Re: Israel pushing for Kurdish state? -
Horseshit. Oh, I'm sorry, is horsehit too harsh a word when faced with the bemused scepticism of the professional rationalist? In that case, horseshit. The latest, and perhaps most gruesome, car bombing was adjacent to a police recruitment center. Whether or not you approve of the targets in Ireland or Iraq is not the determining factor. The determining factor in both is the occupation. You don't like their choice of targets? Get your troops out. Do we need to remind you about certain gruesome practices of the Vietnames resistance to the French occupation? To the US occupation? Should we condemn the anti-apartheid fighters who blew cafes frequented by police and others? - Original Message - From: Chris Doss [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2004 7:30 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Israel pushing for Kurdish state? - --- Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Lately the resistance in Iraq has mainly been killing people at open-air markets. The anti-imperialist content of this strategy is hard to discern. Doug --- It doesn't have anti-imperialist content. The point is to make themselves look badass on TV and Jihadi websites and get money and converts. That's why they always stage high-profile PR campaigns of zero military content, like the raid on Ingushetia or the attack on the Indian parliament. __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
Re: Israel pushing for Kurdish state? -
So then why, Mr. Henwood, have you given credence to the notion that the US presence might lend stability to Iraq? - Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2004 8:05 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Israel pushing for Kurdish state? - Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: Have you added up all the Iraqi civilians killed by various factions of Iraqi and non-Iraqi terrorists and compared the number to that of Iraqi civilians killed by US and other foreign troops who invaded and have occupied Iraq and by economic sanctions before the invasion and occupation? Americans who vote for John Kerry who will be the next POTUS, aka the biggest terrorist and war criminal, have no moral standing to pretend to be appalled by un-American terrorists. Only those who do not vote for Kerry or Bush have the moral standing to criticize foreign terrorists. What a load of crap. Elections are about contesting for power, and often involve debased compromises; votes aren't symptoms of moral purity. And why is it impossible to hold two thoughts in mind at once? The sanctions were murderous and the war a horrible crime. There's no doubt that the U.S. and its very junior partners have killed far more Iraqi civilians than the resistance. But there are some people on the western left - some of them members of PEN-L, even - who can't acknowledge that a lot of the Iraqi resistance consists of jihadists and unreconstructed Saddamites, i.e., absolutely awful forces. As Christian Parenti said when he returned from his first trip to Iraq - there's no way anything good can come of this. Doug
Re: India Turned Kashmir into the Bitter Place It Is Now
You were much further ahead when you said you didn't know. Since then you've deployed the outside agitator explanation, and then this, neither of which address the real issues. - Original Message - From: Chris Doss [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2004 8:59 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] India Turned Kashmir into the Bitter Place It Is Now --- Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: India turned Kashmir into the bitter place it is now Typical Guardian headline: Big country (fill in name of big country here) turned small country (fill in name of small country here) into the bitter place it is now. Small countries are by definition victims of other countries and share no responsibility whatsoever for the situation. __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
Re: Israel pushing for Kurdish state? -
To the both of you: Fuck off and die, you self-important pricks. Threaten me because I stayed out past curfew? You know what you can do. And you know where to find me if you don't like it. - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2004 8:42 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Israel pushing for Kurdish state? - He has behaved ok until tonight. One more he is gone; or maybe I will just get him to resub to LBO. On Thu, Jul 29, 2004 at 10:51:40PM -0400, Doug Henwood wrote: sartesian wrote: So then why, Mr. Henwood, have you given credence to the notion that the US presence might lend stability to Iraq? I haven't, asshole. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Israel pushing for Kurdish state?
Chris, You gave a better answer when you earlier when you said you didn't know. Assuming want Kashmiris want or don't want is exactly not the issue. The issue is the material determinants of the struggle, the history of the conflict in the area and what the resolution requires. - Original Message - From: Chris Doss [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 26, 2004 11:14 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Israel pushing for Kurdish state? so, are you two saying that kashmiris are a little group that screeches sovereignity? aren't their demands of self-determination legitimate? why would india go down in flames if the people of kashmir were to gain self-determination? --- You're assuming a majority of the people of Kashmir want self-determination. I don't know if they do. Since most fighters killed in Kashmir (as far as I know) are non-Kashmiris, I doubt that they do. __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
Re: Oink-oink
Your tax-cut dollars at work. - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2004 5:25 AM Subject: [PEN-L] Oink-oink NY Times, July 25, 2004 For Corporate Donors, the Restraints Are Off By GLEN JUSTICE WASHINGTON, July 24 - As the political conventions begin, corporate big spenders, who have been restrained by new campaign finance laws, finally can cut loose. ___
Re: HDI, GNP and the PPP factor
5 for a depreciated dollar on street corners in lower Manhattan. - Original Message - I can buy a banana for 3 cents in my city (Pop. 15 million). How much a banana costs in New York? Ulhas
Re: Dear Peter Coyote
Give 'em hell, Louie! Don't back down. No matter how much they bully you, threaten you, you go Louie, you two-fisted battler for humanity! You are the Hulk Hogan of the open letter, and all that's good and right in the world. And I for one look forward to supporting you in your open letter battles with other icons of imperialism. Who's next? --- Checked for splling. - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2004 6:29 AM Subject: [PEN-L] Dear Peter Coyote As the driving force behind an open letter in support of the Cobb-Kerry campaign, I am a little perplexed over whence you derive your authority. Is it the fact that you star in the cable tv series 4400, about people who were abducted by space aliens? Frankly, I would be far more impressed if Fox Mulder had been heading up such an effort since the X-Files was far less talky and far more entertaining than the show you are presently involved with. Just a suggestion. The ratio between dialog and action on such shows should be approximately 50-50. In 4400, it is about 90-10. Underbudgeted for special effects, are we? Perhaps you are resting on your laurels as a 1960s hippie radical. Your website informs us that: From 1967 to 1975, Peter took off to do the Sixties where he became a prominent member of the San Francisco counter-culture community and founding member of the Diggers, an anarchistic group who supplied free food, free housing and free medical aid to the hordes of runaways who appeared during the Summer of Love. Not that I would gainsay the importance of helping somebody come down from a bummer acid trip (isn't that what they called it?), but I have a feeling that it was far more important to organize protests against the war in Vietnam. You also inform visitors to your website that you were a delegate to the Democratic National Convention which you also covered for Mother Jones Magazine and consider your completely re-built 1964 Dodge 4x4 Town Wagon that you have owned since 1969 your longest-lasting addiction. If I were you, I'd ixnay the references to the Democratic Party and play up the Town Wagon stuff. After all, the Town Wagon was never used to drop napalm on Vietnamese peasants. -- Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Advert for self
The American Plan Time was, not so long ago,when the decline of the dollar was seen as the end of "US hegemony," and the re-ascent of Europe, as if there ever had been, or is, anunified entity called "Europe." The dollar's depreciation was supposed to be an indication of Europe's, as if there ever was single economic unit called "Europe," emerging rivalry, more than rivalry, superiority, to the US's capitalism.
Re: Advert for self
Excuse me, forgot to add: http://www.thewolfatthedoor.blogspot.com - Original Message - From: sartesian To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2004 12:17 PM Subject: Advert for self The American Plan Time was, not so long ago,when the decline of the dollar was seen as the end of "US hegemony," and the re-ascent of Europe, as if there ever had been, or is, anunified entity called "Europe." The dollar's depreciation was supposed to be an indication of Europe's, as if there ever was single economic unit called "Europe," emerging rivalry, more than rivalry, superiority, to the US's capitalism.
Re: HDI, GNP and the PPP factor
Speaking of scientific racism, ever read Chase's Legacy of Malthus? Best work on it, I think. - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2004 10:01 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] HDI, GNP and the PPP factor Economics is all about measuring in measurable. I was reading this week about scientific racism in Victorian England, where people tried to develop mathematical measures of how close various peoples came to being Africans. These measures showed the Irish were almost Black. Such matters were taken very seriously and the time. If we were gone to try to make some sort of quantitative measure of a human development index, I think I will try to get a handle on how people at the bottom fared rather than looking at averages. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Subject: Re: Suicides, Military and Economic
From: http://www.epw.org.in EPW Commentary July 10, 2004 Is Rural Economy Breaking Down? Farmers' Suicides in Andhra Pradesh Farmers' suicides represent only the tip of the iceberg. To attribute the rural crisis entirely to poverty and drought would be an oversimplification of the situation and the several ways in which village economy is under stress today. Hastily announced relief packages do not address this complex situation. E A S Sarma Andhra Pradesh, applauded by every visiting dignitary for its reformist and hi-tech approach to governance, has been in the news, but this time for a different reason. Heavy debt and acute poverty have forced many a farmer in the state to take the extreme step of committing suicide. In his first visit outside Delhi as prime minister, Manmohan Singh met some of the affected families and consoled them with a great deal of compassion and kindness.
Does any of this ring a bell?
Columbia, reports the Financial Times of 07-19-04 has "put itself back on the oil maps" due to "improved security" and revised tax laws. The Clinton-era military aid, along with the assassination of workers' leaders, high prices, and reduced taxes have brought ExxonMobil, Burlington Resources, and Shell back to the offshore Tayrona bloc and the onshore Magdalena Valley. The number of new exploration wells is the highest drilled since1990. 1990? Does that yearring a bell with anyone? Speaking of bells, Columbia's production hasn't exactly followed the Hubbert'sbell curve, remaining relatively static until 1995 whendaily output jumped some 40 percent, jumping another33 percent from 1997 to 1999, then dropping 12percent in 2000. Oh well, those pesky details. Here's another one for those who got their Jones on..., this one about the elasticity of "reserves." Columbia's proven reserves in 1990 measured 3.2 billion barrels; in 2003, 1.6 billion barrels.Oh myGod.the party's over; the hydrocarbon era is done.wait a minute. Between 1990 and 2003, Columbia produced 2.9 billion barrels of oil. How can we subtract 2.9 billion from 3.2 billion and still have 1.6 billion? Because reserves are an economic, not geological, calculation.
Re: Does any of this ring a bell?
