Re: Classical political economy, labor standards, and human capital
Adam Smith: In this country indeed [Scotland], where the division of labour is not far advanced, even the meanest porter can read and write, because the price of education is cheap, and a parent can employ his child no other way at 6 or 7 years of age. This however is not the case in the commercial parts of England ... and parents find it in their interest to set them soon to work. Thus their education is neglected. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864iwma/1866-e.htm#04 4. JUVENILE AND CHILDREN'S LABOUR (BOTH SEXES) We consider the tendency of modern industry to make children and juvenile persons of both sexes co-operate in the great work of social production, as a progressive, sound and legitimate tendency, although under capital it was distorted into an abomination. In a rational state of society every child whatever, from the age of 9 years, ought to become a productive labourer in the same way that no able-bodied adult person ought to be exempted from the general law of nature, viz.: to work in order to be able to eat, and work not only with the brain but with the hands too. However, for the present, we have only to deal with the children and young persons of both sexes divided into three classes, to be treated differently [a]; the first class to range from 9 to 12; the second, from 13 to 15 years; and the third, to comprise the ages of 16 and 17 years. We propose that the employment of the first class in any workshop or housework be legally restricted to two; that of the second, to four; and that of the third, to six hours. For the third class, there must be a break of at least one hour for meals or relaxation. It may be desirable to begin elementary school instruction before the age of 9 years; but we deal here only with the most indispensable antidotes against the tendencies of a social system which degrades the working man into a mere instrument for the accumulation of capital, and transforms parents by their necessities into slave-holders, sellers of their own children. The right of children and juvenile persons must be vindicated. They are unable to act for themselves. It is, therefore, the duty of society to act on their behalf. If the middle and higher classes neglect their duties toward their offspring, it is their own fault. Sharing the privileges of these classes, the child is condemned to suffer from their prejudices. The case of the working class stands quite different. The working man is no free agent. In too many cases, he is even too ignorant to understand the true interest of his child, or the normal conditions of human development. However, the more enlightened part of the working class fully understands that the future of its class, and, therefore, of mankind, altogether depends upon the formation of the rising working generation. They know that, before everything else, the children and juvenile workers must be saved from the crushing effects of the present system. This can only be effected by converting social reason into social force, and, under given circumstances, there exists no other method of doing so, than through general laws, enforced by the power of the state. In enforcing such laws, the working class do not fortify governmental power. On the contrary, they transform that power, now used against them, into their own agency. They effect by a general act what they would vainly attempt by a multitude of isolated individual efforts. Proceeding from this standpoint, we say that DO parent and no employer ought to be allowed to use juvenile labour, except when combined with education. By education we understand three things. Firstly: Mental education. Secondly: Bodily education, such as is given in schools of gymnastics, and by military exercise. Thirdly: Technological training, which imparts the general principles of all processes of production, and, simultaneously initiates the child and young person in the practical use and handling of the elementary instruments of all trades. [The German text calls this polytechnical training. -- Ed] A gradual and progressive course of mental, gymnastic, and technological training ought to correspond to the classification of the juvenile labourers. The costs of the technological a schools ought to be partly met by the sale of their products. The combination of paid productive labour, mental education bodily exercise and polytechnic training, will raise the working class far above the level of the higher and middle classes. It is self-understood that the employment of all persons from 9 and to 17 years (inclusively) in nightwork and all health-injuring trades must be strictly prohibited by law.
Re: Classical political economy, labor standards,and human capital
Marx, here sounds like he is following the ideas of Robert Owen, who believed that education and production could be combined. In any case, you made an interesting juxtaposition. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Low productivity in the Global South
Well, yes, but isn't it obvious to PK that the latter (competition among workers for jobs) far outweighs the former (competition among capitalists for workers) when 50% or more of the labor force are unemployed sweatshop wages are better than wages of many other kinds of work in the area??? Since he himself argues that sweatshop work is in fact greatly desired by workers who have few other options??? Yoshie No. Wage levels in open developing countries have been increasing rapidly over the past two generations, and so (with the exception of the United States and New Zealand) have wage levels in industrial countries... Brad DeLong
Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: brad de long textbook
For fiscal you should have shown a big truck labeled neoliberalism running the turtle over in the middle of the screen. mbs You have a better way to teach people the relative lags involved in automatic stabilizers, monetary policy, and discretionary fiscal policy? :-) Brad DeLong Shme on you! Now I hve coffee up my nose nd ll over my keybord nd the key won't work nymore!
Re: FW: Why Feds Spend More on Suburban Schoolsthan Poor Ones?
