date:20040721

On Mon, 19 Jul 2004, Doug Henwood wrote:
maybe the three million or so people who voted for nader in 2000 should
take control of local democratic executive committees, use structure in
place to recruit candidates, slag off on dems who suck, use available
funds to issue policy statements and press releases one after another,
show up at public and government meetings, control of county dem
mechanisms might lead to control of state dem parties...
This sounds like a very good idea, or at least one worth trying. What's
the argument against it?
There are two basically: one, it's impossible, and two, you won't be able
to do anything with it.  The reason is that the incentives are all on the
other side and that all state party machines are collusive.
In New York City, where you and I live, nothing short of the governorship
would allow us to accomplish anything in the state worth doing.  Lower
level success would allow you to make symbolic gestures which by and large
have already been made in our home town, from domestic partnership to
living wage law to declarations against the war and patriot act.
Almost everything important in New York City (as in most cities) can only
be accomplished with permission from the state.  And the state, as
everyone knows, is run by three men in a room: the head of the state
assembly, the head of the state senate, and the governor.  All the other
state legislators are superfluous.  They do do good in the world: they do
constituent service, which, if you've ever been in need of it, you know
can really be a godsend.  But it's not the sort of thing we want to
dedicate our lives to doing.
And yet you'd have to win the vast majority of these positions, each of
them is inherently useless to you, in order to control the state party.
But for your opponent, the machine, these seats are far from useless. For
the machine members who run for them, they're jobs, they are their
livelihood, for which they will fight tooth and nail.  And the main thing
they control is more jobs in the form of patronage, all the recipients of
which will likewise fight tooth and nail: judges, clerks, armies of
lawyers dependent on the distribution of trustee and estates, receipients
of city jobs, etc.  They have something very concrete to lose in the here
and now. Our side would be fighting for something quite vague in the
distant future.
But then to make things worse, as we approach each tiny vicity, the odds
against us double and quadruple because the Democrat and Republican state
machines are defined by their collusion.  The reason there is a 99%
reelect rate is because no one is ever really opposed.  Much of the time
they aren't even nominally opposed.  The two parties in New York, like in
most other states, have made collusive agreements never to go after each
other's seats.  The minority party (which is different in different parts
of the states) has just as much interest in this as the majority party;
both parties control the jobs they have and want that to continue
indefinately; real elections would threaten this.
The end result is that it is more important to them to remain in control
of their parties than to win elections; and this is their ultimate weapon.
If an insurgent ever wins a contested primary, the party machine not only
doesn't support their election; it actively fights against them by helping
the other party to win.  It sounds outrageous but it happens all the time
-- that is, it happens all the times that insurgents actually run, which
doesn't happen much.  The two parties have an equal interest in opposing
any upstart because it threatens both their machines.
And if perchance you should win and get in the state legislature, the
party will make sure you have zero power and will do everything possible
to defeat you the next time around, first within the primary and then
using the other party again.  Whereas on you side, you'll really have
nothing to show for your efforts for toil.  It will be impossible for you
to get any legislation started or to do much of anything else that would
gain you a good name.  And the odds of you winning reelections are even
lower than your odds of getting in in the first place since the party will
be mobilized against and has a vast array of dirty tricks.
And then you have to repeat this, and keep holding onto it, for each seat
in the state, all the while gaining nothing, while the other side has meat
and potatoes at stake.
And then comes the worst thing at all: if you actually do take over the
state party so that you can control the nomination of federal level
offices, you'll run into exactly the same thing at the federal level.
I think if you really wanted to take over the state, you'd be better off
with a state-wide IRV campaign.  Probably equally doomed, but at least the
interim incentives would make more sense: you'd build up an organization
outside their grasp that could affect the media and politics
independently.  This is basically how people passed the

Iraq: Kurdish Leader Warns Karkuk's Attacks Might Get Situation Out of Control

Iraq: Kurdish Leader Warns Karkuk's Attacks Might Get
Situation Out of Control
London Al-Sharq al-Awsat in Arabic 10 Jul 04 p2

[Report by Shirzad Shaykhani in Al-Sulaymaniyah:
Prominent Kurdish Leader: We Do Not Have a Plan To
Fight a Civil War in Karkuk, But What Is Happening
Might Get Out of Our Control]

A prominent Kurdish leader has expressed his fears
that the recent security incidents in Karkuk, which
saw the increased assassination of Kurdish officials
and the targeting of their motorcades by unidentified
elements, could lead to a wave of violence and counter
violence that Kurdish leaders do not wish to happen
and drag the city's population into bloody
confrontations with dire consequences.

The Kurdish official, who asked to remain
unidentified, made the statement in response to an
Al-Sharq al-Awsat question about the series of
assassinations targeting the Kurdish officials in the
city's governmental departments.   He stressed that
the Kurdish leaders have no plans to fight a civil war
with the other nationalities living in Karkuk but
cited the statement of UN Envoy to Iraq Lakhdar
Brahimi when he said:   The civil war will not be
declared from above but might be caused by the lower
bases.   The Kurdish official added:   We do not
wish to destroy the country that we had in the past
worked to restore its cohesion and strengthen the ties
of its unity by conceding many of our rights.   But
there are actions and moves by elements in the other
parties' bases that could drag our bases into
retaliating.   We are afraid that things might get out
of our control as Kurdish leaders and dire
consequences to ensue.

He went on to say:   We sacrificed hundreds of
thousands when we confronted the ruling dictatorship
as a result of the genocide operations, mass
displacement, and chemical bombardment.   We have no
specific plans to react to these provocations.   But
think what will happen if the Kurds in the city
reacted to these reckless actions and the violent
reactions get out of our control?   We cannot
guarantee that we will be able to control the Kurds in
such a case.

Another official accused regional parties of
encouraging the terrorist operations targeting the
Kurds in Karkuk in an attempt to disrupt the situation
and create chaos in the city whose sons want to live
in peace with each other.   He added that some Turkish
leaders' statements -- which are seen as a blatant
interference in Iraq's national affairs --- are
encouraging some people to incite racial sectarianism
in the city.   He then stressed that the Iraqis in
general and the sons of Karkuk in particular are
capable of coexisting fraternally and rebuilding their
country on the basis of accord and mutual
understanding if some foreign parties stop their
interference and support for the anarchist elements.
He added:   There is no difference between this and
that person whatever his ethnic or doctrinal
affiliation is, especially as we are about to build a
new Iraq on the ruins of the obnoxious dictatorship.





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Whoops!

Sorry -- I meant to send that Kurds thing somewhere else.



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Re: The Restorer

On Tue, 20 Jul 2004, Louis Proyect wrote that the Turkish documentary The
Restorer would be playing at the following times and channels:
July 21, 8.30 pm. channel 34 Time Warner or 107 RCN,
July 29, 3.00pm channel 56 TW, or 108 RCN
Aug 4, 12 midnight channel 67 TW, 110 RCN.
Louis, are you sure about this?  I just checked the first two on my TiVo
listings for Time Warner and they show no sign of The Restorer or any
other film playing in those slots.  For example, Ch 34 TW for July 21 has
Assembly Update listed for the 8-9:30 pm slot.
A title search for the next two weeks under Restorer also shows nothing,
although that's not definitive -- it could be listed under a program title
(i.e., the public access equivalent of POV or something).
If the listings are wrong but you still think it's playing (which might be
-- after all, this is public access) it would help to know how long it is
so I could record it.
Michael

Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece

indeed i read about this, and it only adds to my
doubt. i am not very
knowledgeable about iraq but is it not possible that
the thugs who will
rush in to fill the void left by a suddenly departed
US army, would be
worse? i remember reading pieces about east timor,
rwanda, and
elsewhere, of the horrors that ensued when any
provisional authority
pulled out (in those cases these authorities were a
bit more
legitimate,
such as the UN).

isnt it important not to forget that their thugs are
as bad as ours?
only, we can try to control our thugs but they cannot
control theirs or
ours.

--ravi
---
I personally have no real opinion on this subject,
since I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on
what's happening in Iraq, but over in this part of the
world the powers-that-be are very worried that Iraq is
going to wind up as a fundamentalist state sitting on
huge amounts of oil reserves that would try to further
destabilize Central Asia, which would be really bad.
(Then again, a fundamentalist state dependent on Iran
might even be a good thing for the Kremlin, since
relations between Moscow and Tehran are pretty close
and Russia views Iran as a moderating influence in the
Muslim world. One of the first things Putin did after
he became president was to invite Khattami to the
opening of a new mosque in Tatarstan.)



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absolute general law of capitalist accumulation


by Chris Doss

For formal logic , arriving at a contradiction means
there is a
mistake,
something is false.
--

Technically, this is false. In logic, ever since
Plato, the rule has been that something cannot both be
and not be in the same way at the same time.
Dialectics in Hegel and Marx do not deny this; they
are more interested in seeing how different trends
within a single phenomenon cause it to break apart

^
CB: What's the difference between what you said and what I said ? I believe
you state the rule of non-contradiction, which is what I am referring to.

absolute general law of capitalist accumulation/dialectics and logic


by Devine, James


-clip-

But for Marx, a contradiction was an empirical (real, practical)
phenomenon,
unlike the contradiction in logic. A social organization -- such as
capitalism -- was a whole or totality, but in its structure, there were
different parts that didn't work together well. (Kinda like putting an
English-unit part in a car that has an engine that was specified  built
using
metric units, as my father did once. Or like when NASA used metric and the
private contractor used the English system, so the Mars probe crashed.) In
Marx's case, the contradictions of capitalism were problems within the
system
such as class antagonism and competition amongst the capitalists, summarized
by
Engels as the contradiction between socialized production (the whole) and
individualized appropriation (the parts).


CB: Wouldn't you say that also for Marx, contradictions in the capitalist
system are the motives for it to change into a different system, i.e.
socialism ?  Contradiction as the basis for change is a dialectical concept.
Marx deals with dialectical, not formal logical contradictions.

The contradictions dealt with in the absolute general law of capitalist
accumulation are the poverty and unemployment that inherently accompany
technological progress under capitalist relations of production, a
contradiction of regress and progress, with regress being absolute and
progress relative.

Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation

CB: What's the difference between what you said and
what I said ? I
believe
you state the rule of non-contradiction, which is what
I am referring
to.
---
I thought you were implying that Marx and Hegel denied
the RoNC. Maybe I misread you.




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Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece

2004-07-21 Thread Yoshie Furuhashi

An argument against it?  You would actually try it yourself if it
were really a good idea.
Yoshie

nah, doug's a journalist, he'd write about it...  michael hoover
A person who puts forward a proposal should be prepared to act on it.
Otherwise, others will simply conclude that, if the idea is not even
worth the proposer's time, then, it's not worth their time either.
--
Yoshie
* Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/
* Greens for Nader: http://greensfornader.net/
* Bring Them Home Now! http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html,
http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php,  http://www.cpanews.org/
* Student International Forum: http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: http://www.osudivest.org/
* Al-Awda-Ohio: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio
* Solidarity: http://www.solidarity-us.org/

Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation

The ontological idea of internal relations, the idea that makes 
Marxs analysis of capitalism dialectical, leads to the treatment of 
law as immanent.  The nature of individuals, in the case of human 
individuals the degree of their rational self-consciousness as 
expressed in their motives and, based on these, their characteristic 
forms of behaviour, is the product of their relations.  For Marx, as 
for Keynes, the diffentia specifica, of capitalist relations is the 
dominance in it of greed as the motivation of individuals.  Marx claims 
action based on these motives produces both a vast increase in human 
productive powers and misery, agony of toil slavery, ignorance, 
brutality, mental degradation  on the side of the class that produces 
its own product in the form of capital.

It does this by necessarily producing a particular mode of labour, an 
increasing organic composition of capital and via this an industrial 
reserve army.  This produces immiserization of the proletariat.  This 
is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation.

This is irrational and therefore unreal.  The rational outcome of the 
law by which a constantly increasing quantity of means of production, 
thanks to the advance in the productiveness of social labour, may be 
set in movement by a progressively diminishing expenditure of human 
power is the creation of free time for individual development and 
fully free activity.

The rational is made real by the same capitalist process creating a 
subjectivity able and willing to transform productive relations into 
relations conforming to this rational law.  That subjectivity, 
according to Marx, is the immiserized proletariat.

within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social 
productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the 
individual labourer; all means for the development of production 
transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation 
of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, 
degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every 
remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they 
estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour-process 
in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an 
independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, 
subject him during the labour-process to a despotism the more hateful 
for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working-time, and 
drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of 
capital. But all methods for the production of surplus-value are at the 
same time methods of accumulation; and every extension of accumulation 
becomes again a means for the development of those methods. It follows 
therefore that in proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the 
labourer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse. The law, 
finally, that always equilibrates the relative surplus-population, or 
industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this 
law rivets the labourer to capital more firmly than the wedges of 
Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of 
misery, corresponding with accumulation of capital. Accumulation of 
wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of 
misery, agony of toil slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental 
degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that 
produces its own product in the form of capital. [25] This antagonistic 
character of capitalistic accumulation is enunciated in various forms 
by political economists, although by them it is confounded with 
phenomena, certainly to some extent analogous, but nevertheless 
essentially distinct, and belonging to pre-capitalistic modes of 
production.

These claims about how a subjectivity willing and able to transform 
productive relations into rational relations are mistaken.  Individuals 
immiserized in this way would be subjects of this kind.  there is no 
necessity, however, for capitalism to produce immiserization.  The 
organic composition of capital doesn't have to change in the way marx 
assumes.  For this and other reasons, the creation of an industrial 
reserve army isn't a necessity i.e. a necessary feature of these 
relations.  Nor is it necessary that: they mutilate the labourer into 
a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a 
machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a 
hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of 
the labour-process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in 
it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he 
works, subject him during the labour-process to a despotism the more 
hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into 
working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the 
Juggernaut of capital.

