Re: Re: Re: Re: NIPA history and Fed follies
I wrote: Also, can't it be said that within the context of capitalism, any emancipation won due to fast growth and low unemployment is at best transitory, since eventually the reserve army will be restored, if not by Greenspan by the slow-down in accumulation that results from squeezed profits? writes Carrol: Two points. it's three, but who's counting? 1. Marx's *Wages, Price and Profit*: If workers don't take advantage of every opportunity to raise their standard, they will be pressed ever further down. So they have to struggle to get ahead even to stay even. And capitalists can't necessarily raise prices (at least right away) to compensate for increased wages. I agree totally: workers must take advantage of all opportunities. In fact, I made the point that capitalists can't always raise prices to compensate for the rise of unit labor costs (at least not right away). If this period when capitalists can't raise prices persists, this implies a fall in the profit rate (unless the "organic composition of capital" also falls), which causes accumulation to slow or fall, which raises unemployment. (If monetary policy prevents this slowing of the economy, that leads to inflationary acceleration, as in the late 1960s/early 1970s.) 2. And *social* gains won in the struggle are potentially permanent, or at least harder for the capitalists to steal back. Consider social security, or the real (though slipping) gains made by blacks and women (which are working class gains). I wasn't arguing against struggling. Instead, I was pointing out that the vast majority of successful struggles leave the structure of capitalism -- precisely, the capitalist control over production, pricing, and accumulation -- untouched. We have to be conscious of this limitation. I think most working people "on the ground" are conscious of it. We have to understand that most people sense the degree of permanence of capitalism at this point in history (they're not stupid) and that this is an important basis for their reformism and/or despair. Most people have had Maggie T's "There Is No Alternative" stuffed into their minds not only by the Powers That Be but also by everyday experience. We have to be conscious of this basis if we want to fight it. One thing is to get away from a sole focus on macroeconomics to look at the potential non-reformist reforms on the micro-level in everyday life (of course, these have to be linked with each other). How can people run their lives better than the capitalists and their minions do? 3. Though (as we know even empirically from history) it does not often or usually happen, there is always the potential for struggles for better conditions to grow into something larger. Absolutely. In addition, workers and other dominated groups must defend themselves against constant attacks by capital. I wrote: I'd say that most workers would also like the idea of "non-inflationary growth," given the fact that capitalism isn't about to crumble and die. Low unemployment is great for the working class (after all, a lot of worker who normally can't get jobs are getting them these days, at least in the US) Tom Walker writes: Given the fact that capitalism isn't about to crumble and die . . . perhaps. But more importantly: given the absence of strategic alternatives. "Low" unemployment may indeed be great. Sustained low unemployment would be even better. Full employment would be ecstasy. right. I didn't say otherwise. Part of the Greenspanish dynamic is that the "great" low unemployment can't be sustained without threatening accelerating inflation. Buy that argument and you've pretty much conceded not only the indefinite continuation of capitalism, but the specific lack of strategic alternatives that has characterized the past few decades. No, I'm arguing that we need to go beyond simply being in favor of full employment. (Bumper sticker summary: "Full Employment is Not Enough!" or "We Don't Just Want Bread, We Want Roses, Too!") This is especially true since there are other problems with capitalism on top of unemployment that need to fight. Greenspan is not simply an evil man. He's also a politicized version of the dynamic that Marx pointed to in ch. 25 of volume I of CAPITAL. When Marx wrote, high employment automatically led to profit squeezes which led to a slow-down in accumulation. But that assumes the gold standard prevails. (The gold standard sets a ceiling on prices.) With fiat money (as now prevails), we might see worsening inflation instead. So if Greenspan didn't exist, he'd have to be invented (by the capitalists). In fact, the neoliberal upsurge involves the creation of Greenspans all around the world. For example, in England, "Labor" Party prime minister Tony Blair made the Bank of England independent of democratic control and thus subservient to the short-term special interests of the bond market, the bankers, and the rentiers --
BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, FRIDAY, MAY 19, 2000: RELEASED TODAY: "Regional and State Employment and Unemployment: April 2000" indicates that regional and state unemployment rates were relatively stable in April. All four regions registered little change over the month, and 41 states and the District of Columbia recorded shifts of 0.3 percentage point or less, BLS reports. The national jobless rate edged down to 3.9 percent. Nonfarm employment incrased in 38 states in April. New claims filed with state agencies for unemployment insurance benefits declined by 21,000 to a seasonally adjusted level of 276,000 during the week ended May 13, according to figures from the Employment and Training Administration of the Department of Labor. This latest report was widely interpreted as confirmation that the strong demand for workers helps newly laid-off workers to find new jobs in a relatively short time. With the exception of a week in late April, the level of initial claims has been below the 300,000 mark since mid-February (Daily Labor Report, page D-1). __New claims for unemployment benefits fell last week for the second consecutive week, leaving claims at a level suggesting that businesses are scrambling to find workers The decline was sharper than many analysts were expecting. They were forecasting that claims would fall to 295,000 (The Associated Press in The New York Times, page C2). __The Labor Department said that new claims for jobless benefits fell again last week, though a longer-term measure rose to one of its highest levels of the year. The 4-week moving average of claims, which many analysts prefer because it smoothes out short-term fluctuations, inched up to 289,750 last week, its highest level mid-January. The gauge has been below 300,000 since October (The Wall Street Journal, page A6). The Federal Government is taking steps to improve training for its employees, but more strategic planning is needed to keep up with the best practices of the private sector, witnesses tell the Senate Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, Restructuring, and the District of Columbia. Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio), chairman of the subcommittee, said he was surprised to discover that most federal agencies do not have formal training budgets. Instead, he said, training money is dispersed throughout agency budgets in "operations" or "administration" accounts. "It takes a great deal of effort on behalf of an agency to pull this information together from the different parts of the budget to present a complete picture of training activities," he said. Almost all of the agencies said their employee training budgets were inadequate and that they could use additional training funds (Daily Labor Report, page A-8). A growing pool of high-technology Philippine talent that is attractive to employers in Europe and the United States, and is increasingly drawing multinationals like Trend Micro, America Online, and Motorola to move some of their operations to the Philippine Islands. That same computer-literate population is now feeding a surprisingly lively Internet start-up scene, in a country where many annual incomes are typically around $1,000 and less than 1 percent of the population use Internet. "The Philippines may be a poor country, but part of it is English-speaking and educated," said Fernando d. Contreras, vice president-elect of the Philippine Internet Service Organization. "That' what we're trying to emphasize for the Internet." Nearly 50 years of United States rule, from the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898 until World War II, gave the Philippines an American-style educational system in which English is taught to almost all of the country's 76 million people -- 95 percent of which are literate. An accompanying table lists the fastest growing importers of U.S.high-tech parts for manufacturers, and the fastest-growing exporters of high-tech goods to the U.S. Source of the data is the American Electronics Association (The New York Times, page C1). The Census Bureau has begun the controversial statistical sampling that will estimate the number and characteristics of people who might have been missed in the traditional head count, Director Kenneth Prewitt says. The agency has interviewed by telephone 56,000 of the 314,000 households in the sample. The Census Bureau says that sampling is a scientifically sound way to correct the disproportionate undercount of minorities -- groups that tend Democratic. Because two sets of population census counts will be available, states will have to decide which one to use when they begin redrawing political districts next year (USA Today, page 10A). Syndicated columnist Julianne Malveaux, appearing in USA Today (page 15) says that on equal pay matters, the data are daunting. Despite their gains, women on average earn about 75 cents for every dollar men
BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, THURSDAY, MAY 18, 2000: College enrollment rates for the 1999 graduating class declined compared with the class of 1998, according to BLS. The college enrollment of young women (64.4 percent) continued to outpace that of young men (61.4 percent). Among races and ethnic groups, 59.2 percent of blacks, 42.2 percent of Hispanics, and 62.8 percent of whites who graduated from high school in 1999 were enrolled in college the following fall (Daily Labor Report, page D-10). The booming U.S. economy brought about a 4.8 percent gain in per capita personal income in 1999, reflecting higher pay across most industries, according to figures released by the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis. The gain brought per capita income to $28,518 in 1999. BEA said the per capital income ranged from $39,167 in Connecticut to $20,506 in Mississippi. The 1999 percent rise in per capita income marked the third consecutive year that this key measure of prosperity climbed by about 5 percent. Per capita income increased by 4.9 percent in 1998, and by 5.2 percent in 1997, according to BEA figures. Taking inflation into account, the latest report showed the "real" per capita income rose 3.2 percent in 1999, somewhat less than the 4 percent gain for 1998. BEA used as an inflation measure its own quarterly index for personal consumption expenditures, which is part of the gross domestic product series. That price index rose 1.6 percent in 1999. "Personal income growth accelerated in five regions -- Plains, Rocky Mountain, Southeast, Southwest, and Great Lakes -- and decelerated in three regions -- New England, Far West and Midwest" during the fourth quarter, BEA found (Daily Labor Report, page D-1). U.S. high-technology companies have added 1.2 million jobs to the economy since 1993, according to a survey released by the American Electronics Association. The increase brings the total of high-tech jobs to about 5 million by 1999, the report -- "Cyberstates 4.0: A State-by-State Overview of the High-Technology Industry" -- indicates. AEA uses 45 SIC codes to define high-technology industries, according to the report.. They fall into three broad categories -- high tech manufacturing, communications services, and software and computer-related services. ...these 45 SIC codes do not comprehensively cover the entire high-tech industry, as the structure of the SIC industry is limited. In an effort to produce solid statistics, AEA does not include broad categories if the high-tech portion does not represent a clear majority. Wages were greater in the high-tech industry than in the economy as a whole. Among high tech workers, the average annual salary in 1998 was $58,000, compared with the average private sector wage of $32,000 (Daily Labor Report, page A-11). Data computed by the Bureau of National Affairs in the first 20 week of 2000 show a weighted average first-year increase of 3.5 percent in newly negotiated contracts, compared with 2.6 percent in the same period in 1999. Manufacturing contracts provided a weighted average increase of 3.3 percent, compared with 2.7 percent in 1999. Excluding construction contracts, the nonmanufacturing industry weighted average increase was 3.6 percent, compared with an average of 2.3 percent one year earlier (Daily Labor Report, page D-13). The U.S. has lost the distinction of having a college graduation rate higher than those of other industrialized countries, an international survey shows. At the beginning of the 1990s, 30 percent of the U.S. population graduated from college. As of 1998, the last year for which figures are available for all countries, it was 33 percent, but Norway (37 percent), the United Kingdom (35 percent) and the Netherlands (34.6 percent) had pulled ahead. "The 1990s witnessed rapidly growing demand for education," says Andreas Schleicher of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which issued the "Education at a Glance" report. "Every government understands education is key to economic and social success today" (USA Today, page 9D). application/ms-tnef
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Mine, The monarchy had already been overthrown by December 1917. The Duma Lenin shut down was not "under the patronage of the monarchy." The electoral winners, were socialists and revolutionary ones. Just a different brand than Lenin's Bolsheviks. Marx praised the direct election of the leaders of the Paris Commune. The post-revolutionary election of December 1917 cannot be called "bourgeois constitutionalism." This fit Marx's prescription. But Lenin wanted power and he took it. Much that few approve of followed from his assertion of anti-democratic power. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sunday, May 21, 2000 4:35 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19394] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:Re:Re:MarxandMalleability (fwd) Barkley, Marx never supported a parliament working under the patronage of monarchy. He was not a feudalist socialist. That being said, he was critical of *both* monarchy and bourgeois constitutionalism, which is what Lenin realized in Russia. as i always say, socialist politics is a power struggle, agitation and propoganda, not a romantic marriage. You can not get rid of capitalism by peaceful means since capitalism did not establish itself by peaceful means. Marx says in the Manifesto that the violent overthrow of the bourgeosie is necessary if the proleteriat is to attain its socialist goals. We can not apply the standarts of liberal bourgeois democracy to revolutionary circumstances. You are confusing oranges and apples, Barkley. adios, Mine -- Forwarded message -- Date: Sun, 21 May 2000 15:10:19 -0400 From: "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:19389] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:Re:MarxandMalleability (fwd) MIne, When Lenin closed it down, there had just been a reasonably democratic election, the sort of thing Marx supported. The SRs won, who were neither monarchists nor lackeys of the aristocracy, very far from it. One can criticize them and various aspects of their politics, but not on grounds that they were anti-socialist or anti-revolutionary. They were just not Lenin's Bolsheviks. That's all. The issue is that Lenin used Marx's writings in a way that it is not at all clear Marx would have supported, not for the first time in the case of what would become the USSR. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, May 19, 2000 7:36 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19347] 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.
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Mine, The monarchy had already been overthrown by December 1917. The Duma Lenin shut down was not "under the patronage of the monarchy." The electoral winners, were socialists and revolutionary ones. Just a different brand than Lenin's Bolsheviks. Marx praised the direct election of the leaders of the Paris Commune. The post-revolutionary election of December 1917 cannot be called "bourgeois constitutionalism." This fit Marx's prescription. But Lenin wanted power and he took it. Much that few approve of followed from his assertion of anti-democratic power. And, if memory serves, Marx held out hope for revolution by constitutional means within monarchies during his 1873 speech to the Working Men's Association at The Hague (I think he cited Britain and The Netherlands - both constitutional monarchies). Cheers, Rob.