HOW REDISTRIBUTION OPERATES Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia It has been often noticed, both by proponents of laissez-faire capitalism and by radicals, that the poor in the United States are not net benficiaries of the total government programs and interventions in the economy. Much of mbs: Noted by people who can't count, I imagine. It does indicate that even in his high libertarian phase--the mid-1970s--Nozick did not quite dare make the argument that government programs to keep the poor from having to sleep under bridges are bad because they violate the poor's rights to be autonomous liberal individuals. Instead, he felt like he had to make the argument that such government policies were ineffective. To my mind, one of the best things the _New Republic_ ever published was called Anarchy, State, and Rent Control: it was about how Nozick used the Cambridge Rent Control Board to break the contract that he (as an autonomous, liberal individual) had made with Eric Segal, and to keep squatting in Segal's apartment... Brad DeLong
Re: Re: Re: Czech issues.
Reminds me of the details in the memoir of Zdenek Mlynar, Nightfrost in Prague. http://www.hfni.gsehd.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/CWIHP/BULLETINS/b2a4.htm Mlynar was on the CC of the Czech Communist Party in '68 (and a former roomate of Gorbachev's in the 50's) and went to Moscow with Dubcek and other members of the CC to negotiate with Brezhnev and Suslov et. al. Comrade Brezhnev related a hotline conversation with LBJ before the Warsaw Pact invasion where he asked point blank if NATO would intervene against the Warsaw Pact in the event of an invasion to normalize the Czech situation. LBJ, said in so many words, You have your sphere of influence, we have ours...We will not risk war to save Czechoslovakia. Good illustration of the E.P. Thompson view that the Cold War was a mechanism used by each systems political ruling class to maintain domination over their respective populations. Michael Pugliese You would rather that Lyndon Johnson would have risked total thermonuclear war to keep Dubcek in power? There were people in the White House then who would have benn glad to oblige... Brad DeLong
Ousmene Sembene
Senegal's Ousmene Sembene wrote and directed Black Girl, the very first African film, in 1965. Recently the Film Forum in NYC held a Sembene retrospective to run consecutively with his latest feature Faat-Kine. This gave me the opportunity to see the 1971 Emitai (God of Thunder), which I saw when it first came out, and two other films that are closely related thematically: the 1977 Ceddo (Common Folk) and the 1987 Camp de Thiaroye. These three films, dealing with questions of class oppression, colonialism and racism, are, like all of Sembene's work, passionate denunciations of injustice and an implicit call to action. Born in 1923, his father a fisherman, Sembene fell in love with movies at an early age after seeing scenes of Jesse Owens' track victories in Leni Riefenstahl's pro-Nazi documentary Olympics documentary. For the first time, he told the LA Times in 1995, a black honored us by beating whites. . . . It became the film for the young people of my generation. We can be sure that this was not Riefenstahl's intention. Sembene quit high school after punching out a teacher who had hit him first. He then joined the Free French army during World War II. After the war he became a rail worker, participating in an epochal Dakar-Niger railroad strike in 1947-48. After stowing away in a ship to France, he became a longshoreman in Marseilles and a member of the French Communist Party. In France he started writing fiction in order to depict the reality of modern African life which could best be represented by the African. His first novel The Black Docker was published in 1956. But in the early 1960s, Sembene decided to turn his attention to filmmaking (the people's night school) because most Africans were illiterate and could only be reached with this medium. His films would follow the same road as his writing, to offer an alternative to Tarzan movies and garish epics like Mandingo. We have had enough of feathers and tom-toms, he said. So he went to Moscow, where he studied at the Gorki Institute under Soviet directors Mark Donskoi and Sergei Gerasimov. This was the time when the USSR was not only offering an economic alternative to developing countries, but a cultural one as well. Indirectly, the Soviet Union became a midwife to modern African cinema. The 'common folk' of Ceddo are the serfs of a small village in 19th century Senegal who are miserably oppressed by organized religion and by their feudal overlords. Although the structures are much more modest than those found in any feudal society (Islamic services are held on the open ground bounded by pebbles), the bonds enforced by custom are the same. The ceddo must pay tribute to their King in the form of firewood bundles. An Islamic caste also takes tribute in the form of slaves, who are exchanged for guns or cloth in a general store run by a white man. To round out the microcosm of feudal society, there is a single white Catholic priest who is barely tolerated by the Moslems. Weary of oppression, a ceddo youth kidnaps the daughter of the king and takes her to an isolated wooded glen near the ocean. She will only be returned after the ruling classes forsake slavery and forced conversion to Islam. The villagers, played by non-professionals as is the case in nearly all of Sembene's films, have a simple desire to live as they have always lived. No dogmatic Marxist, Sembene would have little tolerance for glib remarks about 'rural idiocy' for it is only in traditional village life that honesty and humility can be found. The film's most dramatic scenes pit the hostage-taker against aristocrats from the village who come to rescue the princess with rifles in hand. Armed only with a bow and arrow and superior cunning, the ceddo youth vanquishes them one by one. In the course of his courageous resistance, the princess begins to warm to him although he is slow to respond in kind. His memory of oppression remains too strong. In one of the more gripping images of the film, the gorgeous princess bathes nude in the ocean while the young commoner stands on the beach glowering at her, bow and arrow in hand. He will not indulge himself in desire as long as his people are in bondage. In a conflict between the King and the Islamic clergy over how to divide up ceddo tribute, the clergy seize power. Now that they are the new ruling class, they force the village to undergo conversion. One by one, the men's heads are shaved as they are given new names. The arrogant Imam tells the disconsolate villagers: You are now Ishmaila, You are now Ibraima, etc. Economic assimilation, whether in Africa or in the New World, is always preceded by cultural assimilation. Implicit in Sembene's films is the notion that cultural renewal must precede social and economic transformation. Sembene returns to village life in Emitai. It is in the early days of WWII and the French Vichy government is rounding up African youth to fight in their war. A village has been occupied by a company of
