnings being sent as email attachments? Does anybody else see the irony here? --paul *** REPLY SEPARATOR *** On 5/19/00 at 7:56 AM [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -- Forwarded message -- Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 16:47:07 +0530 From: S DE [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Fwd: new viruses...]
Marx and Malleability
Brad De Long wrote: So why, then, is the first Marx so weak in post-Marxian Marxism? Why was the world afflicted with, say, Paul Sweezy's claim that "One need not have a specific idea of a... beautiful musical composition, to recognize that the... the rock-and-roll that blares at us exemplify a pattern of utilization of human and material resources which is inimical to human welfare"? My god. Where did he say that? Doug _Monopoly Capital_, pp. 138-9. He also takes after slums and cars with big fins, where he has more of a point...
Re: Marx and Malleability
What do you have against cars with big fins? --jks My god. Where did he say that? Doug _Monopoly Capital_, pp. 138-9. He also takes after slums and cars with big fins, where he has more of a point...
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What do you have against cars with big fins? --jks Aside from the fact that they were rather ugly, they were also rather mean if one backed into you. If I remeber correctly, there was a handful of news items on the grisly effects of that. Secondary effect: they provided material for some very dull cartoons by Bill Maudlin. Carrol
Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx andMalleability (fwd)
Mine, Yes, I have read the CM and am well acquainted with its platform. I have even been known to make students read it and discuss and be tested on it. I note that Critique of the Gotha Program was written a quarter of a century later, or thereabouts. There is no reason to link its prescriptions in a direct manner with what is in the CM. Dismissing a direct reading of the "withering away of the state" phrase as an "anarchist" interpretation will not do. It is an outburst of anarchist utopianism by Marx, pure and simple. What is in the CM in no way can be called a "withering away of the state," and I continue to maintain that the latter is an utopian "vision" (yes, Jim D., I agree, it is a vision and hence "utopian"). What is in the CM's platform is fairly practical, and as has already been noted by me, some of it is standard in most most modern economies (e.g. progressive income tax), and some is standard in garden variety socialist economies, (e.g. nationalized credit), and some is more utopian (e.g. abolition of the distinction between the city and the country, unless one considers suburbs to have achieved this... ). Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, May 18, 2000 6:13 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19248] Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx andMalleability (fwd) Barkley wrote: So, was this utopian or not? We certainly did not see any withering away of the state, not in the former USSR, not in the PRC, not anywhere Lenin argued that anarchists misinterpreted "withering away of the state" in a very utopian way. Accordingly, they also misinterpreted Marx. Thus you are reading Soviet union under the influence of anarchist perspective and utopionism. What Marx had in mind was a socialist state, even though he did not explicitly articulate in that way. In his time, the only approximation to this model was Paris Commune, and Lenin's interpretation of the state derives from this model. It is a big mistake to say that MArx does not have a theory of state, and then romanticize him. In the _Communist Manifesto_ Marx outlines the features of a socialist state: 1. abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. a heavy progressive and graduated income tax. 3.abolition of all rights of inheritance. 4. centralization of credit in the hands of the STATE, by means of a national bank with state capital and exclusive monopoly. 5 centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. 6. extension of factories and instruments of production owned by teh state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, the improvement of the soil generally in accordence with a common plan. 7. equal liability of all to labour.. 8. combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries. gradual abolution of the distinction between town and country; by a more equable distribution of the population over the country. 9. free education for all children in public schools.abolition of children's factory in its present form. combination of education with industrial production. Mine Doyran Political Science Phd student SUNY/Albany
Marx and Malleability
K Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit on 19/5/00 4:16 am, Brad De Long at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Brad De Long wrote: So why, then, is the first Marx so weak in post-Marxian Marxism? Why was the world afflicted with, say, Paul Sweezy's claim that "One need not have a specific idea of a... beautiful musical composition, to recognize that the... the rock-and-roll that blares at us exemplify a pattern of utilization of human and material resources which is inimical to human welfare"? My god. Where did he say that? Doug _Monopoly Capital_, pp. 138-9. He also takes after slums and cars with big fins, where he has more of a point... Hey Brad What's your beef with Sweezy? You have already tried to discredit him by referring us to his citations of J.V. Stalin of yore. Now it's time for the rock and roll generation to disassociate itself from this obvious reactionary -- is that the idea? The passage occurs in the context (always important, that) of a discussion of the sales effort and its interpenetration with production. Given the vast resources now expended by multimedia conglomerates promoting ciphers of unremitting blandness (aurally) and pornographic connotation (visually) that themselves promote other items of conspicuous waste, it is surely even more relevant to observe "a pattern of utilization of human and material resources which is inimical to human welfare". How prescient he was. Michael K.
Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd)
Charles, Frankly, I see the "withering away of the state" as a millennial vision, like the second coming in Christianity. When John the Baptist met Yeshua bin Miriam he declared that he was the messiah and the "end is near." At various points over the last 2000 years, various folks have declared the same thing only to find out it was not so. When the Communist Manifesto was written, Marx and Engels (accurately) saw an imminent revolutionary uprising. It did not work out as they had hoped/expected, indeed, in France ended as the "farce" of Napoleon III after the "tragedy" of Napoleon I. Clearly when Marx wrote of the arrival of communism and the "withering away of the state" he was not expecting its imminent arrival. But such hopes have certainly fired subsequent generations of revolutionaries. I am not saying that they should not do so today either, although the current political climate is distinctly reactionary, as near as I can tell. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, May 18, 2000 10:31 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19260] Marx and Malleability (fwd) "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 01:33PM The utopianism came in when he actually discussed what socialism would be, or more precisely communism, e.g. the withering away of the state and "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs;" all very nice, but also very utopian, especially the bit about the withering away of the state. What a pathetic joke. CB: Barkley, I know you are from an era of instant gratification , and you want to LIVE through the world revolution, but history is not a just so story. The transition to socialism, communism and the whithering away of the state is an epochal, i.e. indefinitely multiple generational process. Even Engels and Marx did not see it, even much of it. On the other hand, first time tragedy , second time farce, this whithering away.
Re: : withering away of the state
Rob Schaap [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 12:09AM And hello again, Charles. CB: This is a problem for you because of your utopianism. Marx predicted that the Paris Commune would be a folly of dispair, but also knew that it was the beginning of actual socialism, with all its faults, and advanced his theory of socialism based on it. Similarly , the USSR to the 20th power. The whole idea of praxis is to do with shared learning in shared action, no? _ CB: Yes, nicely put. __ Whilst I agree with you that it wouldn't be fair to test a post-bellum society for its adherence to all 'the' communist criteria (this ignores the reality of the 'getting from here to wherever there is' problem), this doesn't mean that the SU was necessarily the beginning of actual socialism. It only was if we've learned from its needless flaws (and separating the needless from the historically enforced can be hard), and the likes of Luxemburg and Trotsky make for valuable reading on this, I reckon. Many Trots reckon the SU was on the path, but that it had become distorted. I think they go this route to keep Lenin and the Bolsheviks beyond criticism, and the consequence is the view that all the SU needed was a political revolution to get back to its socialist essence. __ CB: "the path" is not there already. "The path"is made in praxis. "All " the SU needed was a revolution in one or two big capitalist countries, like Germany and France. ___ A more structural criticism (one that doesn't put the blame for what went wrong on a couple of big personalities during the '20s, esp. Unca Joe) might have it that the party, constituted and legitimised as it was, could be expected to 'substitute itself for the class' to the point it became a ruling class insofar as it enjoyed decisive political economic power, became ever more distanced (materially) from its purported constituency, and developed material interests that were specific to it and inimical to workers. That would indicate that a social revolution, rather than a political one, would be needed even to get the SU on the right road. _ CB: Imperialism was able to force the party and state to be overly centralized, by keeping the SU under permanent war or threat of war through its whole existence. Even hindsight does not show that the SU could risk much decentralization until the socialist democracy destroying, and socialism destroying institutions were to set, as you sketch. Whatever, the SU is gone, and it is probably one of the harshest capitalist systems on the face of a benighted planet. The aparat is now uncontentiously the bourgeoisie, and the workers are exploited so intensely as to reduce life expectancies to what used to be called third world levels. We've already seen that Trotsky (himself often, but not always, of the Bolshevik persuasion) saw a lot of this in the SU he saw in the thirties. All in all, I take the view that Leninism has to be investigated with the possibility in mind that some of its flaws were profound, regardless of the invidious position in which the early revolutionaries were confronted. CB: Leninism as theory is not profoundly flawed. Leninism as practiced had enormously profound virtues and big flaws both. No current anti-Leninists have demonstrated that they have theory or practice superior to that of historical Leninism. They are armchair, holier-than-thou'ers. _ So I reckon you *can* be a non-Utopian non-Leninist, and that there is nothing at all dogmatic about such a position. CB: But to be non-utopian , one would have to show more results in the real world than any non-Leninists have. The test of your claim is practice ( See Marx's Second ? Third Thesis on Feuerbach) Claims such as Justin's that my approach to Lenin and Marx is like that of an approach to the Father , Son and Holy Ghost, are, ironically, themselves, liberal dogma, unfounded selfcongratulation that Justin or someone thinks more critically and undogmatically than I. This is false. Justin's thinking is not more critical, non-dogmatic than mine, as demonstrated constantly on these lists. Liberals and anti-Leninists are most often dogmatists themselves, and can't claim the mantel of anti-dogmatism by declaration and insult. CB
Re: Re: Re: Re: : withering away of the state (fwd)
Rod, "Everything"? Really? Ponomaesh Russki yazik? Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, May 19, 2000 7:11 AM Subject: [PEN-L:19273] Re: Re: Re: : withering away of the state (fwd) I have read everything. Rod [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What did you read about Soviet socialism? Mine Interesting musings Carrol, but words have meanings, and what most people mean by the word socialism is not what was seen in the USSR. You can call it what you want, but I don't call it socialism. Rod Carrol Cox wrote: Rod Hay wrote: Perhaps Marx was utopian. But we will have to wait until we have a socialists society, in order to find out. The Soviet Union called itself socialist but it wasn't. This I think is utopian. Socialism is a movement, not a platonic form against which you can measure any state and say it is or isn't "socialist." It would seem to me wrong to assume that there will not be many more episodes in the socialist movement which will go greatly astray in one way or another, many more defeats. THe struggles of 6 billion people and their descendants to find their way out of capitalism will almost certainly contain episodes at least as unpleasant as the USSR at its worst. The struggle for socialism has to be essentially g self-justifying at each step, regardless of the (temporary) final outcomes of each struggle. If the only or even the chief reason to fight for socialism is the achievement of the socialism for our great-grandchildren, then socialism is a bust. This is *not* to disagree with Rosa Luxemburg that the final goal is everything, the struggle is nothing. The role of that final goal is the understanding we achieve through it of the present. Hence the struggle depends on the final goal *independently* of whether or not we ever achieve that final goal. Marx, as I understand him, did not propose the classless society and the withering away of the state as a prize to reward us at the end. He saw that just as feudalism could be understood from the perspective of capitalism, so capitalism could only be understood from the perspective of communism. We can only understand the capitalist state (and therefore organize our struggle against it) by seeing it from the perspective of the society in which the state has withered away. [I really think it would help if a larger proportion of marxists suffered from depression. That would help dampen the galloping optimism that blithely says the USSR was not socialist -- for the implication of that evaluation is that socialism of just the sort we want will be easily attainable if we just have the right ideas. Horse Feathers!] The evil at the heart of capitalism (or of any social order of which the market is the central institution) is that Reality becomes the Future, while the past and present become mere appearance. I began to see this by reading and re-reading Plato's *Republic* and attempting to explain it to undergraduates. In Plato's timarchy (in effect a landed aristocracy of some sort) the Past is the Real. The present is merely a recapitulation of the past and is emptied of reality. In what he called an oligarchy (a state ruled by those whose motive was the accumulation of wealth [=money?], the past was non-existent, and the present only the shadow of the future. Action becomes meaningless in itself, since it cannot exhibit ambition (which is the struggle to maintain what the past has given us) nor can it be its own end. Since anything resembling capitalism was still nearly 2000 years away, it was remarkable that even in the piddling financial manipulations of his day Plato could see this. The core capitalist metaphor, that of *investment* catches up this trivialization of the present by the future. The *demos* Plato discarded with contempt: they *chose* (he implies) to live only in the present, their lives dominated by a lowly lust for immediate satisfaction. (One of the many modern equivalents of this is the accusation that unwed mothers have babies in order to make money off of public aid.) There would have been no way to theorize this in Plato's world, for that depended on the development of wage labor under capitalism and its theorization in Marx's conceptions of surplus value and alienation. The working class, by definition, is that class which *must* live in the present (that being the main thrust of the assumption that labor power is purchased at is value). And it is this (unavoidable) attachment of the working to the present (which implicitly is also a valuation of the past such as the investor dare not allow him/herself) which makes the working class a *potentially* revolutionary class. Its revolutionary task is to free humanity from the tyranny of the future. Carrol -- Rod Hay [EMAIL
Re: [Fwd: new viruses...] (fwd)
Dear Pen-l, I for one did not open this message. It is my understanding that some of the latest viruses have come labeled as "virus alerts" with packages attached that are supposed to help you fight it. Maybe this one is legit, but just so you all know. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, May 19, 2000 7:57 AM Subject: [PEN-L:19276] [Fwd: new viruses...] (fwd) -- Forwarded message -- Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 16:47:07 +0530 From: S DE [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Fwd: new viruses...]