One way of actually creating the

Making a stand by sitting down

NY Times, July 21, 2004
Delgado Makes a Stand by Taking a Seat
By WILLIAM C. RHODEN
OAKLAND, Calif.
BEGINNING tonight, the Yankees will see a lot of the Toronto Blue Jays.
The two teams will play 19 times in the final three months of the
season. The Yankees will also see a lot of the Blue Jays slugger Carlos
Delgado; they just won't see him in the middle of the seventh inning.
Though Delgado is having an off year, he remains one of the most
respected players in Major League Baseball. Last March when the United
States invaded Iraq, Delgado, in his own quiet way, said that for him,
enough was enough. He had stood for God Bless America through the 2003
season but vowed not to do so this season. In an act of a simple, mostly
unnoticed, protest against the war, Delgado, a 32-year-old first
baseman, has chosen to remain in the dugout while God Bless America is
played.
I'm curious to see the reaction to Delgado at Yankee Stadium, which
George Steinbrenner has turned into a paean to patriotism. Some teams,
including Toronto, have stopped playing God Bless America, which was
inserted into games after the attacks of Sept. 11. Most teams now play
the song only on weekends or holidays.
The Yankees play it during the seventh-inning stretch at every home
game. That includes tonight, when they begin a two-game series with
Toronto. Delgado will probably not be standing on the field.
I'm not trying to get anyone mad, he said Monday in Oakland, where the
Blue Jays were playing the Athletics. This is my personal feeling. I
don't want to draw attention to myself or go out of my way to protest.
If I make the last out of the seventh inning, I'll stand there. But I'd
rather be in the dugout.
Good for him. In the world of mainstream professional sports, where
cookie-cutter athletes rarely take a stand on any issue, let alone one
as highly charged as a war, Delgado is a rarity. He is unafraid to
question a ritual that he does not agree with. Delgado's protest this
season has been so quiet, so subtle that Bud Selig, the baseball
commissioner, didn't know about it until I called him to talk about it
on Monday.
When you called me today you actually startled me, he said from his
office in Milwaukee. Selig later read a statement that he had prepared
on Delgado's action.
I'm in the process of getting more information, but eventually I would
like to sit down and discuss it with Carlos, Selig said. I am very
sensitive to this kind of issue, both as a matter of respect for our
country and for one's right to express his opinion.
I'll be watching to see how Selig handles this.
It was Selig, in the aftermath of Sept. 11, who ordered all teams to
play God Bless America, injecting a political statement into the games.
I don't honestly think that politicizes the issue, Selig said, calling
the playing of the anthem a matter of respect. After all, we do have
troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
With all due respect to Selig, once God Bless America became a
political statement, a player like Delgado became free to express his
own political views.
His well-thought-out opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is
just one part of a larger issue for him. Delgado, a native of Puerto
Rico, sees his protest as consistent with his earlier opposition to the
Navy's use of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques as a weapons testing
ground. In many ways, the United States military waged a form of war for
60 years on the tiny island, using a 900-acre site for bombing exercises.
Delgado, who grew up on the mainland, remembers older residents telling
stories about bomb explosions.
They lived in that target practice area for 60 years, he said. They
tell you stories of how, in the middle the night, a bomb blew up. I
never experienced it, but I can imagine it. I can see why you might be a
little hostile from time to time. 
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/21/sports/baseball/21rhoden.html
--
The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece

Michael Pollak wrote:
This sounds like a very good idea, or at least one worth trying. What's
the argument against it?
There are two basically: one, it's impossible, and two, you won't be able
to do anything with it.  The reason is that the incentives are all on the
other side and that all state party machines are collusive.
I think you're overstating things. The infiltration strategy could
have some influence on who gets elected, and also on the environment
in which other elected officials operate - they'll have to respond to
and compromise with a whole new set of actors. Maybe. It is to be
hoped that. New York state wouldn't be about to raise its minimum
wage if the Working Families Party hadn't been agitating for it - and
the WFP is sort of playing the entryist game.
Doug

Melville on savagery versus civilization

From chapter 17 of Typee:
The green and precipitous elevations that stood ranged around the
head of the vale where Marheyo's habitation was situated
effectually precluded all hope of escape in that quarter, even if
I could have stolen away from the thousand eyes of the savages.
But these reflections now seldom obtruded upon me; I gave myself
up to the passing hour, and if ever disagreeable thoughts arose
in my mind, I drove them away.  When I looked around the verdant
recess in which I was buried, and gazed up to the summits of the
lofty eminence that hemmed me in, I was well disposed to think
that I was in the 'Happy Valley', and that beyond those heights
there was naught but a world of care and anxiety.  As I extended
my wanderings in the valley and grew more familiar with the
habits of its inmates, I was fain to confess that, despite the
disadvantages of his condition, the Polynesian savage, surrounded
by all the luxurious provisions of nature, enjoyed an infinitely
happier, though certainly a less intellectual existence than the
self-complacent European.
The naked wretch who shivers beneath the bleak skies, and starves
among the inhospitable wilds of Tierra-del-Fuego, might indeed be
made happier by civilization, for it would alleviate his physical
wants.  But the voluptuous Indian, with every desire supplied,
whom Providence has bountifully provided with all the sources of
pure and natural enjoyment, and from whom are removed so many of
the ills and pains of life--what has he to desire at the hands of
Civilization?  She may 'cultivate his mind--may elevate his
thoughts,'--these I believe are the established phrases--but will
he be the happier?  Let the once smiling and populous Hawiian
islands, with their now diseased, starving, and dying natives,
answer the question.  The missionaries may seek to disguise the
matter as they will, but the facts are incontrovertible; and the
devoutest Christian who visits that group with an unbiased mind,
must go away mournfully asking--'Are these, alas!  the fruits of
twenty-five years of enlightening?'
In a primitive state of society, the enjoyments of life, though
few and simple, are spread over a great extent, and are
unalloyed; but Civilization, for every advantage she imparts,
holds a hundred evils in reserve;--the heart-burnings, the
jealousies, the social rivalries, the family dissentions, and the
thousand self-inflicted discomforts of refined life, which make
up in units the swelling aggregate of human misery, are unknown
among these unsophisticated people.
But it will be urged that these shocking unprincipled wretches
are cannibals.  Very true; and a rather bad trait in their
character it must be allowed.  But they are such only when they
seek to gratify the passion of revenge upon their enemies; and I
ask whether the mere eating of human flesh so very far exceeds in
barbarity that custom which only a few years since was practised
in enlightened England:--a convicted traitor, perhaps a man found
guilty of honesty, patriotism, and suchlike heinous crimes, had
his head lopped off with a huge axe, his bowels dragged cut and
thrown into a fire; while his body, carved into four quarters,
was with his head exposed upon pikes, and permitted to rot and
fester among the public haunts of men!
The fiend-like skill we display in the invention of all manner of
death-dealing engines, the vindictiveness with which we carry on
our wars, and the misery and desolation that follow in their
train, are enough of themselves to distinguish the white
civilized man as the most ferocious animal on the face of the
earth.
His remorseless cruelty is seen in many of the institutions of
our own favoured land.  There is one in particular lately adopted
in one of the States of the Union, which purports to have been
dictated by the most merciful considerations.  To destroy our
malefactors piece-meal, drying up in their veins, drop by drop,
the blood we are too chicken-hearted to shed by a single blow
which would at once put a period to their sufferings, is deemed
to be infinitely preferable to the old-fashioned punishment of
gibbeting--much less annoying to the victim, and more in
accordance with the refined spirit of the age; and yet how feeble
is all language to describe the horrors we inflict upon these
wretches, whom we mason up in the cells of our prisons, and
condemn to perpetual solitude in the very heart of our
population.
But it is needless to multiply the examples of civilized
barbarity; they far exceed in the amount of misery they cause the
crimes which we regard with such abhorrence in our less
enlightened fellow-creatures.
The term 'Savage' is, I conceive, often misapplied, and indeed,
when I consider the vices, cruelties, and enormities of every
kind that spring up in the tainted atmosphere of a feverish
civilization, I am inclined to think that so far as the relative
wickedness of the parties is concerned, four or five Marquesan
Islanders sent to the United States as

Another Democratic Party presidential candidate

The Independent, 21 July 2004
The cult and the candidate
Lyndon LaRouche is a convicted fraudster and virulent anti-Semite. Now
he's campaigning for the American presidency. Terry Kirby investigates
his sinister global network - and his conspiracy theories about Tony Blair
He has warned that the international monetary system is about to
collapse and that five billion people will die in the ensuing chaos. The
Royal Family and MI6 are, he claims, responsible for the international
drugs trade. Welcome to the weird world of Lyndon LaRouche, the
81-year-old who is campaigning as an independent Democratic candidate
for president of the United States in this November's election, for the
fifth time. A millionaire who describes himself as the world's leading
economic forecaster, LaRouche is also a convicted fraudster and
conspiracy theorist par excellence.
Until recently, LaRouche was virtually unknown in Britain, while in the
United States he is dismissed as a crackpot, ignored by both the media
and the political world. But since the death just over a year ago of the
British student Jeremiah Duggan, a 22-year-old Jew found dead in
mysterious circumstances in Germany after becoming involved with
LaRouche supporters, his organisation has come under closer scrutiny
than it has for decades.
Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, a US think tank that
monitors right-wing groups, said: In America we have treated him as a
fringe eccentric, which is wrong because the truth is he recruits a lot
of talented young people, like Jeremiah Duggan, and attempts to turn
them into followers who will mindlessly celebrate a cause that's going
nowhere.
(clip)
Earlier this summer, LaRouche accused Cheney of working with a crowd of
scoundrels at Number 10 to run a dirty tricks operation against him
through the British press in time for the Democratic convention.
MEANWHILE, HE CAMPAIGNS UNDER THE DEMOCRATIC TICKET IN THE UNITED
STATES, ATTRACTING FEDERAL FUNDING FOR EVERY CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION HE
OBTAINS, AND WILL BE ON THE BALLOT PAPER IN MORE THAN 30 STATES. His
latest theory is that the resurgence of something called Synarchist
International - which he says helped former Nazis enter western
intelligence networks - was responsible for the Madrid train bombing.
Says Berlet: People in the US just tend to ignore him, but they do so
at their peril. He is running a totalitarian group, a political cult.
full: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=542953
--
The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation

I didn't set off the quote from Marx.  It's the passage beginning
within the capitalist system.  It's also from Chap. 25 of Capital
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm.  Also, I
meant to say: Individuals immiserized in this way would _not_ be
subjects of this kind.
Ted

Racial profiling

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Editorial
July 21, 2004 Wednesday Home Edition
HOMELAND SECURITY: Fear of racial profiling makes skies less safe
BYLINE: SHAUNTI FELDHAHN
A journalist's disturbing account of her recent airline flight has sent
shock waves around the Internet, and raised troubling questions about
whether fear of racial profiling is sacrificing security --- and
whether it'll take another terrorist attack to mandate a solution.
In the Women's Wall Street article Terror In The Skies, Again?
http://www.womenswallstreet.com/WWS/article_landing.aspx?titleid=1articleid=711
writer Annie Jacobsen recounts the suspicious behavior of 14 Syrian men
on her flight. They congregated in groups and flashed hand signals, or
took carry-on items inside the lavatories and emerged without them,
followed by each of the others in close succession.
A flight attendant was concerned enough to break aviation rules and tell
the inquiring reporter that onboard air marshals were tracking the
situation. After more alarming behavior on final approach, one man
signaled the others no. At the gate, the men were stopped by the FBI,
and the reporter gave a sworn statement.
A Federal Air Marshals service spokesman later said the men were
questioned and released; none was on a terrorist watch list. He said
onboard marshals do not stop suspicious behavior or arrest anyone until
there's an actual event. (Unfortunately, since one potential tactic is
assembling pieces of a bomb in the lavatories, an event would make
arrests a moot point.)
When I checked out this story, I was troubled to find both that this was
not an isolated incident, and that a fear of racial profiling, fines and
lawsuits is weakening our air security system.
===
Salon.com
The hysterical skies
She survived a flight with 14 harmless Syrian musicians -- then spread
3,000 bigoted and paranoid words across the Internet. As a pilot and an
American, I'm appalled.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Patrick Smith
July 21, 2004  |  In this space was supposed to be installment No. 6 of
my multiweek dissertation on airports and terminals. The topic is being
usurped by one of those nagging, Web-borne issues of the moment, in this
case a reactionary scare story making the cyber-rounds during the past
week.
The piece in question, Terror in the Skies, Again? is the work of
Annie Jacobsen, a writer for WomensWallStreet.com. Jacobsen shares the
account of the emotional meltdown she and her fellow passengers
experienced when, aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Detroit to Los
Angeles, a group of Middle Eastern passengers proceeded to act
suspiciously. I'll invite you to experience Terror yourself, but be
warned it's quite long. It needs to be, I suppose, since ultimately it's
a story about nothing, puffed and aggrandized to appear important.
The editors get the drama cooking with some foreboding music: You are
about to read an account of what happened, counsels a 70-word preamble.
The WWS Editorial Team debated long and hard about how to handle this
information and ultimately we decided it was something that should be
shared ... Here is Annie's story [insert lower-octave piano chord here].
What follows are six pages of the worst grade-school prose,
spring-loaded with mindless hysterics and bigoted provocation.
Fourteen dark-skinned men from Syria board Northwest's flight 327,
seated in two separate groups. Some are carrying oddly shaped bags and
wearing track suits with Arabic script across the back. During the
flight the men socialize, gesture to one another, move about the cabin
with pieces of their luggage, and, most ominous of all, repeatedly make
trips to the bathroom. The author links the men's apparently irritable
bladders to a report published in the Observer (U.K.) warning of
terrorist plots to smuggle bomb components onto airplanes one piece at a
time, to be secretly assembled in lavatories.
What I experienced during that flight, breathes Jacobsen, has caused
me to question whether the United States of America can realistically
uphold the civil liberties of every individual, even non-citizens, and
protect its citizens from terrorist threats.
Intriguing, no? I, for one, fully admit that certain acts of airborne
crime and treachery may indeed open the channels to a debate on civil
liberties. Pray tell, what happened? Gunfight at 37,000 feet? Valiant
passengers wrestle a grenade from a suicidal operative? Hero pilots beat
back a cockpit takeover?
Well, no. As a matter of fact, nothing happened. Turns out the Syrians
are part of a musical ensemble hired to play at a hotel. The men talk to
one another. They glance around. They pee.
That's it?
That's it.
full:
http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2004/07/21/askthepilot95/index.html
--
The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation/dialectics and logic

Charles B: Wouldn't you say that also for Marx, contradictions in the capitalist
system are the motives for it to change into a different system, i.e.
socialism ?  Contradiction as the basis for change is a dialectical concept.
Marx deals with dialectical, not formal logical contradictions.

I don't know about motives, but obviously for Marx, the contradictions in capitalism 
create possibilities for the emergence of socialism. 

The contradictions dealt with in the absolute general law of capitalist
accumulation are the poverty and unemployment that inherently accompany
technological progress under capitalist relations of production, a
contradiction of regress and progress, with regress being absolute and
progress relative.

I'd say that poverty and unemployment are _results_ of the contradiction.

jim devine

Not a dime's worth of difference

Protest zone draws ire
Court to be asked to rule on use of high barriers and netting
By Jonathan Saltzman, Boston Globe Staff | July 21, 2004
Cement barriers, 8-foot-tall chain-link fencing, and heavy black netting
have been installed around the protest zone outside the FleetCenter,
angering protesters who say they will be penned in and closed off from
Democratic National Convention delegates.

Much of the area is located under abandoned elevated Green Line tracks
that slope downward. The setup, which one netting installer called ''an
internment camp, will force tall protesters at the southern end of the
zone to lower their heads to avoid banging them on green metal girders.

Furious that protesters are being shoehorned into an enclosed space,
lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Lawyers
Guild said they will ask a federal judge to open up or move the zone.