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No I SAID Duma was a monarchial liberal institution to begin with (1905 February revolution). so why should such an autocratic institution be maintained under socialism? A new regime requires new institutions and political restructuring. Duma was a transitory stage on the way to socialim, once it completed its historical mission, it came to an end. (that is why Lenin sees bourgeois democratic reforms as "strategic" but not as ends in themselves. Use them and shoot them philosophy!) I don't also see your reasoning Barkley. You are not a socialist, so why do you struggle with me that Russia was not a socialist regime at that time? Mine, The monarchy had already been overthrown by December 1917. The Duma Lenin shut down was not "under the patronage of the monarchy." The electoral winners, were socialists and revolutionary ones. Just a different brand than Lenin's Bolsheviks. Marx praised the direct election of the leaders of the Paris Commune. The post-revolutionary election of December 1917 cannot be called "bourgeois constitutionalism." This fit Marx's prescription. But Lenin wanted power and he took it. true, but what is the point?.I think we are moving away from the subject matter of the discussion. The original topic was whether Russian revolution was a REVOLUTION or not. I argued it WAS, but you seem to be saying that it was an elite attempt to seize power. I *DO NOT* SEE HISTORICAL STRUGGLES THROUGH THE LENSES OF ELITES. Such a way of looking is conservative as it freezes history and comprimises conflicts, which is why, for example, I did not like Jim's glorification of Weber and Hobbes.. History and political economic circumstanes of Russia proves my point about the pre-revolutionary circumstances (international (war)+ agrarian social structures+ peasent insurrections+ urban St.Petersburg strikes, etcc). so what is your evidence for insisting otherwise? merci, Mine
four walls, three too many
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Use them and shoot them philosophy! Bracingly clarifying. I'm very grateful you're nowhere near state power. Doug
RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re:Re:Re:Re:MarxandMalleability (fwd)
Rob Schaap wrote: if memory serves, Marx held out hope for revolution by constitutional means within monarchies during his 1873 speech Memory serves you poorly. By 1873 Marx had already given up any hope or expectation of proletarian revolution anywhere. He'd based his life on the great throw of a dice: staked it on the belief that a newly-emergent social class, the working-class, would become a class-for-itself, with its own political culture, leadership and trajectory to power - a naïve belief based probably in an overestimation of Rousseau's conception of a civil society, in which 'classes' of people succeed one another in a kind of stately historical minuet; the fact that Marx's own conception of the w/c was protean, apocalyptic etc, that this was not a class so much as a furnace consuming history and reforging the world, was in contradiction with his optimistic Enlightenment core beliefs. When it became clear to him that this proletariat did not exist, and the one which DID exist was and would ALWAYS be quite incapable of reshaping the world, he turned to ethnography and begun blindly clutching at anthropological straws, in other words he abandoned the western European political field aka actually-existing Capitalism in toto, along with all its classes, cultural impedimenta etc. Right at the end one of the straws he clutched had Russia written on it and, poignantly, beside his death-bed was a large box stuffed with various pamphlets and writings about or from Russia. But this was just piling pain onto grief. It had all been the forlorn pursuit of will o'the wisps. Marx's political ideas were driven, as he was driven, by a burning desire, lust, for POWER (the next person on the scene to be similarly motivated was Lenin; Engels, that genial old duffer, had no such yearnings and by the time his life-juices ran into the sands of the latter-day 2nd International, his personal accommodation to the world had also, tragically or bathetically, become his political accommodation to late-Victorian politics, an accommodation to which he, fondly but quite impermissibly, assimilated his old friend Karl, whose days of incandescent political passion he no doubt remembered sentimentally. The sheer extent of Marx's despair at the end, his absolute repudiation of events as they'd turned out, his remorseless cynicism about the everyday world of labour-bureaucracies, with their time-serving placemen and greasy little deals -- this is something we barely know and can hardly guess at, but in fact his latter writings, as do his latter SILENCES, his failure to complete any of Capital after vol I (pub 1867) speak eloquently enough, once you understand what's going on. This was a man who had not expected to end his days in Bournemouth watching young governesses push prams and ply their trade; he'd expected volcanoes to erupt and to transfigure the geology of human civilisation, let alone its routine history. He'd expected to win power, to be a statesman for his elective class, and to begin epochal processes of change. It was not to be. He was a man who above all others had relentless and self-sacrificially sought after the truth, JUST BECAUSE he sought after power, and who had always striven to interrogate the world in the way which was MOST inimical to himself, in order not to hide from the truth, had therefore indulged himself as a thinker less than almost any scientist; one thinks of Plato, Newton (who also went mad, for the same kinds of reasons), Darwin, maybe Godel and a few mathematicians, but there are precious few others in the entire unfolding of western civilisation and none whose devotion to the unyielding perverse malice of facticity was more true, than Karl Marx's. Yet at the end of his life he was obliged to face the unyielding facts of absolute failure, absolute seeming-miscomprehension of the world he'd striven so hard to deconstruct. It is hard to imagine a more profound personal tragedy, a sense of a life completely wasted, than this, than must have afflicted him. The man's life was a tragedy consumed by terrible poverty and personal disaster. What sustained him through all of that, and made him hope that the bourgeoisie would rue his painful illnesses, was an incorrigible belief in the certain outcome of events, but it was not to be. He was not justified by events, and died painfully, in despair, defeated and in obscurity. Mark Jones
four walls, three too many (fwd)
actually, you can train me ! Mine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Use them and shoot them philosophy! Bracingly clarifying. I'm very grateful you're nowhere near state power. Doug
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Mine, The monarchy had already been overthrown by December 1917. The Duma Lenin shut down was not "under the patronage of the monarchy." The electoral winners, were socialists and revolutionary ones. Just a different brand than Lenin's Bolsheviks. Marx praised the direct election of the leaders of the Paris Commune. The post-revolutionary election of December 1917 cannot be called "bourgeois constitutionalism." This fit Marx's prescription. But Lenin wanted power and he took it. Much that few approve of followed from his assertion of anti-democratic power. Barkley Rosser But, you see, Lenin had the blessing of History on his side. What matter majorities and elections when you are doing the will of History? Brad DeLong
Re: H1B skilled worker legislation - for or against?
After the debate about China and the WTO, I would like to know what Max and Marty advocate regarding the legislation that grant more H1B visas for immigrants with skills that employers say they cannot find in the U.S. labor force. The most telling point I've heard is that the U.S. should have a levy on employers that would fund training. The U.S. has plenty of capable info-tech workers, but they need fine-tuning in new, highly specific topics. Are you for or against this legislation? I'm agin H1B visas. There should be a training levy w/ or w/o such visas. This is a fairly hot issue right now, with software companies pushing for more visas. The corps will demand more visas whether or not there are enough available workers because it helps them to push compensation down and make non-standard work arrangements more pervasive. mbs
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And, if memory serves, Marx held out hope for revolution by constitutional means within monarchies during his 1873 speech to the Working Men's Association at The Hague (I think he cited Britain and The Netherlands - both constitutional monarchies). Rob, respectfully, you don't get it. Marx saw "constitutional means" a pragmatic "vehicle" to achieve socialism, not an end itself. Marx was a revolutionary. Once, he believed, revolution took place, which was a revolution in the "socio-economic realm", the political superstructure of the same socio-economic grounding would be overthrown. Does he say this or not? Let's face it.. Rosa did the same strategic mistake in naively believing in the "spontaneous" gains of the bourgeois constitutional democracy..She did not take into consideration the "persistence" of status-quo in Europe and incorporation of working classes. please, let's NOT SOCIAL DEMOCRATIZE or BERNSTAINIZE Marx here!!ohh.. I can not stand this sort of social democratic reading of Marx.. sorry.. Mine Cheers, Rob.