Re: : withering away of the state
At 07:46 PM 5/18/00 -0400, you wrote: Perhaps Marx was utopian. But we will have to wait until we have a socialists society, in order to find out. The Soviet Union called itself socialist but it wasn't. I think that quibbling about whether or not the USSR was "socialist" is useless. Names are not that important, while "socialism" typically refers more to a movement than an end-result. I used to think that the USSR should be called "collectivist" rather than "socialist" (for reasons similar to Rod's) but I noticed that in the Manifesto and elsewhere, Marx and Engels never made the assumption that "socialism" was a good thing. They are quite critical of socialists (and call themselves communists). The key question is not whether or not the USSR was "socialist," but rather _what kind_ of socialism it was. I think of as an example of bureaucratic socialism (BS). With the receding of the grass-roots working-class movement, with the imperialist invasions and the civil war, with the conflict between the peasants and the workers, the party-state ended up as the only force holding things together, providing order, organizing and developing the economy, defending the country against its foreign enemies, etc. Under these conditions, a small minority of the population could grab and keep state power for themselves "in the name of the proletariat." Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Marx Engels, was Re: Marx andMalleability
Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 07:10AM The problem with the "Dialectics of Nature" is that Engels tries to turn dialectics into a formal system, and thus destroys the meaning of the word. This synthesis-antithesis-synthesis crap does not appear in Hegel or in Marx. _ CB: No, Engels shows exactly how dialectics is the negation of formal logic, or a formal system, including as applied to nature, because dialectics is based on contradiction and formal logic is based on non-contradiction. The issue you raise Engels knew before you did. You probably got it indirectly from Engels. Rob Schaap wrote: G'day Charles, You say "Materialist dialectics was Engels' , and not Marx's." I rteckon we have to be very explicit and specific here. I thought, for instance, that you and I had come to agree that materialism is not the same as physicalism? Social *relations* are material for Marx, and, indeed, the basis of what he called his materialist conception of history. Freddy's *Anti-Duhring* has some beaut bits in it, but, as I've tried to show you elsewhere, is difficult to nail on exactly what is meant by 'dialectic'. Stalin ended up with a view that finds support in Anti-Duhring, but so does, say, Fromm - and those two chaps would've agreed on bugger-all. Cheers, Rob. -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
At 10:43 AM 5/19/00 -0400, you wrote: What do you have against cars with big fins? --jks if a horse falls against a 1959 Cadillac, it can die. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
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I guess you have "state capitalist" model in your mind, which you mistakenly attribute to Marx's CM.. On the contrary, In CM, Marx endorses "state socialist" model. Moreover, Marx criticizes the state capitalist (social democratic) model in the Gotha program, saying that universal free education was not a progressive achievement in the party program for it was already practised under some bourgeois regimes. You need to abolish capitalism to liberate education, not to liberate education to abolish capitalism. in any ase, we had a hot discussion on wsn on this issue a while ago. we comrades argued that what was practiced in Russia was socialism. it was "real" and "existing" socalism, not a utopian one, unlike the bourgeois ideolog way of denying empirical evidence and distorting reality. Austin and Spector comrades made very balanced and objective comments about soviet russia. I will ask Austin's permission to post his message. bye, Mine What is in the CM's platform is fairly practical, and as has already been noted by me, some of it is standard in most most modern economies (e.g. progressive income tax), Barkley wrote: So, was this utopian or not? We certainly did not see any withering away of the state, not in the former USSR, not in the PRC, not anywhere Lenin argued that anarchists misinterpreted "withering away of the state" in a very utopian way. Accordingly, they also misinterpreted Marx. Thus you are reading Soviet union under the influence of anarchist perspective and utopionism. What Marx had in mind was a socialist state, even though he did not explicitly articulate in that way. In his time, the only approximation to this model was Paris Commune, and Lenin's interpretation of the state derives from this model. It is a big mistake to say that MArx does not have a theory of state, and then romanticize him. In the _Communist Manifesto_ Marx outlines the features of a socialist state: 1. abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. a heavy progressive and graduated income tax. 3.abolition of all rights of inheritance. 4. centralization of credit in the hands of the STATE, by means of a national bank with state capital and exclusive monopoly. 5 centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. 6. extension of factories and instruments of production owned by teh state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, the improvement of the soil generally in accordence with a common plan. 7. equal liability of all to labour.. 8. combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries. gradual abolution of the distinction between town and country; by a more equable distribution of the population over the country. 9. free education for all children in public schools.abolition of children's factory in its present form. combination of education with industrial production. Mine Doyran Political Science Phd student SUNY/Albany
Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd)
"J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 11:07AM Charles, Frankly, I see the "withering away of the state" as a millennial vision, like the second coming in Christianity. When John the Baptist met Yeshua bin Miriam he declared that he was the messiah and the "end is near." At various points over the last 2000 years, various folks have declared the same thing only to find out it was not so. ___ CB: But Engels and them specifically describe extensively and frequently a) what religious/idealist thought and "visions" are b) How Marxism is atheist and exactly not religious/idealist. Engels also discussed the specific similarities between early Christianity and the workers movement in the 19th Centuryt. So, the Marxist classics are abundantly clear on how their "vision" is and is not like Christianity. And from that we know that it was not a millenial concept. Rather specifically it was revolutionary, and atheist, consciously differentiating itself from the type of thing you say. It is a common form of anti-Marxism to try to equate it with Christianty and religion. It is a worldview , but specifically not religious, not mysterious like millenial ideas. So, I have a problem with analogizing it to Christianity. __ When the Communist Manifesto was written, Marx and Engels (accurately) saw an imminent revolutionary uprising. It did not work out as they had hoped/expected, ___ CB: It ain't over yet. It is a long term process, longer than YOU and others expected. You have thrown in the towel too soon. Courage , comrade. ___- indeed, in France ended as the "farce" of Napoleon III after the "tragedy" of Napoleon I. Clearly when Marx wrote of the arrival of communism and the "withering away of the state" he was not expecting its imminent arrival. But such hopes have certainly fired subsequent generations of revolutionaries. I am not saying that they should not do so today either, although the current political climate is distinctly reactionary, as near as I can tell. __ CB: Hear, hear, that's the spirit ! Sure we are in a deep ebb, but 1910 was a deep ebb relative to the achievements of the immediate previous revolutionary upsurges. Marxism was in crisis then too. A flow will come, though we as individuals may be gone. I wish I could see world revo too. Maybe it will be faster than it seems it can now. CB
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Dismissing a direct reading of the "withering away of the state" phrase as an "anarchist" interpretation will not do. It is an outburst of anarchist utopianism by Marx, pure and simple. Draper's exhaustive survey of absolutely everything that Marx said about this subject suggests that it wasn't an "outburst." Marx was anti-state and hoped that the rise of the proletariat would create the objective conditions under which the withering away of the state could happen. Marx's optimism on this issue seems based on his extrapolation of the growth and spread of the working-class movement in Western Europe during his lifetime. But the development of the proletariat as a class-conscious and self-organized force is much more complicated and contingent than the "laws of motion of capital," the drive to create crises, concentration, centralization, etc. Marx was much more accurate about the latter, therefore. (Mike Lebowitz' BEYOND CAPITAL is good on this stuff.) What is in the CM in no way can be called a "withering away of the state," and I continue to maintain that the latter is an utopian "vision" (yes, Jim D., I agree, it is a vision and hence "utopian"). It's not utopian in the sense that Marx Engels used the term, since it is based in a materialist analysis of historical potentialities of capitalist society, i.e., the failures successes of capitalism in conjunction with the growth of the working-class movement as the basis for replacing it. Utopianism typically refers to having a fixed image of the way the world "should be" and then trying to create or bring about that image. I don't think Marx's vision of the withering away of the state is detailed enough, while he clearly believed that workers were the ones who would create their own socialism rather than applying some preconceived model. Almost everyone has a tinge of utopianism -- an inkling of the way the world should be. Milton Friedman, for example, has a vision of a perfect market Eden. Unfortunately, his views are endorsed by powerful agencies such as the US Treasury Department and the IMF, who try to force the world into that mold. What is in the CM's platform is fairly practical, and as has already been noted by me, some of it is standard in most most modern economies (e.g. progressive income tax), and some is standard in garden variety socialist economies, (e.g. nationalized credit), and some is more utopian (e.g. abolition of the distinction between the city and the country, unless one considers suburbs to have achieved this... ). It's important to avoid quoting this list out of context. _Before the list_ is presented, the CM's "platform" is portrayed as a "pretty generally applicable" description of what the proletariat will do to "win the battle of democracy," to become "organized as the ruling class," to make "despotic inroads on the rights of [capitalist] property." Further, it is "economically insufficient and untenable, but ... in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order..." (page 490 of Tucker's 2nd edition of the MARX-ENGELS READER) In this light, Marx Engels' list doesn't sound like a "platform" or "the features of a socialist state" as much as a tentative description of what can/will/might happen in the early stages of a revolution. It's pretty much the same thing as what Marx elsewhere called the "dictatorship of the proletariat." It's the establishment of the working class as a new ruling class, replacing the old one. Note that the list is _followed by_ a description of the withering away of the state, without using that term: "When, in the course of development [in the course of human events?], class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. "In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all." (pp. 490-1) It should be noted that for Marx, the state is an institution of coercion to impose and reproduce class relations. This differs from the liberal conception of the state, which is basically an institution that provides "public goods" which must coerce the free-riders who exploit the production of public goods without
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: MarxandMalleability (fwd)
Mine, How do I have a "state capitalist model in mind"? I simply noted that some parts of the CM are now widely adopted in many societies and some are not, but fully agree with you that what is in the CM is, more or less, a reasonable description of what a socialist system would look like. I also agree that, for all its many flaws, the USSR fit the model pretty well. Obviously there are a lot of issues not addressed in the CM platform, and thus there are many possible variations on this model. That "Lenin said" that it was anarchist or utopian to view Marx's "withering away of the state" in the obvious way does not impress me at all. It is simply a further sign that Lenin was out to interpret Marx in ways that would justify his own anti-democratic seizure of state power and his actions that followed. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, May 19, 2000 11:56 AM Subject: [PEN-L:19296] Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: MarxandMalleability (fwd) I guess you have "state capitalist" model in your mind, which you mistakenly attribute to Marx's CM.. On the contrary, In CM, Marx endorses "state socialist" model. Moreover, Marx criticizes the state capitalist (social democratic) model in the Gotha program, saying that universal free education was not a progressive achievement in the party program for it was already practised under some bourgeois regimes. You need to abolish capitalism to liberate education, not to liberate education to abolish capitalism. in any ase, we had a hot discussion on wsn on this issue a while ago. we comrades argued that what was practiced in Russia was socialism. it was "real" and "existing" socalism, not a utopian one, unlike the bourgeois ideolog way of denying empirical evidence and distorting reality. Austin and Spector comrades made very balanced and objective comments about soviet russia. I will ask Austin's permission to post his message. bye, Mine What is in the CM's platform is fairly practical, and as has already been noted by me, some of it is standard in most most modern economies (e.g. progressive income tax), Barkley wrote: So, was this utopian or not? We certainly did not see any withering away of the state, not in the former USSR, not in the PRC, not anywhere Lenin argued that anarchists misinterpreted "withering away of the state" in a very utopian way. Accordingly, they also misinterpreted Marx. Thus you are reading Soviet union under the influence of anarchist perspective and utopionism. What Marx had in mind was a socialist state, even though he did not explicitly articulate in that way. In his time, the only approximation to this model was Paris Commune, and Lenin's interpretation of the state derives from this model. It is a big mistake to say that MArx does not have a theory of state, and then romanticize him. In the _Communist Manifesto_ Marx outlines the features of a socialist state: 1. abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. a heavy progressive and graduated income tax. 3.abolition of all rights of inheritance. 4. centralization of credit in the hands of the STATE, by means of a national bank with state capital and exclusive monopoly. 5 centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. 6. extension of factories and instruments of production owned by teh state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, the improvement of the soil generally in accordence with a common plan. 7. equal liability of all to labour.. 8. combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries. gradual abolution of the distinction between town and country; by a more equable distribution of the population over the country. 9. free education for all children in public schools.abolition of children's factory in its present form. combination of education with industrial production. Mine Doyran Political Science Phd student SUNY/Albany
Re: : withering away of the state
Charles Brown wrote: Actually, isn't it a big part of our problem that what _most people_ DO mean by "socialism" what they had in the USSR? --jks CB: This is a problem for you because of your utopianism. Marx predicted that the Paris Commune would be a folly of dispair, but also knew that it was the beginning of actual socialism, with all its faults, and advanced his theory of socialism based on it. Similarly , the USSR to the 20th power. Wait a minute. A model that failed and which is now held in almost universally low regard - you may not like that, but it's a fact - is the basis of a future socialism? Justin may be a utopian, but you're a dystopian then. Doug
Re: Re: : withering away of the state
Doug Henwood wrote: Wait a minute. A model that failed and which is now held in almost universally low regard I've never praised or dispraised any position on the grounds that it was or was not "marxist." I'll break that habit now. The use of the concept of "model" in reference to social systems is aggressively anti-marxist -- that is, it is incompatible with almost anything Marx ever wrote. In marxist terms the USSR cannot be either a good nor a bad model simply because in marxist terms it was not a model of any sort. (In most usages of the word -- and in almost all instances of the serious use of the concept -- "model" is a version of Platonic Realism.) Carrol