I didn't know Uribe hired Sachs and Stiglitz. - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, July 24, 2004 7:52 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Does any of this ring a bell? sartesian wrote: Columbia, reports the Financial Times of 07-19-04 has put itself back on the oil maps due to improved security and revised tax laws. I think hiring Jeffrey Sachs and Joseph Stiglitz might have helped as well. -- Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Thanks for that Brother Melvin. Damned if I didn't think that Fraser tried to fight his way into Jefferson Avenue. But I was out of Detroit in 1973, and heard about it, and the other battles, from friends. 1970-73 were the years, though, weren't they. Funny how it coincides with a peak in the rate of profit, a big dip, and then a recovery in the rate. Do remember the brothers taking over the cage. That one created a picture in my head that will never go away. - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2004 12:58 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Thomas Frank op-ed piece In a message dated 7/20/2004 1:20:58 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Just one more thing: Is apologizing for the occupation part of being a great "uniter" rather than a "divider" of the working class? Just curious, you know, because my experience with union bureaucracies and leadership was that they were the dividers, like, ummh... Douglas Fraser, who secured his position in the UAW, and I would guess the board of Chrysler, after leading armed goons into the Jefferson Avenue plant to break the wildcat strike of the mostly African-American workers protesting the speed-ups and lack of safety. Now that's unity._ Comment Yea . . . Doug Fraser was a piece of work. An old timer out of the Desoto plants and "hard fist socialists" - rough counterpart to say A. Philip Randolph. Fraser was rewarded with a seat on the Chrysler Board of Directors in the wake of the company's failure to meet its obligations in the bond market in 1980 . . . the collapse hit November 1979 when Chrysler reported its greatest lost of revenue in history. The Jefferson events of 1973 was part of an intense strike wave. The summer months in Chrysler plants were unbearable . .
Of Rumps and Dumps
Somebody out there thinks the ruling class has dumped George Bush? Check out:http://www.whitehouseforsale.org/documents/RP_Ind_060204.pdf Check the whole site at: http://www.whitehouseforsale.org
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
First, all three million do not exist in the same locality. Secondly, a large number who voted for Nader then now are happily reunited with friends inside the regular Democratic Party. Thirdly, fat chance of getting the national party to change anything, or even state parties. Remember the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party? Fourthly, the Democratic Party is not an industrial union, like the UAW or UMW, and even there and then independent workers organizations had to be, and will have to be again, constructed against the established leadership. Need I continue? - Original Message - From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 19, 2004 3:29 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Thomas Frank op-ed piece Michael Hoover 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? Doug An argument against it? You would actually try it yourself if it were really a good idea. Yoshie
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Ah, Mr. Wendland, you return. Please, before you remark upon others's comments-- please review your opposition to immediate US withdrawal from Iraq. Explain the accelerating instability brought on by the US presence. Or is that too divisive for you in your role as the sage of social democracy? - Original Message - From: Joel Wendland [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 19, 2004 6:26 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Thomas Frank op-ed piece sartesian wrote: an industrial union, like the UAW or UMW, and even there and then independent workers organizations had to be, and will have to be again, constructed against the established leadership. Ah yes. More splits in the working class. Joel Wendland _ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar - get it now! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/
Re: Venture Communism
One last time: - Original Message - From: Dmytri Kleiner [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2004 4:28 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Venture Communism On Sat, Jul 17, 2004 at 10:20:34PM -0700, sartesian wrote: I don't just allude to a reference, I pointed out the historical failure of such notions as venture communism. -- I pointed to the historical failures of these attempts and the failures of social revolutions that in fact did not complete the violent process of expropriating the bourgeois system on an international scale. Violence seems to be your numbe one fear . What you propose is not different that Owenism and a new New Lanark. At core your proposal is Create 2, 3, many Amanas. _ What does this have to do with Voluntarism? Do you not believe that my labuor can be assest to the struggle of labour against property? Whithout Venture Commmunism, my labour is an asset to the enemy. The surplus value of my labour helps fund the guns and prisons and rents that support the ruling class. Why are you against my effort to take this surplus value away from them and put it instead towards the accumulation of democraticly controlled communal wealth? __ Your response is proof of the voluntarism. 'Taking surplus value away from them and put it instead towards the accumulation of democratically controlled communal wealth?' Workers don't have that choice. Plain and simple. They sell their labor power out of necessity. That same necessity creates the potential, the necessity, for social, even violent, revolution. You think the workers who worked at the Ypsilanti, Michigan M-16 factory waiting to be drafted during Vietnam War did it out of choice? Was there a choice? Well, sure, you could go to Canada or Sweden; you could do a number of things and even get support. But almost everyone worked and waited. That's called necessity. And many upon return, if they did return, could consider, not alternative democracies, but immediate struggle for radical transformation, in class vs. class terms. ___ There is no me-ism here, all workers are faced with the same question. Venture Communism provides an answer, ___ Workers are not at all faced with the 'same question.' They face this reality, this struggle with this social organization, not the question of whether to sell their labor to Ford, or 'share' it in New Amana. Choice has absolutely nothing to do with it. __ How are we ever to overthrow the class relation while making the ruling class more powerfull with our own labour? Please explain how overthrowing the ruling class will come about. It seems you believe that we can overthrow them by reading history book alone. _ News flash: it, overthrowing the ruling class, has been attempted, and even had some success. None of the attempts or success involved venture communism, democratically shared profits, etc. They all did involve a certain amount of violence, and a class, not individuals, that utilized that violence in defense of that social revolution. Nothing wrong with that, although, again, that seems to be your greatest fear. _ What do I propose workers do? That's a voluntarist question which has nothing to do with the actual concrete reality. What people //do// has nothing to do with reality? Are you serious? __ What people do has everything to do with reality. Proposing Owenism for social emancipation has nothing to do with reality. Providing do be and don't be lists has nothing to do with the actual development of social struggles. Would you propose that African-Americans would have been better off by not demanding, not entering employment as industrial workers? Is it not more accurate to say that capital's requirement of access to labor triggered the civil rights movement and only by engaging that demand, the real class content of African-American emancipation was made manifest? ___ The more they provide their surpluss value to the Capitalists, the more they build their own prisons. __ You got your dialectic ass-backwards. The contradictions are in capital. Capital sows the seeds of its own destruction. We are not discussing alternatives. There are no alternatives to the struggles of workers in and out of the workplace against the ruling structure, class, and organization of capital. _ Finally, your inability to see capital (and money-capital) as class relations says all that needs to be said about your alternative, and your democracy. Capital is not just the accumulation of dead labor, it's the accumulation of expropriated, alienated, social dead labor
Re: [Fwd: Swans' Release: July 19, 2004]
I've stay out of this discussion, to everybody's relief (and my own), but is it possible that anyone can really endorse voting for a national Democratic candidate as progressive, or even the lesser evil? I guess so, but it takes a complete disavowal of history to do so. It takes a deliberate denial of reality. Ask a simple question: Are the Democratic Party and its national candidates calling for immediate, unconditional withdrawal from Iraq? No. I'm sure Kerry has a plan for disengagement. So did Nixon, and that plan precipitated more deaths. Because it isn't this or that candidate of the bourgeois order that matters. It is the need of the order itself that dictates war and the continuation of war. The first requirement for any step forward is rupturing the two party continuum-- preferably on a directly labor/class basis, but in the absence of that-- the next best thing-- the lesser good. Why not give the lesser good the same chance as the lesser evil?
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Dumped George Bush? Not hardly. Put 200 million into his campaign and he hasn't, and they haven't, started yet. Kerry? That's call hedging the position. You don't dump somebody by place a 200 million dollar bet. Dump Bush Oh no, they love this love-child of Ronald Reagan, and I do mean THEY, collective, plural, class. He embodies everything they hold to be self-evident, those natural virtues -- venality, vindictiveness, viciousness. - Original Message - From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2004 4:51 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Thomas Frank op-ed piece Shane Mage and Doug Henwood say that the ruling class appear to have dumped George W. Bush, and I agree with them. Democratic Party front groups want us to think that the November election will be a referendum on Bush, but the ruling class know that it will be a referendum on Kerry.
Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece
Rump? Not hardly. In 2000 corporate contributions to the GOP and Bush exceeded the amount to Dems by 2 to 1. That rate continued, at least through 2003. As for the $200 million being a modest sum-- it exceeds by 25%, if memory serves me, the previous record for funds raised, the previous record belonging also to the current record holder, George W. Bush. That's a mighty big rump. - Original Message - From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 18, 2004 5:50 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Thomas Frank op-ed piece At 8:05 PM -0700 7/18/04, sartesian wrote: Dumped George Bush? Not hardly. Put 200 million into his campaign and he hasn't, and they haven't, started yet. Kerry? That's call hedging the position. You don't dump somebody by place a 200 million dollar bet. Dump Bush Oh no, they love this love-child of Ronald Reagan, and I do mean THEY, collective, plural, class. He embodies everything they hold to be self-evident, those natural virtues -- venality, vindictiveness, viciousness. There will be a rump faction that continues to support Bush, but the rest have probably already made the decision that Bush does more harm than good for them. I think that $200 million is not a particularly large sum for the ruling class. -- 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: Venture Communism
Well, if you want another view.. It seems to me that Venture Communism is little different than Proudhon's people's banks dealing in labor money. Rather than Venture Communism, this proposal should be called finance Proudhonism is no alternative to advanced capitalism or social revolution. The utopian formula at the heart of Venture Communism might have some application in isolated, and essentially agrarian, communities, but it has no application in class struggle between labor and property.
Re: Farm Holiday Associationn (was Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece)
Papers of Milo Reno available at: http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/MSC/ToMsc100/MsC44/msc44.html
Re: Venture Communism
Shares of what acquired by labor instead of property? What are you going to acquire buy your arm and hammer buy outs? Exxon? Flextronics? Tinto Rio? Coca-Cola? I don't think so. You cannot buy out, substitute, or displace the existing social accumulation. You can seize it, destroy it, etc. Splitting profits equally? No such thing. Oxymoron. Profits by definition are a function of inequality. And as soon as your isolated communist community comes into contact with the world of finance capital, you're venture begins its morping into good old private capitalism. Plenty of history to demonstrate all of the above and all of the above are compressed in the history of the Russian Revolution. - Original Message - From: Dmytri Kleiner [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, July 17, 2004 8:41 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Venture Communism On Sat, Jul 17, 2004 at 09:25:07AM -0700, sartesian wrote: Well, if you want another view.. It seems to me that Venture Communism is little different than Proudhon's people's banks dealing in labor money. Thanks for the tip! I will investigate Proudhon's people's banks. Rather than Venture Communism, this proposal should be called finance Proudhonism is no alternative to advanced capitalism or social revolution. It is only meant to be an alternative to existing ways to start new organisations, it is an investment scheme, it is not a politcal system. However, by making these new organisations more equitable and more democratic it paves the way to socialism and is therefore an alternative to violent revolution, with the advantage that existing social accumulation is preserved and not destroyed. The utopian formula at the heart of Venture Communism might have some application in isolated, and essentially agrarian, communities, but it has no application in class struggle between labor and property. Why so? The forumla at the heart of Venture Communism is shares aquired by labour instead of money and profits split equaly, why do you imagine that limits its application as you describe? Please explain. Regards, Dmytri.