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Mine, Frankly I do not understand parts of this remark. I have not debated with you the nature of socialism in Russia in 1917 or at any point. Indeed, I think we both agree that (eventually) the USSR was indeed socialist. Furthermore, whatever my political views are is irrelevant to the accuracy or lack thereof of my arguments (and you do not know what my political views are anyway, despite your attempts to label). I would agree that the Duma was established as you said. But by December 1917 the tsar had been overthrown. The election of December saw a victory by the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Lenin had no good excuse on Marxist grounds for denying them power. I know, he claimed to be the leader of the "vanguard of the proletariat." There is a phrase fraught with even more tragedy than the "dictatorship of the proletariat." BTW, the real revolution was the one in February/March. It was the one in which people rose up in the streets and the' soldiers turned their guns on their bosses rather than the demonstrators. What Lenin led was a coup d'etat that called itself a revolution. Arguably it became a revolution. But as of November 7, 1917, it was a seizure of power in the capital by a small and well organized clique. Most people in the rest of the country did not even know that it had happened. Small wonder they did not support it as their votes a month later showed. And, Mine, I suspect I have more reasons for being interested in what has happened and is happening right now in Russia than you do. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, May 22, 2000 2:46 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19408] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re:Re:Re:Re:MarxandMalleability (fwd) No I SAID Duma was a monarchial liberal institution to begin with (1905 February revolution). so why should such an autocratic institution be maintained under socialism? A new regime requires new institutions and political restructuring. Duma was a transitory stage on the way to socialim, once it completed its historical mission, it came to an end. (that is why Lenin sees bourgeois democratic reforms as "strategic" but not as ends in themselves. Use them and shoot them philosophy!) I don't also see your reasoning Barkley. You are not a socialist, so why do you struggle with me that Russia was not a socialist regime at that time? Mine, The monarchy had already been overthrown by December 1917. The Duma Lenin shut down was not "under the patronage of the monarchy." The electoral winners, were socialists and revolutionary ones. Just a different brand than Lenin's Bolsheviks. Marx praised the direct election of the leaders of the Paris Commune. The post-revolutionary election of December 1917 cannot be called "bourgeois constitutionalism." This fit Marx's prescription. But Lenin wanted power and he took it. true, but what is the point?.I think we are moving away from the subject matter of the discussion. The original topic was whether Russian revolution was a REVOLUTION or not. I argued it WAS, but you seem to be saying that it was an elite attempt to seize power. I *DO NOT* SEE HISTORICAL STRUGGLES THROUGH THE LENSES OF ELITES. Such a way of looking is conservative as it freezes history and comprimises conflicts, which is why, for example, I did not like Jim's glorification of Weber and Hobbes.. History and political economic circumstanes of Russia proves my point about the pre-revolutionary circumstances (international (war)+ agrarian social structures+ peasent insurrections+ urban St.Petersburg strikes, etcc). so what is your evidence for insisting otherwise? merci, Mine
Marx and Malleability
The sheer extent of Marx's despair at the end, his absolute repudiation of events as they'd turned out, his remorseless cynicism about the everyday world of labour-bureaucracies, with their time-serving placemen and greasy little deals -- this is something we barely know and can hardly guess at, but in fact his latter writings, as do his latter SILENCES, his failure to complete any of Capital after vol I (pub 1867) speak eloquently enough, once you understand what's going on. This was a man who had not expected to end his days in Bournemouth watching young governesses push prams and ply their trade; he'd expected volcanoes to erupt and to transfigure the geology of human civilisation, let alone its routine history. He'd expected to win power, to be a statesman for his elective class, and to begin epochal processes of change. It was not to beHe was not justified by events, and died painfully, in despair, defeated and in obscurity. Mark Jones applause Powerfully argued. I'm not sure it's right, but it is well-said... Brad DeLong
Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re:Re:Re:Re:MarxandMalleability (fwd)
Mark, Is it not also true that Marx had a stroke in the early 1870s that slowed him down greatly after that (and also did not exactly uplift his spirits)? I stand to be corrected on this, if not correct, as on so many other matters. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Mark Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Monday, May 22, 2000 3:07 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19410] RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re:Re:Re:Re:MarxandMalleability (fwd) Rob Schaap wrote: if memory serves, Marx held out hope for revolution by constitutional means within monarchies during his 1873 speech Memory serves you poorly. By 1873 Marx had already given up any hope or expectation of proletarian revolution anywhere. He'd based his life on the great throw of a dice: staked it on the belief that a newly-emergent social class, the working-class, would become a class-for-itself, with its own political culture, leadership and trajectory to power - a naïve belief based probably in an overestimation of Rousseau's conception of a civil society, in which 'classes' of people succeed one another in a kind of stately historical minuet; the fact that Marx's own conception of the w/c was protean, apocalyptic etc, that this was not a class so much as a furnace consuming history and reforging the world, was in contradiction with his optimistic Enlightenment core beliefs. When it became clear to him that this proletariat did not exist, and the one which DID exist was and would ALWAYS be quite incapable of reshaping the world, he turned to ethnography and begun blindly clutching at anthropological straws, in other words he abandoned the western European political field aka actually-existing Capitalism in toto, along with all its classes, cultural impedimenta etc. Right at the end one of the straws he clutched had Russia written on it and, poignantly, beside his death-bed was a large box stuffed with various pamphlets and writings about or from Russia. But this was just piling pain onto grief. It had all been the forlorn pursuit of will o'the wisps. Marx's political ideas were driven, as he was driven, by a burning desire, lust, for POWER (the next person on the scene to be similarly motivated was Lenin; Engels, that genial old duffer, had no such yearnings and by the time his life-juices ran into the sands of the latter-day 2nd International, his personal accommodation to the world had also, tragically or bathetically, become his political accommodation to late-Victorian politics, an accommodation to which he, fondly but quite impermissibly, assimilated his old friend Karl, whose days of incandescent political passion he no doubt remembered sentimentally. The sheer extent of Marx's despair at the end, his absolute repudiation of events as they'd turned out, his remorseless cynicism about the everyday world of labour-bureaucracies, with their time-serving placemen and greasy little deals -- this is something we barely know and can hardly guess at, but in fact his latter writings, as do his latter SILENCES, his failure to complete any of Capital after vol I (pub 1867) speak eloquently enough, once you understand what's going on. This was a man who had not expected to end his days in Bournemouth watching young governesses push prams and ply their trade; he'd expected volcanoes to erupt and to transfigure the geology of human civilisation, let alone its routine history. He'd expected to win power, to be a statesman for his elective class, and to begin epochal processes of change. It was not to be. He was a man who above all others had relentless and self-sacrificially sought after the truth, JUST BECAUSE he sought after power, and who had always striven to interrogate the world in the way which was MOST inimical to himself, in order not to hide from the truth, had therefore indulged himself as a thinker less than almost any scientist; one thinks of Plato, Newton (who also went mad, for the same kinds of reasons), Darwin, maybe Godel and a few mathematicians, but there are precious few others in the entire unfolding of western civilisation and none whose devotion to the unyielding perverse malice of facticity was more true, than Karl Marx's. Yet at the end of his life he was obliged to face the unyielding facts of absolute failure, absolute seeming-miscomprehension of the world he'd striven so hard to deconstruct. It is hard to imagine a more profound personal tragedy, a sense of a life completely wasted, than this, than must have afflicted him. The man's life was a tragedy consumed by terrible poverty and personal disaster. What sustained him through all of that, and made him hope that the bourgeoisie would rue his painful illnesses, was an incorrigible belief in the certain outcome of events, but it was not to be. He was not justified by events, and died painfully, in despair, defeated and in obscurity. Mark Jones
Re: four walls, three too many
Sounds very orange to me Steve On Mon, 22 May 2000, Doug Henwood wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Use them and shoot them philosophy! Bracingly clarifying. I'm very grateful you're nowhere near state power. Doug
Marx and Malleability
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/19/00 05:47PM
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...
CB: Maybe. What do you mean by it ? Do you start with popular sovereignty ? If not,
then your critique of Soviets as undemocratic is probably flawed.
___
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).
___
CB: What you said is that you guess you are holier than the Soviets, after saying you
never killed anyone. See above. Why do you guess you are holier than the Soviets ?
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.
___
CB: Probably, but the U.S. has never suffered a holocaustic war as the Soviets did in
WWII. It is not clear to me that the 15 years from mid WWII, when Czechoslovakia was
within the fascist orbit, to 1968 would have been enough time to open up the deep
freeze on the trail that the Nazis had followed to get to the SU. Don't think
Americans can quite understand the significance of 20 million killed and the other
damage of the war on SU.
_
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,
__
CB: Not sure that it is smaller than those who choose the leaders of the biggest
corporations, and the heads of the U.S. governments.
__
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?
___
CB: Because if capitalism is doing it that way, perhaps it is necessary to match it in
order to defend against capitalism. Marx and Engels advocated a centralized state for
socialism. Why ? Because they were Germans with autocratic reflexes. No. Because only
a Utopian approach does not understand that violence is the midwife of the
tranformation from one form of society to another, or whatever Marx said. Socialism
has to be centralized in order to survive capitalism. The fall of the SU to war and
threat of war throughout its whole existence proves this even more than when Engels
and Marx first theorized it.
Those who want to make Marx, the friendly old genius, a pacificist and radical
democrat in every concrete historical circumstance are dreaming of a Utopian Marx like
themselves. Pipedream socialism.
_
(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.
CB: And another point, I don't even have one vote for the actual leaders of the U.S.
system, who are heads of giant corporations. The U.S. government works for them, and
takes orders from them mainly.
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.
CB: The citizens of the Soviet Union didn't have less ability than this to impact
their system.
Re: NIPA history and Fed follies
Jim Devine wrote:
No, I'm arguing that we need to go beyond simply being in favor of full
employment. (Bumper sticker summary: "Full Employment is Not Enough!" or
"We Don't Just Want Bread, We Want Roses, Too!") This is especially true
since there are other problems with capitalism on top of unemployment
that need to fight.