''We were given every assurance that there would be an adequate space
for people to assemble for purposes of protest that is within sight and
sound of the convention and the delegates, said John Reinstein, an ACLU
lawyer representing activists planning to protest at the convention.
``This is neither. . . . It's a pen.

full:
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/conventions/articles/2004/07/21/protest_zone_draws_ire/

NY Times, July 19, 2004
EDITORIAL OBSERVER
Pop Quiz: What Do New York 2004 and Chicago 1968 Have in Common?
By ADAM COHEN
If trouble breaks out between police and demonstrators at next month's
Republican convention, the media will be quick to draw comparisons to
the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. Mayor Richard J. Daley's
rampaging police who injured hundreds of unarmed protesters and
bystanders provided one of the great cautionary tales in American
politics, and one that is already on the mind of the Bloomberg
administration. In a recent interview, the mayor's communications
director rushed to say, before I could even raise the subject, that his
boss was no Mayor Daley, and that this was not Chicago in 1968.

As the co-author of a lengthy Daley biography, American Pharaoh: Mayor
Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and the Nation, I can attest
that the two mayors are not much alike. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who
made $5 billion at the intersection of finance and technology, is a
world away from Mayor Daley the father of Chicago's current mayor
who plodded his way up an old-line Democratic machine, and lived his
whole life in the working-class neighborhood of Bridgeport. And given
the probity and professionalism Mayor Bloomberg has shown in office, a
Chicago-style debacle seems unlikely here. Still, these two men seem to
have a remarkably similar distaste for demonstrators and for somewhat
similar reasons.

Mayor Daley's dislike of protests was largely rooted in his view of
politics. The Chicago machine was built on the principle that the way to
have a voice in government was to pay one's dues at the precinct level
by turning out the vote. Mayor Daley shared the machine's hierarchical,
pragmatic values, and was offended by anyone who made demands on elected
officials without helping to elect them.

When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. brought the civil rights
movement to Chicago in 1966, his idealistic words about equal
opportunity and fair housing were lost on the mayor. Mayor Daley could
not believe that Dr. King expected to dictate policy to city hall when
he did not control a single precinct captain.

Mayor Daley viewed the 1968 protesters in much the same way. When I
started work on the Daley book, I shared the common misconception that
Mayor Daley hated antiwar protesters because he supported the Vietnam
War. But I soon learned that he opposed the war, and had quietly tried
to persuade President Lyndon Johnson to withdraw the troops. The mayor's
objection was in a way procedural. If the demonstrators wanted to end
the war, it seemed to him, they should have done the hard political work
to be where he was that week: inside the convention hall.

Mayor Bloomberg's roots lie in a social organization that's very
different from the clubhouse, but equally intolerant of spontaneous
outbursts. Until he ran for mayor he had spent his life in the corporate
world, where as in a political machine people pursue a common goal
by working through the system. Employees who try to harangue leaders
into changing corporate policy are not engaging in free speech. They are
being insubordinate.

In his handling of demonstrators, Mayor Bloomberg has acted like a
corporate leader dealing with unruly subordinates. His police have
confined them in metal pens, and treated them with a roughness that
makes protesting the government a grueling experience. The New York
Civil Liberties Union is suing on behalf of a diabetic, wheelchair-bound
New Yorker who says she was kept in a pen at a protest last year despite
a medical need to leave.

In the

Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation

2004-07-21 Thread Waistline2




In a message dated 7/21/2004 8:07:43 AM Central Standard Time, 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 

there is no necessity, however, for capitalism to produce 
immiserization. The organic composition of capital doesn't have to change 
in the way Marx assumes. For this and other reasons, the creation of an 
industrial reserve army isn't a "necessity" i.e. a necessary feature of these 
relations. Nor is it necessary that: "they mutilate the labourer into a 
fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, 
destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they 
estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour-process in the 
same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they 
distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the 
labour-process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform 
his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels 
of the Juggernaut of capital." 


Comment 

The increased poverty (immiserization) of the working class 
does not exist in a comparison of the working class with itself . . . say . . . 
as it existed in 1840, 1900, 1960 or 2004. The increased poverty of the working 
class exists in relationship to the increase of the total wealth of society and 
can be measured against the increase in wealth of capitalists as a class or 
those regarded as capitalists due to their wealth. Today's article on Bill Gates 
is a case in point. 

The organic composition of capital does not speak of the 
reforms and concessions the working class wrestle from the capitalists. Rather, 
what is spoken of is the direction of how the productive forces increase in 
capacity . . . from the standpoint of the consistent increase in spending and 
deployment of machinery and technological development versus human labor . . . 
as a ratio . . and its impact on the working class and capitalists. The 
polarization between the poorest and the richest does in fact increase. 


In the world total social capital the spending on machinery 
and technology rises in relationship to the spending on hands . . . even during 
period of absolute increase in the size of the industrial class. The amount of 
labor deployed in the production of commodities moves in the direction of zero . 
. . as an aggregate of labor ... as opposed to away from zero . . . as the 
general law of capital accumulation in the absolute sense. 

The sometimes fast and sometimes slow improvement of 
production methods and/or revolutionizing of the material power of production is 
an absolute law of not just bourgeois production . . . but all social 
production. 

Melvin P.

Re: Math

2004-07-21 Thread Doyle Saylor

Greetings Economists,
CB (Charles Brown) writes,
(first),
...Math, grammar and logic are all sets of rules on how to use symbols
then CB writes,
...logic is mathematical and linguistic, but I am curious on the essential
distinction between linguistics and mathematics implied here

To which JD (James Devine) replies,
...it's possible that math might be part of Chomsky's transformational
grammar, i.e., the structure of human language that is inborn (built-in)
in the human brain? In that case, math is linguistic, but not merely
so

Doyle,
Chomsky's transformational grammar?  This is still a debate about what
exactly is inherited.  A better discussion about the issue of inheritance is
found in Gould's book, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, Belknap,
Harvard press, 2002.  Chapter eight, Species as Individuals in the
Hierarchical Theory of Selection, pages 638 through 644 discuss some of the
problems that Dawkins has with the idea of rule based inheritance.

Since you seem to think grammar is inherited, Let's try to make a
distinction here that most people could understand.  Logic has been treated
as part of mathematics for awhile.  So I won't distinguish between them.
Grammar structures language as is the commonplace.  We might go to
Wittgenstein to get an odd ball view of grammar (Philosophical Grammar,
Wittgenstein, Blackwell, 1974) which parallels JD's conflation of
mathematics and language.  However, mathematics doesn't appear to grammarize
symbols.  There is a case for a low level math instinct in the sense of
babies can count before they can think language.  That is called subitizing.

To understand the difference then between grammar and subitizing it is best
to consider the difference in the labor processes.  The basis for language
is joint attention.  That is at some point babies learn to look at a parents
face and follow their gaze.  So if mom looks at something like a toy the
baby understands something about the object which is a toy.  Or food, or
whatever.  Sharing attention means more or less mind reading.  That is
states of the brain are shared and understood to be shared.

Mom does her brain work in her old familiar ways.  That is incoming to the
occipital lobe mainly for vision, naming things in the temporal lobe, doing
things in the parietal lobe, and organizing and planning what to do with
stuff in the temporal lobe and parietal is done in the frontal lobe.  The
baby does roughly the same sort of stuff.  Babies vary in how they do things
from their parents for various reasons.  The baby learns how to use their
mind from the example of the parents.  Habits of brain work.  Not
necessarily there in terms of a grammar.  Grammar is variable within bounds.
Chomsky like the enlightenment thinkers he has always sprung his own thought
from thinks of this as a universal essence.  However, Gould and others see
this differently.  We may have a tool that can do certain things, the brain.
But what emerges in how we do things must certainly vary.  How can the brain
anticipate email?

A general purpose theory of the work process of brainwork that grammar
implies, presumes that we understand what exactly the brain is doing word by
word.  George Lakoff the linguist looks at where Mathematics comes from.
Like many linguists Lakoff broadly uses metaphor as the basic mechanism of
thought and therefore of mathematics.  In his book, Where Mathematics Comes
From,. Lakoff, Nunez, Basic Books, 2000, gives an extended examination of
all levels of mathematics to trace down how metaphor might be the basis for
mathematics.  Metaphor stands in for field states in the brain.  So for
example at a given time, various fields are connected in the occipital lobe,
temporal lobe, and frontal lobe.  That being the metaphor.

Returning to grammar, language is a representation of between a parent and
child the basic way to use the face and hands to do work in the world.
Mathematics is not confined to that metaphor.  Math does not function in
brain work like plain language acts.  Grammar is not mathematics.  They are
both metaphorical in the sense that sheets of neurons interconnect in
patterns.  But the labor processes are different.  Nor is it possible in my
view to say grammar is inherited.  As most evolutionary theorists would say
there is a wholeness of environment and human beings that does not reduce to
rules.

Let's try to envision that.  If I write this piece I am using a linear
script to describe brain states or metaphorical activity in the brain.
However, the brain states are not linear.  So in the sense I write anything
linearly I am not conceptualizing the process of thinking.  If I
conceptualize thinking that is create symbols that work like thinking, I
might then find ways to do non-grammatical language.  That is not restrict
myself to an a priori limitation to what can be done.
Thanks,
Doyle

Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation

Marx sets out the differentia specifica of capitalist production in 
the following passage from Chap. 25 (that this is an expression of 
motivation dominated by greed is made clear in other passages in 
Capital and elsewhere).  This too is an absolute law of this mode of 
production in the sense of law as immanent.

A rise in the price of labour, as a consequence of accumulation of 
capital, only means, in fact, that the length and weight of the golden 
chain the wage-worker has already forged for himself, allow ofa 
relaxation of the tension of it. In the controversies on this subject 
the chief fact has generally been overlooked, viz., the differentia 
specifica of capitalistic production. Labour-power is sold to-day, not 
with a view of satisfying, by its service or by its product, the 
personal needs of the buyer. His aim is augmentation of his capital, 
production of commodities containing more labour than he pays for, 
containing therefore a portion of value that costs him nothing, and 
that is nevertheless realised when the commodities are sold. 
Production of surplus-value is the absolute law of this mode of 
production.
Laws of capitalist production are throughout treated as immanent, a 
treatment Marx persistently contrasts with their treatment as imposed 
and invariant.

The law of capitalist production, that is at the bottom of the 
pretended natural law of population, reduces itself simply to this: 
The correlation between accumulation of capital and rate of wages is 
nothing else than the correlation between the unpaid labour 
transformed into capital, and the additional paid labour necessary for 
the setting in motion of this additional capital. It is therefore in 
no way a relation between two magnitudes, independent one of the 
other: on the one hand, the magnitude of the capital; on the other, 
the number of the labouring population; it is rather, at bottom, only 
the relation between the unpaid and the paid labour of the same 
labouring population. If the quantity of unpaid labour supplied by the 
working-class, and accumulated by the capitalist class, increases so 
rapidly that its conversion into capital requires an extraordinary 
addition of paid labour, then wages rise,and, all other circumstances 
remaining equal, the unpaid labour diminishes in proportion. But. as 
soon as this diminution touches the point at which the surplus-labour 
that nourishes capital is no longer supplied in normal quantity, a 
reaction sets in: a smaller part of revenue is capitalised 
accumulation lags, and the movement of rise in wages receives a check. 
The rise of wages therefore is confined within limits that not only 
leave intact the foundations of the capitalistic system, but also 
secure its reproduction on a progressive scale. The law of 
capitalistic accumulation, metamorphosed by economists into pretended 
law of Nature, in reality merely states that the very nature of 
accumulation excludes every diminution in the degree of exploitation 
of labour, and every rise in the price of labour, which could 
seriously imperil the continual reproduction, on an ever-enlarging 
scale, of the capitalistic relation. It cannot be otherwise in a mode 
of production in which the labourer exists to satisfy the needs of 
self-expansion of existing values, instead of, on the contrary, 
material wealth existing to satisfy the needs of development on the 
part of the labourer. As, in religion, man is governed by the products 
of his own brain, so in capitalistic production, he is governed by the 
products of his own hand. [10]
Here, as in many other passages I've previously quoted, rational 
relations of production are claimed to be characterized by material 
wealth existing to satisfy the needs of development on the part of the 
labourer.  The irrational relations of capitalism reverse this 
rational means/end relation: the labourer exists to satisfy the needs 
of self-expansion of existing values.

Marx also explicitly opposes an immanent conception of law to the 
Malthus/Darwin mistaken idea of an invariant natural law of 
population:

The labouring population therefore produces, along with the 
accumulation of capital produced by it, the means by which it itself 
is made relatively superfluous, is turned into a relative 
surplus-population; and it does this to an always increasing extent. 
[15] This is a law of population peculiar to the capitalist mode of 
production; and in fact every special historic mode of production has 
its own special laws of population, historically valid within its 
limits and only in so far as man has not interfered with them.
This characterization of law as immanent is also found in the other 
passages I've quoted.

The law of capitalistic accumulation, metamorphosed by economists into 
pretended law of Nature, in reality merely states that the very nature 
of accumulation excludes every diminution in the degree of 
exploitation of labour, and every rise in the price of labour,

Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece

2004-07-21 Thread s.artesian

THEIR thugs are OUR thugs, just as they were in Afghanistan.  It is the decimation of 
the social structure under US attack that creates the opportunity for and the thugs 
themselves.  We can control our thugs?  That must be comforting to all those in US run 
prisons.  I can't wait until somebody in the US military tells them how much better 
off they are.

The facts are that the economy is worse off now than before; living standards continue 
to decline; oil revenues are misappropriated.

This was/is a capitalist assault against the social costs of reproducing an economy 
that might support something more than starvation and deprivation.

The only rationale, humane, position is the radical and revolutionary position, OUT 
NOW, and that's just for starters.

From: Chris Doss [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Jul 21, 2004 6:14 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Thomas Frank op-ed piece

indeed i read about this, and it only adds to my
doubt. i am not very
knowledgeable about iraq but is it not possible that
the thugs who will
rush in to fill the void left by a suddenly departed
US army, would be
worse? i remember reading pieces about east timor,
rwanda, and
elsewhere, of the horrors that ensued when any
provisional authority
pulled out (in those cases these authorities were a
bit more
legitimate,
such as the UN).

isnt it important not to forget that their thugs are
as bad as ours?
only, we can try to control our thugs but they cannot
control theirs or
ours.

--ravi
---
I personally have no real opinion on this subject,
since I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on
what's happening in Iraq, but over in this part of the
world the powers-that-be are very worried that Iraq is
going to wind up as a fundamentalist state sitting on
huge amounts of oil reserves that would try to further
destabilize Central Asia, which would be really bad.
(Then again, a fundamentalist state dependent on Iran
might even be a good thing for the Kremlin, since
relations between Moscow and Tehran are pretty close
and Russia views Iran as a moderating influence in the
Muslim world. One of the first things Putin did after
he became president was to invite Khattami to the
opening of a new mosque in Tatarstan.)



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Conservative support for Nader?