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in 1917, REVOLUTION happened in Russia, whether you like it or not. it was a perfectly democratic and legitimate way of resisting to the system. You can not take away people's right to resist. It is completely legitimate to overthrow an "illegitimate" system based on coercion and exploitation like capitalism. Marx says in the manifesto: "expropriators should be expropriated" Mine That "Lenin said" that it was anarchist or utopian to view Marx's "withering away of the state" in the obvious way does not impress me at all. It is simply a further sign that Lenin was out to interpret Marx in ways that would justify his own anti-democratic seizure of state power and his actions that followed. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, May 19, 2000 11:56 AM Subject: [PEN-L:19296] Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: MarxandMalleability (fwd) I guess you have "state capitalist" model in your mind, which you mistakenly attribute to Marx's CM.. On the contrary, In CM, Marx endorses "state socialist" model. Moreover, Marx criticizes the state capitalist (social democratic) model in the Gotha program, saying that universal free education was not a progressive achievement in the party program for it was already practised under some bourgeois regimes. You need to abolish capitalism to liberate education, not to liberate education to abolish capitalism. in any ase, we had a hot discussion on wsn on this issue a while ago. we comrades argued that what was practiced in Russia was socialism. it was "real" and "existing" socalism, not a utopian one, unlike the bourgeois ideolog way of denying empirical evidence and distorting reality. Austin and Spector comrades made very balanced and objective comments about soviet russia. I will ask Austin's permission to post his message. bye, Mine What is in the CM's platform is fairly practical, and as has already been noted by me, some of it is standard in most most modern economies (e.g. progressive income tax), Barkley wrote: So, was this utopian or not? We certainly did not see any withering away of the state, not in the former USSR, not in the PRC, not anywhere Lenin argued that anarchists misinterpreted "withering away of the state" in a very utopian way. Accordingly, they also misinterpreted Marx. Thus you are reading Soviet union under the influence of anarchist perspective and utopionism. What Marx had in mind was a socialist state, even though he did not explicitly articulate in that way. In his time, the only approximation to this model was Paris Commune, and Lenin's interpretation of the state derives from this model. It is a big mistake to say that MArx does not have a theory of state, and then romanticize him. In the _Communist Manifesto_ Marx outlines the features of a socialist state: 1. abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. a heavy progressive and graduated income tax. 3.abolition of all rights of inheritance. 4. centralization of credit in the hands of the STATE, by means of a national bank with state capital and exclusive monopoly. 5 centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. 6. extension of factories and instruments of production owned by teh state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, the improvement of the soil generally in accordence with a common plan. 7. equal liability of all to labour.. 8. combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries. gradual abolution of the distinction between town and country; by a more equable distribution of the population over the country. 9. free education for all children in public schools.abolition of children's factory in its present form. combination of education with industrial production. Mine Doyran Political Science Phd student SUNY/Albany
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Charles says: Claims such as Justin's that my approach to Lenin and Marx is like that of an approach to the Father , Son and Holy Ghost, are, ironically, themselves, liberal dogma, unfounded selfcongratulation that Justin or someone thinks more critically and undogmatically than I. This is false. Justin's thinking is not more critical, non-dogmatic than mine, as demonstrated constantly on these lists. * * People can and will draw their own conclusions about that. --jks
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Yeah, I know, those old cars are fragile. I would never let a horse fall on mine. --jks At 10:43 AM 5/19/00 -0400, you wrote: What do you have against cars with big fins? --jks if a horse falls against a 1959 Cadillac, it can die. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Marx and Malleability
Brad De Long wrote: Brad De Long wrote: So why, then, is the first Marx so weak in post-Marxian Marxism? Why was the world afflicted with, say, Paul Sweezy's claim that "One need not have a specific idea of a... beautiful musical composition, to recognize that the... the rock-and-roll that blares at us exemplify a pattern of utilization of human and material resources which is inimical to human welfare"? My god. Where did he say that? Doug _Monopoly Capital_, pp. 138-9. He also takes after slums and cars with big fins, where he has more of a point... Being a temporary resident of Bedford-Stuyvesant, I can see the point on slums, but tail fins, well those are a bit more problematic. Yeah, marketers screw with our desires, but what's wrong with liking stylish things? I'm not defending tail fins in themselves, and I'm not a big fan of the automobile, but Sweezy sounds too much like the kind of wet blanket that Ernest Mandel criticized in this passage from Late Capitalism: The genuine extension of the needs (living standards) of the wage-earner, which represents a raising of his level of culture and civilization. In the end this can be traced back virtually completely to the conquest of longer time for recreation, both quantitatively (a shorter working week, free weekends, paid holidays, earlier pensionable age, and longer education) and qualitatively (the actual extension of cultural needs, to the extent to which they are not trivialized or deprived of their human content by capitalist commercialization). This genuine extension of needs is a corollary of the necessary civilizing function of capital. Any rejection of the so-called 'consumer society' which moves beyond justified condemnation of the commercialization and dehumanization of consumption by capitalism to attack the historical extension of needs and consumption in general (i.e., moves from social criticism to a critique of civilization), turns back the clock from scientific to utopian socialism and from historical materialism to idealism. Marx fully appreciated and stressed the civilizing function of capital, which he saw as the necessary preparation of the material basis for a 'rich individuality'. The following passage from the Grundrisse makes this view very clear: 'Capital's ceaseless striving towards the general form of wealth drives labour beyond the limits of its natural paltriness, and thus creates the material elements for the development of the rich individuality which is as all-sided in its production as in its consumption, and whose labour also therefore appears no longer as labour, but as the full development of activity itself, in which natural necessity in its direct form has disappeared; because a historically created need has taken the place of the natural one.' For socialists, rejection of capitalist 'consumer society' can therefore never imply rejection of the extension and differentiation of needs as a whole, or any return to the primitive natural state of these needs; their aim is necessarily the development of a 'rich individuality' for the whole of mankind. In this rational Marxist sense, rejection of capitalist 'consumer society' can only mean: rejection of all those forms of consumption and of production which continue to restrict man's development, making it narrow and one-sided. This rational rejection seeks to reverse the relationship between the production of goods and human labour, which is determined by the commodity form under capitalism, so that henceforth the main goal of economic activity is not the maximum production of things and the maximum private profit for each individual unit of production (factory or company), but the optimum self-activity of the individual person. The production of goods must be subordinated to this goal, which means the elimination of forms of production and labour which damage human health and man's natural environment, even if they are 'profitable' in isolation. At the same time, it must be remembered that man as a material being with material needs cannot achieve the full development of a 'rich individuality' through asceticism, self-castigation and artificial self-limitation, but only through the rational development of his consumption, consciously controlled and consciously (i.e., democratically) subordinated to his collective interests. Marx himself deliberately pointed out the need to work out a system of needs, which has nothing to do with the neo-asceticism peddled in some circles as Marxist orthodoxy. In the Grundrisse Marx says: 'The exploration of the earth in all directions, to discover new things of use as well as new useful qualities of the old; such as new qualities of them as raw materials; the development, hence, of the natural sciences to their highest point; likewise the discovery, creation and satisfaction of new needs arising from society itself; the cultivation of all the qualities of the
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Jim Devine wrote: In the terms I used, this positing of possessiveness reflected Hobbes' experience with the English Civil War and the rise of capitalist competition. Mine writes: Yes and No. Hobbes was not *simply* writing under the influence of his circumstances. He was also *normatively* endorsing capitalism and private property regime. If one's ideas simply reflect one's circumstances, then Marx could never have been "critical" of capitalim. I didn't say "simply reflected circumstances," since I didn't use the word "simply." plus, Hobbes' notion of the "instict of rational self-preservation" is completely "ahistorical". Hobbes abstracts the concept from its historical content, and then projects capitalism onto human nature as if human nature has never changed, or as if it has always remained capitalist. He does not locate rationality in its historical context. He assimilates the very definition of liberty to capitalist rationality (posssesive individualism). I don't disagree. I wouldn't equate his views of human nature with "capitalist rationality," though. I think it also reflected (though it did not "simply reflect") the extremely contentious English Civil War. You say R's model was an abstraction. i don't terribly disagree with this. however, i don't see any problem with abstractions per se nor do I. The problem for me, as for Marx Engels, was with the kind of abstraction it (R's "contrat social") was. I wrote: But following R, there's a distinction between "possession" (control) and "property" (state-endorsed rights). Mine writes: I don't recall this. do you have a citation for this distinction from the text. Under "capitalism", state is by definition a protector of private property regime The distinction is in R's SOCIAL CONTRACT. BTW, I don't think the concept of "private property" is a good one. I would use the term "individual property" instead, since the impact of "private property" is more than private. Under capitalism, owning the right kinds of property allows one to appropriate a share of the societal surplus-value. Even under simple commodity production, the owner of property can impose pollution and the like on others. I think it's confusing to _define_ the capitalist state as "a protector of [the] private property system." That's what it does, but I would define it in more general terms as the organization that monopolizes violence (or attempts to do so) in a given territory. (This follows Weber, who follows Trotsky, but is not the same.) At least for a while the working class could control the state in a way that goes against capitalist property. I like that book [Origins of Inequality] too. It's a very abstract and hypothetical anthropology, akin to a lot of "sociobiology" in style of analysis (trying to figure out what people were like without society) but with more attractive conclusions to most leftists. come on! which socio-biology?. I strongly disencourage you to assimilate R to biologically reductionist socio-biology arguments that reduce man to "genes"... I explained what I meant, in parentheses. this missive is too long to respond to any more... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
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Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 12:41PM Charles Brown wrote: Actually, isn't it a big part of our problem that what _most people_ DO mean by "socialism" what they had in the USSR? --jks CB: This is a problem for you because of your utopianism. Marx predicted that the Paris Commune would be a folly of dispair, but also knew that it was the beginning of actual socialism, with all its faults, and advanced his theory of socialism based on it. Similarly , the USSR to the 20th power. Wait a minute. A model that failed... ___ CB: Wouldn't call it a model that failed, but efforts to build socialism that had enormous successes and failures. Here's an example of an enormous success. It played a key role in the liberation of most of the paleocolonial world ! A gigantic blow to white supremacism. That was a profound success of the Soviet Union. Another success was proving that a society could exist with no unemployment and free health care and higher education. Unfortunately , they had to put a lot of their success into building defenses against imperialist war. But they were up to the task. and which is now held in almost universally low regard... _ CB: You give too much regard to the opinion of the current generation. History has not ended , nor is its judgment of the SU final with those to whom you refer. - you may not like that, but it's a fact - CB: It's a fact, among the minority of the world population who think about such, but the significance of the fact - the opinion of the current generation of ideologists - is not what you imply. is the basis of a future socialism? Justin may be a utopian, but you're a dystopian then. ___ CB: All turns on your topian approach. You only see utopias and dystopias. You refuse to acknowledge scientific vision ( as defined by the Father , the Son and the Holy Ghost, and the Devil herself ) which contemplates vulgar trial and error as as important to the process as neat and clean"models", armchair holier than thou"theories". You don't have practice as part of your epistemology, only models, theory, topias. Soviet Union is only a "failure" for a utopian approach, (and bourgeois approach, as the latter allows you to ignore its enormous successes in your measurement of its history). A scientific approach finds trials , errors and truths. The SU passed some of the tests and failed others. Normal array result in a scientific practice ( practice is short for experimentation and industry) . It would be very unwise to throw out the positive results from the history of the SU under the humbug that it was an absolute failure. You would have been one calling Marx a distopian for focussing on positive lessons from the Paris Commune, which failed much worse and quicker than the Soviet Union. CB
Fw: [HAYEK-L:] LIT: R Epstein on Hayekian Socialism (corrected)
Hey, folks, since there is yet another discussion going on here about "what is socialism," I thought I would pass on this tidbit to let you all know that some people think that Hayek was one! (Apologies to Michael who prefers to have no mention of Hayek on his list because of Hayek's ultra-pro-capitalist stance, :-)). Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: List Host [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, May 19, 2000 12:24 PM Subject: [HAYEK-L:] LIT: R Epstein on "Hayekian Socialism" (corrected) Hayek In The Literature-- welfare security "In sum, I think that the charge of Hayekian socialism carries with it a certain accuracy, because Hayek did not see the close intellectual and institutional connections between the government interventions that he supported and those which he opposed. In part, Hayek made mistakes because of the political circumstances of his own time. In order to slay the dragon of central planning, he thought it imperative to concede some points to the opposition. But a second reason is at work as well, and it brings us back to the philosophical origins of Hayek's position. The central feature of Hayekian thought was its reliance on ignorance. It is ignorance that make central planning fail. It is ignorance that gives local knowledge its real bit. It is ignorance that leads us to embrace a conception of subjective value. I value my ignorance as much as the next fellow. But truth be known, Hayek has gotten his central philosophical point only partly right. He overstates the level of ignorance that we have, and thus underestimates the dangers of government intervention driven by knowledge of partisan advantage. It may well be that I cannot draw the demand curve for my new widget; but I do know that there are few states of the world in which I am better off without my protected monopoly that with it. And ignorant, thought I may be, I will be prepared to invest a good deal in securing that legal protection if allowed to do so by the rules of the game. With partial knowledge I can put self-interest to work in the political sphere just as I can put it to work in the economic sphere. Truth be known, that is where Hayek goes wrong. We (collectively) may not know enough to manage a complex economic system from the center, but we (individually) do know enough to seek to rig the rule of the game to cut in our favor. Imperfect information coupled with confined self-interest offers a better set of behavioral assumptions about individual actors and social processes. Once we make those assumptions, we must be aware of the dangers that come from interferences with the contractual freedom and with legal efforts to maintain, from the center, minimum levels of security for us all. These ideals may sound fine in the abstract, but in practice they confer too much power on government bureaucrats and often invite private behaviors that ape many of the worst characteristics of the central planning that Hayek rightly deplored. The Hayekian critique applies to the Hayekian concession on minimum welfare rights. In that important sense, the charge of Hayekian socialism sticks." From Richard Epstein, "Hayekian Socialism". _Maryland Law Review_. Vol. 58, No. 1. 1999. pp. 271-299. Richard Epstein is professor of law at the U. of Chicago. "Hayek In The Literature" is a regular feature of the Hayek-L list. Hayek-L Archive: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/hayek-l.html Hayek Scholars Page: http://www.hayekcenter.org/friedrichhayek/hayek.html Scholars Bookstore: http://www.hayekcenter.org/bookstore/scholars_books.html