Re: Re: Re: Low productivity in the Global South
No. Wage levels in open developing countries have been increasing rapidly over the past two generations, and so (with the exception of the United States and New Zealand) have wage levels in industrial countries... Brad DeLong Of course wages have been going up. You start with zero when you are a subsistence farmer living outside the cash economy. When a Colombian peasant, who grew his own food and traded the surplus for manufactured goods in a village plaza, gets thrown off his land and takes a job in factory, he has more money than he ever had but he is poorer than ever. That is why there is rebellion in Colombia. Peasants want to return to the days when they could live off the land. Of course, those who end up in a factory are the fortunate exception. Most Latin American or African ex-peasants end up in the informal economy which means prostitution, drug-peddling, shoe-shining, hawking chewing gum or fruit, etc. This is the social layer that formed the base of the Sandinista revolution coincidentally. In any case, I'd love to see somebody like DeLong go work in a maquila factory for a year or so, like his fellow Berkeley prof Michael Burawoy does. Then at least, his interventions on leftwing mailing lists might come across less as propaganda, and more like lived experience. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: Re: FW: Why Feds Spend More on Suburban Schoolsthan Poor Ones?
Well his main argument against redistribution is precisely that it violates people's rights to control over resources to which they are entitled. As I understand Nozick only those taxes required to maintain the minimal state--basicallly defence, police, and the courts are justifiable. Government programs that use tax monies to finance attempts to improve the condition of the poor or for whatever reason violate entitlement rights and are unjustified, a form of legal theft as Nozick sees it. The argument cited is meant to show those who are not libertarians that government programs do not achieve what they claim to do. By the way I am not at all convinced that what Nozick actually says is incorrect because he is speaking of TOTAL government programs and interventions in the econonomy. Many government interventions may actually make goods for the poor more expensive and certainly agricultural programs often benefit mostly large farms and whiile some funds go to poorer smaller farmers on balance they may be even less competitive. I am not sure it is just as simple as counting as Max seems to say. Any Nozick's main argument is based not upon any rights of the poor specifically but upon the rights of all persons who as self-owners also have rights to that which they have created through labor or exchange. Nozick is usually consistent and does not shy away from accepting any radical or shocking conclusions. For example, he argues that it is possible that one could sell onesefl into slavery if conditions were bad enough. This would not violate his principles of justice. Aside from requirements for the minimal state, the only type of redistribution Nozick allows is restitution, as in aboriginal land claims, or restitution after theft etc. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Brad DeLong [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, April 27, 2001 3:07 PM Subject: [PEN-L:10962] Re: FW: Why Feds Spend More on Suburban Schoolsthan Poor Ones? HOW REDISTRIBUTION OPERATES Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia It has been often noticed, both by proponents of laissez-faire capitalism and by radicals, that the poor in the United States are not net benficiaries of the total government programs and interventions in the economy. Much of mbs: Noted by people who can't count, I imagine. It does indicate that even in his high libertarian phase--the mid-1970s--Nozick did not quite dare make the argument that government programs to keep the poor from having to sleep under bridges are bad because they violate the poor's rights to be autonomous liberal individuals. Instead, he felt like he had to make the argument that such government policies were ineffective. To my mind, one of the best things the _New Republic_ ever published was called Anarchy, State, and Rent Control: it was about how Nozick used the Cambridge Rent Control Board to break the contract that he (as an autonomous, liberal individual) had made with Eric Segal, and to keep squatting in Segal's apartment... Brad DeLong
Re: Low productivity in the Global South
Lou is absolutely correct in his economics -- which means that I agree with him -- but you, Lou, are wrong to personalize your note by challenging Brad personally. On Sun, Apr 29, 2001 at 12:33:25PM -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: No. Wage levels in open developing countries have been increasing rapidly over the past two generations, and so (with the exception of the United States and New Zealand) have wage levels in industrial countries... Brad DeLong Of course wages have been going up. You start with zero when you are a subsistence farmer living outside the cash economy. When a Colombian peasant, who grew his own food and traded the surplus for manufactured goods in a village plaza, gets thrown off his land and takes a job in factory, he has more money than he ever had but he is poorer than ever. That is why there is rebellion in Colombia. Peasants want to return to the days when they could live off the land. Of course, those who end up in a factory are the fortunate exception. Most Latin American or African ex-peasants end up in the informal economy which means prostitution, drug-peddling, shoe-shining, hawking chewing gum or fruit, etc. This is the social layer that formed the base of the Sandinista revolution coincidentally. In any case, I'd love to see somebody like DeLong go work in a maquila factory for a year or so, like his fellow Berkeley prof Michael Burawoy does. Then at least, his interventions on leftwing mailing lists might come across less as propaganda, and more like lived experience. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/ -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