Re: Venture Communism
- Original Message - From: Dmytri Kleiner [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, July 17, 2004 8:33 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Venture Communism I agree. But shooting back when you've got a slingshot and they have a apache helicopter is futile and playing into their hands. __ Come on comrade, take a look around. Same thing about slingshots and helicopters was said 40 years ago about Vietnam, Cuba-- today about Palestine, Iraq.. . etc. All crap. Armed struggle is imposed, not chosen. Just that simple. .
Re: Venture Communism
Then you don't agree. Vietnam was outgunned. So was Cuba. This is a social struggle, not technical, not simply military. Futile? Here, try this one, or two : Attention workers of Paris. This commune of yours is doomed. All resistance will be crushed. Surrender. We have artillery in position at every entrance to your city. Or this: Attention Jews of Warsaw, your uprising is futile. Do not resist. Sound promising? The bourgeoisie rarely have a moment's hesitation about deploying deadly force, and when they do it's only because they are afraid of losing, or have already lost, control of the battlefield. That's the hard cold fact. Modest, relatively, struggles for union organization have been, are met almost everywhere everytime by deadly force-- in the advanced countries as well as less-developed. That's another fact. Outgunned? so was Robert Williams. Big deal. We neither glorify nor reject armed struggle. It's a tactic. But armed struggle shouldn't be the issue here-- it's an issue of power-- of seizing control of the social machinery-- not gently easing it out, or sending the bourgeoisie out to greener pastures. It's about class vs. class-- rulers vs. ruled. And the rulers, as a class, are not bought out by golden parachutes. - Original Message - From: Dmytri Kleiner [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, July 17, 2004 9:19 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Venture Communism On Sat, Jul 17, 2004 at 12:14:53PM -0700, sartesian wrote: - Original Message - From: Dmytri Kleiner [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, July 17, 2004 8:33 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Venture Communism I agree. But shooting back when you've got a slingshot and they have a apache helicopter is futile and playing into their hands. __ Come on comrade, take a look around. Same thing about slingshots and helicopters was said 40 years ago about Vietnam, Cuba-- today about Palestine, Iraq.. . etc. All crap. Armed struggle is imposed, not chosen. Just that simple. I agree that it is imposed not chosen, all I am saying is that it is futile. We are outgunned.
Re: Venture Communism
1. The fallacy in this type of proposal, venture communism, has been examined and exposed many times before you have re-proposed an essentially archaic notion. Marx demolished this notion in many of his works-- and took Proudhon apart in The Poverty of Philosophy. You will need to familiarize yourself with that work if you want to make sense of and in this discussion. 2. You propose a false strategy, of workers either doing nothing or engaging in hedge-fund socialism. Rather than pursue self-capitalist alternatives, the real struggles of the class are what the workers should do. 3. Yes capital can be purchased. But it's still capital. Purchase is not expropriation. Expropriation means the emancipation of labor and the means of production from the constraints of profit, of private property. 4. Oh yeah, it's a trick all right, the sharing of profits equally, so much of a trick that it doesn't, can't, won't exist in anything other than a Ponzi scheme. 5. How so? Because in order to purchase material from the non-venture communist world, the medium of exchange, money, will have to be absorbed into your hedge-fund utopia, and with money, debt, and then production becomes organized necessarily, for the service of money, and the servicing of the debt. 6. Glad to hear of your religious belief in your venture communist corporations. Let me know when the comet comes. - Original Message - From: Dmytri Kleiner [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, July 17, 2004 9:46 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Venture Communism On Sat, Jul 17, 2004 at 12:11:58PM -0700, sartesian wrote: Shares of what acquired by labor instead of property? Share of a new organisation, a startup. That's why I all it //Venture// Communism instead of say //Investment// Communism or //Merchant// Communism. The Venture Commune invests third party capital, in the form of labour, in new ventures. What are you going to acquire buy your arm and hammer buy outs? Exxon? Flextronics? Tinto Rio? Coca-Cola? I don't think so. Not as a start up, but if the start up grows enoough it starts to accumalate other kinds of Capital as well as labour capital, i.e. Money Capital, Capital Goods, it can infact buy out large organisations, or simply take away there markets. You cannot buy out, substitute, or displace the existing social accumulation. You can seize it, destroy it, etc. Please explain why you believe this is so. Capital can be seized, social accumulation is accumulated capital, therefor social accumlation can be seized. Capital can be destroyed, social accumulation is accumulated capital, therefor social accumlation can be destroyed. Capital can be purchaced, social accumulation is accumulated capital, therefor social accumlation can be purchaced. Why do you think the last syllogism is different from the first two? Splitting profits equally? No such thing. Oxymoron. Profits by definition are a function of inequality. Thats the trick in Venture Communism, all share holders are equal, all workers are shareholders, profits are thus shared equaly. And as soon as your isolated communist community comes into contact with the world of finance capital, you're venture begins its morping into good old private capitalism. How so? All workers are shareholders. Shares can not be purchased with money. Profits are devided equaly. Plenty of history to demonstrate all of the above and all of the above are compressed in the history of the Russian Revolution. I see, so what do you suggest workers do in the mean time, give up? Be happy working for capitalists and having no stake? Starve? Or should we grab a molitov cocktail and hit the streats immedietly to die for your revolution? Perhaps we should just read about history and do nothing at all? Venture Communism is not a politcal system, as I've explained, it is a (emerging) plan for starting new organisations, organisations that are equitable and democratic. Dispite your unexplained insistenance to the contrary, I believe than new organisations can replace old organisations and change the world. Regards, Dmytri.
Re: More on Venture Communism
The proposal for venture communism, is above all, ahistorical, derived from a moral sensibility and not the determinants of social organization. And in passing, but more than an in passing, it must be noted that for Marxists there is no such thing as natural social law, except perhaps in a list of oxymorons that would include fair competition and equal profits. I don't think I need to summarize the The Poverty of Philosophy, but I do think D. Kleiner should take the time to study this work as it anticipates and refutes his proposed system 155 years prior to his presentation. Creation of utopian communes has been attempted and executed any number of times, the venture version is not essentially different than any of these attempts. It attempts a pretense of originality with its labor financial instruments, but even these are old hat. Remember Huey Newton's picture on the dollar bill? The real detail of how such a venture would function, of course, are left out. How for example, would products be distributed within and without the venture? How would that expense be absorbed when and if market returns of production do not coincide exactly in time to sustain reproduction of the entire venture? How would the needs of the producers be satisfied, outside the realm of production. Say the medical needs of those who can't work, those with many children, those who need to work less. If their labor times are different, then their labor money will be different, and the equal distribution goes down the drain. But even if not-- what about providing for those needs? Education, medicine, infrastructure? How will the alternative venture enterprise achieve that? And how will it pay its taxes? And you know what? The answers don't even matter. Because the economic concentration of power and production inside the capsule of private property, under the control of the bourgeoisie, was a product of historical necessity-- and the solution to the conflict between the means and relations of production is not amenable to alternatives to the overthrow of that specific, obsolete property relation. That's what it's all about. It is definitely not about celebrating individual empowerment and individual responsibility that capitalism has created, first and foremost because capitalism has created no such thing-- it has empowered a specific class and only those individuals who meet the needs of that class; it has, in the corporation, created the exact antithesis of individual responsibility, only holding individuals responsible for transgressing upon the dictates of private property. Although perhaps you could sell shares in venture communism to those seeking Marxist Financial Advice.
Re: Venture Communism
I don't just allude to a reference, I pointed out the historical failure of such notions as venture communism. Your entire argument is based on a form of voluntarism: Currently my labour enriches capitalists. If I stop doing this then my family faces poverty. Should I feed my child Das Kapital instead of food? This sort of me-ism has nothing to do with the actual development of capitalism or class struggle. The commanding height of the society is the organization of the economy, which is class relation, property and labor. You cannot supplant that organization without overthrowing that class relation, without expropriating the property that encapsulates the means of social production. What do I propose you do? Sorry to be so blunt, but I couldn't care less. What do I propose workers do? That's a voluntarist question which has nothing to do with the actual concrete reality. What workers do do is struggle with and against exploitation. That's what they will continue to do, just as they are forced to continue to be workers. From those immediate, real, concrete struggles, revolutionary programs emerge, articulating the necessary expropriation. To say there is nothing wrong with capital, but all is wrong with capitalism is fetishism to the max. As if one could exist without the other. Capital is not some product, material, inventory. It is a social relation of production. Money is an abstracted value, nothing more, nothing less? OK, but that abstracted value is exchange value, which means wage-labor, which means the appropriation of surplus-value in the service of further empowerment of private property . That's somewhat more than an artifact. Your system will exist, if it ever exists, inside the system of world markets, inside the demands of exchange value and will necessary absorb those demands if and when it ever attempts to expand, if and when it reproduces itself-- the realization of your equal profits will not be coincident with the costs of production. Your labor money and peoples banks won't mean shit when it comes to paying your suppliers-- see for example the history of Poland 1970-1992.
Re: Hawking black hole
But you're not Hawkings - Original Message - From: Gassler Robert [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, July 16, 2004 12:03 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Hawking black hole If I sent a note to the American Economic Association and said 'I have solved the neoclassical autism problem and I want to talk about it' do you think they'd buy it, and just go on my reputation? Guess not.
Re: Russia Steps in to Aid Banking Crisis
I think Chris Doss's remarks on Russian banking worries (and I think they are in the worry, not crisis,category) are a little too non-chalant.. The Guta bank is/was/had been considered one of the sounder banks in the Russian financial network, with higher quality loans/assets to better performing Russian businesses. So its closing to prevent depositor runs, the interruption of electronic transfers, etc. is of significance to the international financial network which wants to conduct its business through legitimized, capitalized institutions. Also, Russian bank business loans measure out at about 21 percent of annual GDP, nowhere near Thailand's 75% but right in line with Indonesia's measure, which almost says it all. OAO Sherbank (at least that's how I read the name) has about 50% of all deposits and 25% of all assets in the Russian banking system.
Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
One more thing... I went back and paged through Capital, and then picked up Vol 1 of the Science of Logic, and damned if I can find anything anywhere in Capital that approaches, parallels, the language Hegel uses in the Science of Logic-- not that Hegel doesn't make sense-- but Capital, to a certain extent, is a demystification of Hegel - Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _. I don't reject dialectical thinking. I just don't like Hegelian jargon. I think that all of CAPITAL could be translated in relatively simple language without dropping Marx's dialectical method, mode of presentation, or understanding of the world. jim
Re: Oil surprises
Oh Jim, you are much too generous. The Hubbert Peak theory, far from even being randomly correct has been shown to be internally inconsistent, and externally inaccurate. - Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 11, 2004 9:30 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Oil surprises Auerbach writes: The reference to Hubbert's peak -- after the geologist who first made the case for depletion dynamics in the oil patch -- omits to note that the prediction was highly controversial inside and outside of the oil business until the 1980s, when it was proven correct. no prediction can ever be proven correct. Just because someone predicts that it's going to rain tomorrow -- and then it does -- doesn't mean that his or her prediction was correct. The prediction can easily be right for the wrong reason, for example, based on astrology or assuming that oil issues can be reduced to mere geology. A better test would be to see if the person is correct _repeatedly_. Unfortunately, outside of physics and other physical sciences, that's pretty difficult. jd
Re: Oil surprises
Egg-zackly. - Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 11, 2004 10:21 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Oil surprises kinda like astrology? Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine From: PEN-L list on behalf of sartesian Sent: Sun 7/11/2004 1:19 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Oil surprises Oh Jim, you are much too generous. The Hubbert Peak theory, far from even being randomly correct has been shown to be internally inconsistent, and externally inaccurate. - Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 11, 2004 9:30 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Oil surprises Auerbach writes: The reference to Hubbert's peak -- after the geologist who first made the case for depletion dynamics in the oil patch -- omits to note that the prediction was highly controversial inside and outside of the oil business until the 1980s, when it was proven correct. no prediction can ever be proven correct. Just because someone predicts that it's going to rain tomorrow -- and then it does -- doesn't mean that his or her prediction was correct. The prediction can easily be right for the wrong reason, for example, based on astrology or assuming that oil issues can be reduced to mere geology. A better test would be to see if the person is correct _repeatedly_. Unfortunately, outside of physics and other physical sciences, that's pretty difficult. jd
Tax Dollars At Work
I hate to say I told you so department: Tom Ridge asking Ashcroft to look into what it would take to postpone the November elections... No joke. Hmmh.. what comes to mind? Declaring everyone enemy combatants? Simple exercise of executive privilege? Resolution of Congress authorizing the president to take all necessary actions? Declaration from White House counsel that since 9/11 the Constitution need not apply? -- or how about a Bush favorite...withdrawing from the Constitution since it was agreed to by prior administrations? Well that will resolve the old lesser of two evils argument. Me? I called this over a year ago, and I got a passport and an open plane ticket
Re: Klebnikov
Cynical jaded New Yorker wants to know: When you lend someone counterfeit money, are you still doing that person a good turn? Should expect repayment, with interest? In real or counterfeit money? - Original Message - From: Daniel Davies To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 11, 2004 12:30 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Klebnikov Michael was just asking how the Russian oligarchs would go about making use of Chechen freedom fighters; my point was only that, in general, there is a surprisingly efficient global community of violent men and no particular instance of thugs of two kinds working together ought to necessarilybe regarded as surprising. The Korea-Birmingham(UK) connection was the subject of an episode of Panorama a couple of weeks ago, which is why it stuck in my mind. NB that the "Official" IRA is not the same thing as the "Provisional" IRA which put the bombs in pubs (and neither is the same as the "Real IRA" which is the only currently active nationalist terrorist group), and that the Officials have been basically dormant since the 1980s. dd -Original Message-From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: 11 July 2004 20:13To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Re: Klebnikov In a message dated 7/11/2004 1:20:45 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: It's a useful corollorary (?) of social network theory that almost all badlads are joined up together, via a smallish number of "connected node"individuals. The North Korean government's forged $100 bills ended up financing the ecstasy trade in Birmingham, via the Libyans, the mafiya and the Official (Maoist) IRA.dd Comment Explain the context of "bad" and why one would link the government of North Korea with the Mafia . . . although I have no moral gripe with counterfeit money. It is my understanding the biggest counterfeiter of currency is the world today is the US government. Is not fiat money counterfeit by definition? Why is this important or rather what is the meaning? I have no principle opposition to counterfeiting . . . only bourgeois property. Do you mean Birmingham in Alabama or England? Just curious. Does it follow that without the North Korea government there would be no ecstasy trade in Birmingham? If not . . . what is the point of this? Dope as consumption always drives private accumulation of capital . . . going back to the evolution of spices and sugar as items of trade. Molasses . . . liquor and opium came later . . . but its all dope . . . converted into a "need" diving private accumulation. Is this a moral position on how the IRA raises money? Is it better to rob banks . . . cheat the tax man . . . or put a few products in ones purse while shopping? I am all ears. Melvin P.
Re: Spam fraud moves up a notch
The Claims Resolution Tribunal has been mandated to report all unclaimed funds for permanent closure of accounts and transfer of existing credit balance into the treasury of Switzerland government as provided by the law for management of assets of deceased beneficiaries who died interstate (living no wills). __ OK, I'll ask... isn't dying interstate a federal offense, and thus falls under jurisdiction of Fumblers, Bumblers, and Idiots?
Re: Spam fraud moves up a notch
New that Jim, it was just a joke... interstate, Volker can't wait to send this guys my CC number - Original Message - From: Craven, Jim [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 11, 2004 4:03 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Spam fraud moves up a notch Should be reading dying intestate or without a will. Jim C. -Original Message- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of sartesian Sent: Sunday, July 11, 2004 6:57 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Spam fraud moves up a notch The Claims Resolution Tribunal has been mandated to report all unclaimed funds for permanent closure of accounts and transfer of existing credit balance into the treasury of Switzerland government as provided by the law for management of assets of deceased beneficiaries who died interstate (living no wills). __ OK, I'll ask... isn't dying interstate a federal offense, and thus falls under jurisdiction of Fumblers, Bumblers, and Idiots?
Re: Fw: [stop-imf] Africa should not pay its debts - Jeffrey Sachs
Really? That's quite an aberration-- participating in the dismantling of the Russian Revolution, transforming the remnants of socialized property into private fortunes. And now Sachs got religion? Yeah right, him and O'Neil. Save us from the basically good blokes and we can handle the rest. - Original Message - From: Daniel Davies [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, July 10, 2004 10:27 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Fw: [stop-imf] Africa should not pay its debts - Jeffrey Sachs Sachs has always been basically a man of the left, and has been saying sensible things about sovereign default fo longer than anyone else I can remember (including me and Richard Portes). Perhaps the whole Harvard Institute thing should be viewed by revisionist historians as a brief aberration in the career of a basically good bloke. dd
Re: absolute general law of capitalist accumulation
Chris Burford states at the beginning of his post that the general law exists only to conclude, in his remedy, that Marx expresses the law upside down: Chris argues that the result of this law is the relative privilege and well being of the workers in the metropolitan countries, and that the only solution is a halt in the wealth (living standards?) of those workers in favor a radical redistribution of use values.. In theory, the general law argues that the 'reserve army' does not function to enhance the 'wealth' of the employed workers, but rather to pressure against relative and absolute improvements. In fact the bourgeoisie do not redistribute the extracted values from imperialized countries to their own workers. Careful examination of the facts regarding capital import/export, proportions of profit from overseas operations, rentier instruments etc, show that none of the notions so often vulgarized from Lenin's polemic about imperialism actually describe the functioning of the advanced capitalism. Any number of radicals, of left or right, can and will argue that the workers in the advanced countries must sacrifice their wealth for reasons of right and left-- like the national good, the international good, the moral good, and for the sake of the soul. But such sacrifice has nothing in common with Marx's analysis. Believe me, before the workers of the advanced countries begin their revolutionary struggle, they will have sacrificed plenty, without benefit to the workers of the less advance countries. The bourgeoisie will see to that. When the advanced workers begin their revolutionary struggle, they will be sacrificing more. The civil war will see to that. But to propose that the outcome of that process, which liberates the means of production from the obsolete, destructive relations of production, requires further declines in living standards is to make the revolution at heart a zero-sum at best, and a negative in practice. - Original Message - From: Chris Burford [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2004 12:16 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] absolute general law of capitalist accumulation This revolution has to be achieved by radical reforms in the *relative* distribution of world money, and in the first place by the peaceful but utterly effective dethronement of the dollar. But this is not reformist conjuring tricks, essential though it is for the International Monetary Fund to discuss reforms in an elegant and civilised way. It implies in real terms that the relatively vastly privileged working people of the metropolitan heartlands must accept a halt on their relative rise in wealth in return for a redistribution of use values and social values, while the investment energies of the human race for perhaps at least a generation go into repairing the devastation of the lives and environment of the great majority of human beings. IMHO Chris Burford London - Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2004 2:46 PM Subject: [PEN-L] absolute general law of capitalist accumulation Does the empirical generalization suggested below have validity today nationally or globally ? Charles The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and energy of its growth, and, therefore, also the absolute mass of the proletariat and the productiveness of its labour, the greater is the industrial reserve army. The same causes which develop the expansive power of capital, develop also the labour-power at its disposal. The relative mass of the industrial reserve army increases therefore with the potential energy of wealth. But the greater this reserve army in proportion to the active labour-army, the greater is the mass of a consolidated surplus-population, whose misery is in inverse ratio to its torment of labour. The more extensive, finally, the lazarus-layers of the working-class, and the industrial reserve army, the greater is official pauperism. This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation. Like all other laws it is modified in its working by many circumstances, the analysis of which does not concern us here. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm#S4
Re: Christian Parenti reporting from Falluja
Answer the questions: Why do you support continued US occupation of Iraq when clearly that occupation has made things worse? Are you the one who thinks things have to get worse before they get better? - Original Message - From: Joel Wendland [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2004 6:09 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Christian Parenti reporting from Falluja
War aint No Game: Do not Pass Go, Do not collect $200