Consumer Society, was Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Doug Henwood wrote: [snip] Ernest Mandel criticized in this passage from Late Capitalism: [snip] (the actual extension of cultural needs, to the extent to which they are not trivialized or deprived of their human content by capitalist commercialization). This whole passage from Mandel is magnificent, but he does (unavoidably) leave a hole in his argument -- which could be the occasion of endless debate. How does one measure "the extent" to which any one "actual extension of cultural needs" is or is not trivialized? If I recall correctly, the same passage in *Monopoly Capital* that sneers at rock also sneers at the "hi-fi system" endlessly playing (unheard) in the background. Whatever may have been Sweezy's subjective attitude at the time, this does not (as Michael Keaney has pointed out) any more constitute a condemnation of Bach's Brandenberg Concertos than does the sneer at rock music constitute an attack on rock as such. (I suspect Sweezy was really sneering at rock as such, as Caudwell sneered at Jazz in the mid-thirties -- but we are entitled to ignore the error and look for the principle.) One effect of rock music (quite aside from its excellence or lack of excellence as music) has been the diminution of public places where people can hear each other talk. There is not a single bar in Bloomington- Normal where one can carry on a conversation. There is one restaurant and bar that quiets down a bit after about 8:30 p.m. on week nights. That's in a population center of about 150,000. Carrol
Re: Re: : withering away of the state
Doug, It is possible to say that the USSR was a "model of socialism" (Carrol Cox's complaint, nothwithstanding) while nevertheless maintaining that it was/is not THE "model for socialism." Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, May 19, 2000 12:41 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19300] Re: : withering away of the state Charles Brown wrote: Actually, isn't it a big part of our problem that what _most people_ DO mean by "socialism" what they had in the USSR? --jks CB: This is a problem for you because of your utopianism. Marx predicted that the Paris Commune would be a folly of dispair, but also knew that it was the beginning of actual socialism, with all its faults, and advanced his theory of socialism based on it. Similarly , the USSR to the 20th power. Wait a minute. A model that failed and which is now held in almost universally low regard - you may not like that, but it's a fact - is the basis of a future socialism? Justin may be a utopian, but you're a dystopian then. Doug
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Mine, I have less problem with Lenin's seizing power than I do with his shutting down the Duma a month later when the SRs won the election rather than his Bolsheviks. There was the original sin of the Bolshevik Revolution from which many others flowed after. Indeed, it is very relevant to this discussion of Marx and how Lenin and others interpreted him, especially as regards "the dictatorship of the proletariat" the criticism of "parliamentarism," the discussion surrounding the "nature of socialism and communism," and, of course, "the withering away of the state," and other related matters. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, May 19, 2000 12:53 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19302] Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:MarxandMalleability (fwd) in 1917, REVOLUTION happened in Russia, whether you like it or not. it was a perfectly democratic and legitimate way of resisting to the system. You can not take away people's right to resist. It is completely legitimate to overthrow an "illegitimate" system based on coercion and exploitation like capitalism. Marx says in the manifesto: "expropriators should be expropriated" Mine That "Lenin said" that it was anarchist or utopian to view Marx's "withering away of the state" in the obvious way does not impress me at all. It is simply a further sign that Lenin was out to interpret Marx in ways that would justify his own anti-democratic seizure of state power and his actions that followed. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, May 19, 2000 11:56 AM Subject: [PEN-L:19296] Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: MarxandMalleability (fwd) I guess you have "state capitalist" model in your mind, which you mistakenly attribute to Marx's CM.. On the contrary, In CM, Marx endorses "state socialist" model. Moreover, Marx criticizes the state capitalist (social democratic) model in the Gotha program, saying that universal free education was not a progressive achievement in the party program for it was already practised under some bourgeois regimes. You need to abolish capitalism to liberate education, not to liberate education to abolish capitalism. in any ase, we had a hot discussion on wsn on this issue a while ago. we comrades argued that what was practiced in Russia was socialism. it was "real" and "existing" socalism, not a utopian one, unlike the bourgeois ideolog way of denying empirical evidence and distorting reality. Austin and Spector comrades made very balanced and objective comments about soviet russia. I will ask Austin's permission to post his message. bye, Mine What is in the CM's platform is fairly practical, and as has already been noted by me, some of it is standard in most most modern economies (e.g. progressive income tax), Barkley wrote: So, was this utopian or not? We certainly did not see any withering away of the state, not in the former USSR, not in the PRC, not anywhere Lenin argued that anarchists misinterpreted "withering away of the state" in a very utopian way. Accordingly, they also misinterpreted Marx. Thus you are reading Soviet union under the influence of anarchist perspective and utopionism. What Marx had in mind was a socialist state, even though he did not explicitly articulate in that way. In his time, the only approximation to this model was Paris Commune, and Lenin's interpretation of the state derives from this model. It is a big mistake to say that MArx does not have a theory of state, and then romanticize him. In the _Communist Manifesto_ Marx outlines the features of a socialist state: 1. abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. a heavy progressive and graduated income tax. 3.abolition of all rights of inheritance. 4. centralization of credit in the hands of the STATE, by means of a national bank with state capital and exclusive monopoly. 5 centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. 6. extension of factories and instruments of production owned by teh state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, the improvement of the soil generally in accordence with a common plan. 7. equal liability of all to labour.. 8. combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries. gradual abolution of the distinction between town and country; by a more equable distribution of the population over the country. 9. free education for all children in public schools.abolition of children's factory in its present form. combination of education with industrial production. Mine Doyran Political Science Phd student SUNY/Albany
Re: Re: : withering away of the state
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 12:55PM Charles says: Claims such as Justin's that my approach to Lenin and Marx is like that of an approach to the Father , Son and Holy Ghost, are, ironically, themselves, liberal dogma, unfounded selfcongratulation that Justin or someone thinks more critically and undogmatically than I. This is false. Justin's thinking is not more critical, non-dogmatic than mine, as demonstrated constantly on these lists. * * People can and will draw their own conclusions about that. __ CB: Except for you. You will draw your conclusion based on some liberal dogma.
Re: Marx and Malleability
K Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit on 19/5/00 4:16 am, Brad De Long at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Brad De Long wrote: So why, then, is the first Marx so weak in post-Marxian Marxism? Why was the world afflicted with, say, Paul Sweezy's claim that "One need not have a specific idea of a... beautiful musical composition, to recognize that the... the rock-and-roll that blares at us exemplify a pattern of utilization of human and material resources which is inimical to human welfare"? My god. Where did he say that? Doug _Monopoly Capital_, pp. 138-9. He also takes after slums and cars with big fins, where he has more of a point... Hey Brad What's your beef with Sweezy? You have already tried to discredit him by referring us to his citations of J.V. Stalin of yore. Now it's time for the rock and roll generation to disassociate itself from this obvious reactionary -- is that the idea? Michael K. I think that the line between Sweezy's attitude toward rock-and-roll and the suppression of the Czechoslovakian Jazz Section, or the bulldozing of Moscow modern art exhibits, is pretty clear. The point is not the "discrediting" of Sweezy, but how it came to be that people who claimed to be committed to a tradition that extolled human freedom, potential, and development could be so hostile to... ...jazz ...modern art ...rock and roll That is an interesting historical puzzle; I would like to have a sense of why it happened. Brad DeLong
RE: Re: Re: : withering away of the state
Perhaps but that could cut two ways, as in socialism yes, good no. No reason to assume every form of socialism would be desirable. mbs I bet if we took a count more people would consider the USSR socialism (communism even) than not. CB Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 09:15PM Interesting musings Carrol, but words have meanings, and what most people mean by the word socialism is not what was seen in the USSR. You can call it what you want, but I don't call it socialism. Rod Carrol Cox wrote: Rod Hay wrote: Perhaps Marx was utopian. But we will have to wait until we have a socialists society, in order to find out. The Soviet Union called itself socialist but it wasn't. This I think is utopian. Socialism is a movement, not a platonic form against which you can measure any state and say it is or isn't "socialist." It would seem to me wrong to assume that there will not be many more episodes in the socialist movement which will go greatly astray in one way or another, many more defeats. THe struggles of 6 billion people and their descendants to find their way out of capitalism will almost certainly contain episodes at least as unpleasant as the USSR at its worst. The struggle for socialism has to be essentially g self-justifying at each step, regardless of the (temporary) final outcomes of each struggle. If the only or even the chief reason to fight for socialism is the achievement of the socialism for our great-grandchildren, then socialism is a bust. This is *not* to disagree with Rosa Luxemburg that the final goal is everything, the struggle is nothing. The role of that final goal is the understanding we achieve through it of the present. Hence the struggle depends on the final goal *independently* of whether or not we ever achieve that final goal. Marx, as I understand him, did not propose the classless society and the withering away of the state as a prize to reward us at the end. He saw that just as feudalism could be understood from the perspective of capitalism, so capitalism could only be understood from the perspective of communism. We can only understand the capitalist state (and therefore organize our struggle against it) by seeing it from the perspective of the society in which the state has withered away. [I really think it would help if a larger proportion of marxists suffered from depression. That would help dampen the galloping optimism that blithely says the USSR was not socialist -- for the implication of that evaluation is that socialism of just the sort we want will be easily attainable if we just have the right ideas. Horse Feathers!] The evil at the heart of capitalism (or of any social order of which the market is the central institution) is that Reality becomes the Future, while the past and present become mere appearance. I began to see this by reading and re-reading Plato's *Republic* and attempting to explain it to undergraduates. In Plato's timarchy (in effect a landed aristocracy of some sort) the Past is the Real. The present is merely a recapitulation of the past and is emptied of reality. In what he called an oligarchy (a state ruled by those whose motive was the accumulation of wealth [=money?], the past was non-existent, and the present only the shadow of the future. Action becomes meaningless in itself, since it cannot exhibit ambition (which is the struggle to maintain what the past has given us) nor can it be its own end. Since anything resembling capitalism was still nearly 2000 years away, it was remarkable that even in the piddling financial manipulations of his day Plato could see this. The core capitalist metaphor, that of *investment* catches up this trivialization of the present by the future. The *demos* Plato discarded with contempt: they *chose* (he implies) to live only in the present, their lives dominated by a lowly lust for immediate satisfaction. (One of the many modern equivalents of this is the accusation that unwed mothers have babies in order to make money off of public aid.) There would have been no way to theorize this in Plato's world, for that depended on the development of wage labor under capitalism and its theorization in Marx's conceptions of surplus value and alienation. The working class, by definition, is that class which *must* live in the present (that being the main thrust of the assumption that labor power is purchased at is value). And it is this (unavoidable) attachment of the working to the present (which implicitly is also a valuation of the past such as the investor dare not allow him/herself) which makes the working class a *potentially* revolutionary class. Its revolutionary task is to free humanity from the tyranny of the future. Carrol -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive
Marx and Dictatorship
On 18 May 00, at 22:08, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ideas have consequences, but not mechanical ones. yes they do: I will now unsub from pen-l to get away from all its chit chat trash and re re re trash.
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Brad De Long wrote: I think that the line between Sweezy's attitude toward rock-and-roll and the suppression of the Czechoslovakian Jazz Section, or the bulldozing of Moscow modern art exhibits, is pretty clear. The point is not the "discrediting" of Sweezy, but how it came to be that people who claimed to be committed to a tradition that extolled human freedom, potential, and development could be so hostile to... ...jazz ...modern art ...rock and roll That is an interesting historical puzzle; I would like to have a sense of why it happened. Jazz and rock and roll strike some sorts as disorderly, chaotic, and rebellious. Some revolutionaries seem to prefer a new order - their order - to disorder, chaos, and rebellion. Complaints about the "anarchy of capitalist production" fall along those lines. Then there's the class thing - Sweezy comes from a fairly posh background. As did Adorno, who didn't like jazz, and no doubt would have hated rock and roll. Those hippie girls who shook their breasts at him probably helped bring on his death. Modern art is a mixed bag. The cultural elite who ran the Congress for Cultural Freedom liked it because it was elitist (but yahoos in the U.S. Congress thought they were supporting Commie art by funding the likes of Jackson Pollock). There's some resemblance between Jesse Helms and Joe Stalin's artistic taste, no? Doug
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Brad raises an important question about the cultural development of Soviet-style socialism. It has been noted that there are parallels between "socialist realism" and the sort of art promoted under Nazism. This suggests that there is something in the way totalitarian, or would-be totalitarian, stystems regard art. A crude first approximation might be that these enshrine the cultural values of people with middlebrow artistic taste, due to their, typically, non-elite education and background in the old society, and create an apparatus for enforcing that taste by coercion, an well, of course, in the choice of what to spend public mony on. That does not explain thea ttitude of someone like Sweezy, who was not a bureaucrat from a lower class background in a Stalinist state, but a person of highly elite education. However, at the time he wrote the sentence in question, he was even more enamored of Stalinism than he is now, and may have adopted its tastes by analogy; at the very least, he had the reaction of someone of his education and generation to music that was loud, fast, abrasive, and obnoxious, and didn't even have positive political content, and confused that reaction with an insult to the human spirit. For me, if socialism hasn't got a place for low and vulgar rock n roll, I don't want it. --jks * * 8 how it came to be that people who claimed to be committed to a tradition that extolled human freedom, potential, and development could be so hostile to... ..jazz ..modern art ..rock and roll That is an interesting historical puzzle; I would like to have a sense of why it happened. Brad DeLong
RE: Re: Re: : withering away of the state
This may seem a cliche, but I'd say it is more complex than "yea, yea, or nay, nay", ( I really hate to say this one) "good and bad", "success and failure". It had some good and some bad ( and ugly), some success and some failure ( and freedom even). For us, the importance of the SU is to learn the positive and negative lessons, for when we do it. No, it is not only a source of negative lessons. Wrong. The "all bad" version throws out the baby with the bath water. Ok , Max , two points for you for getting me to use all these cliches. But the point here is also, the harm to the reputation of socialism. On that, it is important first, to debunk the exaggeration of its failures, raise its coveredup successes, and broadcast the positive as well as negative critique, as in any scientific, objective process. CB "Max B. Sawicky" [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 02:15PM Perhaps but that could cut two ways, as in socialism yes, good no. No reason to assume every form of socialism would be desirable. mbs I bet if we took a count more people would consider the USSR socialism (communism even) than not. CB Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 09:15PM Interesting musings Carrol, but words have meanings, and what most people mean by the word socialism is not what was seen in the USSR. You can call it what you want, but I don't call it socialism.