EPI Conference
[Note the RSVP addresses are not the s ame as mine.] Dear Colleague, We invite you to participate in a day long event to consider research on union organizing, including employer, employee and union strategies, conduct and practices as well as how the law and its administration affects workers rights to organize. The meeting will take place in Washington D.C. on June 6, 2001, at the Economic Policy Institute which is hosting the event with the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs and the Institute for Womens Policy Research. The goals of the meeting are to generate lively and informal discussion about current, planned and needed research on the subject of union organizing and related issues, and to form an ongoing and expanding network of scholars who share a commitment to and research interest in this field. The purpose of the meeting is to encourage and promote such research as well as provide the opportunity for people interested in the subject to share thoughts about current and future projects. If you are interested in attending this meeting or have questions, please contact Larry Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or Fred Feinstein at the University of Maryland, School of Public Affairs at [EMAIL PROTECTED] by May 10th. Please indicate the relevant research on which you are working or which you intend to pursue. Once we hear from you we will respond with further details about the meeting. We hope you will consider participating in what we believe will be an interesting and important gathering. Thank you. Roy Adams Dale Belman Michael Belzer Kate BronfenbrennerLance Compa Dan Cornfield Adrienne Eaton Fred Feinstein Sarah Fox Sheldon Friedman Jim GrossHeidi Hartmann Morris Kleiner Larry Mishel Kent Wong
Re: Global AIDS war chest
At 28/04/01 09:18 -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: Chris: It is simply not credible, let alone revolutionary, to assert, when diseases like small pox and polio are near eradication, that a massive assault on AIDS could not drastically reduce the global death rate. Astonishing coming from somebody who is a medical professional. There are vaccinations for polio and smallpox, but none for AIDS and none likely in the near to medium term. This is the main reason it is a pandemic. It is a disease that is a function of social and economic backwardness. To get rid of it, you need to uproot social and economic backwardness. There are a number of health measures that could be used, and are used in developed countries. Furthermore AIDS medication can now stop the illness killing. The point I was making was about drastically reducing the death rate. I would ask Louis Proyect to say whether there is *any* reform at all in the global management of this disease that he would support, if he does not like a Global AIDS war chest supported by a mixture of well intentioned people and opportunists (like most reforms). Or is he and others of a similar mind, specifically arguing that the only reforms that should be demanded now are transitional ones, ones that do not bring any material benefit to ordinary working people and whose only goal is to lead people to see the necessity of socialist revolution? If the latter is the case, I would argue that that has obvious disadvantages of leaving people to die in large numbers. However in addition strategically it will demoralise more people than it will inspire, bearing in mind that the world revolution cannot be one decisive simultaneous act of overthrow of the capitalist class world wide, but will have to proceed through a series of reforms which weaken its power. Chris Burford London
Re: A call to action against WB and IMF- Oct 2-4
At 28/04/01 19:31 -0700, you wrote: I hope that my fellow socialists will respond positively to this call from my fellow anarchists. Best, Sabri **POST FAR AND WIDE** Revolutionaries of the World - organize and converge on Washington, DC! Between October 2nd and 4th 2001, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank will hold their bi-annual meeting at the Wardman Park Marriot Hotel in Washington, DC. Both these institutions exemplify how capitalism promotes poverty, racism, sexism, environmental destruction, and social injustice in the name of so-called development. Both the IMF and the World Bank are merely the outward faces of a brutal elite bent on imposing its destructive economic regime on the entire world. We will not be content with reforming, or even abolishing the IMF/World Bank. We will not rest untill every last bank has been burned, till the last memory of banks has been erased from our world. While I welcome the perspective of taking on the world capitalist system, the formulations here walk of tightrope along the edge of provocation. They do not specifically rule out campaigning for reforms. However they belittle them. Unless there is a political focus of particular major structural reforms, then an anarchist call of this nature runs the risk of catching demonstrators in the trap of smash windows, get noticed, which has been discussed on LBO-talk. Now the movement has emerged into existence, that will be a cul-de-sac. Besides other forces, well intentioned as well as opportunist, and the global finance capitalist class itself, *will* be discussing reforsm. Demonstrations have a chance of succeeding and building confidence if they focus on realistic campaign targets, in the way Bod Geldof has moved on from calling for the cancellation of debt by individual countries to a systematic programme for the IMF and the World Bank to cancel the debt of the HIPC's. Chris Burford London
why can't the IMF and World Bank?