Let's be clear, Western, or US military strategy is not based on poker, boxing, football, chess, or Pac Man. And as far as I can tell, which isn't too far but was way too close for comfort, infantry tactics and strategy of the Asian opponents to the US are not based on Go. The US military too believes in fluidity, onlythey call itmaneuver and mobility.Let's not forget that the US military inVN deployed thousands of helicopters totransport troops and equipment, to insert andretrieve and relocate battalion and brigade strength forces in shorter time than ever before. Remember "air-mobile"? Game analogies do not apply. Material determinants do. So the US, with its production, construction, destruction, delivery capabilities, developed the strategy of superiorfirepower and logistical dominance. The is the historical resultof the Union triumph in theCivilWar. And there has never been any military to match the logistical capability of the US. Check the US airlift to Israel during the Yom Kippur War coincident with the tremendous resupply of SVN. Check Gulf War 1. Check the logistical fuck-up in Gulf War 2. As for the Chinese "strategy of stones.." look, all wars are wars of attrition-- "we" killmore of "them" than "they" kill of "us," until somebody runs out of us or them. Simple. Everything else is tactics. China doesn't throw stones. China has exhibited the capacity to absorb tremendous rates of attrition-- not unlike the USSR in the defeat of Nazi Germany, the USSR having tremendous logistical delivery capability to resupply, in body and machine its divisions. "Amateurs talk tactics. Professionals talk logistics." "Fighting the actual battle is the easiest part..." --Gen. William T. Sherman
The American Tradition
From Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld by David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro: There was one case in which Japanese rightists and American intelligence werer caught red-handed [sic!]. This was the Kaji affair, which began in late 1951. A leftist writer named Wataru Kaji was kidnapped by G-2 and handed over to the newly ensconced CIABut Kaji was held incommunicado formore than a year by the CIA and was allegedly subjected to torture.When the affair came to light, the Japanese were outraged because Kaji's detention lasted past April 1952, when Japanese sovereignty was restored. The press also discovered the existence of a Japanese espionage group that had aided the Americans in the kidnapping... p.47 Speaking ofprecedents to Iraq, ghost prisons, and the sort of stability the US brings with occupation.. "...But few understand that Americans were hiring mobsters in Japan as well in a secret war against the left that began as early as 1946. At its helm stood Major General Charles Willoughby, MacArthur's intelligence chiefWilloughby and his trusted aides in G-2 worked to directly repress the left,and to indirectly repress it, by aiding and financing rightist thugs or yakuza to do the job . [Willoughby's] mentor, General MacArthure referred to him as 'my lovable Fascist.' Willoughby had functioned under MacArthur in Manila, and there became close to the Falangist Spaniards who supported Franco." _ p.45 Tell me again about the terrible consequences to stability if the US immediately quits Iraq? Where and when in history has US occupation everadvanced the prospects for emancipation? Not after the "great," "noble," "patriotic," "just" war against "fascism," obviously. And if not then, when exactly? I only bring this up because there is this issue of accountability-- you advocate something, you have to account for the consequences in the same forum where you advanced your position.
Re: China and the American consumer
- Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 04, 2004 10:47 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] China and the American consumer A lot of this would be changed if China let the renminbi float (i.e., rise). The predictions at the end seem similar to those made about Japan awhile back (e.g., in Michael Crichton's RISING SUN) before the Japanese miracle popped. jd -- The article itself, like those articles about 20 years ago, have a lot of the old yellow peril theme. The Chinese economy is about as uneven, ragged, stumbling as you can get and still be upright. Agriculture has been decimated-- and there is no contradiction between internal decimation and increased exports, in fact as the same past 20 years have shown, the two go hand in hand. Infrastructure as a whole is unable to sustain the explosion of projects and non-performing debt levels will begin another explosive increase. Ah yes, the competition from the east-- with the supposed benefit to American consumers more than offset by the workers both in China and the US.
Re: Simon and Garfunkel
Yeah, but what if a terrorist hijacks Simon and Garfunkel's private jet and crashes into the stage after it was set up, killing the nauseating pair, and forcing a refund.. And suppose the concert insurance doesn't cover terrorist acts of god, then what... should the government step and subsidize the concert givers? compensate the victims families? Should it? Or should it let the market handle the matters-- according to the well known American traditions of fair play and non-cosmic justice-- the type practiced at Gitmo, and in Baghdad, or Sing-Sing? And what about the burn victims? Who should pay for that? Hey these are really important questions, and the fact that Marxists don't take them seriously shows how ill-suited Marxism really is to modern living. - Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 04, 2004 11:09 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Simon and Garfunkel Barrister Shemano writes: ... Let's imagine the crew does all their work. They set up the special sound and light systems, etc. However, Simon and Garfunkel get into a fight and refuse to perform, so the show is cancelled and all ticket are refunded. The next night, Simon and Garfunkel reunite. The crew, pissed off, refuses to do any work. So Simon and Garfunkel go on stage, Simon plugs his guitar into the existent sound system, and notwithstanding the lack of special lighting, a backup band, etc., the two of them perform for 18,000 people who pay $2.7 million. I am not sure what my questions are. In what sense is the crew producing surplus value? What value did they produce on night one? What exactly is the value that is being created? Isn't all the value, for all practical purposes, being created by Simon and Garfunkel? Isn't the crews' value purely contextual and unrelated to their labor per se? This production process took two days. The crew produced the SV on the first day, but it was only _realized_ on the second. SG produced some of it on the second day, but they also claimed more than they produced. The fact that they were able to claim more than they produced (their monopoly power) is indicated that they were able to cancel the first day simply because of a spat -- and then allow the realization of the surplus-value on the second day. (This assumes that there are lots of people who would be willing to pay to hear their music.) It's possible that the produced SV could have gone to waste, i.e., if SG's spat had continued. In that case, the SV would not have been realized. jd
Re: Sowell
Correction: I said 30 years ago referring to Buckley's no-contest contest with the SEC. Actually it was 23 years ago and here are some details: In 1979, the SEC charged Buckley, the Rex Reed of American conservatism, with violating federal securities laws while attempting to forestall personal bankruptcy while he was an officer of Starr Broadcasting Group, Inc. According to the SEC, Buckley and the Starr brothers, Peter and Michael, formed a separate partnership which purchased a number of drive-in theater properties prior to 1975. [Note: Only a real entrepreneur would purchase drive-in theaters when the price of gasoline was doubling.] The market, however, failed to reward Mr. Buckley's faith in the future of American adolescent sexual encounter. By the summer of 1974 the partnership was deeply in debt and staggering under its interest payments. Mr. Buckley and the Starrs then induced Starr Broadcasting to purchase the properties and assume all debts and liabilities of their separate partnership. Eighteen months after Starr Broadcasting INc. purchase the properties, the theaters entered bankruptcy proceedings. Three dollar Bill settled the charges in the best tradition of American entrepreneurship, paying up without admitting to guilt or proclaiming innocence (see OED-- amoral). Buckley made restitution of 1.4 million dollars, withdrew his claim for reimbursement of legal fees by Starr Broadcasting (see Evie's Dictionary of the Yiddish language-- chutzpah), and agree to an order barring him from holding a position as an officer or directer of a publicly owned company for 5 years, and from any future violation of the SEC's anti-fraud, reporting, and proxy laws. The SEC agreed that Buckley could apply to court to have the restrictions modified as to holding corporate office, provided he could show the court that he was capable of obeying the law. Mr. Buckley stated he would not apply. But Buckley, having pleaded no contest, wasn't about to go quietly. Outside of court that is. He charged the SEC with refusing to distinguish between technical and substantive guilt [Note: does this not sound like Sowell's distinction in types of justice?]. To a Wall Street Journal reporter, Mr. Buckley attributed his problems that he doesn't have a head for figures. I am not making this up.
Holiday News
The precipitating cause for the invasion of Iraq was not to be found in the policy papers of current, or former, or currently former, officers of the US capital. Nor was the determining factor found in the Pentagon's order of battle, the essays of neo-conservative ideologists with unsavory business partners, the balance sheet of a certain construction services company, visions of new American empires, fear of old economic competitors, loss of hegemony, dramatic dollar declines and euro ascents, or the ecstatic belligerence of the evangelical half-wits occupying all three branches of government.But the pre-determination of the invasion was published for all to see by the US Department of Energy's Energy Information Agency in its Appendix B: Performance Profiles of Major Energy Producers 2002 ___ http://thewolfatthedoor.blogspot.com
Re: Sowell and the big lie.
I'll eat Mr. Sowell alive and my brother would bury him for sure. Peace Melvin __ Cue the brother: Brother Melvin puts somefire to the feet of theideological tapdancers of capital, and the dancershead towards the emergency exits, protesting the harsh language. Meanwhile, fire or no fire, their, the tap dancers', feet stink. But the facts ofmatters are that my brother Melvin isteaching a lesson-- that rhetoric obscures reality, and the reality is class struggle. The purveyors of the rhetoric of free markets, greed and god,have not themselves shied away fromapologizing, excusing, thephysical attacks upon the poorer members of society by the agents of the wealthier-- agents such as the police, the military, thesecret and not so secret night-riders. "It's unfortunate," is offered,which means, aswith everything else offered by the ideological soft shoe/hard bootmen, "It's really the fault of those uncouth, unwashed,demanding poor, who just won't accept that this is all for their own benefit. But we must preserve order." You tell me if you haven't heard that, or its equivalent, coming out of the mouths of Gilderites, Randists, Friedmaniacs, Von Miserabilists. What is the reality of capitalat its critical moments? -- Attacks on the workers. Thatcher dismantling British Steel; shuttering the coal mines.The dirty war in Argentina, withDaimler Benz auto plants used asghost prisons; with Fordpointing out "troublemakers." But no, some would ratherdiscuss hypothetical revenue sharing in Simon and Garfunkel concerts without realizing that the expropriation begins not in the work of the roadies, but the very production of the amps, the guitars, the costumes, the lights, that make the social, commerical, presentation of such aconcert possible. Give me Brother Melvin and his fire in the belly every time. And I'll bring the shovel. - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, July 02, 2004 5:32 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Sowell and the big lie. In a message dated 7/2/2004 6:42:37 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: As Godwin's Law approaches, I am done with the thread. David Shemano Comment I understand . . . but there are times I speak as an insurgent partisan. I would debate Mr. Sowell in front of the people who actually have elected me to offices . . . offices . . . on things like the military budget. I am not a liberal or leftist. I am a communist worker who is not ashamed of the path I traveled from Christ communism to modern communism. And more than capable of presenting coherent arguments to masses. I do not advocate dividing one fish amongst 40 people. I do believe and can convince the diverse peoples of American that the billions of dollars cycling through the circuit of speculation could be better spend on real things like health care, hot dogsand child care for the majority of the workers who happen to be women. If you cannot spend a billion dollars then I am not advocating taking anything from you but an abstraction that is wealth that means nothing to the multitude. I am not interested in expropriating ones rather large mansion . . . because I refuse to be responsible for the administrative task of a mansion. You hire a cook and have to feed him to cook the food that feeds you. And then the cook have to feed his or her family and the cycle deepens. You slowly discover that the people you have hired are actually making you work to pay them. OK! There is some deeper logic and morality to society that does not always match our noble aspirations and ideological proclamations. I'll eat Mr. Sowell alive and my brother would bury him for sure. Peace Melvin P.