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Brad, pen-l's resident contrarian, writes: I think that the line between Sweezy's attitude toward rock-and-roll and the suppression of the Czechoslovakian Jazz Section, or the bulldozing of Moscow modern art exhibits, is pretty clear. Actually, the (disgusting) quote from MONOPOLY CAPITAL was by both Baran _and_ Sweezy. Though as co-author of that book, Sweezy can't be totally absolved of the horrible guilt of being against rock'n'roll, it fits better with my understanding of Baran. I think of Paul B. as more Stalinist than Paul S., though perhaps someone more familiar with all of their works than I am can correct me. Also, I think Paul B. was more influenced by the Frankfurt school. That school emphasized the cultural critique of capitalism (much more than Paul S. did). It also emphasized the conflict between what's real under capitalism and what's rational from the Frankfurter perspective. In the relevant passage of MONOPOLY CAPITALISM, there is no explicit call for the suppression of rock'n'roll. So that's another thing that separates Sweezy from the East Bloc Stalinists who suppressed the Czechoslovakian Jazz Section, etc. Similarly, I don't like rap music, but that doesn't mean that I advocate its suppression. I do like the idea of restrictions on the volume of the music being blasted out of peoples' cars. But that would simply be a liberal reform of the sort that is already in place in many areas, not an example of Stalinist repression. For example, New York City had anti-noise ordinances long before the resistible rise of Rudy Giuliani. Since Baran Sweezy explicitly are criticizing "the rock-and-roll that blares at us" rather than rock'n'roll _per se_, someone who hasn't declared an ideological war against Sweezy might allow for the possible interpretation that it's the _blare_ which is important to their argument. Sweezy, I know was very critical of the USSR and its "allies" of the East Bloc when they were around. I guess he might have been disgusted by the suppression of Jazz, but would have said "considering the way in which capitalism keeps up its attacks on the USSR, the poverty that they started with, etc., you can understand why they do such stupid things." Again, I don't know what his exact position on this issue was (though I hope that Brad has documentation here). Also, Sweezy's opinion on these issues has changed over his life-time, just as everyone else's do. Just as we should trash Brad for his youthful indiscretions (I can imagine that he inhaled), we need to give Sweezy the benefit of the doubt rather than arbitrarily dumping him in the dust-bin of history with the Soviet Commissars. It's important to notice that suppression of culture is not a phenomenon that is unique to the distorted socialism that grew up in poor countries attacked by capitalist enemies and forced to become garrison states. Here in California, where Brad also lives, we got an early taste of neo-liberalism with governor Reagan's efforts to defund education and the arts, a trend which has continued to the present day. Education has been transformed more and more into "just the basics, ma'am," so that art and culture are left to the commercial television networks (including PBS) to purvey. This is just as much a crime against culture as was the Soviet suppression of alternative culture. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Global Business Economics Review (GBER)
THO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: (Please feel free to disseminate this announcenet to your friends, libraries and journal directories around the world.) The Global Business Economics Review (GBER) is an international refereed journal, published semi-annually (June and December) by the Business Economics Society International, for the presentation, discussion and analysis of advanced concepts, initial treatments and fundamental research in all fields of Business and Economics. Priority is given to insightful policy oriented articles that deal with the implications of the increasingly global business activity, especially written for the educated lay-person. The GBER welcomes contributions from academicians, corporate executives, staff members of research institutions, international organizations and government officials. Interested authors should submit four (4) copies of original manuscripts in English, with authorship identified on a removable cover page, accompanied by a submission fee of $25 payable to BESI. Manuscripts and editorial communications should be directed to: Editor Global Business Economics Review 64 Holden Street Worcester, MA 01605 USA Tel: (508) 595-0089 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Please type 'GBER' in the dubject line) Manuscripts submitted to the Review must be original contributions and should not be under consideration for any other publication at the same time. The reviewing is based on the anonymity of the author(s) and the confidentiality of reviewers' and editors' reports. Authorship should be identified only on a removable cover page. Manuscripts should, normally, not exceed 12 single-spaced pages (Font:Times, Size:10) inclusive of graphs, tables, endnotes/footnotes and references. Detailed Format instructions will be attached to the acceptance for publication letter. ISSN: 1097-4954 Copyright © 1998 by the Business Economics Society International All rights reserved Printed in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA For more information, please browse: http://www.assumption.edu/html/faculty/kantar/GBER.html __
RE: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Brad raises an important question about the cultural development of Soviet-style socialism. It has been noted that there are parallels between "socialist realism" and the sort of art promoted under Nazism. This suggests that there is something in the way totalitarian, or would-be totalitarian, stystems regard art. A crude first approximation might be that these enshrine the cultural values of people with middlebrow artistic taste, due to their, typically, non-elite education and background in the old society, . . . But this is not unique to totalitarian/authoritarian societies. If Readers' Digest had an art supplement you would find the same stuff there in a patriotic mode. Look at the arguments over the Viet Vets memorial. The common element is rejection of elite and/or less accessible art. mbs
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 02:45PM Brad, pen-l's resident contrarian, writes: I think that the line between Sweezy's attitude toward rock-and-roll and the suppression of the Czechoslovakian Jazz Section, or the bulldozing of Moscow modern art exhibits, is pretty clear. Actually, the (disgusting) quote from MONOPOLY CAPITAL was by both Baran _and_ Sweezy. Though as co-author of that book, Sweezy can't be totally absolved of the horrible guilt of being against rock'n'roll, CB: Don't you think that as a genre, rock'n'roll is a failure , like the Soviet Union, and hoola hoops ? Isn't rock'n'roll a sort of dystopia ? Didn't it just come out that the CIA WAS promoting modern art with an anti-communist political aim ? CB
NIPA history
Apropos the conversation the other day over whether the national income product accounts were an attempt "to hoodwink the people," the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which does the U.S. NIPAs, has an official history at http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/aw/0100od/maintext.htm. Doug
Re: NIPA history
Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 03:12PM Apropos the conversation the other day over whether the national income product accounts were an attempt "to hoodwink the people," the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which does the U.S. NIPAs, has an official history at http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/aw/0100od/maintext.htm. _ CB: I just went to the sight and saluted it.
Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 03:18PM Didn't it just come out that the CIA WAS promoting modern art with an anti-communist political aim ? that doesn't mean that it was bad art. __ CB: I thought the Soviets knocked it out because it was being used for anti-communist purposes, "good or bad". What is good art ? Good things can be used by bad people. Besides, modern art seems better than most "socialist realism" outside some Cuban works. ___ CB: I have seen a lot of modern art worse than a lot of socialist realism. Of course, most of both I haven't seen. Whose correct about art ? Me or you ?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
CB wrote: Didn't it just come out that the CIA WAS promoting modern art with an anti-communist political aim ? I replied: that doesn't mean that it was bad art. CB now replies: I thought the Soviets knocked it out because it was being used for anti-communist purposes, "good or bad". So, maybe they were right about one thing. But they -- the unelected Soviet equivalents of Jesse Helms -- deserved to be tweaked by art, if not more. What is good art ? I don't know. All it does is remind me of a cartoon, with two fellows at a modern art museum. Says one "I don't know much about art..." and the other replies "but you know more than the artist did." Whose correct about art ? Me or you ? We're both correct and we're both wrong, even though we may have contradictory tastes. As a died-in-the-wool Philistine, I think that defining "good" art is a matter of taste. The purpose of art criticism, as far as I can tell, is to help the viewer understand what's seen by presenting possible interpretations. I have this "proletarian style" portrait of Chairman Mao on my wall. It's painted on black velvet and he's got big eyes like a Keane painting... (Actually, that's a joke from an old "Anarchy" comic book.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Too bad Louie Proyect is off hiding on an Indian reservation. He could add to this I think in the case of abstract art that the condemnation came before the anti-communist use. At the time of the 1917 Russian Revolution, abstract art already existed, with some of its most important practitioners, e.g. Kandinsky and Malevich, being Russian. Most of these folks were sympathetic to the revolution and during the 1920s there was an outpouring of abstract art and "constructivist art" (check out the funky Tatlin architectural models at the Guggenheim that never got built) in the USSR. The imposition of socialist realism (and I agree with Charles that some of it is actually quite good) came with the rise of Stalin and a more general crackdown on "alternative" culture in many areas. I note that the 1930s saw such art in many areas, I see an old WPA "socialist realist" fresco in the local post office here in Harrisonburg. Given the Stalinist suppression of such art, along with "formalist" music and a lot of other stuff, which ran through the 1930s and reached a peak with Zhdanov in the "anti-cosmopolite" campaign of the late 1940s, it is not surprising that many abstract artists began to take a different view of things. Many were Trotskyists, and the campaign that Charles is noting largely involved former Trotskyists in the New York area. But, even so, Picasso remained a member of the CP throughout all this nonsense. I don't have a more general explanation of this sort of stuff, but there is a huge literature out there purporting to provide all kinds of explanations. In any case, the abstract painters were originally pro-Soviet and only got turned off by Stalin's suppression. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, May 19, 2000 3:29 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19327] Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 03:18PM Didn't it just come out that the CIA WAS promoting modern art with an anti-communist political aim ? that doesn't mean that it was bad art. __ CB: I thought the Soviets knocked it out because it was being used for anti-communist purposes, "good or bad". What is good art ? Good things can be used by bad people. Besides, modern art seems better than most "socialist realism" outside some Cuban works. ___ CB: I have seen a lot of modern art worse than a lot of socialist realism. Of course, most of both I haven't seen. Whose correct about art ? Me or you ?
Fw: Ohio State University Settles
- Original Message - From: "seth wigderson" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, May 19, 2000 3:04 PM Subject: Ohio State University Settles Dear Friends, Here is the CWA story and the OSU Press Release SW - - - - - - OSU Strikers Win Tentative PactMay 19, 2000 Negotiators have reached a tentative agreement to end the three-week strik= e at Ohio State University, where CWA's fight for living wages has won broad support from students, politicians, religious leaders and the larger Columbus community. The proposed contract will increase wages by $2 over three years for campus workers and by $1.90 for employees at the Ohio State Medical Center. Bringing the wages of the two units closer together was a top priority for striking workers. Nearly 2,000 workers, members of CWA Local 4501, walked off the job May 1. Under the agreement, reached May 18, they will return to work beginning at = 5 a.m. May 22. Ratification votes are scheduled for May 23-25. "We made real progress," said District 4 Vice President Jeff Rechenbach. "W= e had a very effective strike, and we addressed the primary goals that we had= . We got some additional money and we brought the hospital much closer in lin= e with campus than it had been." Five days into the strike, workers rejected a contract offer that had significantly different pay scales for the two bargaining units. The new proposal gives hospital workers a shift differential of 15 cents in the first year, 20 cents in the second and 25 cents in the third, in addition t= o bettering their base wages. The workers include groundskeepers, bus drivers, custodians, food service workers and maintenance employees on the 50,000-student Columbus campus, th= e nearby medical center and satellite campuses in Wooster, Lima and Newark. Many of the workers earn less than $10 an hour, in spite of years of service. Support for the strikers started strong and continued to grow, with rallies= , vigils and friendly honks as drivers passed picket lines. As the strike entered its third week, several members of the Columbus City Council spoke out on the workers' behalf. Councilwoman Charleta Tavares told the Columbus Dispatch that she recently saw a fast food restaurant offering workers $8 a= n hour with stock options, a pension plan and other benefits. "When we say we pay our fast-food workers this kind of rate, what does it say for people who have worked for years making $9 or $10?" she said. Noted supporters include poet Maya Angelou and NAACP President Kweisi Mfume= , who both cancelled scheduled appearances on campus the second week of the strike. In a letter of thanks to Mfume, CWA President Morton Bahr said, "Our struggle is as much for respect and dignity for this overwhelmingly African-American workforce as it is for wages and working conditions. Your support, hopefully, will assist in our efforts to reach an early and satisfactory agreement." Meanwhile, students held a sit-in at the administration building, planned rallies, passed out flyers and wore CWA buttons and T-shirts. The Council o= f Graduate Students passed a resolution urging students, staff and faculty to boycott businesses that pay rent to Ohio State, including vending machine companies, restaurants, copy shops and the campus bookstore. Professors also showed support, moving some classes outdoors to avoid crossing picket lines and allow students to see and hear the strikers. - - - - - - May 19, 2000 For Immediate Release: UNIVERSITY AND UNION NEGOTIATORS REACH TENTATIVE "LANDMARK AGREEMENT" Negotiators for The Ohio State University and the Communications Workers of America Local 4501 early this morning reached a tentative agreement which they hope will bring an end to the three-week-old strike by 1,900 union members. The CWA leadership is asking members to return to their jobs starting Monday followed by a ratification vote which will take place next week. "We are enormously pleased that we have been able to reach this tentative agreement," said Dr. William E. Kirwan, university president. "This is a landmark agreement that is fair and equitable and which addresses concerns raised by both sides. The wage package included in the accord was put on the table by the union's bargaining team and it is a package we are able to support. I am very hopeful that the university can begin to return to normal and that we will once again be able to call upon the valued skills and full services of the CWA." Gary Josephson, president of the CWA local, said that the tentative agreement represents a significant step forward for his members and urged his members to ratify the accord. "We pressed our issues and the university listened," Josephson said, "and we listened to the university's issues. In the end, we wound up with what I believe is a win/win agreement - one that has my full support and the
Re: arxandMalleability (fwd)
Barkley, interpreting Marx is difficult enough without trying to do so through the lens of Lenin's policies, during a war. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Consumer Society, was Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
I recall the week after J. Kennedy was killed, the bars did not have bands as some sort of patriotic gesture. I still remember fondly how nice the conversations were. Carrol Cox wrote: One effect of rock music (quite aside from its excellence or lack of excellence as music) has been the diminution of public places where people can hear each other talk. There is not a single bar in Bloomington- Normal where one can carry on a conversation. There is one restaurant and bar that quiets down a bit after about 8:30 p.m. on week nights. That's in a population center of about 150,000. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 03:52PM So, maybe they were right about one thing. But they -- the unelected Soviet equivalents of Jesse Helms -- deserved to be tweaked by art, if not more. ___ CB: More than you deserve to be tweaked by art ?