Counterpunch, July 21, 2004
Nader Sleeping with the Enemy?
Let's Be Fair
By JOSHUA FRANK
Democrats and liberal defenders of John Kerry, are throwing tantrums
over Ralph Nader's new found affinity for conservatives who are aiding
his ballot efforts in swing states. According to a Detroit News report,
Greg McNeilly the Executive Director of the Michigan Republican Party
said, We are absolutely interested in having Ralph Nader on the
ballot. Indeed these Republicans hope Nader will siphon votes away from
Kerry, and tally the state's 17 electoral points on George Bush's score
card come election day.
Right-wing organizations are also putting their efforts behind Nader out
West. Citizens for a Sound Economy, an anti-tax, anti-government group
ran by Republican powerhouse Dick Armey, wants Nader on the Oregon
ballot. A rigid Christian anti-gay group, known as Oregon Family
Council, also believes voters should have a chance to pull the lever for
Ralph in the fall. As you can imagine, Democrats aren't the least bit
pleased with these recent developments. And they are the first to
happily point out Nader's new bedfellows.
Out of their own rage over Nader's challenge to politics as usual,
Democratic loyalists are fighting harder than they did during the
Florida recount to keep Nader off state registers. In Oregon, while
attempting to gather signatures at a local high school petition drive,
Kerry troops infiltrated the event, boosting the numbers so organizers
believed they had reached capacity. Countless Naderites were left out,
unable to attend the rally or sign the petition, which needed to take
place during a single assembly. Democrats, loathing the thought of
voters having a chance to vote for Nader, did not sign the petition --
ultimately sabotaging the event efforts.
Then of course there is Arizona, where Democrats successfully blocked
Nader from attaining ballot access. Their lawsuit, which argued that a
number of the signatures were gathered by former felons, was deemed
illegal. The tactics used by the Democrats is reminiscent of the
Republican shenanigans in Florida four years ago (where's Greg Palast
when you need him?), and what the Democrats surely won't tell you is
that they used a Republican law firm to nail Nader.
Well, if Nader is so bad, what about the Kerry/Edwards ticket? Where is
the Democrat support coming from?
As usual, convicted corporate criminals have been pouring tons of cash
into both major parties this election season. But since the Democrats
seem to be the only party up in arms over Nader's bid, it is only fair
to focus on their blatant follies.
Chevron Inc, who was convicted in 1992 of egregious environmental
offenses, has given the Democrats over $46,000 this election cycle.
Pfizer, the monstrous pharmaceutical company and maker of Zoloft and
erection fortifying Viagra, has given close to $160,000 to the Democrats
this go-round. Their crime? Price fixing food additives, to which they
pled guilty in 1999.
Time/Warner, who will most likely be charged with a $400 million
accounting violation later this summer by the SEC, has given John Kerry
approximately $250,000 since 1990. That's not including the over $3.6
million they have given the Democrats since the Al Gore's run for president.
And Democrats are up in arms over the a few thousand dollars
conservatives, as individuals not corporations mind you, have given to
Ralph Nader this year?
Bush's homeboy, convicted right-winger Kenny Boy Lay, the Enron sage,
used to sit on the board of directors for the Heinz Foundation, which is
John Kerry's wife's ketcup rich environmental trust. His company has
given well over one million dollars to the Democrats since 2000. And we
all know Enron's crimes.
Archer Daniels Midland, the huge multinational processor and exporter of
cereal grains and oilseeds, pled guilty in 1996 to one of the largest
anti-trust lawsuits in the history of the United States. They've anteed
up over $1.7 million to the Democratic Party since 2000. And this is
just the tip of the iceberg.
How about the most recent on the list of corporate robber barons?
Although they have yet to be convicted of any wrong-doing in Iraq (the
Pentagon claims they have overcharged tax payers millions of dollars),
Dick Cheney's war profiteering Halliburton has donated $129,449 to the
Dems this year. And Democrats still want us to believe Nader's the only
one who is sleeping with the enemy?
Clearly conservative money and support, which is minimal at best, is
aiding Nader's efforts to get his name on certain state ballots. But
Democrats are also guilty of having their hand in a tainted cookie jar.
The difference being, Nader is unlikely to be persuaded by such support.
Unfortunately the same can't be said for his opposition.
--
The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

absolute general law of capitalist accumulation

by Chris Doss
21 July 2004 12:29 UTC
CB: What's the difference between what you said and
what I said ? I
believe
you state the rule of non-contradiction, which is what
I am referring
to.
---
I thought you were implying that Marx and Hegel denied
the RoNC. Maybe I misread you.

^^
CB: I can see how you might have misunderstood what I meant.

I am saying that Hegel ( and Marx) employ both formal logic and dialectical
logic.  Within formal logic , they recognize the rule of
non-contradiction. Within dialectical logic, contradictions are fruitful and
important. There is no rule against contradiction, rather contradictions
are sought, so to speak.

Re: Ali G.

2004-07-21 Thread Daniel Davies

Sasha Baron-Cohen isn't really that left-wing; my other half was a
contemporary of his at Cambridge and remembers him as being pretty
apolitical.  The sexual politics of some of the things he's done on British
TV were really quite appalling, in that rather annoying ironic laddish
sexism way that we have over here.  On the other hand, he is funny, which I
suppose ought to count for something when judging a comedian.

dd

PS.  btw, you can listen to the original subject of the Ali G satire, Radio
1 DJ Tim Westwood at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/urban/westwood/

Westwood actually does know his stuff when it comes to hip-hop, and is a
mate of Chuck D IIRC (I think he gets quite a prominent shout-out on the
credits to the Nation of Millions album).  But it is often extremely funny
to listen to all his wassups and word to all my niggaz and reflect that
his father was the Bishop of Peterborough.


-Original Message-
From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Louis
Proyect
Sent: 20 July 2004 15:34
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Ali G.


Unfortunately, Ali G.'s HBO shows are not available yet on DVD. I also
fear that it will become more and more difficult for the highly educated
and leftwing British Jew who plays him to fool people like Sam
Donaldson, etc. into thinking that he is a poorly educated inner city
rapper. In any case, you can snippets of his act at:
http://www.hbo.com/alig/. While most of his interviewees are big-time
rightwingers like Brent Snowcroft or fundamentalist Christian ministers,
he does manage to fool some well-known leftists on occasion. Last Friday
night, when I was watching an Ali G. marathon on HBO in preparation for
the new season which began on Sunday, I was greatly amused by his
interview of Nation Magazine writer and Columbia University professor
Arthur Danto, whose humorlessly, impenetrable prose helped me decide to
cancel my subscription to this magazine. The exchange went something
like this:

Ali G: So what is art nouveau [pronounced nuvio]?

Danto: That's a style of art that was popular at the turn of the century
done by people such as Gustav Klimt.

Ali G: And what about art deco?

Danto: Well, all of NYC is art deco. [At this point, Ali G. gives Danto
one of his patented cocked-head What's up with that? look.]

Ali G: Okay, then what is Art Garfunkel?

At this point Danto, who should have known better, explains patiently
that this is not art but a singer who used to be paired with Paul Simon,
whereupon Ali G. retorts, Won't that confuse the youth [pronounced
yoof]. Very funny stuff.

The Cheerful Confessions of Ali G, Borat and Bruno
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
NY Times, July 15, 2004

Da Ali G Show, the British comic Sacha Baron Cohen's HBO series,
returns for its second American season on Sunday.

While playing the part of Ali G, an imbecilic and gonzo rapper who
speaks in Caribbean-British slang, Mr. Baron Cohen in the first few
episodes interviews Pat Buchanan, Sam Donaldson and Gore Vidal. For all
the publicity that Ali G received in his initial HBO season, in which he
put on the likes of Newt Gingrich, the former astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin
Jr. and the former director of central intelligence R. James Woolsey,
none of this season's august figures managed to see their disguised
interviewer for who he is: a wickedly smart, left-wing comedian and
practicing Jew with a degree from Cambridge.

In man-on-the-street interviews and other stunts this season, Mr. Baron
Cohen also reprises the characters of Borat, an unwashed, leering
Kazakh, and Bruno, an Austrian gadfly from the fashion world. Typically
averse to talking out of costume and character, Mr. Baron Cohen still
sat down this week to discuss his approach to satire, his fear of
America and the secret wild ways of Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Here are
excerpts.

VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN Why is Ali G so funny?

SACHA BARON COHEN It's a pretty simple joke, which is why even some kids
get it. Essentially you have two people who look totally different  one
guy dressed in an absurd yellow jumpsuit, and the other guys dressed in
a suit. They're speaking in different ways, with different body language
and totally different levels of intelligence.

HEFFERNAN Is it more fun to play pranks on British people or Americans?

BARON COHEN It depends on the class, actually. The best targets  the
legitimate targets  are successful, powerful white men, who rule the
country. And in Britain the upper class are incredibly accommodating.
You can punch someone from the upper class in the face, and they'll go,
Oh, I'm dreadfully sorry. They'll never ever throw you out of the room.

Here, there have been some occasions where people just are blunt, where
they will say, All right, enough is enough. Marlin Fitzwater threw Ali
G out of the room. And this year Andy Rooney hated Ali G from the moment
he saw him. He starts asking: Have you done this before? Is English
your first language? And then basically tries to stop the interview
after one question.

Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece

2004-07-21 Thread Waistline2




In a message dated 7/21/2004 11:03:21 AM Central Standard 
Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 

The facts are that the economy is worse off now than 
before; living standards continue to decline; oil revenues are misappropriated. 


This was/is a capitalist assault against the social costs of 
reproducing an economy that might support something more than starvation and 
deprivation. 

The only rationale, humane, position is the radical and 
revolutionary position, OUT NOW, and that's just for starters.

Comment 

This thread is needed and heart breaking. Being compelled to 
ask if the people of Iraq are better off today than they were yesterday . . . is 
mindboggling. Our government bombed this country for ten years after Desert 
Storm . . . inflcited horrible destruction upon the people of Iraq . . . 
murdering their babies . . . then destroyed their infrastructure to a 
large degree and one is asked if the new rulers are going to be better than 
those who created the situation in the first place.

What kind of question is that? 

The idea that we are bringing democracy and goodness to the 
world and people of Iraq is not well thought out and without any merit 
whatsoever. We are to pretend that this was not plunder on a grand scale? The 
first targets seized in Iraq were the national museums and banks . . . stealing 
national artifacts and money in full view of the world. 

Then . . . then . . . one of the primary objectives was 
targeted (among other geopolitical considerations of the bourgeoisie) . . . 
making sure that Iraqi oil was taken off the world market to manipulate the 
price of oil upwards as the bourgeoisie's answer to falling rates of 
profit!

"Their thugs" . . . are most certainly our thugs or as it is 
called in the penal institutions of America . . . "turn keys" for the Warden or 
the bourgeois order headed by our personalbourgeoisie. 

"Out Now" is urgent because we could not prevent them from 
going in . . . in the first place. If we could have stayed the hand of our 
bourgeoisie . . . there would be no need to even "discuss" whose bad guys are 
the worst. 


Melvin P.

absolute general law of capitalist accumulation/dialectics and logic

by Devine, James



I don't know about motives, but obviously for Marx, the contradictions in
capitalism create possibilities for the emergence of socialism.


CB: OK. Instead of motives , causes for it to change. The dialectical idea
is that everything changes, and the change is based on the contradictions
within the thing changing, and what it changes to is determined by the
nature of those contradictions, I think.

The contradiction of class divided society causes society to move toward
classless society.

This is a main preservation of Hegelian dialectics in Marx's sublation of
Hegel.

^^



The contradictions dealt with in the absolute general law of capitalist
accumulation are the poverty and unemployment that inherently accompany
technological progress under capitalist relations of production, a
contradiction of regress and progress, with regress being absolute and
progress relative.

I'd say that poverty and unemployment are _results_ of the contradiction.

^^
CB: A result of which contradiction ?

Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004, Doug Henwood wrote:
I think you're overstating things. The infiltration strategy could have
some influence on who gets elected, and also on the environment in which
other elected officials operate - they'll have to respond to and
compromise with a whole new set of actors. Maybe.
Sure, but when you phrase it this way, it no longer has anything to do
with taking over the party at the local level the way the conservatives
did.  Now you're just talking about becoming part of the democratic party
oursevles and working for the most progressive of the candidates that are
already possible within the existing spectrum.  And elect a Cynthia
McKinney or a Jerry Nadler.
What the conservatives did was very different.  But they also had very
different issues than us -- ones that
1) they deeply believed in;
2) which could be vitally affected at the most local levels; and
3) which were so far off the map that they rated immmediate news and
affected the national discourse
namely the school issues of prayer and creationism, and the strategy of
constraining abortion by the death of a thousand pin prick regulations.
I don't know if we have any issues that fill those three conditions.  Can
anyone think of any?
New York state wouldn't be about to raise its minimum wage if the
Working Families Party hadn't been agitating for it - and the WFP is
sort of playing the entryist game.
No!  They definately are not.  They are playing the third party fusion
game, which is a different game entirely which entirely avoids all the
problems I laid out.  New York is one of the only states you can play that
game and you're right, they are having a tiny effect at the margin.
But in all honesty I think they are overblowing their own horn on this
issue.  I don't think they were decisive. It's a Democratic party issue
this year from the national level on down. (And it's classically
Democratic -- they keep raising it less than it's lost by inflation, so
they can argue with mainstream models that it can't possibly be hurting
job growth, just stopping exploitation.  They are not challenging the
model.)
You can also go the Labor Party route and push for an issues that would be
both transformative and yet still conceivable within the existing
discourse, like comprehensive health care and child care.  Especially
outside New York where the fusion route is not a possibility.
But none of these is the take over the local and then state party from
the grass roots route.
Michael

Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece

Michael Pollak wrote:
On Wed, 21 Jul 2004, Doug Henwood wrote:
I think you're overstating things. The infiltration strategy could have
some influence on who gets elected, and also on the environment in which
other elected officials operate - they'll have to respond to and
compromise with a whole new set of actors. Maybe.
Sure, but when you phrase it this way, it no longer has anything to do
with taking over the party at the local level the way the conservatives
did.
That could be the long-term goal. But there could also be
accomplishments along the way.
  Now you're just talking about becoming part of the democratic party
oursevles and working for the most progressive of the candidates that are
already possible within the existing spectrum.  And elect a Cynthia
McKinney or a Jerry Nadler.
But having more people on the inside would make it more likely that
folks like that could get nominated.
Speaking of Nadler, any word on hos his stomach stapling is going? I
haven't seen him around the neighborhood in ages.
What the conservatives did was very different.  But they also had very
different issues than us -- ones that
1) they deeply believed in;
2) which could be vitally affected at the most local levels; and
3) which were so far off the map that they rated immmediate news and
affected the national discourse
namely the school issues of prayer and creationism, and the strategy of
constraining abortion by the death of a thousand pin prick regulations.
I don't know if we have any issues that fill those three conditions.  Can
anyone think of any?
Local minimum wage/living wage laws. State-financed public health
insurance. Workplace safety regs. Equal pay enforcement. Alternative
energy experiments. Land use/sprawl issues. Small school experiments.
Road pricing. Etc.
New York state wouldn't be about to raise its minimum wage if the
Working Families Party hadn't been agitating for it - and the WFP is
sort of playing the entryist game.
No!  They definately are not.  They are playing the third party fusion
game
They're not entirely independent of the Dem Party. They're doing an
inside/outside thing. Joel Rogers told me that was the New Party
strategy ten or twelve years ago.
Doug

United Nations Human Indicators Index 2004

Is now available at:
http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2004/pdf/hdr04_HDI.pdf
It is *highly* interesting that for the first time ever Cuba has made it
into the High human development grouping that includes the G-8 nations,
etc. Considering the economic warfare being waged against this country,
the impact of the collapse of its main trading partner, etc., this is
about as great a testimony to the superiority of a planned economy and
socialism as you are going to find.
--
The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation/dialectics and logic

2004-07-21 Thread Waistline2




In a message dated 7/21/2004 11:36:26 AM Central Standard 
Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 

The contradictions dealt with in the absolute general law 
of capitalist accumulation are the poverty and unemployment that inherently 
accompany technological progress under capitalist relations of production, a 
contradiction of regress and progress, with regress being "absolute" and 
progress relative. 