Re: Sowell
It, the rise in wages, is not incompatible with increasing unemployment, but neither is it incompatible with rising employment. Sowell, or whoever wants to argue this point from the right, makes a superficial cause and effect between wage rates and employment levels, where there is none. And by the way, its is the creation of such superficial cause and effect links, and the propagation of them as profound economic insights that defines a hack. - Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2004 9:16 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Sowell Grant Lee wrote: The wonders of the internet. Here is Sowell explaining his shift away from Marxism: http://www.salon.com/books/int/1999/11/10/sowell/index1.html David Shemano From that interview: So you were a lefty once. Through the decade of my 20s, I was a Marxist. What made you turn around? What began to change my mind was working in the summer of 1960 as an intern in the federal government, studying minimum-wage laws in Puerto Rico. It was painfully clear that as they pushed up minimum wage levels, which they did at that time industry by industry, the employment levels were falling. I was studying the sugar industry. There were two explanations of what was happening. One was the conventional economic explanation: that as you pushed up the minimum-wage level, you were pricing people out of their jobs. The other one was that there were a series of hurricanes that had come through Puerto Rico, destroying sugar cane in the field, and therefore employment was lower. The unions preferred that explanation, and some of the liberals did, too. So how is incompatible with Marxism that raising wages above market levels can reduce employment? He just decided that the living conditions of sugar workers were less important than the needs of the economy. Doug
Re: Sowell
That, the distinction between minimum wage laws, and a rising minimum wage, is sophistry, not analysis. If you can't see the identity between the two, it's only because your analysis is completely pedantic and lacks the critical, social, element, that places Marx head and shoulders above, and flat out against, every bourgeois political economist. That's what I mean when I say hack. - Original Message - From: David B. Shemano [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2004 5:49 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Sowell Mr. Sartesian writes: It, the rise in wages, is not incompatible with increasing unemployment, but neither is it incompatible with rising employment. Sowell, or whoever wants to argue this point from the right, makes a superficial cause and effect between wage rates and employment levels, where there is none. And by the way, its is the creation of such superficial cause and effect links, and the propagation of them as profound economic insights that defines a hack. For the third time, neither Sowell, nor any other neoclassical economist I know of, has ever argued that rising wages causes unemployment. Obviously, if wages are rising, people who might otherwise be at the beach will be drawn into the workforce. The argument is about the effect of minimum wage laws, and if you can't figure out the difference between minimum wage laws and rising wages, be a little more careful before you call somebody a hack. Now that I got that off my chest, I am off to see Simon and Garfunkel at the Hollywood Bowl. When I get back, how about a discussion of explaining the price of concert tickets from a Marxist perspective? David Shemano
Re: Sowell
And one more time: The argument that is made and couched in pseudo-economic terms, is not an argument, but an ideology where any mandatory increase in benefits to the dispossessed is blamed for the eventual increase in social misery. It is nothing but the argument for laissez-faire increases in exploitation against any remedial action by, pick one or all, government, trade unions, social democrats. The argument then takes the critical element in the reproduction of capital, extraction of profit, and turns it, identifies it as the universal greatest good. That much is explicit in the argument as the practice, i.e. Chile, the US in the 70s and 80s, has shown. I am very careful before calling someone a hack. Somebody who makes purely ethereal distinctions in order to obscure the ugly reality in order to justify the continuation of that reality is a hack. Obviously nothing. This is not about simple common sense, as if there exists such a thing, price theories, or the democracy of free markets. It's about class. What makes a hack is someone denying, obscuring his or her class service, by proclaiming rationality, utility, objectivity. Would it shock you if I said J. S. Mill was a hack, and a big one? Friedman is a hack, and never hackier than when he criticized the IMF for its role in the Asian and post-Asian financial collapse of 97-98. PS. BOSTON FANS: NEW YORK THANKS YOU FOR YOUR VISIT AND WISHES YOU A SAFE TRIP HOME.
Interim Results Are In
A short time ago, some participants were arguing that immediate US withdrawal from Iraq would "destabilize" the country and damage the inhabitants. The GAO has issued a report, available at:http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04902r.pdf that shows just how beneficial the occupation has been, (and willcontinue to be). I am not so foolish to think that those arguing for "stabilization" under US occupation will, having read this report, change their view, but I think it would be nice for them to explain the dismal reality in light of their previous arguments.
Re: Enron
Horseshit. Capitalism is not legalized fraud and theft. Capital is the expropriation of labor through its force organization as wage-labor. Such compelled organization entails the social immiseration of the overwhelming majority of the world's population. Property is not theft. It's class relations. What is it you want to learn? How capitalism required the overthrow of Allende? How the Chicago Boys' theory of economic freedom required dirty wars to make it real?You want to explore something? Explore the decline in living standards during the restoration of capitalism in Russia. Explore the lost decade in Latin America. Property isn't theft. But flacks are flacks. They should be called what they are. Jim C. called it right. He shouldn't have backed down. - Original Message - From: David B. Shemano [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 2004 6:48 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Enron In defense of David Shemano, Michael Perelman writes: David is a conservative. He speaks English with a right wing dialect, but he does so with humor (not snottiness). We can disagree with him. I usually do, but we can still be polite. I don't see him as a red meat class warrior, but as a sincere [albeit misguided] conservative]. As a I said when I first participated on this list so many years ago, I am here to learn, and believe learning results from dialectic argument. The argument that capitalism is legalized fraud and theft is a very interesting thesis which I would love to explore. (For instance, doesn't that statement, as a normative statement, assume the justness of private property, because if not, what is wrong with theft?). However, as Prof. Craven does not appear to suffer from any doubt, I doubt he would enjoy such an exchange with me. You can't please everybody. David Shemano
Re: Chronology of Russian-Chechen relations -- part two
I don't know if this qualifies as a true chronology since it compresses so many years and developments into single paragraph synopses of decades. In any case, I think we need to see much more detail on the 1917-1929 period-- proposals, programs, debates, conflicts specifically re Bolsheviks and Chechnya. And going forward, is there any information out there on specific economic changes post Stalin? What were living standards like, economic output, and industrial worker population size 1973-1980, 1981-1986, 1987-1991, 1992-98?
Re: Chronology of Russian-Chechen relations -- part two
Thanks. - Original Message - From: Chris Doss To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 27, 2004 7:00 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Chronology of Russian-Chechen relations -- part two It only touches on economics in passing, but there is a good general piece on the situation here: http://www.google.ru/search?q=cache:P_qzh9htAKcJ:www.ecoi.net/pub/mv121_chya-bg2000-iskandarian.pdf+chechnya+economy+statisticshl=ruie=UTF-8inlang=rusartesian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And going forward, is there any information out there on specific economicchanges post Stalin? What were living standards like, economic output, andindustrial worker population size 1973-1980, 1981-1986, 1987-1991, 1992-98? Do you Yahoo!?New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
Re: Chronology of Russian-Chechen relations -- part two
Always carry a shaker full. - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 27, 2004 7:02 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Chronology of Russian-Chechen relations -- part two Chris Doss wrote: Hey, I did manage to find something in English on the Chechen economy in 2002 by Mikahil Delyagin. (Delyagin is a left-wing quasi-Keynesian economist who looks kind of like a chipmunk.) With Delyagin prefacing his article with the following hawkish rant, I would tend to take what he says later on with a grain of salt: A war is going on in Russia. It is going on not only in the Caucasus but also in Moscow. The most terrible thing in the current war is not the impotence of the military and the militia, not the lies, which we have already grown tired of and not even the coffins, however cynical it may sound. The most terrible thing is that we pay our murderers ourselves. Armed with Russian weapons, the Chechen bandits drive Russian KAMAZ trucks, which run on gasoline produced from Russian oil. They torture prisoners of war with electric current generated by Russian electric power stations and heat with Russian gas luxury homes which they have built on the money from the Russian budget. The most terrible thing is that with our own hands we are continuing to support up to this very day the economic base of the Chechen terror. -- Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Chronology of Russian-Chechen relations -- part two
Read the Delyagin.Must say that if Delyagin is a "left-winger,"the right wingmustbe tothe right ofJohn C. Calhoun and Albert Speers. The information provided by Delyaginquite is the result of the deconstruction of the economy, itswarlordization, and bears striking similarities to conditions in Afghanistan, Nigeria, even Iraq. - Original Message - From: Chris Doss To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 27, 2004 6:45 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Chronology of Russian-Chechen relations -- part two Hey, I did manage to find something in English on the Chechen economy in 2002 by Mikahil Delyagin. (Delyagin is a left-wing quasi-Keynesian economist who looks kind of like a chipmunk.)