Yoshie and OSU
We have not heard much from Yoshie for a while, but it seems that she has been very successful in her efforts. OSU Strikers Win Tentative PactMay 19, 2000 Negotiators have reached a tentative agreement to end the three-week strike at Ohio State University, where CWA's fight for living wages has won broad support from students, politicians, religious leaders and the larger Columbus community. The proposed contract will increase wages by $2 over three years for campus workers and by $1.90 for employees at the Ohio State Medical Center. Bringing the wages of the two units closer together was a top priority for striking workers. Nearly 2,000 workers, members of CWA Local 4501, walked off the job May 1. Under the agreement, reached May 18, they will return to work beginning at 5 a.m. May 22. Ratification votes are scheduled for May 23-25. "We made real progress," said District 4 Vice President Jeff Rechenbach. "We had a very effective strike, and we addressed the primary goals that we had. We got some additional money and we brought the hospital much closer in line with campus than it had been." Five days into the strike, workers rejected a contract offer that had significantly different pay scales for the two bargaining units. The new proposal gives hospital workers a shift differential of 15 cents in the first year, 20 cents in the second and 25 cents in the third, in addition to bettering their base wages. The workers include groundskeepers, bus drivers, custodians, food service workers and maintenance employees on the 50,000-student Columbus campus, the nearby medical center and satellite campuses in Wooster, Lima and Newark. Many of the workers earn less than $10 an hour, in spite of years of service. Support for the strikers started strong and continued to grow, with rallies, vigils and friendly honks as drivers passed picket lines. As the strike entered its third week, several members of the Columbus City Council spoke out on the workers' behalf. Councilwoman Charleta Tavares told the Columbus Dispatch that she recently saw a fast food restaurant offering workers $8 an hour with stock options, a pension plan and other benefits. "When we say we pay our fast-food workers this kind of rate, what does it say for people who have worked for years making $9 or $10?" she said. Noted supporters include poet Maya Angelou and NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, who both cancelled scheduled appearances on campus the second week of the strike. In a letter of thanks to Mfume, CWA President Morton Bahr said, "Our struggle is as much for respect and dignity for this overwhelmingly African-American workforce as it is for wages and working conditions. Your support, hopefully, will assist in our efforts to reach an early and satisfactory agreement." Meanwhile, students held a sit-in at the administration building, planned rallies, passed out flyers and wore CWA buttons and T-shirts. The Council of Graduate Students passed a resolution urging students, staff and faculty to boycott businesses that pay rent to Ohio State, including vending machine companies, restaurants, copy shops and the campus bookstore. Professors also showed support, moving some classes outdoors to avoid crossing picket lines and allow students to see and hear the strikers. - - - - - - May 19, 2000 For Immediate Release: UNIVERSITY AND UNION NEGOTIATORS REACH TENTATIVE "LANDMARK AGREEMENT" Negotiators for The Ohio State University and the Communications Workers of America Local 4501 early this morning reached a tentative agreement which they hope will bring an end to the three-week-old strike by 1,900 union members. The CWA leadership is asking members to return to their jobs starting Monday followed by a ratification vote which will take place next week. "We are enormously pleased that we have been able to reach this tentative agreement," said Dr. William E. Kirwan, university president. "This is a landmark agreement that is fair and equitable and which addresses concerns raised by both sides. The wage package included in the accord was put on the table by the union's bargaining team and it is a package we are able to support. I am very hopeful that the university can begin to return to normal and that we will once again be able to call upon the valued skills and full services of the CWA." Gary Josephson, president of the CWA local, said that the tentative agreement represents a significant step forward for his members and urged his members to ratify the accord. "We pressed our issues and the university listened," Josephson said, "and we listened to the university's issues. In the end, we wound up with what I believe is a win/win agreement - one that has my full support and the support of our entire negotiating team. We are asking our members to return to work starting Monday." Josephson and Kirwan also called upon faculty and students to return to their normal classroom activities. "We appreciate the support faculty and
Re:Marx and Malleability
RE The point is not the "discrediting" of Sweezy, but how it came to be that people who claimed to be committed to a tradition that extolled human freedom, potential, and development could be so hostile to... ...jazz...modern art ...rock and roll It's pretty simple to my untutored mind ... Base -- superstructure Capitalism -- capitalist art hate capitalism -- hate capitalist art What, in particular, was disliked about capitalist art/popular culture? The expression of "asocial" and/or "decadant" individualism. Classical case: one of the best movies of all time (except for the last 3 minutes), Modern Times by C. Chaplin. The movie is an attack on capitalism, capitalist technology, consumerism, and THE MASSES. The hero at the end of the movie achieves individualism and deals with all of the stuff he was involved with (simplifying somewhat) by leaving behind the factory, the masses (both middle class and working class), and society in general to strike out as the "heroic asocial individual" to start a new life based on walking away from society's problems (capitalism in particular). That is, the hero did not return to try to return to change society. Boo, hiss. An alternative ending would have had the hero achieve individualism but, recognizing his obligation to the working class, would have used his new insights to help these masses. However, the simple link: hate capitalism -- hate capitalist art/popular culture (particular of the asocial variety) clearly something to be called into question. And it likely suffers for the beast, essentialism (the essence of culture within capitalism is the capitalist economic relations and ideololgy). Further link to previous discussions: if mass culture is unacceptable to those pushing for socialism/communism, then mass ideas of what good politics are is also called into question. Therefore, we can't (this argument might go) depend on simply-minded democracy if the masses are so corrupted they like rock-and- roll. Therefore, we must take power and not give any to the masses until they no longer like rock-and-roll (or capitalism for that matter). I don't, of course, go along with this but I think this might be a disturbing idea perhaps held by some lefty types. In short, distaste for rock-and-roll might be intimately linked to the revoluationary vanguard that takes over the state "in the name of the capitalist masses." To me, however, a certain amount of asocial individualism is not necessarly a bad thing. But folks should be aware of this sort of trend within, in particular, North American thinking. I could go on for a long time on this, but won't. Eric
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
At 04:26 PM 5/19/00 -0400, you wrote: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 03:52PM So, maybe they were right about one thing. But they -- the unelected Soviet equivalents of Jesse Helms -- deserved to be tweaked by art, if not more. ___ CB: More than you deserve to be tweaked by art ? yeah, even though my students may disagree, I'm not a tyrant. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Marx and Malleability
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 04:35PM At 04:26 PM 5/19/00 -0400, you wrote: So, maybe they were right about one thing. But they -- the unelected Soviet equivalents of Jesse Helms -- deserved to be tweaked by art, if not more. ___ CB: More than you deserve to be tweaked by art ? yeah, even though my students may disagree, I'm not a tyrant. _ CB: So many here are holier than them Soviets.
Re: Re:Marx and Malleability
Eric wrote: In short, distaste for rock-and-roll might be intimately linked to the revoluationary vanguard that takes over the state "in the name of the capitalist masses." making another link, this is straight out of Rousseau, who saw the masses as corrupted and thus hoped that an enlightened Legislator would impose his ideal social contract. This imposition included cultural censorship. BTW, Rousseau's censorship (and other obnoxious activities, like the creation of an official civic religion) is similar to Plato's conceptions in the REPUBLIC, except what Plato wanted only for the elite Guardians, R wanted for everyone. I think that there's a link between philosophical idealism -- e.g., Plato, Rousseau, the Walrasianism of the IMF and other neoliberal forces, and Stalin's idealist version of "diamat" and "histomat" -- and imposition on others from above. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
stats
Statistics v Number of people in the world, (pop. 5.5 billion) that live in abject poverty: 1.4 billion v Number of people currently expected to die from starvation: 900 million v Percentage of those that live in the undeveloped nations: 97 v Number of children in world dying each year from controllable illness: 12 million v Number of people in world that died each of the five years of World War II: 10 million v Number of people in world that die each year of preventable social causes: 10 million v Cost of one new Osprey aircraft (50 planned): $84 million v Annual cost of treatment to eliminate world's malaria cases: $84 million v Money set aside annually for malaria control by organized world health: $9 million v Money set aside for Viagra pills per annum by organized world health: $40 million v Number of children in world blinded yearly from lack of Vitamin A: 500 million v Number of women who died during childbirth last year in world: 650,000 v U.N. estimate of yearly expenditure on war: $800 billion v U.N. estimate of yearly expenditure on health services: $25 billion v Number of children in world that die by age 5 (yearly): 12 million v Percentage of those that succumb to routine preventable health causes: 90 v Ratio of African-American to white new born deaths in U.S. last year: 2:1 v Number of reported pediatric measles deaths in U.S. last year: 45 v Amount of money not allocated by Congress for measles vaccines: $9 million v Average amount of 1999 year-end bonus paid to Oxford HMO execs: $6 million v Time it takes the Pentagon to spend annual federal allocation for women's health: 15 minutes - Figures compiled by Don Sloan, M.D.
Re: Marx and Malleability
CB: So many here are holier than them Soviets. I've never sent a bunch of troops to suppress the beginnings of democracy in Czechoslovakia. In fact, I've never killed _anyone_. So I guess that I'm holier than the Soviets, though not necessarily holier than thou. BTW, it's wrong to blame "the Soviets." After all, it was only the top leadership of the state-party bureaucracy that made the decisions to roll the tanks in 1968. The people were not to blame, since they didn't choose that leadership. (As Nathan might argue, we in the US are _more_ responsible for crimes like this (e.g., the recent terror-bombing of Serbia) because we have a bit more say about who are our leaders are than the Soviets did. Of course, Nathan would disagree about the parenthetical example I chose.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re:Marx and Malleability
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 05:00PM I think that there's a link between philosophical idealism -- e.g., Plato, Rousseau, the Walrasianism of the IMF and other neoliberal forces, and Stalin's idealist version of "diamat" and "histomat" -- and imposition on others from above. CB: What's the link ? Materialism is the philo of the working masses , because.socialism and democracy follow from a rational apprehension of reality, understanding the world without
Re: Marx and Malleability
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 05:05PM CB: So many here are holier than them Soviets. I've never sent a bunch of troops to suppress the beginnings of democracy in Czechoslovakia. CB: Democracy "began" when there when the Nazis were removed by the Red Army. - In fact, I've never killed _anyone_. So I guess that I'm holier than the Soviets, though not necessarily holier than thou. ___ CB: All the Soviets killed someone ? Even the art commisars all killed someone ? Where's the evidence ? I bet the vast majority of Soviets either did not kill anyone or those who killed someone did so in heroic self-defense of the country in the wars. I think you have an exaggerated notion of Soviets who killed. __ BTW, it's wrong to blame "the Soviets." After all, it was only the top leadership of the state-party bureaucracy that made the decisions to roll the tanks in 1968. ___ CB: Rolling the tanks into Czech in 1968 does not make you holier than them. There are crimes of commission and crimes of commission. Those who have done nothing are not innocent. _ The people were not to blame, since they didn't choose that leadership. ___ CB: None of them chose that leadership ? Rather overstated. _ (As Nathan might argue, we in the US are _more_ responsible for crimes like this (e.g., the recent terror-bombing of Serbia) because we have a bit more say about who are our leaders are than the Soviets did. Of course, Nathan would disagree about the parenthetical example I chose.) __ CB: Speak for yourself. I don't have more of a say about who my leaders are than the Soviets did. They limit my "choices" to all I people I don't want. That means I have ZERO say. That you think you have more of a choice means the U.S. bourgeoisie have fooled you. You buy that the U.S. election system is somewhat still democratic. You've bought the bourgeois propaganda that this is the Free World. False.