The following article by Bob Geldof, in today's Observer puts popularly the case for a systematic fund run by the IMF and the World Bank for AIDS control and relief in Africa. He argues that the IMF and World Bank, which we own as taxpayers in the richest nations could do this. It is of course a reform. Of course it does not challenge the continued existence of the capitalist system, but it does argue that the global economy should not work so perversely against the interests of innocent human beings. And of course there are self-serving motives in the way Bob Geldof promotes this. Nevertheless debate about reforms will be part of the process of globalisation. Just because it includes self-serving individuals and opportunists does not mean it should be ignored. What reform campaign can keep such people out? If this reform is not progressive, please could someone say what reform would be *more* progressive? Chris Burford London __ If the G7 can afford to cancel the debt of African nations, why can't the IMF and World Bank? Bob Geldof Sunday April 29, 2001 The Observer This evening in Trafalgar Square Nelson Mandela will once again not only represent his country but also that great moral courage rightly applauded by the admiring crowds in London and around the world. I visited him recently in his home in Johannesburg. I had come to show him a report that proves what Drop the Debt, the continuation of the hugely successful Jubilee 2000 campaign, has been saying for a long time. The World Bank and the IMF can afford to cancel 100 per cent of the debts owed by the poorest countries, just as the Group of Seven (G7) richest nations already have done. The sombre reality of a continent he has done so much to change and lead by example preoccupied and troubled him. He talked of his profound sorrow at the Aids pandemic gripping the continent and under which 20 per cent of the people of his own country suffer. He spoke, without bitterness but with frustration, about the clear linkage between Africa's debt problem and the continent's inability to deal effectively with the massive destruction caused by this terrible disease. He told me how Zambia loses two thirds of its trainee teachers to HIV each year. How the result has brought to a shattering halt the tiny education system in that country. How Zambia pays more in debt repayments to us than on its entire healthcare budget. How ridiculous it is that Zambia, having entered the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, which is supposed to end the debt crisis, will end up paying more in debt than they did prior to entering the initiative, as a result of the complex, arbitrary and ineffective series of financial hurdles the World Bank and IMF have imposed on these countries. And how on average there has been only a pathetic 27 per cent reduction in the debt payments that are crushing and smothering those countries which have so far qualified for debt relief. His head turned down, and that familiar voice began to shake as he spoke of the onerous debt burden breaking the backs of the increasingly tired and defeated peoples of this beautiful, intoxicating continent. This is a man whose imprisonment mirrored that of his country, whose freedom was his country's freedom. Who was unbowed, unbroken and, in his most staggering defeat of his tormentors, was not embittered. Now he sat silent, for a moment beyond words at the monstrous enormity of what he had outlined in this tragic tour d'horizon . The independent study I was showing Nelson Mandela, on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund was by Chantrey Vellacot, a leading global accountancy firm. I also told him that I had heard of a report circulating within the World Bank that the HIPC initiative is severely flawed and not capable of delivering what it set out to do - a lasting exit from the debt crisis for the poorest countries. After numerous rewrites this report was finally made public last week, and it proves that far deeper debt cancellation is required. When I left Mandela he was armed with the findings of the independent report and arguing that now, before infrastructure utterly collapses and instability sets in, we must persuade and force the global institutions to relent and free the people of Africa from their unjust and unjustifiable yoke. Two days later, South African President Thabo Mbeki talked to me of the upcoming conference on Aids in Africa. This was the time for increased pressure, he said, echoing his predecessor. He showed me the Millennium Action Plan, drawn up by him and other African leaders, which they would be discussing at the next Organisation for African Unity meeting, and which they will be taking in its final form to the G7 summit in Genoa in July. In broad, bold and blunt language, these leaders demand deeper debt cancellation. These are not extremists. South Africa is a relatively
Re: Re: Global AIDS war chest
Chris: There are a number of health measures that could be used, and are used in developed countries. Furthermore AIDS medication can now stop the illness killing. The point I was making was about drastically reducing the death rate. And I was trying to get you to understand AIDS as a socio-economic phenomenon. Unless poverty is eliminated, AIDS and diseases engendered by it like TB will remain pandemic. Just as diarrhea will continue to kill the infants of Africa, or alcoholism will kill American Indians, etc. Campaigns against such diseases will remain ineffective as long as the average income of somebody living in the Congo is 1/100th of a typical inhabitant of the USA. The richest fifth of the world's people consumes 86 percent of all goods and services while the poorest fifth consumes just 1.3 percent. Nothing the UN can do will have an impact on AIDS until there is a modicum of equality world-wide. This is how Paul Farmer describes the problem in Infections and Inequalities: --- But one can be impressed by the power of modern medicine and yet dejected by our failure to deliver it equitably). For me, one of the quickest