On the other hand, Jim, here's this delightful quote from the _New
Republic_, September 1945 ("The Road to Freedom: Full Employment"):
"Our experience with periods of labor shortage indicates that its first
effect is greatly to increase the bargaining power of labor, both
individually and collectively. This results in steady improvement
of wages and working conditions, up to the limit set by productive
capacity. It means that employers must seek to make employment
attractive, since the workers are no longer motivated by the fear
of losing their jobs. A shift of workers from the less pleasant
and remunerative occupations occurs, so that standards are raised
at the lower levels
"The status of labor will improve, since employers can no longer
rely upon the discipline of discharge to enforce authority. The
tendency will be for labor to have more participation in
industrial and economic policy."
Why supplement such clarity with a ambiguous bumper sticker slogan that
'full employment is not enough'?
Greenspan is not simply an evil man.
I could be wrong, but I don't think Greenspan is an evil man.
He's also a politicized version of the dynamic that Marx pointed to in
ch. 25 of volume I of CAPITAL.
From which (since you mention it) may I quote:
"If the means of production, as they increase in extent and effective
power, become to a lesser extent means for employing workers, this
relation is itself in turn modified by the fact that in proportion as the
productivity of labour increases, capital increases its supply of labour
more quickly than its demand for workers. The over-work of the employed
part of the working class swells the ranks of its reserve, while,
conversely, the greater pressure that the reserve by its competition
exerts on the employed workers forces them to submit to over-work and
subjects them to the dictates of capital. The condemnation of one part of
the working class to enforced idleness by the over-work of the other part,
and *vice versa* becomes a means of enriching the individual capitalists,
and accelerates at the same time the production of the industrial reserve
army on a scale corresponding with the progress of social accumulation."
Ironically, economic growth may indeed expand the demand for workers but
not as much as it expands the supply of labor power. Thus the treadmill
aspect of capitalist growth as a formula for reducing unemployment. Marx's
implied response to such a treadmill, a few pages later in the same
section -- "planned co-operation between the employed and the unemployed
to obviate or to weaken the ruinous effects of this natural law of
capitalist production on their class. . ." A course of action inevitably
denounced by "capital and its sycophant, political economy [as an]
infringement of the 'eternal' and so to speak 'sacred' law of supply and
demand."
How does this [reducing working time] work? I haven't studied this as
much as you have, Tom, but wouldn't reducing working hours per worker
increase the demand for individual employees, which would lower the
unemployment rate further into the capitalists' perceived danger zone?
I suppose Marx had in mind something like the above when he describe
limitation of the working day as "a preliminary condition without which
all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive."
But you don't have to take Marx's word for it. The following was the view
of an Industrial Inquiry Commission established by the U.S. Congress,
which reported in 1902:
"A reduction of hours is the most substantial and permanent gain which
labor can secure. In times of depression employers are often forced to
reduce wages, but very seldom do they, under such circumstances, increase
the hours of labor. The temptation to increase hours comes in times of
prosperity and business activity, when the employer sees opportunity for
increasing his output and profits by means of overtime. This distinction
is of great importance. The demand for increased hours comes at a time
when labor is strongest to resist, and the demand for lower wages comes at
a time when labor is weakest. A gain in wages can readily be offset by
secret agreements and evasions, where individual workmen agree to work
below the scale; but a reduction of hours is an open and visible gain, and
there can be no secret evasion. Having once secured the shorter working
day, the question of wages can be adjusted from time to time according to
the stress of the market."
Alternatively, wouldn't the capitalists see falling working hours per
worker as just a different form of higher labor costs? How do these
Sam, you fucked up! Admit it, and let's get onwith it, was Re: Genderization (fwd)
Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/20/00 09:02AM Brad De Long [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/22/00 12:55PM Sam, look it. You fucked up, and you fucked up royally. Admit it, and go on from there. The question you must ask yourself is why did you feel it necessary to make a big thing out of a tautology that no one denies -- that sexual relations are necessary for human reproduction. -clip- _ CB: Sam probably felt he had to say this because even though it is a tautology, many on these lists treat this tautology as a triviality, unimportant in understanding human history and society, and especially the social relations between women and men. This tautology is often treated as unimportant or "uninteresting" as compared to other factors, especially in post-modernist anti-essentialist discourse. This is the error of thinking that because social relations and culture are important in shaping human history and society, much more important than in other species, that nature or natural causes have no importance or no interesting importance in shaping human beings. Nobody denies that sexual relations are necessary for human reproduction, they just chastise and mock anyone who includes this necessity in discussion of ...well just about anything on these lists. It is sort of a new taboo on talking about sexual relations between women and men. CB
Re: four walls, three too many
Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/22/00 02:49PM [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Use them and shoot them philosophy! Bracingly clarifying. I'm very grateful you're nowhere near state power. __ CB: This sounds like you think like it would be better if you were somewhere near state power. Holier than she is , are you ? CB
Re: NIPA history and Fed follies
Max Sawicky wrote: We've done that number. It's 126.4 I've never done 126.4. Do you have to raise your hand first? Tom Walker
Re: Re: four walls, three too many
Charles Brown wrote: CB: This sounds like you think like it would be better if you were somewhere near state power. Holier than she is , are you ? Nope, I'm an infidel, suspected of bourgeois tendencies even. Doug
Re: Withering away of the state
First, let's start with the word socialism and what it means. To me the minimum would be some socialisation of the means of production (I distinquish this from nationalisation). This entails the establishment of democratic institutions capable of managing that control. I take this to be what Marx meant by the withering away of the state. The state as a institution of a divided society would be replaced, as those divisions were resolved, by alternative democratic institutions (the division between the public and private sphere being one of the most important divisions, would thus be overcome). The Soviet Union did not attempt to construct these institution, (in fact, after the initial period of the soviets, they did everything in their power to destroy alternative centres of power.) Yugoslavia and Cuba did more in this and have a greater claim to being socialist. The Soviet Union was a society in which the division between capital and labour was still strong. Capital, was for the main part, controlled by the bureaucracy, but it still existed as an opposition to labour. Little was being done to overcome this division. The Soviet Union was one of the world's most developed welfare states but it was not socialist, it was most definitely a society in which capital still ruled. Rod "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Rod, In what way was it not? The USSR followed most of the "planks" in the platform at the end of the Communist Manifesto. It even, under Khrushchev, attempted to maintain greenbelts and carried out other policies motivated by the essentially utopian goal of eliminating the distinction between the city and the country. What it was not was communist. And neither it nor any other socialist state (that I am aware of, maybe Pol Pot made such claims) ever claimed so to be. The official line in the old USSR was that they were a socialist state "in transition" to a communist future that never arrived. BTW, to those who are getting upset that I have made some critical remarks about Marx, I say that I am a great admirer of Marx and fully agree that he was very perspicuitous about many matters, arguably the most brilliant economist of the nineteenth century, certainly one of the most. But, he was not a god or a messiah or a prophet. He was a human being subject to errors, no matter how brilliant or wise he was. Even if one wishes to designate him as "error-free," clearly his writings are open to many interpretations in many places, as we all well know. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, May 18, 2000 7:49 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19253] : withering away of the state 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. "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Jim, I did not mean that the vision was pathetic. I meant that the actual outcome in light of the vision/ (forecast) was pathetic. Barkley Rosser -- -- 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 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: Withering away of the state