Re: Marx and Malleability
CB: So many here are holier than them Soviets. Sure, we have no right to condemn people who send artists whose work they didn't like to die in labor camps, or, in palmier days, to have their thoughts corrected in psychiatric hospitals. Now, why didn't that occur to me? --jks
Re: Art, was Re: Marx and Malleability
Carrol wrote: I'm a bit sceptical of using opinions on art as arguing points. I wondered about this also with reference to Ted Winslow's quoting of Marx's "man also produces in accordance with the laws of beauty." By coincidence just before I read Ted's post Yeats's lines Solider Aristotle played the taws, Upon the bottom of the king of kings had popped into my head. They seemed very beautiful to me -- but I'll be damned if I could argue that there were any "laws of beauty" to produce them or that someone who did not think they were beautiful (who preferred a supermarket tabloid or a poem by Eddie Guest [Dorothy Parker: "I'd rather flunk my Wasserman test / Than read a poem by Eddie Guest."]) was ... whatever. Edgar Snow writes that during the war in Moscow the public speakers (previously used for various propaganda purposes) played only classical (I presume classical in the narrow sense -- Haydn through Beethoven) music 24 hours a day. It made wartime a little less grim, a little more endurable. My suggestion is that you read "laws of beauty" as the "mechanical" aspect of "art" as "production through freedom", the aspect pointed to in the passage from Kant I quoted. This is not the essence of art, however. The essence is imaginative freedom, "the spirit, which must be free in art and which alone inspires the work". It's for this reason that the writing of beautiful poetry cannot be "taught" since "learning is nothing but imitation". p. 151 Kant uses the term "genius" to designate the capacity for producing beautiful art. It is "a talent for producing that for which no definite rule can be given; it is not a mere aptitude for what can be learned by a rule. Hence originality must be its first property." p. 150 Universality enters in a different way. Both the making and the appreciating of the beautiful involve aesthetic judgment as an expression of the "sensus communis" - "the faculty of judging of that which makes universally communicable, without the mediation of a concept, our feeling in a given representation." "under the sensus communis we must include the idea of a sense common to all, i.e. of a faculty of judgment which, in its reflection, takes account (a priori) of the mode of representation of all other men in thought, in order, as it were, to compare its judgment with the collective reason of humanity, and thus to escape the illusion arising from the private conditions that could be so easily taken for objective, which would injuriously affect the judgment. This is done by comparing our judgment with the possible rather than the actual judgments of others, and by putting ourselves in the place of any other man, by abstracting from the limitations which contingently attach to our own judgment. This again is brought about by leaving aside as much as possible the matter of our representatitive state, i.e. sensation, and simply having respect to the formal peculiarities of our representation or representative state. Now this operation of reflection seems perhaps too artificial to be attributed to the faculty called common sense, but it only appears so when expressed in abstract formulae. In itself there is nothing more natural than to abstract from charm or emotion if we are seeking a judgment that is to serve as a universal rule. "The following maxims of common human understanding do not properly come in here, as parts of the Critique of Taste, but yet they may serve to elucidate its fundamental propositions. They are: (1) to think for oneself; (2) to put ourselves in thought in the place of everyone else; (3) always to think consistently. The first is the maxim of unprejudiced thought; the second of enlarged thought; the third of consecutive thought. ... "I say that taste can be called sensus communis with more justice than sound understanding can, and that the aesthetical judgment rather than the intellectual may bear the name of a sense common to all, if we are willing to use the word 'sense' of an effect of mere reflection upon the mind, for then we understand by sense the feeling of pleasure. "We could even define taste as the faculty of judging of that which makes universally communicable, without the mediation of a concept, our feeling in a given representation. ... "Taste is then the faculty of judging a priori of the communicability of feelings that are bound up with a given representation (without the mediation of a concept)." Critique of Judgment pp. 136-8 This idea of "taste" is is , I suggest, another of the ideas of Kant that have been sublated by Marx. For instance, it's implicit in the account - in the "Comments on James Mill" - of how we would produce if we "carried out production as human beings". Another instance is the following passage from the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts. "Just as only music awakens in man the sense of music, and just as the most beautiful music has *no* sense for the unmusical ear - is
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
CB: So many here are holier than them Soviets.
sez me:
I've never sent a bunch of troops to suppress the beginnings of democracy
in Czechoslovakia.
in response:
CB: Democracy "began" when there when the Nazis were removed by the Red Army.
I guess we disagree about the meaning of the word "democracy." Paging
Comrade Slansky...
sez me:
In fact, I've never killed _anyone_. So I guess that I'm holier than the
Soviets, though not necessarily holier than thou.
CB: All the Soviets killed someone ? Even the art commisars all killed
someone ? Where's the evidence ? I bet the vast majority of Soviets
either did not kill anyone or those who killed someone did so in heroic
self-defense of the country in the wars.
I think you have an exaggerated notion of Soviets who killed.
I didn't say that "all the Soviets killed" anyone. In fact, I made it clear
that I didn't mean that (though I elided that passage in the current
missive -- look at my previous message in this thread).
I don't like the numbers game ("how many were killed in Cambodia vs. how
many in Indonesia"). But I don't think that the invasion of Czechoslovakia
had anything to do with "heroic self-defense of the country." It had to do
with tired old bureaucrats who wanted to preserve their rule and couldn't
stand any kind of democratic reform.
The people were not to blame, since they didn't choose that leadership.
CB: None of them chose that leadership ? Rather overstated.
Okay, a small number of CP bureaucrats chose their own leaders, highly
influenced by the power of the in-group leaders. (Gee, it's kinda similar
to here in the US.) Why this kind of quibble?
(As Nathan might argue, we in the US are _more_ responsible for crimes
like this (e.g., the recent terror-bombing of Serbia) because we have a
bit more say about who are our leaders are than the Soviets did. Of
course, Nathan would disagree about the parenthetical example I chose.)
CB: Speak for yourself. I don't have more of a say about who my leaders
are than the Soviets did. They limit my "choices" to all I people I don't
want. That means I have ZERO say.
Each out-of-power individual acting alone has zero power (or close to it),
no matter what the system.
But you do have the option of attending a big demonstration or the like,
which can have some impact on our leadership. The anti-war movement won
some victories, for example, speeding the exit of Lyndon Johnson from the
White House. It's true that Nixon intensified the terror-bombing of North
Vietnam, but at least the movement saved the lives of some US troops on the
ground. That's hardly an unmixed victory, but it's not ZERO impact. The
civil rights movement also had some victories.
That you think you have more of a choice means the U.S. bourgeoisie have
fooled you. You buy that the U.S. election system is somewhat still
democratic. You've bought the bourgeois propaganda that this is the Free
World. False.
I didn't say that the US election system is democratic. Saying that "we
have a bit more say about who are our leaders are than the Soviets did" is
NOT the same as saying that the US electoral system is democratic, since I
deliberately stated it in relative terms.
BTW, I don't think that the bit of democracy we see in the US was _given to
people_ by the capitalists. There are lots of examples of capitalism that
are totally undemocratic (e.g, Nazi Germany). The little bit of democracy
was won by struggle from below, starting with the Bill of Rights, which was
a response to the anti-Federalists and "Shay's rebellion." The powers that
be keep on struggling to reduce civil liberties, so efforts from below
continue to be necessary.
You say that the U.S. election system is not "still democratic." When was
it democratic?
Finally, there's no point in throwing insults at me (e.g., that I've
"bought the bourgeois propaganda that this is the Free World"). I find that
all that insults do is to reduce my regard for those who use them.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:Re:MarxandMalleability (fwd)
Duma was originally an elite establishment started by autocracy and liberals allying with the tsarist regime. it was not a democractic institution to begin with. I think Bolsheviks carried Duma to its logical conclusion, at a time when european parliemants were still under the tutelage of monarchies. thus, the closing down of duma should be understood within its own historical dynamics. Mine Mine, I have less problem with Lenin's seizing power than I do with his shutting down the Duma a month later when the SRs won the election rather than his Bolsheviks. There was the original sin of the Bolshevik Revolution from which many others flowed after.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability(fwd)
I would add one more thing.Weber's definition of state is quite
misleading. If state is defined in terms of monopolization of power,I
don't think this is unique to capitalist state. If you carefully read
Weber's _Sociology of Ancient Civilizations_, where he analyzes
pre-capitalist states, you will see that Roman empire was monopolizing
power in a given territory too, but Roman empire was not necesarily
capitalist, as Weber admits. In _Economy and Society_ Weber adds one
more dimension to his theory of the modern state: "legitimate right to
have a monopoly of violence in a given territory".He does not use
legitimacy in the sense of consent formation (contractual). He uses it to
describe how rulers receive legitimacy ("beleif" in legality, p.37)
regardless of whether or not rulers are themselves are legitimate
(following his logic faschism is legitemate too! geez!).
So Weber is interested in how the ruling autority is "legitimized". In
that respect, the capitalist state doees not simply use coercion but also
seek consent to make people beleive that its very existence is legimate
Weber was a bourgeois thinker.I prefer Gramsci's concept of hegemony to
Weber's concept of domination, since he has a more dynamic
vision of the state. Gramsci argues that the very definition of
the capitalist modern state is based two charecteristics: consent and
coercion. Politics is a power struggle of trying to gain hegemony over the
state (war of position),and of converting spontaneous mass movements to
long term organic developments. Once a dominant groups establishes her
hegemony, then they automatically resort to consent formation by
effectively using the ideological appratuses in society: civil society,
business groups, education, family, church..
ohh! gramsci is a different story.i love his reading of M' prince with a
communist twist! italian geniousity..
Mine
I think it's confusing to _define_ the capitalist state as "a protector
of [the] private property system." That's what it does, but I would
define it in more general terms as the organization that monopolizes
violence (or attempts to do so) in a given territory. (This follows
Weber, who follows Trotsky, but is not the same.) At least for a while
the working class could control the state in a way that goes against
capitalist property.
Two Men, Four Little Girls, and the inability to accept justice denied(fwd)
Forwarded from Nicole.. Mine " I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. " - Martin Luther King, Jr. TWO MEN, FOUR LITTLE GIRLS (Friday, May 19th, Newark Star Ledger editorial excerpt) A jury will determine the guilt of the two men just indicted for the 1963 church bombing that killed four young African-American girls in Birmingham, Ala. But the investigation and prosecution of this crime, and the amount of stubborn energy behind the effort, offer some measure of what society will not tolerate. That is the importance of these two indictments. The indictments and arrests come 37 years late, but they declare that things have changed in this country from the days when white men could kill black people, brag about it and expect the law to leave them alone. Denise McNair, 11, and Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robinson and Cythnia Wesley, all 14, were victims of one of the most horrendous crimes of the civil rights era. There had been other bombings, enough to earn Birmingham the nickname Bombingham, enough for one section of the black neighborhood to be called Dynamite Hill. But this one was different. Set off a bomb in a Baptist church at 10a.m. on a Sunday, and the intent to kill innocent people, en masse, is clear. That is church time, Sunday school time, and that is when the bomb went off in the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church. It was a massive bomb, built with 15 sticks of explosives, and the four girls were near ground zero. They were caught in a blast so powerful that it turned the wall before them into flying shards of concrete and flattened cars on the street outside. Another 22 people were injured. The horror of that day was amplified by the horror of the official apathy that followed. This act took place in the kind of community where secrets were not easily kept, at a time in our history when those who committed such crimes usually felt no need to hold the secret close. These suspects were identified early on. But while the mayor of Birmingham cried over the victims, local authorities never mustered an investigation worthy of his tears. And without explanation, J. Edgar Hoover, called off the FBI. That's the way things were. But things do change. In 1977, Robert, "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss, one of the original suspects, was tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He died in 1985 in jail, where he belonged, because the new white state attorney general would no longer give racism immunity. Even so, the FBI closed its investigation and nothing happened until 1996. That's when Joseph Lewis, now the FBI special agent in charge of New Jersey, was running the FBI office in Birmingham. Lewis reopened the case, a decision that led to the indictment of two or more of the original suspects, Thomas E. Blanton Jr. and Bobby Frank Cherry. Lewis is black, which may not fit with Hoover's idea of the FBI. But as we said, the country has changed. Some of the people may say that the prosecution of two aging men simply opens old wounds and serves no purpose. The truth is the racism that swallowed up four girls in 1963 is a fissure that has never really closed and cannot be closed until justice is done for its victims. "If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation … want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress." Fredrick Douglass - 1857
Re: Marx and Weber
What's misleading about a definition of the state that is wider than the
capitalist state? Weber would not regard tht as a criticism. Neither would
Marx regard it asa criticism to say that his approximation to a definition
of the state, an instrument of one class for oppressing another,is wider than
capitalism. Gramsci's notion of hegemony, which you praise, is also very
general.
You are quite correct that Weber thought that fascism could be legitimate,
but that's not because he was a fascist. He was a bourgeois democrat,
himself. W's notion of legitimacy corresponds to Gramsci's notion of consent.
For W, a state is legitimate if it is acquiesed to by people who broadly
accept the norms it upholds. A fascist population will regard a fascist state
as legitimate. Likewise Gramsci knew from personal experience that facism
could win the consent of a population. As to ultimate values, Weber was a
sort of Nietzschean who thought that there was no neutral justification for
choice among fascist ot bourgeois or communist values. But of course Marx, a
class relativist, agreed with that.
--jks
In a message dated 5/19/00 8:28:43 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
I would add one more thing.Weber's definition of state is quite
misleading. If state is defined in terms of monopolization of power,I
don't think this is unique to capitalist state. If you carefully read
Weber's _Sociology of Ancient Civilizations_, where he analyzes
pre-capitalist states, you will see that Roman empire was monopolizing
power in a given territory too, but Roman empire was not necesarily
capitalist, as Weber admits. In _Economy and Society_ Weber adds one
more dimension to his theory of the modern state: "legitimate right to
have a monopoly of violence in a given territory".He does not use
legitimacy in the sense of consent formation (contractual). He uses it to
describe how rulers receive legitimacy ("beleif" in legality, p.37)
regardless of whether or not rulers are themselves are legitimate
(following his logic faschism is legitemate too! geez!).
So Weber is interested in how the ruling autority is "legitimized". In
that respect, the capitalist state doees not simply use coercion but also
seek consent to make people beleive that its very existence is legimate
Weber was a bourgeois thinker.I prefer Gramsci's concept of hegemony to
Weber's concept of domination, since he has a more dynamic
vision of the state. Gramsci argues that the very definition of
the capitalist modern state is based two charecteristics: consent and
coercion. Politics is a power struggle of trying to gain hegemony over the
state (war of position),and of converting spontaneous mass movements to
long term organic developments. Once a dominant groups establishes her
hegemony, then they automatically resort to consent formation by
effectively using the ideological appratuses in society: civil society,
business groups, education, family, church..