ways to burst the One World, One Hope bubble was to return to Haiti, where HIV unhampered, has continued to spread. And this is as true in certain U.S. settings as it is in Haiti. AIDS is already the leading cause of death of young adults in many U.S. cities, as it is in most cities in the developing world. Moving along the fault lines of society, HIV continues to entrench itself among the worlds poor and marginalized, making enormous gains in parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Some fairly sober scholars estimate that by the year 2000 as many as forty to one hundred million people will be infected with HIV. What accounts for our failure to prevent the spread of HIV? What forces promote its transmission? As Ive argued throughout this book, social inequalities are central to the distribution of HIV infection. In the United States, as elsewhere, the disease is settling into poor or otherwise marginalized communities; previously bounded risk groups have in some settings melted into insignificance. The incidence of AIDS among women is increasing more rapidly than the incidence of AIDS among men: between 1985 and 1994, AIDS cases among women increased threefold. Of cases of AIDS among women, 77 percent are registered among black and Hispanic women, most of them poor. Structural violencegender inequality, racism, and povertyis at the very heart of these trends. There are not only striking differences in the distribution of HIV but also a great inequality of outcomes among those living with AIDS. In the United States, survival after a diagnosis of AIDS varies enormously, with women and people of color having shorter life expectancies than white men In the United States in 1994, death rates from HIV disease among black men were almost four times as high as for white men; for black women, death rates from AIDS were nine times as high as for White women. --- I would ask Louis Proyect to say whether there is *any* reform at all in the global management of this disease that he would support, if he does not like a Global AIDS war chest supported by a mixture of well intentioned people and opportunists (like most reforms). I would support the reform of abolishing the debts of all third world nations to the IMF and other imperialist financial institutions. These debts are used to bludgeon governments into adopting austerity programs, whose first victim is the national health systems. This, not charity, is what is required. Or is he and others of a similar mind, specifically arguing that the only reforms that should be demanded now are transitional ones, ones that do not bring any material benefit to ordinary working people and whose only goal is to lead people to see the necessity of socialist revolution? Why waste time trying to discuss this on PEN-L. I would take this up with you on one of the Marxism lists, but certainly not mine. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
pig-brother
The Austrian Young Farmer's Association has a website with a web camera showing the inside of an intensive hog operation. (However, I doubt that the operation is the same as those here). There is quite a bit of information as well (in German). http://www.pig-brother.at/online/ There is a similar camera showing a cow facility at girls-camp.at. The purpose of the sites is to defend intensive livestock operations. Cheers, Ken Hanly
Re: Question on Marx
Carrol quotes Marx: Why is labor represented by the value of its product and labor-time by the magnitude of that value? and says: Marx seems to have felt that the originating difference between his own work and that of classical political economy was that he aimed at answering this question while political economy failed even to raise it. Yet in most of what I read on Marx by Marxists this question is seldom cited. Was Marx wrong to think it so important, or is it important only in respect to the general social criticism by Marx to which it gave rise rather than as a question of intrinsic and continuing interest. And is a short general answer to Marx's question possible or is it only answered by the totality of his work in political economy? There used to be a lot of discussion of this quote in teh British journal CAPITAL CLASS, by authors such as Himmelweit (sp?) and Mohun. Unfortunately, I dont remember what they said. My off-the-cuff interpretation of the quote is that Marx saw labor under capitalism as alienated. Rather than labor being planned collectively (and democratically) by the association of producers, labor produces commodities, which are alien creatures independent of the workers wills. Labor thus has value within capitalism. Workers contribute value as individuals, though they have no control over that value. In my interpretation (which was clarified immensely by Charlie Andrews book, FROM CAPITALISM TO EQUALITY), value represent a workers contribution to the societal factory. (Strictly speaking, its a group of workers collective contribution because workers typically dont contribute as individuals.) Exchange value refers to the ability of a commodity to command a certain number of (abstract) labor-hours. In volume I, Marx assumed that value and exchange-value were equal. -- Jim Devine - This message was sent using Panda Mail. Check your regular email account away from home free! http://www.pandamail.net
Re: Re: Low productivity in the Global South