Nice post, Rod! And I tend to side with Barkley on the SR Constituent Assembly, too - which seems to me to have been a more promising midwife for the sort of transformations you discuss (especially in light of the resolutions they were passing in their last days) than the dictatorship of a vanguard - substitutionalist elite. Social-Democratically yours, Rob. First, let's start with the word socialism and what it means. To me the minimum would be some socialisation of the means of production (I distinquish this from nationalisation). This entails the establishment of democratic institutions capable of managing that control. I take this to be what Marx meant by the withering away of the state. The state as a institution of a divided society would be replaced, as those divisions were resolved, by alternative democratic institutions (the division between the public and private sphere being one of the most important divisions, would thus be overcome). The Soviet Union did not attempt to construct these institution, (in fact, after the initial period of the soviets, they did everything in their power to destroy alternative centres of power.) Yugoslavia and Cuba did more in this and have a greater claim to being socialist. The Soviet Union was a society in which the division between capital and labour was still strong. Capital, was for the main part, controlled by the bureaucracy, but it still existed as an opposition to labour. Little was being done to overcome this division. The Soviet Union was one of the world's most developed welfare states but it was not socialist, it was most definitely a society in which capital still ruled. Rod
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re:Re:Re:Re:MarxandMalleability
But, you see, Lenin had the blessing of History on his side. What matter majorities and elections when you are doing the will of History? Brad DeLong "History does nothing, it 'possesses no immense wealth', it 'wages no battles'. It is man, real, living man who does all that, who possesses and fights; 'history' is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims." Marx and Engels, *The Holy Family*, Collected Writings, vol. 4, p. 93 Ted -- Ted WinslowE-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Division of Social Science VOICE: (416) 736-5054 York UniversityFAX: (416) 736-5615 4700 Keele St. Toronto, Ontario CANADA M3J 1P3
Re: Re: Re: four walls, three too many
Charles Brown wrote: CB: This sounds like you think like it would be better if you were somewhere near state power. Holier than she is , are you ? Nope, I'm an infidel, suspected of bourgeois tendencies even. Doug ...who goes to parties with the Treasury Secretary. I heard that as far as Wolfensohn was concerned, the last straw was Stiglitz calling *his* *own* former staff at the World Bank "third rate"... Brad DeLong
Re: Re: Re: Re: four walls, three too many
Brad De Long wrote: I heard that as far as Wolfensohn was concerned, the last straw was Stiglitz calling *his* *own* former staff at the World Bank "third rate"... Yup, I've heard that too, and from a very reliable source. Doug
Re: Withering away of the state (fwd)
Rod Hay wrote: First, let's start with the word socialism and what it means. To me the minimum would be some socialisation of the means of production (I distinquish this from nationalisation). One of the factors why people construct their language in such a dichotomic fashion is because they seriously conflate the "state capitalist" with the "state socialist" model, and mistakenly attribute the charecteristics of the former to the letter. If one wants to see capitalism in socialism, then one wants to beleive there is in fact no difference between the two. This entails the establishment of democratic institutions capable of managing that control. I take this to be what Marx meant by the withering away of the state. Marx meant withering away of the "bourgeois state", the state which he was witnessing historically. In that respect, his views of the state can not be read out of context. My impression is that you reading the state in the abstract here, in a Hegelian fashion. We are living in the real world, Rod, not in the ideal world. Socialism took place in the periphery of the world system, under the pressure of European and US imperialistic hegemonies, so it was natural that it had some shortcomings, but the system tried its BEST to raise the living standarts of its people, more so rigidly than capitalist states. Shortcomings of the capitalist state requires capitalist solutions (as in Keynesianism). Shortcomings of the socialist state requires socialist solutions (as in Marxism). . The Soviet Union did not attempt to construct these institution, (in fact, after the initial period of the soviets, they did everything in their power to destroy alternative centres of power.) Yugoslavia and Cuba did more in this and have a greater claim to being socialist. From Andy Wayne Austin: (1) "State socialist countries brought comparatively tremendous benefits to their people. Under communist parties these countries were substantially better off than they were before socialism and they are now much worse off after the fall of state socialism. Between 1960 and 1980 all state socialist countries compared favorably with middle and upper-range capitalist countries, and all state socialist society easily surpassed the bottom third capitalist countries. In fact, there were after 1960 no state socialist societies in the bottom third of poorest countries. There was substantially less inequality in these countries, and the ruling parties, while having some bit more of the social surplus than the average person, were much less well off than their counterparts in capitalist societies (a Soviet leader, if so inclined, could only dream of the wealth and privilege of the US politician). All this came with a high level of social services. State socialist societies were not perfect. There is no requirement that any society be a utopia or live up to any ideal to be a desirable alternative. There is probably not a single wage-laborer who desires to be a slave. We live in the real world, Paul, and we always will. People living under state socialist regimes were much better off than most people living under capitalism. They really were" (2) "His statements are also deeply problematic because capitalist countries do in fact round up laborers in their own states or for export to their colonies. English labor history is full of periods of rounding up vagabonds, vagrants, orphans, etc., and selling them into bondage to capitalists in their North American and Australian colonies. In the United States, Indians were rounded up and forced to migrate across the country. After slavery, blacks were rounded up by capitalists and forced to work under the most degrading and dangerous of conditions. In the West, Latino labor forces were subject to such treatment. And perhaps no groups suffered more explicitly harsh treatment of this kind than the Chinese immigrant. Now we have a vast prison system to contain the fallout from structural unemployment, and increasingly this system is being transformed into a slave-labor force. There is also a problem with the notion of Soviet "colonialism" or "imperialism" if by that term we mean the economic exploitation of a "periphery" by a "core." In the relations between the core and periphery in the capitalist context there is often a flow of surplus out of the periphery into the core. Thus the periphery was underdeveloped by their relawith the core. By contrast, relations between core and periphery in the Soviet system system led to development in the satellites. They were, as the capitalist ideologue would have it, proheir satellites. Capitalist have exploited this fact by noting how much former Soviet satellites - "propped up by the Soviet Union" - have suffered after the "fall of communism." One can hardly claim that the extension of the Soviet Union was of an exploitative nature analogous to the relation between core and periphery in world capitalism,
query on Canadian and US labor law
Can anyone suggest accessible and readable articles or books on the differences between Canadian and US labor laws? Thanks. Michael Yates
FWD: [corp-focus] Against China PNTR (fwd)
forwarded.. A view from Washington-based analysts? May I have permission to post a long (about 40Kb) piece by Walden Bello and Anuradha Mittal (under the Institute for Food and Development Policy by-line as well as Focus on the Global South, a Bangkok-based NGO think-tank) taking quite an opposite point of view? kj khoo --- begin forwarded text Date: Mon, 22 May 2000 19:46:20 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [corp-focus] Against China PNTR Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] List-Id: Sharp-edged commentary on corporate power corp-focus.lists.essential.org Against China PNTR By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Should China be fully immersed into the corporatized global economy? The debate over whether the U.S. Congress should grant Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR, formerly known as permanent most favored nation) status is about many things, but none more important than this basic question. The vote on PNTR is intertwined with a U.S.-China bilateral trade deal that contains tariff concessions and deregulatory measures designed to aid U.S. business, and with China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). This should not be a hard question to answer. Opening the economy further to U.S. and other multinational corporations and deregulating the economy further will exacerbate the worst social and economic tendencies in China, while undermining many of the country's important achievements of the past 50 years. As NAFTA proponents argued about Mexico, PNTR proponents can fairly say that China is already open to foreign business. But as with NAFTA, PNTR is about corporate investment as much as the trade in goods. U.S. business wants the certainty that comes from the China trade deal and Chinese membership in the WTO, and the progressive elimination of the many barriers to foreign investment in China. Most of the hardships that large numbers of Chinese people will experience if PNTR is granted and China joins the WTO are not seriously disputed: * Ten million or more peasants will be thrown off the land, as agricultural supports are withdrawn. * Millions of workers will lose their jobs as state enterprises wither in the face of foreign competition, or downsize and speed up operations in an effort stay competitive. * Social service provision will be decimated. Healthcare, education, pensions and other such services have long been provided by employers -- duties that state employers no longer want or can afford in the face of foreign competition. Foreign private corporations are generally not interested in taking on social service provision responsibility. * As a result of these and other factors, there will be a surge in income and wealth inequality, exacerbating dangerous trends already underway. * Foreign tobacco companies will gain greater access to the Chinese market, which almost certainly