Reply:

I'd say that poverty and unemployment are results of the 
contradiction. 

^^ CB: A result of which contradiction? 

Comment 

Private appropriation of the products of social production as 
fundamentality . . . or private appropriation in contradiction with the social 
character of production. 

This private appropriation is a form of property relations 
that imparts a distinct circuit . . . mode of operation to continuous cycles of 
reproduction . . . how labor is deployed in a given branch of industry and on 
what basis. The bottom line basis of deployment is based on what is profitable 
to the bourgeois property relations as individual owners or an institutional 
relations based on private ownership of the productive forces. 

A multiplicity of other contradictory factors flow from the 
property relations within this form of social production. Other contradictions 
flow from the fact of human beings engaging production no matter what the 
property relations. 

Melvin P.

Beeps, Peeps, Veeps, Creeps

charles curtis, george dallas, john garner, garrett hobart, richard
johnson, william king, thomas marshall, levi morton, daniel thompson,
william wheeler, henry wilson...

control of vp running mate set by fdr at 1940 dem convention, prior to
that time prez nominees generally did not express preference re. who vp
candidate should be (william jenings bryan called this careful neglect
or some such phrase)...

fdr decided that he wanted to dump john garner (who said vp position
wasn't worth pitcher of warm spit), fdr failed to convince  secretary of
state cordell hull to accept nomination, fdr forced convention to accept
henry wallace vy threatening  to resign presidency otherwise...

in 84, walter mondale became first prez candidate to announce running
mate (geraldine ferraro) prior to convention, all dem candidates since
then have folowed suit - dukakis in 88 with  (lloyd 'I i knew jack
kennedy, i served with jack kennedy senator [quayle] you're no jack
kennedy'), clinton (gore) in 92, Gore (lieberman) in 2000, and now kerry
with edwards..

as for rep candidates, only dole (kemp) and bush the second (cheney)
have announced early...

kerry's timing conceivably of interest, others who went public early did
so just a few days before party conventions, kerry breaks record bigtime
by advancing announcement three weeks, indication of weakness imo (lame
attempt by lame candidate to get some news coverage)...   michael hoover






--
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Re: Beeps, Peeps, Veeps, Creeps

 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/21/04 12:55 PM 
charles curtis, george dallas, john garner, garrett hobart, richard
johnson, william king, thomas marshall, levi morton, daniel thompson,
william wheeler, henry wilson...


following somehow deleted from above message: these are among names that
roll off people's tongues when they talk (as so many do) about
vice-prez's... mh


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regarding College business are public records, available to the public and media upon 
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Therefore, this e-mail communication may be subject to public disclosure.

Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004, Doug Henwood wrote:
What the conservatives did was very different.  But they also had very
different issues than us -- ones that
1) they deeply believed in;
2) which could be vitally affected at the most local levels; and
3) which were so far off the map that they rated immmediate news and
affected the national discourse
namely the school issues of prayer and creationism, and the strategy of
constraining abortion by the death of a thousand pin prick regulations.
I don't know if we have any issues that fill those three conditions.
Can anyone think of any?
Local minimum wage/living wage laws.  Workplace safety regulations.
Them we have already in New York.
State-financed public health insurance. Equal pay enforcement.
Those can only be affected at the state level, -- which in our state,
means taking over governorship and the speakership.  Nothing short of that
would have any effect at all.  There would be no interim victories.  You
can't nominate the speaker without taking over the state wide party.
Theoretically you could however take over the governorship through a third
party or through an outside draft -- in which case you don't have to take
over the party machine.
Alternative energy experiments. Land use/sprawl issues. Small school
experiments. Road pricing. Etc.
To the extent those are local (like protesting development or setting up
charter schools) they're really not party issues.  To the extent you want
state aid in terms of money or grid that buys back power, it's another
speakership/governorship issue.
No!  They definately are not.  They are playing the third party fusion
game
They're not entirely independent of the Dem Party. They're doing an
inside/outside thing.
Yes, I know, that's what the fusion strategy is all about.
I think maybe I've over-interpreted your question.  I seem to be going a
level of specficity beyond what you're looking for.  If all you meant to
ask was is it useful for lefties to engage in electoral politics with
some of their energies? then my answer's yes, and we have no more
argument.  I thought you were talking about the relative merits of
specific strategies -- becoming Democrats, trying to become the dominant
Democrats, launching a third party, going half and half (the fusion
strategy), working as outside pressure groups, fighting to change the
electoral rules, etc.
Michael

Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece

Michael Pollak wrote:
Those can only be affected at the state level, -- which in our state,
means taking over governorship and the speakership.  Nothing short of that
would have any effect at all.
This is curiously maximalist for you. Organized efforts can influence
incumbents if they feel like their incumbency is threatened. You
don't need a total takeover to have an influence.
Doug

Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation/dialectics and logic

Charles:The contradictions dealt with in the absolute general law of capitalist
accumulation are the poverty and unemployment that inherently accompany
technological progress under capitalist relations of production, a
contradiction of regress and progress, with regress being absolute and
progress relative.

me: I'd say that poverty and unemployment are _results_ of the contradiction.

^^
CB: A result of which contradiction ?

--

the class contradiction. Capitalist class domination encourages the existence of 
unemployment, for example, to motivate people to do alienated labor  to accept 
exploitation. But under certain circumstances, e.g., Nazi Germany, there isn't much 
unemployment at all. Brute force replaces it. 
jd

Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation/dialectics and logic

2004-07-21 Thread Mario José de Lima

Dear Devine / To relate each contradiction with its results is to return to
an explanation established in causality. In fact, it will lead to the
abandonment of the totality notion./ Mário

- Original Message - 
From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2004 2:31 PM
Subject: Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation/dialectics and
logic

Charles:The contradictions dealt with in the absolute general law of
capitalist
accumulation are the poverty and unemployment that inherently accompany
technological progress under capitalist relations of production, a
contradiction of regress and progress, with regress being absolute and
progress relative.

me: I'd say that poverty and unemployment are _results_ of the
contradiction.

^^
CB: A result of which contradiction ?

--

the class contradiction. Capitalist class domination encourages the
existence of unemployment, for example, to motivate people to do alienated
labor  to accept exploitation. But under certain circumstances, e.g., Nazi
Germany, there isn't much unemployment at all. Brute force replaces it.
jd

Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece

Those can only be affected at the state level, -- which in our state,
means taking over governorship and the speakership.  Nothing short of
that would have any effect at all.
This is curiously maximalist for you. Organized efforts can influence
incumbents if they feel like their incumbency is threatened. You
don't need a total takeover to have an influence.
I'm sorry, I wasn't clear -- I meant no effort *within the state party*
can have any effect.  State legislators are ciphers.  They don't even get
a chance to read the legislation.  Only the speaker, the Senate leader and
the governor count in making laws.  That's gospel.  No one who knows NY
state politics will dispute it.  And you can't have the speakership
without a majority.
You can certainly affect the three men in a room through organized efforts
*on the parties from outside.* I would never dispute that.  1199 had a
huge effect on health care that way in 2002.  And there are tons of other
examples.  But those are not party efforts.  Those are groups organized
outside the parties exerting their influence.
Michael

Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation/dialectics and logic

I'm talking about what Althusserians call structural causation. In any event, the 
dialectical conception doesn't deny the role of causation as much as positing two-way 
causation in many cases (B affects W, while W affects B) and playing down the role of 
exogenous events in the social-historical process. 


Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]   http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine




 -Original Message-
 From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of 
 Mario José
 de Lima
 Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2004 10:45 AM
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: Re: [PEN-L] absolute general law of capitalist
 accumulation/dialectics and logic
 
 
 Dear Devine / To relate each contradiction with its results 
 is to return to
 an explanation established in causality. In fact, it will lead to the
 abandonment of the totality notion./ Mário
 
 
 - Original Message - 
 From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2004 2:31 PM
 Subject: Re: absolute general law of capitalist 
 accumulation/dialectics and
 logic
 
 
 Charles:The contradictions dealt with in the absolute general law of
 capitalist
 accumulation are the poverty and unemployment that inherently 
 accompany
 technological progress under capitalist relations of production, a
 contradiction of regress and progress, with regress being 
 absolute and
 progress relative.
 
 me: I'd say that poverty and unemployment are _results_ of the
 contradiction.
 
 ^^
 CB: A result of which contradiction ?
 
 --
 
 the class contradiction. Capitalist class domination encourages the
 existence of unemployment, for example, to motivate people to 
 do alienated
 labor  to accept exploitation. But under certain 
 circumstances, e.g., Nazi
 Germany, there isn't much unemployment at all. Brute force 
 replaces it.
 jd

intramural cynicism

2004-07-21 Thread Dan Scanlan

Title: intramural cynicism


From the Denver
Post:

Bill Clinton
defended his embattled national security adviser Tuesday as a man who
always got things right, even if his desk was a
mess.

Clinton
said he has known about the federal probe of Berger's actions for
several months, calling this week's news a
nonstory.
I wish I
knew who leaked it. It's interesting timing, he
added.
...
In an
interview with The Denver Post, Clinton questioned the timing of the
Berger flap less than a week before the Democratic National
Convention and two days before a presidential commission is slated to
release its final report on the Bush administration's handling of the
Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.


From Dan
Scanlan,

If anyone should
know of manipulating the American sheeple, its Clinton. It's the
timing, stupid. Put your blue dress on and bomb Afghanistan and
The Sudan.

Let me gloat.
 From the same article:

Clinton
derided the Bush administration for its move this month to give
states the opportunity to allow millions of acres of national forests
to be opened up for logging, energy development and road building.
The plan could affect 4.3 million acres of federal land in
Colorado.

This decision will doubtless make some economic interests
happy, he said. By giving 100 percent of it back to the
states, they really put it all at risk. ... There is no national
policy here except to let the developers persuade whatever governors
and state legislatures they can persuade. It's like saying these are
state forests, not national forests.

Clinton's
administration designated or expanded 22 national monuments and
banned road building and development in 60 million acres of national
forest. He called his record on the environment one of the
least appreciated or sort of best parts of my eight
years.

Differences between the environmental and energy policies of
presidential challenger John Kerry and Bush are among the starkest in
this year's election, he added.

One
of the things the American people will have to decide in this
election is whether they want a strong environmental policy,
said Clinton, who is using his book tour partly to plug Kerry, a
fellow Democrat. The choice, I'd say, is pretty
clear.

-

When Clinton
expanded the 22 national monuments etc. at the very end of his
administration (at the same time he was pardoning major contributors,
as I recall) I suggested in writing that he was merely setting the
stage for claiming to be an environmentalist sometime in the future,
knowing damn well that the following administration could and would
easily overturn his meaningless executive order. It didn't mean shit
then and it sure doesn't mean shit now -- except that it affords a
glimpse into the cynical and callous manipulations of our company
store-bought style of politician, of which Clinton and Kerry are
poster-child models.

Dan
Scanlan

Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece

 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/20/04 7:52 PM 
Daniel Davies wrote:
I'd be *very* careful how one went about this.  It feels like entryism,
and
the experience of the (UK) Labour Party in the 1980s suggests that the
'mainstream' Dems would react to it very badly indeed (by which I mean
that
this, if it didn't work, would be the *end* of friendly relationships
between the US Left (S.A.I.I) and the Democratic Party.

We're not talking about people like Militant I hope. Our Trots
wouldn't touch the DP with a 10-ft pole. (On this question, even some
ex-Trots carry on the tradition, suggesting that membership is that
community is a lot like the Party of the Right, for life at least.)
We're talking about Nader voters, Greens, liberal Dems, etc. Of
course that they lack the discipline of Militant they'll get chewed
up quickly by the DP machinery.
Doug


interesting that someone referred to militant tendency/labour, i put
'entryism' in scare quotes in followup post to my suggestion re. dem
county executive councils, was curious if anyone would comment as
such...

but my suggestion really differs from uk experience, no 'party within
party' stuff...

there is no dem party machinery in orblando...   michael hoover

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Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece

 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/21/04 3:07 AM 
On Mon, 19 Jul 2004, Doug Henwood wrote:
 maybe the three million or so people who voted for nader in 2000
should
 take control of local democratic executive committees, use structure
in
 place to recruit candidates, slag off on dems who suck, use available
 funds to issue policy statements and press releases one after
another,
 show up at public and government meetings, control of county dem
 mechanisms might lead to control of state dem parties...

 This sounds like a very good idea, or at least one worth trying.
What's
 the argument against it?

There are two basically: one, it's impossible, and two, you won't be
able
to do anything with it.  The reason is that the incentives are all on
the
other side and that all state party machines are collusive.
In New York City, where you and I live, nothing short of the
governorship
would allow us to accomplish anything in the state worth doing.  Lower
level success would allow you to make symbolic gestures which by and
large
have already been made in our home town, from domestic partnership to
living wage law to declarations against the war and patriot act.
I think if you really wanted to take over the state, you'd be better off
with a state-wide IRV campaign.  Probably equally doomed, but at least
the
interim incentives would make more sense: you'd build up an organization
outside their grasp that could affect the media and politics
independently.  This is basically how people passed the term-limits
laws.
IRV would be more useful: it would really allow you to develop small
principled parties that could grow until they won, and which would have
an
effect on the political discourse from the beginning.
Michael


another of michael pollak's well-reasoned posts, you've offered number
of specific obstacles re. new york (factors relevant to other locales as
well), in some ways, however, your example can be used in support of
above suggestion which was assumed nation-wide effort (there are 3000
counties in us, most have dem/rep executive councils serving as
'structural' foundation of respective parties)...

florida dems dominated state politics until last couple of decades, but
there was really no party as such, ambitious individuals decided to run,
put together their own campaign org, raised their own money, in number
of ways, state was ahead of the curve re. 'candidate-centered'
elections...

neither of two major parties in u.s. are 'mass'' organizations,
membershp in many places consists several 'activists' who function as
local executive committee and who recruit 'activists' to help party
candidate campaigns, self-selected candidates often don't care whether
they get local party support or not (and sometimes prefer not), surely
progressive/left folks can do better than this with whatever shell of an
organization exists...   michael hoover






--
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Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece

 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/21/04 8:41 AM 
An argument against it?  You would actually try it yourself if it
were really a good idea.
Yoshie

nah, doug's a journalist, he'd write about it...  michael hoover

A person who puts forward a proposal should be prepared to act on it.
Otherwise, others will simply conclude that, if the idea is not even
worth the proposer's time, then, it's not worth their time either.
--
Yoshie


people do different things, as for doug, he's a reporter (he may think
of himself in other terms), i've indicated number of times in past
impact that i think this has on his perspective re. certain things, but
above conclusion is not necessarily one of them, in any event, i made
suggestion (hesitate to call it proposal) not him...  michael hoover
(who has actually attended local dem ex com meetings)


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Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to or from 
College employees
regarding College business are public records, available to the public and media upon 
request.
Therefore, this e-mail communication may be subject to public disclosure.

Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train

In this season of leftwing documentaries, I can't imagine anything that
will surpass Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train,
which opens at the Cinema Village in NYC on July 28. With a title drawn
from his 1994 memoir, this film is much more about broader social and
political issues than it is about the particulars of a man's life since
it is virtually impossible to separate Howard Zinn from his place in
American society. Like documentaries on Fidel Castro and Noam Chomsky,
you are dealing with a very public narrative.
With facial features and a long, lean frame resembling Hollywood actor
(and outstanding progressive) Gregory Peck, Zinn has onscreen charisma
to burn. Even into his eighties, Zinn has a boundless energy and
enthusiasm for speaking at antiwar rallies and discussing politics with
young people. Retired from Boston University in 1988, Zinn has been
anything but disengaged from his long life passion: fighting injustice.
Unlike many academics, Zinn's politics were not something that came to
him exclusively through the intellect. Born into a working-class
Brooklyn Jewish family that lived in tenement housing, Zinn was forced
by circumstances to take up a blue-collar life himself.
While working in the Brooklyn navy yards in the late 1930s, he became a
union organizer and gravitated toward the organized left without ever
becoming a member. When a CP member invites him to a party-led midtown
Manhattan rally, he is knocked unconscious by a cop for just being on
the scene. Without having to read Lenin, this event convinced him that
the police are not neutral in capitalist society. Footage of cops
beating up peaceful protestors and trade union rallies are interspersed
throughout this portion of the film. It is one of the great achievements
of directors Denis Mueller and Deb Ellis to choose exactly the right
film footage to dramatize key moments of Howard Zinn's life.
After WWII begins, Zinn decides to enlist into the Air Force as a
bombardier even though his navy yard job would have provided an
exemption. In the final weeks of the war, he and his fellow airmen are
given orders to bomb a small French town where German soldiers have been
spotted. Not only is the fighting virtually over, they are ordered to
drop an early version of napalm on the town, which kills many citizens
as well as enemy soldiers. From 30,000 feet, it is very difficult to
avoid collateral damage. This traumatizing event turns Zinn into a
pacifist. Unlike the Communist Party that always viewed the war as a
crusade against evil, Zinn would begin to question WWII and eventually
all wars. He should be seen as part of an important pacifist tradition
that also included Pacifica network founder Lew Hill and David
Dellinger, who went to prison for refusing to serve in the military. In
many ways, such figures were all-important in helping to shape the New Left.
After the war ends, Zinn returns to New York where he attends college on
the GI bill and raises a family. To pay the rent and support his family,
he works as a warehouseman on the night shift. In 1956, he receives a
PhD in history from Columbia University and takes a job with Spelman
College, an all-black institution in Atlanta. From nearly the moment he
arrives on campus, he joins students in the fledgling civil rights
movement and becomes an adviser to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC). This earns him the attention of the FBI and the wrath
of the administration, which eventually discharges him.
Eventually Zinn ends up at Boston University, where he picks up where he
left off, but this time in the burgeoning Vietnam antiwar movement.
Along with MIT colleague Noam Chomsky, Zinn is a constant fixture at
teach-ins and rallies. Throwing caution to the wind, he allows himself
to be arrested repeatedly in civil disobedience. On the very day that
his name is being presented for tenure by the Board of Trustees at
Boston University, he accepts a student group's invitation to speak at a
protest where the trustees are meeting to deliberate on his future!
After the radical movement of the 1960s has subsided, Zinn embarks on
the most important project of his life: writing A People's History of
the United States. He begins this work in 1980, coinciding with Ronald
Reagan's first term as president. Like almost everything else that has
happened in his life, Zinn gladly swims against the stream. Although
there has been much attention paid to the success of Fahrenheit 9/11,
I would argue that this book is the must successful intervention into
broader American society by a radical in our entire history. It has not
only sold more than a million copies; it has changed the way that people
see themselves and the world.
One such person is Bruce Springsteen, who after reading Zinn's book, sat
down to record Nebraska, his most socially and politically aware
album. This would seem to complete the circle since Zinn himself decided
to write about history from below after hearing

Wages of Election-Year Rituals

2004-07-21 Thread Yoshie Furuhashi

Wages of Election-Year Rituals:
http://montages.blogspot.com/2004/07/wages-of-election-year-rituals.html

Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece

Michael Hoover wrote:
people do different things, as for doug, he's a reporter (he may think
of himself in other terms), i've indicated number of times in past
impact that i think this has on his perspective re. certain things
I usually say journalist, but I won't complain about reporter. I'm
clearly not objective, in the New York Times-approved sense, but
getting involved in party politics would ruin whatever credibility I
have - and I don't have a lot of time to spare anyway. According to
the old formula for policial action - agitate, educate, and organize
- I concentrate on the first two. There are plenty of people around
to handle the third.
Doug

Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece

2004-07-21 Thread ravi

i am going to try to do a bunch of responses in one message, so i do not
flood the list. this sub-thread (initiated by me) seems to be going in
the direction of a few previous ones which resulted in a flamewar (some
of it off-list). for that reason: (1) i want to point out that i am only
asking questions here -- i do not have a preferred position. if any of
my messages imply otherwise, please disregard. (2) if this does turn
into a flamewar, i will hold off on further posts, to avoid list traffic.


Michael Perelman wrote:
 On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 09:37:03PM -0400, ravi wrote:

 what then of US responsibility to clean up the mess we created? it
 seems to me that many (not necessarily on pen-l) who call for the
 return of the troops are primarily motivated by their concern for
 the safety of american soldiers. many of these same people i am
 sure supported the invasion that put these soldiers in iraq! why
 not first the call: US corporations out of iraq?

 The US establishment could do a lot more good by leaving Iraq,
 admitting that they were wrong, that the press screwed up, and
 warning that the people should be more attentive to the truth next
 time.


yes, lot more good at home. but does anything but the first point
(leaving iraq) make a difference for iraqis? and it is the first point
that is under question.


 Ravi, with all due respect, Iif the US really wanted to make things
 better the money that they spend now could buy many more Islamic
 soldiers, without the stigma of US control.


probably true, but we probably cannot convince the powers to follow the
above plan. or should we be pressing for it?


 If the US left Iraqis decide the fate of their gov't, it would
 probably be anti-American and theocratic.


and is that a good thing for the iraqis? actually, if the US left iraq,
would there be a govt? the current one is itself a bit of a sham.


 but the military is too blunt an object to acomplish anything good.


that may be the real reason to pull out i.e., if we (on the left) are to
advocate pulling out the troops, we need to make explicit our reasons,
lest we be lumped with the jingoists calling for withdrawal, but
concerned only with american lives.


s.artesian wrote:
 THEIR thugs are OUR thugs, just as they were in Afghanistan.  It is
 the decimation of the social structure under US attack that creates
 the opportunity for and the thugs themselves.  We can control our
 thugs?  That must be comforting to all those in US run prisons.  I
 can't wait until somebody in the US military tells them how much
 better off they are.


i agree with your first point. it is the US attack that created the
environment for thugs to arise and gain power. but now that that is the
situation on the ground, what is the best thing for iraqi people? how
would their condition improve or degrade if the US left?

w.r.t controlling our thugs: i believe we can indeed do that. i tend to
think of the points raised by chomsky in his piece on the responsibility
of intellectuals (substitute for intellectuals: the relatively freer
financially safe/stable US resident members of pen-l; well most i would
guess). like me... sitting here typing this message. instead i could be
out on the street organizing a civil disobedience effort to correct the
actions of the thugs that control my govt. if an iraqi tried to control
his thugs in a similar manner, allawi would probably put a bullet in his
head. no?


 The facts are that the economy is worse off now than before; living
 standards continue to decline; oil revenues are misappropriated.


i agree. these conditions are a direct result of the US invasion. are
they made worse by the presence of US troops?

lets pull the US govt out of iraq. let us prevent contracts from being
handed out to any international corporations. let us call for a UN force
to bring about a real elections, based on a real constitution designed
by the people. let US troops be under such UN command and perhaps even
used only in a non-combat role. wouldn't all that help the iraqi people?
or would the removal of all foreign presence in iraq lead to peace and
justice in iraq?


[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


 This thread is needed and heart breaking. Being compelled to ask if
 the people of Iraq are better off today than they were yesterday . .
 . is mindboggling. Our government bombed this country for ten years
 after Desert Storm . . . inflcited horrible destruction upon the
 people of Iraq . . . murdering their babies . . . then destroyed
 their infrastructure to a large degree and one is asked if the new
 rulers are going to be better than those who created the situation in
 the first place.

 What kind of question is that?


when you say being compelled to ask, do you end up answering your
question above: it is the kind of question that is both heart breaking
and compelling.

would you say that nothing that can happen in iraq after a sudden US
pullout would be worse than what we have and are continuing to do/done

Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece

2004-07-21 Thread Craven, Jim

Michael Hoover wrote:

people do different things, as for doug, he's a reporter (he may think 
of himself in other terms), i've indicated number of times in past 
impact that i think this has on his perspective re. certain things

To which Doug Henwood replied:

I usually say journalist, but I won't complain about reporter. I'm
clearly not objective, in the New York Times-approved sense, but getting
involved in party politics would ruin whatever credibility I have - and
I don't have a lot of time to spare anyway. According to the old formula
for policial action - agitate, educate, and organize
- I concentrate on the first two. There are plenty of people around to
handle the third.

Doug


Response Jim C: First of all, I have always seen these dimensions of
political action as dialectially united and inseparable with each
dimension informing, shaping and testing the others. It is through
organizing and organizing goals/imperatives for example, that one
directs, sees and tests effectiveness--or lack of effectiveness--on the
agitational and educational fronts. Plus, real-world organizing often
provides the raw data and information (outside of ideologically
cherry-picked sources of data, methodologies and data)for effective
agitation and education.

On the issue of objectivity, I have always thought of degree of
objectivity being a function of--and defined by--degrees of
intellectual honesty, humility and courage along with methodological
rigor--without fear or favor--as opposed to some supposed/asserted
non-bias (the only people not biased are those in comas, dead or so
brain damaged as not to know what planet they are on). In this sense,
the NYT (not all the news that fit to print but rather all the news
that is print to fit--the interests of the ruling class) meets none of
tests or definitions of objectivity. 

On the issue of self-identity and self-identification, I have always
defined myself not in terms of my primary occupation for purposes of
earning a living--in my case an academic--but rather in terms of my core
values and yes, biases--anti-Imperialist, anti-racist, anti-colonialist,
anti-fascist, anti-capitalist...

Jim C.

Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation

2004-07-21 Thread Ralph Johansen

Is this discussion being read by anyone? I just tuned in and found this
entry. Where do you find in Marx any reference to innate greed as the
motivation for accumulation under capital? Greed, sloth, etc., are among the
seven deadly sins of western mythology and religious doctrine, the basis of
Judaeo-Christian guilt, not the basis for accumulation under capital
according to Marx. To ascribe an immanent human propensity to accumulate, or
greed', as the basis and motivation for capital accretion is another
expression of Adam Smith's innate propensity to truck, barter and exchange,
which Marx explicitly repudiates.

Ralph

- Original Message -
From: Ted Winslow [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2004 5:57 AM
Subject: Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation


Marx sets out the differentia specifica of capitalist production in
the following passage from Chap. 25 (that this is an expression of
motivation dominated by greed is made clear in other passages in
Capital and elsewhere).  This too is an absolute law of this mode of
production in the sense of law as immanent.

 A rise in the price of labour, as a consequence of accumulation of
 capital, only means, in fact, that the length and weight of the golden
 chain the wage-worker has already forged for himself, allow of a
 relaxation of the tension of it. In the controversies on this subject
 the chief fact has generally been overlooked, viz., the differentia
 specifica of capitalistic production. Labour-power is sold to-day, not
 with a view of satisfying, by its service or by its product, the
 personal needs of the buyer. His aim is augmentation of his capital,
 production of commodities containing more labour than he pays for,
 containing therefore a portion of value that costs him nothing, and
 that is nevertheless realised when the commodities are sold.
 Production of surplus-value is the absolute law of this mode of
 production.

Laws of capitalist production are throughout treated as immanent, a
treatment Marx persistently contrasts with their treatment as imposed
and invariant.

 The law of capitalist production, that is at the bottom of the
 pretended natural law of population, reduces itself simply to this:
 The correlation between accumulation of capital and rate of wages is
 nothing else than the correlation between the unpaid labour
 transformed into capital, and the additional paid labour necessary for
 the setting in motion of this additional capital. It is therefore in
 no way a relation between two magnitudes, independent one of the
 other: on the one hand, the magnitude of the capital; on the other,
 the number of the labouring population; it is rather, at bottom, only
 the relation between the unpaid and the paid labour of the same
 labouring population. If the quantity of unpaid labour supplied by the
 working-class, and accumulated by the capitalist class, increases so
 rapidly that its conversion into capital requires an extraordinary
 addition of paid labour, then wages rise, and, all other circumstances
 remaining equal, the unpaid labour diminishes in proportion. But. as
 soon as this diminution touches the point at which the surplus-labour
 that nourishes capital is no longer supplied in normal quantity, a
 reaction sets in: a smaller part of revenue is capitalised
 accumulation lags, and the movement of rise in wages receives a check.
 The rise of wages therefore is confined within limits that not only
 leave intact the foundations of the capitalistic system, but also
 secure its reproduction on a progressive scale. The law of
 capitalistic accumulation, metamorphosed by economists into pretended
 law of Nature, in reality merely states that the very nature of
 accumulation excludes every diminution in the degree of exploitation
 of labour, and every rise in the price of labour, which could
 seriously imperil the continual reproduction, on an ever-enlarging
 scale, of the capitalistic relation. It cannot be otherwise in a mode
 of production in which the labourer exists to satisfy the needs of
 self-expansion of existing values, instead of, on the contrary,
 material wealth existing to satisfy the needs of development on the
 part of the labourer. As, in religion, man is governed by the products
 of his own brain, so in capitalistic production, he is governed by the
 products of his own hand. [10]

Here, as in many other passages I've previously quoted, rational
relations of production are claimed to be characterized by material
wealth existing to satisfy the needs of development on the part of the
labourer.  The irrational relations of capitalism reverse this
rational means/end relation: the labourer exists to satisfy the needs
of self-expansion of existing values.