Good God! Do you think that the *entire* World Bank _Human Development Report_ is a lie? I don't mind the personal shit--it indicates a lack of thought, and a lack of argument, as well as a chronic inability to actually *look* at the world. Lou is absolutely correct in his economics -- which means that I agree with him -- but you, Lou, are wrong to personalize your note by challenging Brad personally. On Sun, Apr 29, 2001 at 12:33:25PM -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: No. Wage levels in open developing countries have been increasing rapidly over the past two generations, and so (with the exception of the United States and New Zealand) have wage levels in industrial countries... Brad DeLong Of course wages have been going up. You start with zero when you are a subsistence farmer living outside the cash economy. When a Colombian peasant, who grew his own food and traded the surplus for manufactured goods in a village plaza, gets thrown off his land and takes a job in factory, he has more money than he ever had but he is poorer than ever. That is why there is rebellion in Colombia. Peasants want to return to the days when they could live off the land. Of course, those who end up in a factory are the fortunate exception. Most Latin American or African ex-peasants end up in the informal economy which means prostitution, drug-peddling, shoe-shining, hawking chewing gum or fruit, etc. This is the social layer that formed the base of the Sandinista revolution coincidentally. In any case, I'd love to see somebody like DeLong go work in a maquila factory for a year or so, like his fellow Berkeley prof Michael Burawoy does. Then at least, his interventions on leftwing mailing lists might come across less as propaganda, and more like lived experience. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/ -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Low productivity in the Global South
Brad, there was a long debate about the standard of living during the Industrial Revolution. You probably know the literature as well as anyone. The issue is complex, but Lou's monetization point cannot be dismissed. On Sun, Apr 29, 2001 at 08:08:05PM -0700, Brad DeLong wrote: Good God! Do you think that the *entire* World Bank _Human Development Report_ is a lie? I don't mind the personal shit--it indicates a lack of thought, and a lack of argument, as well as a chronic inability to actually *look* at the world. Lou is absolutely correct in his economics -- which means that I agree with him -- but you, Lou, are wrong to personalize your note by challenging Brad personally. On Sun, Apr 29, 2001 at 12:33:25PM -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: No. Wage levels in open developing countries have been increasing rapidly over the past two generations, and so (with the exception of the United States and New Zealand) have wage levels in industrial countries... Brad DeLong Of course wages have been going up. You start with zero when you are a subsistence farmer living outside the cash economy. When a Colombian peasant, who grew his own food and traded the surplus for manufactured goods in a village plaza, gets thrown off his land and takes a job in factory, he has more money than he ever had but he is poorer than ever. That is why there is rebellion in Colombia. Peasants want to return to the days when they could live off the land. Of course, those who end up in a factory are the fortunate exception. Most Latin American or African ex-peasants end up in the informal economy which means prostitution, drug-peddling, shoe-shining, hawking chewing gum or fruit, etc. This is the social layer that formed the base of the Sandinista revolution coincidentally. In any case, I'd love to see somebody like DeLong go work in a maquila factory for a year or so, like his fellow Berkeley prof Michael Burawoy does. Then at least, his interventions on leftwing mailing lists might come across less as propaganda, and more like lived experience. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/ -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Low productivity in the Global South
Brad DeLong wrote: Good God! Do you think that the *entire* World Bank _Human Development Report_ is a lie? I don't mind the personal shit--it indicates a lack of thought, and a lack of argument, as well as a chronic inability to actually *look* at the world. Yeah, personal shit is shit, period. But Lou's point is a real whopper, isn't it? There's no way an economist can count the *real* 'opportunity cost' of monetising human life, so we know not what we do. Writers like Everett Rogers, Wilbur Schramm and Wimal Dissanayake have been on to this problem for nearly thirty years (albeit rarely explicitly in the former cases), I think, but the only answer available to development economists is precisely of the 'in the long run' type you regularly condemn via JMK's famous quote. Sure, we start out by counting as an improvement what is really a decline in living standards, but after that Rostowian take-off moment, the improvement will become real. Of course, in cases like that of Ghana - they're still waiting for the take-off after forty-four years, although the stats painted a developing Ghana for the while it took for, eg, TNC rutile miners to destroy the alluvial agriculture belts, diamond miners of all scales to circumvent the reporting and taxation systems, and displaced peasants to move into cities sans infrastructure and integrated economies. Are third-world famine and war inevitable by-products of universalised development strategies across specific situations (especially for the long while it takes for human existence to be sufficiently commodified to allow reliable quantification and operationalisation)? And can stats (eg those 'social indicators') usefully trace the dynamics without consigning a few generations to statistically invisible destitution and death while the invisible hand slowly performs its magic? I notice in Turkey, the IMF is enforcing across-the-board agricultural subsidy cuts. Sure, the subsidies were blunt and poorly targetted, allowing instances of inequity (some recipients didn't use the subsidies for production at all, and have now lost those windfalls in floundering equity markets and Turkish Lire-denominated bank accounts), but the fact is that Turkey is socially far more agriculturally based than many other countries. To cut the subsidies across the board is therefore to hit a much greater proportion of lives than to do so elsewhere. The aggregate of suffering is duly greater, and the pressure for domestic fragmentation, theocratic mobilisations, and even civil war increase proportionately. Do they think about stuff like that? Cheers, Rob.