Re: Chronology of Russian-Chechen relations -- part two
OK. Different left than here, fair enough. Brother Melvin begins the process of properly framing the critical questions. We have a condition of economic, social deconstruction, devolution, where the centrifugal forces part and parcel of interrupted, confined Russian Revolution, overwhelm the entire social fabric. Banditry, financial and/or armed, are results. I don't think that calling for "national self-determination" begins to address that real driving forces-- not in Chechnya, Afghanistan (pre Taliban, post Taliban), Iraq, Angola etc. There is asomewhat paranoid theory of economic history that states that heroin is at the root of all this-- "self-determination for drug-dealers," "poppy pipelines," --- arguing that Kosovar secession was a way to expandtransit ofheroin from Albania (the gateway to Europe for heroin from Southwest Asia, i.e. Afghanistan) and that theinvasion of Afghanistan was was the way to restore poppy cultivation. Chechnyawas to become the transit point for movement into all ofRussia, with the additional benefit of threatening oil pipelines and pipeline revenuesimportant to Russia. This argument is not without merit-- as the role of heroin insustaining andprolongingthe war in SE Asia has been documented. - Original Message - From: Chris Doss To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 27, 2004 7:29 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Chronology of Russian-Chechen relations -- part two Delyagin is a friend of Kagarlitsky, isn't he? I mean left-wing in the economic sense of the term -- he's in Rodina, which is sort-of Keynesian economically and nationalist. (This is usually what "left" means in Russia.) Afghanistan is a close parallel -- destruction of infrastructure accompanied by the growth of armed bands that rule whatever economy still exists. In Afghanistan, the bands were the former Mujaheedin; in Chechnya, they are the former anti-Russian fighters.sartesian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Read the Delyagin.Must say that if Delyagin is a "left-winger,"the right wingmustbe tothe right ofJohn C. Calhoun and Albert Speers. The information provided by Delyaginquite is the result of the deconstruction of the economy, itswarlordization, and bears striking similarities to conditions in Afghanistan, Nigeria, even Iraq. - Original Message - From: Chris Doss To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 27, 2004 6:45 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Chronology of Russian-Chechen relations -- part two Hey, I did manage to find something in English on the Chechen economy in 2002 by Mikahil Delyagin. (Delyagin is a left-wing quasi-Keynesian economist who looks kind of like a chipmunk.) Do you Yahoo!?New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
Malthus Was Wrong
WSJ June 25, 2004 An Indian Paradox: Bumper Harvests and Rising Hunger The World Has Enough Food, But Poor Can't Afford It; ...The world is producing more food than ever as countries such as India, China, and Brazil emerge as forces in globla agriculture. But at the same time, the number of the world's hungry is on the rise--including in India--after falling for decades. Despite its overflowing granaries, India has more hungry people, as many as 214 million, or one-fifth of the population. .Over the past 35 years, the world's food production has expanded faster than its population. In 2002, according to the United Nations World Food Program, farmers produced enough food to provide every person with 2,800 calories a day... But inadequate infrastructure, local corruption, and rural poverty have prevent the chrocially hungry...from gaining access to bountiful harvests. After falling for decadesthe estimated number ofundernourished in the developing world increased 18 million to 798 million between 1997 and 2001. As a result [of the Green Revolution] crop yields multiplied and in recent years India's wheat production topped 70 million tons, surpassing that of the U.S.. As India's grain production grew, so did its surpluses. By 2001, the national stockpile of rice and wheat was approaching 60 million tons...India set up a distribution network to supply surplus grain at reduced prices to 180 million families. But with inefficiency and local mismanagement plaguing distribution, it couldn't move the grain fast enough through the system...A 2002 government survey concluded that 48% of children under five years old are malnourished. _ Clearly the lack of overall development, the vast numbers trapped in archaic rural relations, in sub-subsistence agriculture, makes the problem of undernourishment intractable to capital and its ameliorating efforts. Such are the wages of overproduction, of the uneven and combined development of capitalism...
Re: Marxist Fianancial Advice
1. We are not talking about personal favors, good deeds, doing friends a solid, or picking up a bar tab. We are talking about capitalist accummulation. That's not an exactly subtle distinction. Let me know how you feel when you invest your retirement savings in Venezuelean bonds, and a revolutionary government decides to auto-cancel its debt. 2. In the meantime, much is being presented about sovereignty and self-determination, and national liberation. Some view the formulas of the past as sufficient and final. Some even go so far as to say that it doesn't matter that the national resistance of the Iraqis has nothing to do with socialism, and present that as a Marxist position. I think it is critical to apply a little Marxist analysis internally, to the positions developed a hundred or so years ago about national liberation and sovereignty, and understand how even the Marxists were not coincident with their own history, relying on a fallback position of rights rather than a class analysis of the actual determinants of struggles for national liberation. In a nutshell, the resistance in Iraq has absolutely nothing to do with national liberation and self-determination, but is triggered by capital's need for destruction-- and as such the resistance has everything to do with socialism-- and to be successful must put forward that thing that distinguishes revolutionists from all others-- a revolutionary program. The struggle for national liberation did not arise in the past 150 years separate and apart from critical moments in the conflict between the means and relations of production, and consequently the notion of oppressed peoples is put forward at the moment as people is archaic, is transforming itself into class. This does not mean that we do not defend resistance struggles because organizations involved are not communist. It does mean that we do identify the driving forces, provide a concrete analysis, and not subjugate a radical Marxists analysis to blanket terms, umbrellas of national liberation which obscure the class differentiation, and struggle, at the heart of the resistance. So, for those like myself, interested in disturbing the environment. http://thewolfatthedoor.blogspot.com - Original Message - From: Daniel Davies [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, June 26, 2004 9:20 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Marxist Fianancial Advice s. artesian wrote: Then comes the advice about doing the right thing in the international debt markets and taking positions (long? short?) in Venezuelan debt. That's a real thing of beauty by the way. That was me (btw, I don't believe I've ever claimed to be a Marxist, though I reserve the right to do so in future if I want to) I'm a bit tied up with family matters at the moment, but will return to the lists on this one early doors next week. If you wish to prepare your arguments, be aware that my general theme is going to be that when you agree to lend someone money you are doing them a good turn, not a bad turn. And that having lent someone money, it is not /per se/ evil to hope that you will get it back. A friend cadged thirty quid off me to buy drinks in a nightclub on Friday night, however, so by some standards I am already presumably morally compromised. cheers and good-humoured beers dd
Re: Chat about Financial Advice, was Re: Marxist Financial Advice
I am not righteous. I put two daughters through college. I know a lot about investing-- none of it has anything to do with Marxism. Nobody's against pensions. Railroad pensions, for your edification, are not self-direct investments. They are defined benefit plans. My only point was that Marxist financial advice re investing is an oxymoron. Real Marxist financial advise would be limited to seize the banks, cancel the debt. - Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, June 26, 2004 11:01 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Chat about Financial Advice, was Re: Marxist Financial Advice Carrol Cox wrote: Let's remember that very few if any of the subscribers to this list have much in the way of discretionary investment. How do you know? A lot of PEN-Lers are professors with retirement accounts that invest in stocks and bonds. Many, maybe most, are in the upper quintile of their national income distribution. Even the righteous S.artesian probably has a pension from the railroad. So these aren't just idle theoretical speculations. Doug
Re: Chat about Financial Advice, was Re: Marxist Financial Advice
- Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, June 26, 2004 12:14 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Chat about Financial Advice, was Re: Marxist Financial Advice sartesian writes: I know a lot about investing-- none of it has anything to do with Marxism. for what it's worth, pen-l isn't self-defined as Marxist. _ Really? There's a graphic of Marx on the home page. The query that triggered this all was for Marxist Fianancial Advice. I'm also not sure that Marxist financial advice is necessarily oxymoronic. There may be some stuff in the volume III discussion of money and finance that says something different that might be relevant to personal finance, though I doubt it. Nothing I've read in Vol. 3 can be considered advice for investors. jd
Re: Marxist Fianancial Advice
1.None of your business 2. I don't call it Marxist 3. No 4. The system that is so efficient that some won't have to eat cat food in their golden years requires that many don't eat period, that some cats eat better than many humans, that many never live to see golden years. So much for efficiency and fianancial advice. - Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2004 8:45 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Marxist Fianancial Advice sartesian wrote: And I stand by what I said: behind every free market, behind every investment instrument there's a death squad. Plain and simple. Well yeah, so? Do you have a pension plan at the railroad? Do you think people should spend their golden years eating catfood? Doug
Re: Marxist Fianancial Advice
Marx wrote volumes criticizing bourgeois economic theory, analyzing its class origins, its ideological obfuscations, and the necessity for the overthrow of bourgeois economic practice, with the emphasis on the last. He did not present an alternative political economy, propose morally or socially acceptable investment instruments, or AARP discount packages. - Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2004 9:33 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Marxist Fianancial Advice sartesian wrote: One more thing, and I promise to come off it The query about Marxist financial advice devolved, or evolved, into a discussion of efficient markets, as if somehow markets were an abstraction from the social relations that drive free exchange; as if in fact, free markets did not require compulsion, force, and death squads to enforce their ultimate rationality. Markets, and efficiency, are thus fetishized... to the point that some who claim to be Marxists actually advocate buying emerging market country bonds, and Venezulean bonds in particular. Oh right, Marx would never have been interested in writing about bourgeois economic theory. Doug
Re: Marxist Financial Advice
I wish I could fully support Mr. Devine's portfolio plan. I cannot. I believe vodka is preferable to gin. Freezing cold vodka. Straight up, with a twist. Many twists. Like life. Name the author: The passions of the human heart are as twisted as a corkscrew.
Re: Marxist Fianancial Advice
Keerist, can't we at least spell financial correctly? And then terminate this thread? Marxist financial advice. Come on. Cut it out. Where doe s this take us? Marxist arbitrage? Marxist hedge funds? Behind every free market there's a death squad, at least one. You need more money? S. Don't tell anyone. Figure it out yourself or go get a CFA. Next subject, Marxist methods of seducing housekeepers?
Re: Marxist Fianancial Advice
I can't believe that I'm the only one to see the oxymoron in the question. As for making fun, or being insulting, is it possible that people are really that thin-skinned that they can't see the non-sequitors in their own proposals and questions? Can't laugh at themselves? Can't laugh with others laughing at them? I thought we were made of sterner stuff. Doesn't anybody have a sense of humor out there. And as the surrealists correctly pointed out, there is no humor without some element of cruelty. After what has transpired on, and off, the list over the Doss-Proyect conflict, my comments were truly benign-- I actually went through it twice to tone it down. Damn, you should see how we do it on the railroad. And I stand by what I said: behind every free market, behind every investment instrument there's a death squad. Plain and simple. - Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2004 8:01 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Marxist Fianancial Advice hey, someone honestly asked for financial advice that's based on Marxian ideas. So there were some answers. I'd say the main one was that Marx doesn't have anything to add on this subject. Honest answer for an honest question. Why make fun? jd -Original Message- From: PEN-L list on behalf of sartesian Sent: Thu 6/24/2004 10:33 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Marxist Fianancial Advice Keerist, can't we at least spell financial correctly? And then terminate this thread? Marxist financial advice. Come on. Cut it out. Where doe s this take us? Marxist arbitrage? Marxist hedge funds? Behind every free market there's a death squad, at least one. You need more money? S. Don't tell anyone. Figure it out yourself or go get a CFA. Next subject, Marxist methods of seducing housekeepers?