means there will be a rise in smoking rates among women (traditionally non-smoking in China) and children. Because of the vastness of China's population, even small increases in smoking rates may result in millions of excess tobacco-related deaths. * China will progressively lose the ability to employ the protectionist tools that have enabled it to grow at such rapid rates in recent decades, and to weather the Asian financial crisis with minimal hardship. Corporate proponents of PNTR counter that the economic boom that will follow from PNTR will balance out the harms to workers and farmers -- that these transition costs are an unavoidable cost of modernization. But there is little evidence to support these claims, and even if PNTR hypothetically did spur economic expansion -- a contention we find implausible -- it would still occur amidst worsening economic inequality, a worsening of poverty and shredding of the social safety net. Strangely, despite the cheerleading from Big Business for PNTR and the acknowledged harms (no small thing to shunt aside), some progressives have offered support for PNTR. They contend that it is inappropriate for the United States to treat China differently than other nations, absent a call from Chinese workers and farmers for such differential treatment. But there are almost no independent mass organizations in China, nor even non-governmental organizations. Who exactly do these progressives look to issue such calls? Another strand of progressive criticism of PNTR opposition rejects "protectionism." But it is perfectly appropriate for U.S. unions and others to protect the interests of U.S. workers, especially against the ravages of corporate globalization. PNTR will cost domestic manufacturing jobs and enhance the downward pressure on U.S. wages by making it easier for U.S. manufacturers to produce their goods in Chinese sweatshops. It promises few if any new jobs for workers in the United States. Big U.S. corporate winners from PNTR in the financial and service sectors will create virtually no jobs in the United
Re: FWD: [corp-focus] Against China PNTR (fwd)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- begin forwarded text Date: Mon, 22 May 2000 19:46:20 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Weissman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Against China PNTR By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Should China be fully immersed into the corporatized global economy? The debate over whether the U.S. Congress should grant Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR, formerly known as permanent most favored nation) status is about many things, but none more important than this basic question.[SNIP] This should not be a hard question to answer. Opening the economy further to U.S. and other multinational corporations and deregulating the economy further will exacerbate the worst social and economic tendencies in China, while undermining many of the country's important achievements of the past 50 years. First, let me say at the level of plaintive wish-things-were-different that I really wish political and social conditions in China were such that not only did China not apply to join WTO but took a leading part in global struggle to abolish WTO. But they are not that way. And whatever my doubts of and quarrels with the present Chinese regime, I do not believe that the U.S. Congress is a proper forum for ajudicating the interests of the Chinese people. So from the viewpoint of a u.s. activist the question, "Should China be fully immersed into the corporatized global economy?" far from being a basic question is not even a question at all. It is racist for anyone to argue that the U.S. Congress knows (or can know) more about the interests of China than the Chinese know. I have a good deal of respect for Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman -- but the arrogance and u.s. chauvinism of this argument appalls me. Carrol
Marx's life and theory
At 08:02 PM 05/22/2000 +0100, you wrote: Rob Schaap wrote: if memory serves, Marx held out hope for revolution by constitutional means within monarchies during his 1873 speech Memory serves you poorly. By 1873 Marx had already given up any hope or expectation of proletarian revolution anywhere. He'd based his life on the great throw of a dice: staked it on the belief that a newly-emergent social class, the working-class, would become a class-for-itself, with its own political culture, leadership and trajectory to power - a naïve belief based probably in an overestimation of Rousseau's conception of a civil society, in which 'classes' of people succeed one another in a kind of stately historical minuet; do you have any evidence that Marx followed Rousseau in this way? the fact that Marx's own conception of the w/c was protean, apocalyptic etc, that this was not a class so much as a furnace consuming history and reforging the world, was in contradiction with his optimistic Enlightenment core beliefs. When it became clear to him that this proletariat did not exist, and the one which DID exist was and would ALWAYS be quite incapable of reshaping the world, do you have evidence that this "became clear to him"? where does he say these things? he turned to ethnography and begun blindly clutching at anthropological straws, in other words he abandoned the western European political field aka actually-existing Capitalism in toto, along with all its classes, cultural impedimenta etc. actually, given the way in which capitalism develops unevenly, with backward countries (like Russia) getting the worst of the exploitation and crises and rich countries (like England) having the most organized working classes and the kind of wealth that Marx saw as a needed component of the development of socialism, this kind of "clutching at straws" seems prescient, presaging the ideas of people like Luxemburg and Lenin, who turned their attention to the poorer countries and the impact on them of the imperialistic countries. But even though Marx turned his attention more and more outside of Europe as he grew older, I'd like to see some sort of evidence that he was the discouraged old man described here. Right at the end one of the straws he clutched had Russia written on it and, poignantly, beside his death-bed was a large box stuffed with various pamphlets and writings about or from Russia. But this was just piling pain onto grief. It had all been the forlorn pursuit of will o'the wisps. yes, it's true that the actual revolution in Russia turned into the kind of sh*t that he and Engels predicted would occur if a revolution occurred in a poor country (in the GERMAN IDEOLOGY). Marx's political ideas were driven, as he was driven, by a burning desire, lust, for POWER (the next person on the scene to be similarly motivated was Lenin; What evidence do you have for this psychoanalysis? It's hard to imagine that anyone would spend years reading obscure books in the British Museum in order to get power over others. Engels, that genial old duffer, had no such yearnings and by the time his life-juices ran into the sands of the latter-day 2nd International, his personal accommodation to the world had also, tragically or bathetically, become his political accommodation to late-Victorian politics, an accommodation to which he, fondly but quite impermissibly, assimilated his old friend Karl, whose days of incandescent political passion he no doubt remembered sentimentally. do you have any evidence at all for these assertions? They make Brad happy, but is there anything else? Even he doubts their veracity. The sheer extent of Marx's despair at the end, his absolute repudiation of events as they'd turned out, his remorseless cynicism about the everyday world of labour-bureaucracies, with their time-serving placemen and greasy little deals -- this is something we barely know and can hardly guess at, but in fact his latter writings, as do his latter SILENCES, his failure to complete any of Capital after vol I (pub 1867) speak eloquently enough, once you understand what's going on. he never was good at finishing _any_ of his books. I'd say that this was a _constant_ in his life. I also wouldn't try to get too much out SILENCES in anyone's work.They might indicate what kind of problems exist in their theory that they don't look into, but they don't say anything about their real attitudes. This was a man who had not expected to end his days in Bournemouth watching young governesses push prams and ply their trade; he'd expected volcanoes to erupt and to transfigure the geology of human civilisation, let alone its routine history. He'd expected to win power, to be a statesman for his elective class, and to begin epochal processes of change. It was not to be. It's true that Marx was a failure in terms of his immediate political goals. (It seems to me that the only people who
Newton, was Re: MarxandMall...
Mark Jones wrote: Newton (who also went mad, for the same kinds of reasons) Ahem. Newton suffered from mercury poisoning. Carrol
Re: Re: NIPA history and Fed follies
On the other hand, Jim, here's this delightful quote from the _New
Republic_, September 1945 ("The Road to Freedom: Full Employment"):
Oh yes, back when TNR was a good magazine.
"Our experience with periods of labor shortage indicates that its first
effect is greatly to increase the bargaining power of labor, both
individually and collectively. This results in steady improvement of wages
and working conditions, up to the limit set by productive capacity. It
means that employers must seek to make employment attractive, since the
workers are no longer motivated by the fear of losing their jobs. A shift
of workers from the less pleasant and remunerative occupations occurs, so
that standards are raised at the lower levels
"The status of labor will improve, since employers can no longer rely upon
the discipline of discharge to enforce authority. The
tendency will be for labor to have more participation in industrial and
economic policy."
Why supplement such clarity with a ambiguous bumper sticker slogan that
'full employment is not enough'?
of course the slogan was ambiguous since I using it to summarize the other
things I said, which (I hoped) were less ambiguous. In any event, full
employment doesn't solve the environmental problem. It doesn't end the
exploitation of labor. If it even leans in that direction, capital goes on
strike (or inflation encourages the rentiers to go on strike). I think I
respect Kalecki's analysis more than I do the NEW REPUBLIC on this one.