Darth Vader economics
April 30, 2001 Bush Team Vows to Speed Up Work on Missile Shield By MICHAEL R. GORDON with STEVEN LEE MYERS The New York Times LONDON, April 29 - The Bush administration has put its European allies on notice that it intends to move quickly to develop a missile defense and plans to abandon or fundamentally alter the treaty that has been the keystone of arms control for nearly 30 years. The administration's position on the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which sets strict limits on the testing and deployment of antimissile systems, has been communicated privately to NATO allies. And it was expressed publicly in Europe in an unusually frank address last week by a senior State Department official. We will deploy defenses as soon as possible, Lucas Fischer, the deputy assistant secretary of state for strategic affairs, told the Danish Parliament. Therefore, we believe that the ABM treaty will have to be replaced, eliminated or changed in a fundamental way. The missile defense issue will come to the fore this week, and the scale of the program and the almost urgent way the administration is proceeding are likely to heighten debate over the system. On Tuesday, President Bush is to deliver a speech at the National Defense University on his plans to develop a missile shield in conjunction with cuts in nuclear arms, steps he pledged during the presidential campaign. A senior Pentagon official said today that Mr. Bush would present a broad vision of missile defense but not a specific program. The president will make clear that his administration is moving beyond the ABM treaty. It will be a statement of intent, the official said, expressed in very choice words. American officials say the Pentagon is developing plans for a multilayered system that would involve ship-based radars and interceptors, in addition to land-based and space- based elements. A panel appointed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has recommended vastly increased spending on the development of an airborne laser and, in the longer-term, a space-based laser. Decisions about the design are to be announced later in May, the Pentagon official said. After Mr. Bush's speech, the administration plans to dispatch teams of senior officials to allied capitals in Europe and Asia to outline the administration's proposals for moving ahead with missile defenses, a policy that is contentious at home and abroad, and which has drawn sharp objections from Moscow and Beijing. In addressing the Danish Parliament, Mr. Fischer said the aim of the missile defenses is to defend not only against attacks from rogue states like Iran or Iraq but also against accidental or unauthorized launches. That means the defense system needs to have some capacity to counter the launching of Russian and Chinese missiles. In terms of effectiveness, Mr. Fischer signaled that the administration has set a low standard. The goal would not necessarily be to provide an air-tight defense against even a small attack. It would be enough to complicate a prospective opponent's calculation of success, adding to his uncertainty and weakening his confidence, he said. He also said the administration believed that the system should use the best technologies available, opening the door not only to land- based systems but to sea-based and space-based systems as well. His audience was important because Denmark governs Greenland, the site of an American missile- warning radar that Washington would also certainly seek to upgrade as part of its missile defense plan. In Europe, allied governments have been notably unenthusiastic about the plans for a missile defense. But they have grudgingly indicated that they were prepared to go along with a limited antimissile defense with conditions: Washington should consult first with its allies, and a way should be found to reconcile missile defenses with arms control and a working relationship with Moscow. The fast pace and ambitious nature of the administration's antimissile defense program - and the administration's renewed vow to jettison or fundamentally rewrite the treaty - is likely to reinvigorate the trans-Atlantic debate. The accord, which was concluded between Moscow and Washington, was seen for decades as the cornerstone for strategic arms control. And while European officials increasingly agree that the treaty should be revised or updated, they are anxious about getting rid of it without knowing what arrangement would replace it. Europe is prepared to accept some kind of missile defense but only if it involves cooperation with Russia on modifying the ABM treaty, said Ivo Daalder, a specialist on European security issues with the Brookings Institution in Washington. But the implication of the Bush administration plan is that the ABM treaty as we know it is dead. There is no way you can fit the administration's kind of missile defense plan within the treaty. To make its missile defense plan more palatable, the Bush administration