Marx also explicitly opposes an immanent conception of law to the
Malthus/Darwin mistaken idea of an invariant natural law of
population:

 The labouring population therefore produces, along with the
 accumulation of

Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004, Michael Hoover wrote:
self-selected candidates often don't care whether they get local party
support or not (and sometimes prefer not), surely progressive/left folks
can do better than this with whatever shell of an organization exists...
I think there is now a much more effective model available for affecting
the nomination than taking over the party: the MoveOn model.  MoveOn
almost nominated Dean.  If we on the left in New York want to nominate a
more left Governor, I think the obvious way to do is get a good democrat
to put their name up, and then back them them with a MoveOn style campaign
aimed at the state.
MoveOn has been incredibly effective in both raising money and increasing
the size of the electoral cadre by lowering the price of commitment.  The
only problem with it is that it's run by a couple of democratic party
hacks.  But the best way to change that is to set up a more left one.
And since they are largely tone deaf, I think you could actually beat them
at their game now that they've been kind enough to write the software and
show the way.
Michael

Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train clarification

Louis,
thank you for this thoughtful review. Where and when will it run?
Also, just to clarify--the film opens on July 23rd and runs
indefinitely, but Howard will be in attendance at the July 28th
screening only.
--
Kelly Hargraves
Publicity
First Run Features
1-877-457-5133 (toll free)

Bush-Hitler: Hypnotizing the Masses

2004-07-21 Thread Craven, Jim

Title: Message



Thought you might find this interesting - http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6528.htm

Re: Bush-Hitler: Hypnotizing the Masses

Title: Message



please, let's 
not compare _anyone_ to Hitler. That kind of discussion degenerates 
quickly...
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine 

  -Original Message-From: PEN-L list 
  [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]On Behalf Of Craven, JimSent: 
  Wednesday, July 21, 2004 2:18 PMTo: 
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: [PEN-L] Bush-Hitler: Hypnotizing the 
  Masses
  Thought you might find this interesting - http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6528.htm

Monthly Review: China and Market Socialism

2004-07-21 Thread Joel Wendland

What is the best source that discusses the pre-reform political and economic
developments in China. The Monthly Review special issue focuses almost
entirely on post-1978. Would a comparison of directions/developments pre-
and post -978 be worthwhile?
Joel Wendland
http://www.politicalaffairs.net
Also, http://classwarnotes.blogspot.com
_
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Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation

Ralph Johansen wrote:
Where do you find in Marx any reference to innate greed as the
motivation for accumulation under capital? Greed, sloth, etc., are 
among the
seven deadly sins of western mythology and religious doctrine, the 
basis of
Judaeo-Christian guilt, not the basis for accumulation under capital
according to Marx. To ascribe an immanent human propensity to 
accumulate, or
greed', as the basis and motivation for capital accretion is another
expression of Adam Smith's innate propensity to truck, barter and 
exchange,
which Marx explicitly repudiates.
Marx, in the passage from the Grundrisse I previously quoted, 
explicitly repudiates the classical political economy's conception of 
greed as innate (this is an expression of its failure to take account 
of the fact that social relations are internal relations) , but 
explicitly endorses the conception as an accurate description of the 
subjectivity dominant in capitalism (the idea of irrational passions 
of this kind playing a positive role in human historical development 
was already present in Kant - see his Idea for a Universal History 
with a Cosmopolitan Purpose - and Hegel, both of whom were influenced 
in their conception of this by Adam Smith).

How the multiplication of needs and of the means [of their 
satisfaction] breeds the absence of needs and of means is demonstrated 
by the political economist (and by the capitalist: in general it is 
always empirical businessmen we are talking about when we refer to 
political economists, [who represent] their scientific creed and form 
of existence) as follows:
  (1) By reducing the worker's need to the barest and most miserable 
level of physical subsistence, and by reducing his activity to the 
most abstract mechanical movement; thus he says: Man has no other need 
either of activity or of enjoyment.  For he declares that this life, 
too, is human life and existence.
  (2) By counting the most meagre form of life (existence) as the 
standard, indeed, as the general standard- general because it is 
applicable to the mass of men.  He turns the worker into an insensible 
being lacking all needs, just as he changes his activity into a pure 
abstraction from all activity.  To him, therefore, every luxury of the 
worker seems to be reprehensible, and everything that goes beyond the 
most abstract need- be it in the realm of passive enjoyment, or a 
manifestation of activity- seems to him a luxury.  Political economy, 
this science of wealth, is therefore simultaneously the science of 
renunciation, of want, of saving- and it actually reaches the point 
where it spares man the need of either fresh air or physical exercise. 
 This science of marvellous industry is simultaneously the science of 
asceticism, and its true ideal is the ascetic but extortionate miser 
and the ascetic but productive slave Thus political economy- 
despite its worldly and voluptuous appearance- is a true moral 
science, the most moral of all the sciences.  Self renunciation, the 
renunciation of life and of all human needs, is its principal thesis.  
The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, 
the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, 
sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save- the greater becomes your 
treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour- your capital.  The 
less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, 
i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of 
your estranged being.  Everything which the political economist takes 
from you in life and humanity, he replaces for you in money and 
wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do.  It 
can eat and drink, go to the dance hall and the theatre; it can 
travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, 
political power- all this it can appropriate for you- it can buy all 
this: it is true endowment.  Yet being all this, it wants to do 
nothing but create itself, buy itself; for everything else is after 
all its servant, and when I have the master I have the servant and do 
not need his servant.  All passions and all activity must therefore be 
submerged in avarice.  (Marx, in Engels and Marx, 1975B, pp.308 309) 
of either fresh air or physical exercise.  This science of marvellous 
industry is simultaneously the science of asceticism, and its true 
ideal is the ascetic but extortionate miser and the ascetic but 
productive slave Thus political economy- despite its worldly 
and voluptuous appearance- is a true moral science, the most moral of 
all the sciences.  Self renunciation, the renunciation of life and of 
all human needs, is its principal thesis.  The less you eat, drink and 
buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public 
house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., 
the more you save- the greater becomes your treasure which neither 
moths

Church minister killed in Indonesia

2004-07-21 Thread Ulhas Joglekar

The HinduTuesday, Jul 20, 2004Indonesian church minister killedJAKARTA: Unidentified gunmen burst into a church in central Indonesia andopened fire, killing the woman minister and wounding four worshippers,police said on Monday. The killing on Sunday evening took place in Palu,central Sulawesi province, which has been hit by sporadic violence betweenMuslims and Christians since 2001. At least 1,000 people have been killed.Two men armed with automatic weapons overpowered the security guard atPalu's Effata Church before opening fire, the national police spokesman Gen.Paiman said. The preacher Susianti Tinulele was killed instantly, and fourothers were injured, he said."We are trying to determine the motive,'' said Gen. Paiman, who goes by asingle name. "It is very disturbing that attacks like this continue tohappen in churches in Palu.''In May, gunmen killed a prominent Christian prosecutor in Palu
 as he leftchurch. The town, 600 km northeast of Jakarta, was a major battleground infighting between Christians and Muslims three years ago. Large-scale clashesbetween the two sides have now subsided, but occasional shootings and bombblasts still take place in the region.APCopyright © 2004, The Hindu.

Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs
online.

Greed

2004-07-21 Thread David B. Shemano

Regarding greed and capitalism, a couple of questions based upon the quotations from 
Mr. Winslow:

Is Marx making an empirical point?  Based upon observation, capitalists are motivated 
by greed?  Or is it a definitional point -- under capitalism, capitalists by 
definition are motivated by greed.  For instance, let's hypothesize a man who 
decides in his youth that there is a Rembrandt that he loves and wants to own.  So he 
decides to become rich enough to buy the Rembrandt and then spends a lifetiime 
engaging in capitalist acts until he is sufficiently wealthy to buy the Rembrandt, at 
which time he sells his business and buys the Rembrandt.  Now, while we can criticize 
this man for being possessive, exclusionary, etc., I would suggest he is not motivated 
by greed in the colloquial sense or even in the sense that Marx seems to be using the 
term.   So he is not a capitalist?

David Shemano


--- Original Message---
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 From: Ted Winslow [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent:  7/21/2004  4:28PM
 Subject: Re: [PEN-L] absolute general law of capitalist accumulation

 Ralph Johansen wrote:

  Where do you find in Marx any reference to innate greed as the
  motivation for accumulation under capital? Greed, sloth, etc., are
  among the
  seven deadly sins of western mythology and religious doctrine, the
  basis of
  Judaeo-Christian guilt, not the basis for accumulation under capital
  according to Marx. To ascribe an immanent human propensity to
  accumulate, or
  greed', as the basis and motivation for capital accretion is another
  expression of Adam Smith's innate propensity to truck, barter and
  exchange,
  which Marx explicitly repudiates.

 Marx, in the passage from the Grundrisse I previously quoted,
 explicitly repudiates the classical political economy's conception of
 greed as innate (this is an expression of its failure to take account
 of the fact that social relations are internal relations) , but
 explicitly endorses the conception as an accurate description of the
 subjectivity dominant in capitalism (the idea of irrational passions
 of this kind playing a positive role in human historical development
 was already present in Kant - see his Idea for a Universal History
 with a Cosmopolitan Purpose - and Hegel, both of whom were influenced
 in their conception of this by Adam Smith).

  How the multiplication of needs and of the means [of their
  satisfaction] breeds the absence of needs and of means is demonstrated
  by the political economist (and by the capitalist: in general it is
  always empirical businessmen we are talking about when we refer to
  political economists, [who represent] their scientific creed and form
  of existence) as follows:
(1) By reducing the worker's need to the barest and most miserable
  level of physical subsistence, and by reducing his activity to the
  most abstract mechanical movement; thus he says: Man has no other need
  either of activity or of enjoyment.  For he declares that this life,
  too, is human life and existence.
(2) By counting the most meagre form of life (existence) as the
  standard, indeed, as the general standard - general because it is
  applicable to the mass of men.  He turns the worker into an insensible
  being lacking all needs, just as he changes his activity into a pure
  abstraction from all activity.  To him, therefore, every luxury of the
  worker seems to be reprehensible, and everything that goes beyond the
  most abstract need - be it in the realm of passive enjoyment, or a
  manifestation of activity - seems to him a luxury.  Political economy,
  this science of wealth, is therefore simultaneously the science of
  renunciation, of want, of saving - and it actually reaches the point
  where it spares man the need of either fresh air or physical exercise.
   This science of marvellous industry is simultaneously the science of
  asceticism, and its true ideal is the ascetic but extortionate miser
  and the ascetic but productive slave. . . . Thus political economy -
  despite its worldly and voluptuous appearance - is a true moral
  science, the most moral of all the sciences.  Self renunciation, the
  renunciation of life and of all human needs, is its principal thesis.
  The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre,
  the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize,
  sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save - the greater becomes your
  treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour - your capital.  The
  less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have,
  i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of
  your estranged being.  Everything which the political economist takes
  from you in life and humanity, he replaces for you in money and
  wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do.  It
  can eat and drink, go to the dance hall and the theatre; it can
  travel, it can

Rec for people in NY tri-state: brilliant 13 minute doc on PBS

[I saw this at a festival this winter.  It's a wonderful movie about the
ambivalences of being a woman.  Funny, heart-warming, and for me at least,
very informative.  It gives a deeply satisfying explanation of the
oft-cited statistic of why most women are wearing the wrong size bra --
which turns out to be a much profounder question than I ever suspected.]
[And it's only 13 minutes long. Although warning -- it could be buried
anywhere in a one hour show of other short docs.  Of course if you record
it you can skip the others.]
A GOOD UPLIFT Will Be Broadcast this Thursday, July 22 on PBS!
Tune in to our PBS broadcast on WNET's Reel NY Series
This Thursday, July 22nd at 10pm (Channel 13 in NYC -- check local listings for
channel info in the tri-state area)
For more info on the broadcast:
http://www.thirteen.org/reelnewyork9/film_w8_f2.html
Perky? Saggy? Straps sliding south? A GOOD UPLIFT is a light-hearted
documentary about a Lower East Side lingerie shop, where owner and Jewish
grandmother Magda, will size you up, hook you in, and set you free in the
perfect bra. With the wink of an eye and quick tug of a strap, Magda
supports her customers' self-esteem and bustline, embracing and enhancing
women of all shapes and sizes as they embark on a journey in pursuit of
the perfect bra. Produced by Faye Lederman, Cheryl Furjanic and Eve
Lederman.
The PBS broadcast of A GOOD UPLIFT marks the kick-off of our national
outreach and education campaign, which is reaching women of diverse ages
and backgrounds, to help them explore issues of women's health and
wellness, body image and self-esteem. With the help of a grant from the NY
State Council on the Arts, our outreach screenings this month included
Girls, Inc., the Lower East Side Girls' Club, the YWCA Center for Girls,
Drisha Women's Institute, and summer camps throughout the Northeast.
For more information, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or visit
www.squeezethestone.org
An engaging documentary... about an Orchard Street bra shop run by a
Hungarian Jew who dispenses much wisdom along with undergarments - The
Village Voice
A film about human emotion at its most personal. It speaks to the heart
with no padding. The San Francisco Jewish Bulletin

Re: Church minister killed in Indonesia

2004-07-21 Thread Diane Monaco


Hi Ulhas! 

Its good to hear from you and thanks for the post -- I had just read
about the tragic event in the IHT. Disastrous and so
dreadful. We might find the following commentary by Meidyatama
Suryodiningrat on the upcoming runoff and the future of a democratic
system in Indonesia, somewhat insightful -- I know I did.
Thanks again.

All the best,
Diane


2019: Deadline for democracy in Indonesia 
Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, Washington
The Jakarta Post
July 22, 2004

As anticipation grows in the lead-up to the Sept. 20 presidential runoff,
one of the pertinent questions that we need to ask ourselves is as
follows: Does the advent of direct, free and fair presidential and
legislative elections secure the future of the democratic system in
Indonesia?

The short answer is no. 

Elections are a necessary ingredient, but insufficient in themselves to
ensure the consolidation of democracy. 

Despite the elections, democracy here is still at the transitional stage.
It would be naive to say that democracy has been consolidated. 

We will be able to say that consolidation has occurred only when
democratic processes and institutions become the only game in
town. As long as people continue to resort to extra-constitutional
means in their efforts to obtain power, it cannot be said that our
democracy has evolved as such. 

Unfortunately, while the concept of democracy has entered into the
national psyche, at this juncture it has yet to prevail as the
predominant culture of Indonesian society -- what Henry Kissinger
described as the defining national experience. 

Democracy has prospered because it is has been seen as an alternative to
the bad times during the latter Soeharto years. 

It has not reached the unquestionable apex of primary conviction attained
by such things as Islam and prostration to community elders. 

Studies of emerging democracies in Latin America show that it takes about
two elections before there is a reversion to authoritarianism.
Consequently, the next 10 to 15 years (two to three elections), will test
the depth of democracy's roots here. 

There are three likely outcomes which could emerge in Indonesia at the
end of this formative period. 
The first sees the establishment of a deep democracy and election of
successive nationalist-secular administrations. 