Greenspan is not simply an evil man.
I could be wrong, but I don't think Greenspan is an evil man.
I was overstating it, to make a point (i.e., that if he didn't exist, he'd
have to be invented). He may not be _personally_ evil, but I think that in
terms of his objective impact on the world, he is. He's an ideological
leader of the neoliberal upsurge, struggling to force the world into a
preconceived straight-jacket of the market ideal.
He's also a politicized version of the dynamic that Marx pointed to in
ch. 25 of volume I of CAPITAL.
From which (since you mention it) may I quote:
"If the means of production, as they increase in extent and effective
power, become to a lesser extent means for employing workers, this
relation is itself in turn modified by the fact that in proportion as the
productivity of labour increases, capital increases its supply of labour
more quickly than its demand for workers. The over-work of the employed
part of the working class swells the ranks of its reserve, while,
conversely, the greater pressure that the reserve by its competition
exerts on the employed workers forces them to submit to over-work and
subjects them to the dictates of capital. The condemnation of one part
of the working class to enforced idleness by the over-work of the other
part, and *vice versa* becomes a means of enriching the individual
capitalists, and accelerates at the same time the production of the
industrial reserve army on a scale corresponding with the progress of
social accumulation."
I'm quite familiar with that quote, though I don't think that it's relevant
to 2000 in the US. Rather it's more relevant to 2000 for the world
capitalist system as a whole. Overwork seems the rule in the US, while
idleness is being enforced on much of the rest of the world.
Ironically, economic growth may indeed expand the demand for workers but
not as much as it expands the supply of labor power. Thus the treadmill
aspect of capitalist growth as a formula for reducing unemployment. Marx's
implied response to such a treadmill, a few pages later in the same
section -- "planned co-operation between the employed and the unemployed
to obviate or to weaken the ruinous effects of this natural law of
capitalist production on their class. . ."
that's a good idea. However, the premise of what I said was that capitalism
isn't about to fall apart.
A course of action inevitably denounced by "capital and its sycophant,
political economy [as an] infringement of the 'eternal' and so to speak
'sacred' law of supply and demand."
and it is. A justified one, perhaps, but it goes against supply demand,
which are a result of the existence of capitalist institutions. For it to
work, there'd have to be much more of a societal movement against
capitalism to pull it off. That's hard when internationalism is needed.
How does this [reducing working time] work? I haven't studied this as
much as you have, Tom, but wouldn't reducing working hours per worker
increase the demand for individual employees, which would lower the
unemployment rate further into the capitalists' perceived danger zone?
I suppose Marx had in mind something like the above when he describe
limitation of the working day as "a preliminary condition without which
all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive."
I'm all in favor of lowering the length of the working day. The issue is
how it avoids
Political Constraints, was Re: :Re:Re:MarxandMalleability (fwd)
"J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: The election of December saw a victory by the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Lenin had no good excuse on Marxist grounds for denying them power. I don't quite see how "Marxist grounds" bear one way or the other on this question. There is not that direct certain a relationship between the highest level of theory and direct tactical and even strategic questions. But certainly no fundamental change of social systems will ever be approved by an election -- either prior to the change or in the years immediately after the first break. I draw no immediate conclusions from this premise -- except perhaps that there is no saying in advance what should be done under such conditions. I believe in an earlier post you yourself expressed doubt as to whether the Socialist Revolutionaries would have ended the war. If that is so, then I cannot see any limits whatever on the means to be employed in denying them power. Carrol
Re: Re: Re: Withering away of the state
At 06:54 AM 05/23/2000 +1000, you wrote: Nice post, Rod! And I tend to side with Barkley on the SR Constituent Assembly, too - which seems to me to have been a more promising midwife for the sort of transformations you discuss (especially in light of the resolutions they were passing in their last days) than the dictatorship of a vanguard - substitutionalist elite. I'm not sure that the Constituent Assembly would have dealt well with the issue of ending WW I the way Lenin did for Russia -- or with continuing to fight the war, the way Karensky wanted to do. Would it have dealt well with violent opposition or civil war or imperialist invasion? or the extreme poverty of Russia at the time? the division between the peasants and the workers -- and the difficulty of keeping peasants united once they've grabbed land for themselves? This is not to apologize for Lenin (since I'm no Leninist). But I think that the objective conditions of 1917-18 in Russia were such that nice social democrats were unlikely to take power (or stay there, if you consider Karensky to be a social democrat). I think that these conditions bred substitutionism more than it leapt full-grown from Lenin's head. (Many of the SR's were more substitutionist in that many believed in the "propaganda of the deed." Lenin was a moderate compared to the bomb-throwers among the anarchists, who were strong substitutionists.) Substitutionism takes hold when the working class is poorly organized and less than class conscious. (It can be seen in the form of various lobbyists and lawyers who are substituting for the US working class in most struggles these days.) It's important to notice how Lenin's ideas change with circumstances in Russia. After he initially flirted with Kautsky's top-down "workers can never be socialist" perspective in WHAT IS TO BE DONE?,[*] he became less "vanguardist" and less "substitutionist" as the Russian workers movement grew in number and depth. Then, after October 1917, once the popular revolution begins to fade, the grass roots being torn apart by civil war, urban/rural conflict, etc., his ideas veer toward top-downism. I guess my conclusion is the opposite of Leninism, in that I see Lenin as more of a dependent variable than an independent one. He, like Woodrow Wilson, may have seen history as being on his side (as Brad asserts), but he was wrong. Wilson maybe was right, since his flavor of hypocrisy seems to rule these days (bombing Serbia to "make the world safe for democracy"). [*] Hal Draper's article reprinted in the recent HISTORICAL MATERIALISM makes a convincing case that it was Kautsky who developed the top-down (vanguardist) conception of the party, while Lenin never went all the way (contrary to the strange consensus among Stalinists and Cold Warriors, who all agreed that Lenin = Stalin). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Marx's life and theory (fwd)
by the way, do you have any evidence to your claims from German Ideology? Mine Jim Devine wrote: yes, it's true that the actual revolution in Russia turned into the kind of sh*t that he and Engels predicted would occur if a revolution occurred in a poor country (in the GERMAN IDEOLOGY). You have no slightest notion about what Engels is talking about here! German ideology is neither about a revolution in a "poor" country nor is it about the kind of "shit" you are talking about. It is a comprehensive statement of the materialist conception of history written in 1845-46. Marx and Engels did NOT make predictions about revolution in Russia here-- NOT IN THIS TEXT! Even assuming that they did, their explanation would definetely be much more qualified than your "shit" charecterization! Mine Doyran, SUNY/Albany
Political Constraints,was Re: :Re:Re:MarxandMalleability (fwd)
elections? I am not quite sure about the meaning. Which elections can you show that can really allow me to participate in the selection of people who run the society".I do not elect bankers!.I do not elect corporations!.I do not elect multinationals!.They are there illegitimately (even judged from the standpoint of one sided bourgeois democracy) Mine Doyran SUNY/Albany "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote The election of December saw a victory by the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Lenin had no good excuse on Marxist grounds for denying them power.
Re: Political Constraints,was Re: :Re:Re:MarxandMalleability (fwd)
How about electing your own union reps? Officials? Is that something we can get rid of after the rev. also? Steve Stephen Philion Lecturer/PhD Candidate Department of Sociology 2424 Maile Way Social Sciences Bldg. # 247 Honolulu, HI 96822 On Mon, 22 May 2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: elections? I am not quite sure about the meaning. Which elections can you show that can really allow me to participate in the selection of people who run the society".I do not elect bankers!.I do not elect corporations!.I do not elect multinationals!.They are there illegitimately (even judged from the standpoint of one sided bourgeois democracy) Mine Doyran SUNY/Albany "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote The election of December saw a victory by the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Lenin had no good excuse on Marxist grounds for denying them power.