Re: oviet Arts Policy
Brad De Long wrote: I think that the line between Sweezy's attitude toward rock-and-roll and the suppression of the Czechoslovakian Jazz Section, or the bulldozing of Moscow modern art exhibits, is pretty clear. The point is not the "discrediting" of Sweezy, but how it came to be that people who claimed to be committed to a tradition that extolled human freedom, potential, and development could be so hostile to... ...jazz ...modern art ...rock and roll That is an interesting historical puzzle; I would like to have a sense of why it happened. The Soviet bureacracy may have been hostile to these art forms but they thrived in the USSR and some of E.Europe in quasi-samizdat. The Soviet label Melodiya recorded many jazz groups. Many of the jazzers were students and teachers at the various Soviet conservatories who were often fired from the arch-classicist Soviet musical system like the great pianist Kuryokin was for musical non-conformity. There were numerous great jazz groups in the USSR: the Ganelin Trio, Sergey Kuryokin, Anatoly Vapirov, Boris Grebenshchikov (an amazing saxophonist who played 3 horns simultaneously Rolan Kirk style whose acknowledged hero was Brian Eno) In Poland there is the late great Krystof Komeda a pianist, Tomasz Stanko and many others, there's Croatian trumpeter Dusko Goykovich... Most of these groups are stunning and up there with the finest the West offered at the time: Cecil Taylor, Evan Parker, von Schlippenbach etc. The Warsaw Jazz festival was considered among the best in Europe during the years of the regime. Jazz was surpressed during the Stalin years with slogans like "first a saxophonist then a knife" and "Today he plays jazz, tomorrow he betrays his country". This attitude was gone by the time of President Kosygin who it is said was a great jazz fan and collector of records who would turn up unannounced at various Soviet jazz festivals. The post-Stalin policy towards jazz was confused. The commissars couldn't decide whether jazz was a bourgeois western propaganda or an example of Marxist-Leninist art. They did miss out on a great propaganda opportunity in not letting the free musicians tour very often: the USSR was the avant of the jazz avant garde during the 80's. Free jazz is thriving in the USSR! I don't much of rock'n'roll but there was a scene in these countries and most of it was above ground. I friend told me of going to state-run punk rock clubs in Poland, the USSR and especially Yugoslavia(whose cultural policy was fairly laissez faire)during the 80's. Hopefully someday the history of this music will be written if hasn't been already. As for classical music, the Soviets were untouched in instrumental and chamber music from Rachmaninov and Scriabin's time to Pletnev's. A couple of good books: *Russian Jazz, New Identity* ed. Leo Feigin (owner of Leo records which smuggled out and distributed most of the recordings we have of Soviet jazz) Quartet Books 1985. S.Frederick Starr *Red and Hot. The Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union* Oxford U Press 1983 614pgs. The premier Soviet jazz critic was Alexey Batashev who authored many books and taught thousands of students jazz history. Sam Pawlett
Genderization (fwd)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sorry! Sam Pawlett's definition of sex is sexist. I think I would say this thread is dead here, but I have to reply to false accusations. Mention the word "penetrate" and you get labelled an August Strindberg! Please. I wasn't putting forward a complete definition of sex but just noting that there is a biological aspect to it. Maybe a distinction between sex and reproduction is in order. It is not simply sexist because of the "penetration" thing (since intercourse is necessary). so why is it sexist then? first, sexual activity is constructed in his language as an activity "initiated" by men, so women are presented as powerless and relegated to the level of sexual insignifigance. I didn't say this, please. Sexual activity doesn't have to be initiated by men (and it often isn't) in order for penetration to occur. If you don't like the word "penetration" use another expression as Carroll and Eric have suggested. You should also be careful of the naturalistic fallacy: because reproduction occurs in such and such a fashion does not mean it _ought_ to occur that way. Just because you acknowledge that sexual activity has a biological aspect doesn't mean you support patriarchy or trad. gender roles. second, the sole purpose of sexual activity is reduced to getting women pregnant and injecting male sperm into women's bodies. I didn't say this either but that is -like it or not- how our species reproduces itself. This is not to say that reproduction should or necessarily take place this way, but it will take a long time to undo thousands of years of evolution. Unless you think Darwin was wrong? as i said before, there is no reason to assume biological motherhood. There is no reason to assume it, it is possible through sophisticated surgery for men to give birth but our organs have not evolved that function. Men giving birth is risky and is it fair to the child to make him/her a guinea pig? We are not living hunting gathering societies where reproduction was somewhat necessary for small bands to maintain their species. So you are arguing that reproduction is not necessary to maintain the species at all in any social system? Can you explain this contradiction? Time has changed; sexual roles have changed. We are not living in stone ages. I reject to see the sole purpose of sex as reproduction. I agree with this statement but I didn't say that the sole role of sex is reproduction but it is an important role. Any number of gender roles are consistent with women giving birth. Many women prefer not to have children, and I don't see the reason why they should!!! Many women prefer not to have children and have excellent reasons for their choice. That's fine but some will have to to keep the human race from going extinct. What would happen if all women stopped giving birth? THE SPECIES WOULD DIE OUT. Are you arguing that the human race should become extinct? Malthusianism maybe? Most women who choose not to have children are often upper class. So, as you _seem_ to think, that having children is a bad thing for most women, then who has to bear the burden of reproducing the species? The poor? Those not talented enough to pursue Phd studies? Further, maybe it is better for the children if they are raised by women? I don't know. Mine Sam Pawlett wrote:Well, it is necessary that the male penetrate the female or the species will fail to reproduce itself. ...except for the occasional turkey-baster. or canoe paddler. Why not say "it is necessary for the female to engulf the male sperm . . ."? Sure, why not?
Re: Marx and Weber (fwd)
justin wrote:
capitalism. Gramsci's notion of hegemony, which you praise, is also very
general.
I would not doubt about that. More specifically, and from a sociological
point of view, it is more accurate to argue that Gramsci translated the
political economic language of marxism to a politico-practical language.
His sociology of praxis discovered what was already implicit in Marx,
trying to abridge the gap between theory and practice in Marxist thought.
If one considers the circumstances of Antonio (rising fascism), it is much
easier to understand why Gramsci needed to come up with a new theory of
Marxian politics. What Gramsci rightly observed was that orthodox marxism
(see his critique of Kautsky and Rosa, as well as economism and spontenous
syndicalism) had failed to guide and inform its agency, that is the
working class. Orthodox marxism, especially of the economic determinist
variety, failed to inform political practice, and became the mirror image
of liberal free trade ideology. This apolitization of Marxism was one of
the reasons why fascists took advantage of the opportunity and
seized power. Gramsci was a theorist of political foresight. The man spent
his time in prison thinking about why the socialists could not take
advantage of the opportunity, and instead fascists, and why Marxists
failed to understand that their theory was no longer guide political
practice.Gramsci relates this failure to several factors such as
historical and intellectual backwardenss of italy (dominance of church and
feudal principalities) and absence of an organic political party necessary
educate historical agency.
You are quite correct that Weber thought that fascism could be
legitimate,
but that's not because he was a fascist. He was a bourgeois democrat,
himself.
"nationalist" bourgeois democrat, broadly defined. He personally and
politically advocated Germany's enterence to the war. For this, you may
want to see his _Socialism_ speech, given at the german military school,
to understand how he criticizes Marx and celebrates organized
capitalism... i don't say this to underestimate his contribution to
sociology of the modern state and capitalism. Weber's influence on the
Frankfurt school's theories of late capitalism and some brands of marxism
is unfortunately remarkable.
W's notion of legitimacy corresponds to Gramsci's notion of consent.
true.
Mine
In a message dated 5/19/00 8:28:43 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
I would add one more thing.Weber's definition of state is quite
misleading. If state is defined in terms of monopolization of power,I
don't think this is unique to capitalist state. If you carefully read
Weber's _Sociology of Ancient Civilizations_, where he analyzes
pre-capitalist states, you will see that Roman empire was monopolizing
power in a given territory too, but Roman empire was not necesarily
capitalist, as Weber admits. In _Economy and Society_ Weber adds one
more dimension to his theory of the modern state: "legitimate right to
have a monopoly of violence in a given territory".He does not use
legitimacy in the sense of consent formation (contractual). He uses it to
describe how rulers receive legitimacy ("beleif" in legality, p.37)
regardless of whether or not rulers are themselves are legitimate
(following his logic faschism is legitemate too! geez!).
So Weber is interested in how the ruling autority is "legitimized". In
that respect, the capitalist state doees not simply use coercion but also
seek consent to make people beleive that its very existence is legimate
Weber was a bourgeois thinker.I prefer Gramsci's concept of hegemony to
Weber's concept of domination, since he has a more dynamic
vision of the state. Gramsci argues that the very definition of
the capitalist modern state is based two charecteristics: consent and
coercion. Politics is a power struggle of trying to gain hegemony over the
state (war of position),and of converting spontaneous mass movements to
long term organic developments. Once a dominant groups establishes her
hegemony, then they automatically resort to consent formation by
effectively using the ideological appratuses in society: civil society,
business groups, education, family, church..
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: : withering away of the state (fwd)
No Barkeley just a silly answer to a silly question. But I have read enough, that anything radically new would surprise me. Rod "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Rod, "Everything"? Really? Ponomaesh Russki yazik? Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, May 19, 2000 7:11 AM Subject: [PEN-L:19273] Re: Re: Re: : withering away of the state (fwd) I have read everything. Rod [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What did you read about Soviet socialism? Mine Interesting musings Carrol, but words have meanings, and what most people mean by the word socialism is not what was seen in the USSR. You can call it what you want, but I don't call it socialism. Rod Carrol Cox wrote: Rod Hay wrote: Perhaps Marx was utopian. But we will have to wait until we have a socialists society, in order to find out. The Soviet Union called itself socialist but it wasn't. This I think is utopian. Socialism is a movement, not a platonic form against which you can measure any state and say it is or isn't "socialist." It would seem to me wrong to assume that there will not be many more episodes in the socialist movement which will go greatly astray in one way or another, many more defeats. THe struggles of 6 billion people and their descendants to find their way out of capitalism will almost certainly contain episodes at least as unpleasant as the USSR at its worst. The struggle for socialism has to be essentially g self-justifying at each step, regardless of the (temporary) final outcomes of each struggle. If the only or even the chief reason to fight for socialism is the achievement of the socialism for our great-grandchildren, then socialism is a bust. This is *not* to disagree with Rosa Luxemburg that the final goal is everything, the struggle is nothing. The role of that final goal is the understanding we achieve through it of the present. Hence the struggle depends on the final goal *independently* of whether or not we ever achieve that final goal. Marx, as I understand him, did not propose the classless society and the withering away of the state as a prize to reward us at the end. He saw that just as feudalism could be understood from the perspective of capitalism, so capitalism could only be understood from the perspective of communism. We can only understand the capitalist state (and therefore organize our struggle against it) by seeing it from the perspective of the society in which the state has withered away. [I really think it would help if a larger proportion of marxists suffered from depression. That would help dampen the galloping optimism that blithely says the USSR was not socialist -- for the implication of that evaluation is that socialism of just the sort we want will be easily attainable if we just have the right ideas. Horse Feathers!] The evil at the heart of capitalism (or of any social order of which the market is the central institution) is that Reality becomes the Future, while the past and present become mere appearance. I began to see this by reading and re-reading Plato's *Republic* and attempting to explain it to undergraduates. In Plato's timarchy (in effect a landed aristocracy of some sort) the Past is the Real. The present is merely a recapitulation of the past and is emptied of reality. In what he called an oligarchy (a state ruled by those whose motive was the accumulation of wealth [=money?], the past was non-existent, and the present only the shadow of the future. Action becomes meaningless in itself, since it cannot exhibit ambition (which is the struggle to maintain what the past has given us) nor can it be its own end. Since anything resembling capitalism was still nearly 2000 years away, it was remarkable that even in the piddling financial manipulations of his day Plato could see this. The core capitalist metaphor, that of *investment* catches up this trivialization of the present by the future. The *demos* Plato discarded with contempt: they *chose* (he implies) to live only in the present, their lives dominated by a lowly lust for immediate satisfaction. (One of the many modern equivalents of this is the accusation that unwed mothers have babies in order to make money off of public aid.) There would have been no way to theorize this in Plato's world, for that depended on the development of wage labor under capitalism and its theorization in Marx's conceptions of surplus value and alienation. The working class, by definition, is that class which *must* live in the present (that being the main thrust of the assumption that labor power is purchased at is value). And it is this (unavoidable) attachment of the working to the present (which
Genderization (fwd)
Many women prefer not to have children and have excellent reasons for their choice. That's fine but some will have to to keep the human race from going extinct. What would happen if all women stopped giving birth? THE SPECIES WOULD DIE OUT. Are Sam, I did not say that we should not reproduce our species. I said that motherhood as an institution should be abolished, because i don't see it a biological thing. since child caring is a social invention (as part of women's domestic duties) it is reasonable in principle to argue that we should reconstitute society in way to equalize men's and women's child rearing functions. women should not be solely responsible for mothering. So, as you _seem_ to think, that having children is a bad thing for most women, then who has to bear the burden of reproducing the species? The poor? Those not talented enough to pursue Phd studies? Further, maybe it is better for the children if they are raised by women? I don't know. are you telling this to me? I have been preaching for months that the realities facing third world women are worse than the realities facing first world women. class cuts across gender, and divides women.. while the first world exported its wage labor to periphery, it also exported its own patriachy to reinforce local patriarchal practices (my mom was taught home economics in american high school in Turkey, in the 50s, that was a mandatory requirement). however, women should not be blamed for this; capitalism should be blamed.. merci, Mine MineSam Pawlett wrote:Well, it is necessary that the male penetrate the female or the species will fail to reproduce itself. ...except for the occasional turkey-baster. or canoe paddler. Why not say "it is necessary for the female to engulf the male sperm . . ."? Sure, why not?