Under this scenario, a plural civil society matures allowing for
democracy to be consolidated, and ensuring that it is not just a passing
fad. 

The elected administrations do not have to work miracles to achieve this.
The key is whether democracy is made relevant to society. Whether people
feel their elected leaders can bring stability and a just prosperity.


The economy may grow at a lethargic pace, but at least there is
recognition that basic welfare is being tended to and the civil service
is carrying out its minimum duties without unduly taxing the community.


If these events come to pass, democratic tenets will be solidified in our
traditionally paternalistic culture. 

The second scenario is the rise of non-secular elements via the electoral
process as voters seek alternatives and look to less-liberal
options to the pluralistic nation state. 

Heralding this would be years of indigent and teetering democracy. People
get sick of the incumbent major powers -- usually nationalist status quo
elements like Golkar and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle --
who pervert democratic processes during a time of economic stagnation.


People see them as having no commitment to reform as compromises are made
to suit political expedience. 

The civil service decays as corruption reaches Olympic levels. 

Meanwhile, smaller parties, such as the Prosperous Justice
Party, for example, after carefully distancing themselves from the
decaying hegemony, enhance their images as clean parties lead
by honest figures. They become an attractive option for
mainstream voters seeking a civilian alternative. 

The dilemma is that these small parties, despite their pluralistic
claims, were at birth essentially sectarian in nature, leaning toward
some form of fundamentalism. 

This is not to say that their emergence will cause Indonesia to become an
Islamic state. Leaders of these parties are shrewd enough to know that
slogans such as Islamic sharia are too divisive. 

But the likelihood is that national laws will be subverted by exclusively
Islamic tenets, thus causing an erosion of the secular character of the
state. 

The irony of democratic freedoms is that they bring with them the
opportunity for greater intolerance. 
The third scenario is benevolent authoritarianism. 

The rise of a pseudo-democratic regime propped up by a military that
justifies its role by claiming that it is the vanguard of sundry
propagandist icons -- Pancasila, unity, etc -- and slogans of stability
and welfare. 

The predominant features that would serve as the precursors of such a
regression would be decentralization run amok combined with growing
separatist threats. 

The

India's HDI Improves, Ranking Doesn't

2004-07-21 Thread Ulhas Joglekar

The Financial ExpressFriday, July 16, 2004HDI Improves, Ranking Doesn'tOUR POLICY BUREAUPosted online: Friday, July 16, 2004 at 0103 hours ISTNEW DELHI, JULY 15: India's human development index (HDI) has shown asteady improvement in the last couple of years. India's ranking, however, at127 out of 177 countries remains the same as in the previous year.

The challenge before India, according to the UNDP's Human Development Index2004, is to manage cultural diversity. This assumes significance as thecountry, despite its long secular tradition, has experienced considerablecommunal violence in the last one decade.According to the report, which was released by Union minister forinformation, broadcasting and culture S Jaipal Reddy on Thursday, Malaysia,China, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Vietnam rank above India. The countrieswhich are ranked below India are Myanmar, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Nepal andPakistan.India's HDI has consistently gone up from 0.411 in 1975 to 0.595 in 2002.The HDI was 0.579 in 2000. The HDI, it may be mentioned, is an index whichfocuses on three measurable dimensions of human development - living a longand healthy life, being educated and having a decent standard of living. Theindex combines measures of life expectancy, school enrollment, literacy
andincome to allow a broader view of a country's development.The 2002 report, which focuses on "Cultural liberty in today's world",recognises India's vibrant multi-cultural ethos based on a strong andcomposite policy framework that promotes democracy and diversity.

The report, UNDP resident representative Maxine Olson said, "salutes India forits multi-cultural facet." In India there is space for state identity whilemaintaining a strong Central focus simultaneously, she added.Terming the HDI 2004 a monumental contribution, Mr Reddy said that culturalliberty was important not only for peace and progress but also for thesurvival of mankind.

Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs
online.

Re: India's HDI Improves, Ranking Doesn't

2004-07-21 Thread Michael Perelman

To what extent has India managed to handle it diversity other than the Hindu/Muslim
split?
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Re: Greed

David Shemano wrote:
Is Marx making an empirical point?
Yes.  It's an empirical claim about the psychology dominant in 
capitalism.  The idea of greed' as an irrational passion is ancient. 
 As Marx points out in Capital, it can be found in Aristotle.

Aristotle opposes Oeconomic to Chrematistic. He starts from the 
former. So far as it is the art of gaining a livelihood, it is limited 
to procuring those articles that are necessary to existence, and 
useful either to a household or the state. True wealth (o aleqinos 
ploutos) consists of such values in use; for the quantity of 
possessions of this kind, capable of making life pleasant, is not 
unlimited. There is, however, a second mode of acquiring things, to 
which we may by preference and with correctness give the name of 
Chrematistic, and in this case there appear to be no limits to riches 
and possessions. Trade (e kapelike is literally retail trade, and 
Aristotle takes this kind because in it values in use predominate) 
does not in its nature belong to Chrematistic, for here the exchange 
has reference only to what is necessary to themselves (the buyer or 
seller). Therefore, as he goes on to show, the original form of trade 
was barter, but with the extension of the latter, there arose the 
necessity for money. On the discovery of money, barter of necessity 
developed into kapelike , into trading in commodities, and this again, 
in opposition to its original tendency, grew into Chrematistic, into 
the art of making money. Now Chrematistic is distinguishable from 
Oeconomic in this way, that in the case of Chrematistic circulation 
is the source of riches poietike crematon ... dia chrematon diaboles . 
And it appears to revolve about money, for money is the beginning and 
end of this kind of exchange ( to nomisma stoiceion tes allages estin 
). Therefore also riches, such as Chrematistic strives for, are 
unlimited. Just as every art that is not a means to an end, but an end 
in itself, has no limit to its aims, because it seeks constantly to 
approach nearer and nearer to that end, while those arts that pursue 
means to an end, are not boundless, since the goal itself imposes a 
limit upon them, so with Chrematistic, there are no bounds to its 
aims, these aims being absolute wealth. Oeconomic not Chrematistic has 
a limit ... the object of the former is something different from 
money, of the latter the augmentation of money By confounding 
these two forms, which overlap each other, some people have been led 
to look upon the preservation and increase of money ad infinitum as 
the end and aim of Oeconomic. (Aristoteles, De Rep. edit. Bekker, 
lib. l. c. 8, 9. passim.) 
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch04.htm)
Ted

Re: Greed

2004-07-21 Thread Gil Skillman

David S. writes:

Is Marx making an empirical point?  Based upon observation, capitalists
are motivated by greed?  Or is it a definitional point -- under
capitalism, capitalists by definition are motivated by greed.  For
instance, let's hypothesize a man who decides in his youth that there is a
Rembrandt that he loves and wants to own.  So he decides to become rich
enough to buy the Rembrandt and then spends a lifetiime engaging in
capitalist acts until he is sufficiently wealthy to buy the Rembrandt, at
which time he sells his business and buys the Rembrandt.  Now, while we
can criticize this man for being possessive, exclusionary, etc., I would
suggest he is not motivated by greed in the colloquial sense or even in
the sense that Marx seems to be using the term.   So he is not a capitalist?
David Shemano
From a certain theoretical standpoint--and I'm talking mainstream theory,
not Marxist--these questions are irrelevant.  Given competitive markets (or
indeed, just competitive markets for firm equity shares), it can be shown
that, whatever their personal consumption goals, people who own equity
shares in a given firm will want that firm to maximize profits.  So to the
extent that firm managers respond to the concerns of equity holders, they
will act as though greedy--that is, operate the firm so as to maximize
(the expected present value of) profit.  These theoretical results
vindicate and give a precise interpretation for Marx claim that it doesn't
really matter what individual capitalists want to do--Capital wants to
accrue profit (in Marxian terms, surplus value).
Gil

India's HDI Improves, Ranking Doesn't

2004-07-21 Thread Ulhas Joglekar

Yahoo! India Careers: Over 65,000 jobs
online.

Re: Greed

Gil Skillman wrote:
From a certain theoretical standpoint--and I'm talking mainstream
theory,
not Marxist--these questions are irrelevant.  Given competitive
markets (or
indeed, just competitive markets for firm equity shares), it can be
shown
that, whatever their personal consumption goals, people who own equity
shares in a given firm will want that firm to maximize profits.  So to
the
extent that firm managers respond to the concerns of equity holders,
they
will act as though greedy--that is, operate the firm so as to
maximize
(the expected present value of) profit.  These theoretical results
vindicate and give a precise interpretation for Marx claim that it
doesn't
really matter what individual capitalists want to do--Capital wants
to
accrue profit (in Marxian terms, surplus value).
Greed in this context can't be translated into instrumentally
rational profit maximization.  It's an irrational passion
characteristic of a subjectivity produced by the internal social
relations that constitute capitalism.  The irrationality, which will
be found to some degree in the means as well as the end, can't, for
this reason, be competed away,  It's immanent in these relations.
What rational individuals, as Marx (again following an ancient
tradition in ethics and aesthetics) understands rational, will want
is life in the realm in freedom.
Ted

Re: United Nations Human Indicators Index 2004

2004-07-21 Thread michael

I recall that they jiggled to index to make the US look better. Is my
memory playing tricks on me?
Louis Proyect wrote:
Is now available at:
http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2004/pdf/hdr04_HDI.pdf
It is *highly* interesting that for the first time ever Cuba has made it
into the High human development grouping that includes the G-8 nations,
etc. Considering the economic warfare being waged against this country,
the impact of the collapse of its main trading partner, etc., this is
about as great a testimony to the superiority of a planned economy and
socialism as you are going to find.
--
The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901

Re: Greed

Ted Winslow wrote:
Greed in this context can't be translated into instrumentally
rational profit maximization.
Ted, all this squishy talk makes economists nervous.
Doug

Re: United Nations Human Indicators Index 2004

michael wrote:
I recall that they jiggled to index to make the US look better. Is my
memory playing tricks on me?
That was long ago, in the HDI's early days. In the first iteration,
the U.S. scored badly. As someone in the UN told me, orders came
down from the top - the White House - to make the numbers look
better. And they were remade to look better in subsequent years.
One reason - the first Bush admin had published docs saying
illiteracy rates in the U.S. were in the low teens. The HDI people
picked up on this, hammering the U.S. standing. Literacy was dropped
in favor of school enrollment stats, on which the U.S. does well.
Doug

Re: Not a dime's worth of difference

 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/21/04 10:44 AM 

louis, re. post header: not a dime's worth of difference, have you
changed your mind since below appeared as part of earlier post a few
months ago:
Glick is basically mounting a false polemic. He characterizes radicals
in the Debs and Malcolm X tradition as having the same outlook as
expressed in George Wallace's pithy observation that there's not a
dime's worth of difference between the two parties. In reality, this is

not our view at all. If there were not substantive differences between
the two parties, the system would collapse.

i've always thought that wallace's assertion was incorrect, there's at
least a quarter's worth of difference between 2 major parties...

wallace's 'insurgent' 68 campaign resulted in 12-13% of 'popular' vote
and served as basis for 'southern strategy'' that rep party would use
quite successfully, kevin
phillips was nixon adviser that year and his book _the emerging
republican majority' released a year later argued for going after white
southern and white suburban vote...

assumption was that wallace took votes from nixon rather than humphrey
despite fact that wallace and humphrey were both dems, that nixon would
have won two-candidate race between himself and humphrey by larger than
the 45-43% margin in three person race...  michael hoover



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Please Note:
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Sabri Oncu's response to Greed

2004-07-21 Thread michael perelman

Gil Skillman wrote:

 So to the extent that firm managers respond to the concerns
 of equity holders, they will act as though greedy--that is,
 operate the firm so as to maximize (the expected present value
 of) profit.

I believe Gil meant expected present value of future cash flows/net
income/residual income or some such thing, assuming that the managers'
compensation schemes are sufficiently goal congruent, that is,
sufficiently strong to induce them to follow that path.

But why is the below so certain:

 Given competitive markets (or indeed, just competitive markets for
 firm equity shares), it can be shown that, whatever their personal
 consumption goals, people who own equity shares in a given firm will
 want that firm to maximize profits.

For example, what if suddenly the shares of the Nesin Foundation in
Turkey,
which houses orphans and funds their education until they are able to
earn
their own bread, become competitive because a large number of people
become
interested in owning its shares since the foundation pays more to the
orphans that they are dieing to help than other competing foundations?
The
more the funds the foundations spend on the orphans, the more expensive
their shares get, since those who are willing the help the orphans have
more
to pay to these funds to satiate their locally non-satiable utilities by

helping the orphans.

In this case, wouldn't the Nesin foundation want to maximize its loss
which,
unless there are some contraints, is infinite?

May Aziz Nesin, the founder of the Nesin Foundation, one of the greates
writers of all times of my part of the world, rest in peace.

Sabri

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Chico, CA 95929
530-898-5321
fax 530-898-5901

Re: India's HDI Improves, Ranking Doesn't

2004-07-21 Thread Anthony D'Costa

This requires a long response but I must make it short.  The Hindu-Muslim
divide is India's least problematic cultural divide.  If one were to rank
the splits (which in itself is problematic because of its binary approach)
it would the dalits and the tribal communities versus the rest.  The
dalits are the untouchables or in officialese scheduled castes.  But I must
hasten to add that the Indian government's reservation policy (affirmative
action based on equality of outcomes rather than opportunity) has had some
positive impact.  The rise of the lower castes and the untouchables in a
limited way has changed the basic contours of Indian political power.
Regional parties representing local interests have become more salient
and gradually wrested control from national, often elite-centered, and
north-Indian biased parties.  But the caste divide is complicated with
increasingly class based secular demands.  So the divide is a class
issue, which is fused with the caste split.

There are other splits, which have been better handled, for example language.
Thus far 20 languages or so have been recognized by the government.  Each
language at the minimum represents an ethnic community.  But ethnicity goes
beyond language.  It also includes religion, region, culture, and so on.  The
Indian government has generally handled demands for autonomy reasonably
well, if keeping the states within the Indian union is a criterion for
managing splits well.  The Sikhs and Christians haven't done badly in
India at all.  And despite miles to go, women in India are making their
mark in politics, the corporate world, and intellectual life.  So the
Hindu-Muslim divide is confined to certain pockets, exacerbated by the
politicization of religion by the last ruling party.  It finds far less
resonance among the people than what might be perceived at a distance.

Cheers, anthony

xxx
Anthony P. D'Costa, Professor
Comparative International Development/South Asia and International Studies
University of WashingtonCampus Box 358436
1900 Commerce Street
Tacoma, WA 98402, USA

Phone: (253) 692-4462
Fax :  (253) 692-5718
xxx

On Wed, 21 Jul 2004, Michael Perelman wrote:

 To what extent has India managed to handle it diversity other than the
Hindu/Muslim
 split?
 --
 Michael Perelman
 Economics Department
 California State University
 Chico, CA 95929

 Tel. 530-898-5321
 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Re: Not a dime's worth of difference