Re: Marxist Fianancial Advice
One more thing, and I promise to come off it The query about Marxist financial advice devolved, or evolved, into a discussion of efficient markets, as if somehow markets were an abstraction from the social relations that drive free exchange; as if in fact, free markets did not require compulsion, force, and death squads to enforce their ultimate rationality. Markets, and efficiency, are thus fetishized... to the point that some who claim to be Marxists actually advocate buying emerging market country bonds, and Venezulean bonds in particular. Now that's rich, really a friggin knee slapper. Where years ago rock stars, Treasury Secretaries, jubilee celebrators, were urging cancellation of the debt, here come our efficent market Marxists urging others to become debt holders. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Proudhon got nothing on these guys, absolutely nothing. - Original Message - From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2004 8:09 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Marxist Fianancial Advice sartesian wrote: Keerist, can't we at least spell financial correctly? And then terminate this thread? Oh come off it. True the initial question, as phrased, was perhaps not very interesting, but a lot of different topics came up under the heading. And ultimately, maillists are conversation, not the formal meeting of the Political Committee of the Central Committee of The Sixth International. And a serious point, that's been bugging me for 35 years. The most chaotic parts of various regional and national conferences back during the '60s and early '70s were when someone started talking about what we should be talking about. It only led to talking about talking about what we should be talking about, which only led to talking about . . . . Carrol
Re: Mark Jones Still Among the living (was titled Wrong)
I hate to be such a nit-picker and continue to insist on actually comparing what a well respected man said to the facts, but... Mark Jones stated that Bush was bluffing and would never invade Iraq. - Original Message - From: soula avramidis To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, June 22, 2004 10:17 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Mark Jones Still Among the living (was titled Wrong) The pursuit of profits allocates resources to private as opposed to social needs. the debate should have occurred at a more adequate level, for it should not be between doomsdayers and techno optimist because both options are unrealistic. if the profit motive is to continue to allocate resources in the way it does there is at least ideologically more solid grounds for pessimists to stand on. oil for profits means at least for the time being a continuation of the ecological catastrophe in which we live. butin that I seealso the ideological stance and I do not want to mix between theory and ideology or the timely ideas that serve my interest as a social class or underdeveloped nation coming under consistent attack because of oil or other raw material. on that score the scare mongering of mark Jones "oil is running out bit" does wonders to the cause.. as you may recall many said that the invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with oil and tried to minimise the relevance of oil.. oil is relevant and it runs out. that is why the mark-oil story was timely.. hubbert's new peak was timely for purely ideological reasons.. as to theorymuch of theory explains nothing as in the concept of 'mediation' but without that one has less than nothing. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In a message dated 6/22/2004 6:18:36 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I of course reserve the right to revise and adjust anything I write and admit faulty thinking. Peace Melvin P.How about Mark?Can he do that?Sabri Reply I personally engaged Mark J. on every question I have written about when he was alive and was very vocal on thequestion of the question of the industrial bureaucracy. In fact he and some of his supporters call me a techno optimist . . . among other things. ' I ammost certainlyoptimistic about technology and the material power of production inits evolution orI would still be a freaking slave. Human kindness did not drive the abolition of slavery . .. . according to Marxbut a development in the technological regime or what in English is called the material power of production. When Mark was amongst the living I wrote that he misses the most fundamental issue in human society which is man as a metabolic process before means of production arise. Mark J. had his point of view. What I have written above is historically retrievable on Marxmail and the A-List. I really understand the presentation of the question and on one level it is absurd . . . With the techno optimists . . . meaning me . .. . advocating the construction of a perpetual motion that creates more energy that is used to construct it. This kind of response arise because the proponent somehow think that how we live is a more of less accurate reflection of human needs and then start screaming about sustainability, over population, riding bikes and other . . . independent ideas. I merely ask to unravel the origin of needs and here you will partially resolve the energy issue immediately. It is not a question of riding bikes and other not thought out ideas . . . but rather . . . where are you going in the first place? If you are going to work to reproduce the basis for you going to work, then perhaps this is worth looking at. The bourgeois does not make automobiles for transportation. They make automobiles for profits. Melvin P. Do you Yahoo!?Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
Re: [Fwd: [Marxism] Interview with Richard Heinberg]
Why did I know Mr. Proyect would reproduce this, and reproduce it uncritically? Because small is beautiful? Because less is more? Because it proves how non-energy intensive farming points the way? Because, maybe Mark Jones said it was right? Whatever. Before we get all sappy-- take a moment and look at the FAO database on daily caloric intake per capital per year for Cuba. In 1969 this dcal/cap/yr was 2528; for 1974, 2869.8; for 1979, 2755; 1984, 3128; 1990, 2912.1; 1995, 2227.9; 2000, 2614.4; 2001, 2643.3. So, while the policies have done much to pull Cuba away from the abyss, and it was an abyss of 1993-4-5, Cuba has not yet reached the level of 1974 in this critical measure. This is not to say that Cuba has not faced enormous obstacles. On the contrary, the enormity of the obstacles, and the impossibility of overcoming them on one island, is exactly the point. Moreover, some of the recovery is a product of the tiering of the Cuban economy; the influx of tourism and foreign investment in the entertainment/recreation/pleasure industries; the sanctioning of private markets and private production, both of which are subsidized by the state. - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, June 22, 2004 3:10 PM Subject: [PEN-L] [Fwd: [Marxism] Interview with Richard Heinberg] .It's been done before, albeit on a smaller scale. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, Cuba, which imported almost all of its oil from the U.S.S.R., suddenly faced an annual energy shortage of 25 percent. Fidel Castro's communist government immediately went to work, breaking up the country's large factory farms into small plots of land, encouraging city dwellers to move to the country and become organic farmers. Millions of bicycles were imported from China; cars were banned from certain roadways. The reforms worked, and by the end of the 1990s, Cuba had pulled itself out of what could have been a major depression. Such a plan might work on the global level, Heinberg believes, but there are major obstacles, the primary one for the United States being that some of the methods will smack of communism. It would require a command-and-control economy and a WW IIlevel of effort, Heinberg says... full: http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/06.09.04/oil-0424.html ___ Marxism mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism . -- Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Mark Jones Still Wrong
What you offer is not the argument Mark Jones made. Jones claimed he did know how and when the oil would run out. Jones argued that Bush would never invade Iraq. Jones argued that the future of oilhad nothing to do with capital accumulation. - Original Message - From: soula avramidis To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2004 10:36 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Mark Jones Still Wrong Mark could not have been wrong. in some sense it amounts to a truism. oil runs out dont know how dont know when.? why it was important is because some argued that the invasion of iraq was not because of oil.. it was entirely and i think entirely is justified because of oil. oil is anywhere between 6 to 10 percent of world trade and that is not the important part.. the important part is that it is the principal energy source that underpins capitalist accumulation. and the value relation that allocates resources will do its utmost to draw profits out of oil at the expense of ordinary hard working folk.sartesian [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From the WSJ of 16 June 04:OIL MAJORS REPLACE JUST 75% OF RESERVES PUMPED, STUDY SAYSLondon-Oil companies replaced only 75% of the reserves they pumped duringthe past few years, far below what Securities and Exchange Commission filingindicate, a report by Deutsche Bank AG says.SEC filings by oil major show companies increased their total oil reserves,replacing 116% of what they pumped during 20001-2003. But Deutsche Banksays those figures represent historic discoveries that companies bookedlater and don't reflect genuinely new finds.The report found oil majors increased their reserves at a rate 20% lowerthan during the 1990s, partly as a result of a cut of nearly a third inexploration budgets, as companies streamlined operations after a series ofmeasures. In additions, companiesfocused more on getting out the oil thathad already discovered.BP PLEC, meanwhile, said in its closely followed annual statistical reportthat world oil reserves, as of the end of 2003 are sufficient to supportcurrent global production levels of nearly 77 million barrels a day for thenext 41 years.Hmmm.replacement rates declining after draconian cuts in explorationbudgets due to fixed asset elimination due to "streamlining" operations dueto mergers... Hey I did NOT write the article. Do you Yahoo!?Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
Re: Chris Doss's sources
Don't worry, Mike, I'll handle it for you. I'm really good at this. - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2004 6:43 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Chris Doss's sources Lou Chris. I am leaving now. Please. Stop getter personal. I need to get to Pittsburgh to see me father in the hospital. I don't want to have to worry about the list. Thanks. On Sun, Jun 20, 2004 at 09:19:42AM -0400, Louis Proyect wrote: Yesterday, Chris Doss told PEN-L that there was ethnic cleansing in Chechnya, including Jews. Since demagogic charges of anti-Semitism has surfaced to such an extreme degree in recent years, I was particularly interested to see if there was hard evidence of this. So, instead of producing articles from respected sources, he cites 2 experts. One is Vladimir Bilenkin, a professional sectarian who has been living in the USA during the entire time under question and who helped to destroy the original Marxism list run by the Spoons Collective with his partner Bob Malecki. If he ever wrote anything worth taking seriously, I am not aware of it. The other is Sergei Yastrzhembsky, an adviser to Putin. You might as well cite Condoleeza Rice on Iraq. -- Marxism list: www.marxmail.org -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Chris Doss's sources
Far be it from me to insist on niceties in arguments, but Mr. Proyect is using a false analogy regarding Yastrazhembsky and Rice: Rice is wrong NOT SIMPLY because she is the Bush's NSA, but because she is demonstrably a liar, distorting fact in service of class interest. So while Yastrazhembsky's position in the Russian government obviously speaks to his lack of uninterest, it still must be demonstrated that he is a liar, distorting fact in the service of his class interest. I'm sure, with the vast resources at his command, Mr. Proyect will be able to provide such demonstration. It comes down to asking Yaz what you ask Condee-- where's the evidence? Or absent that, detailing the class interest that requires the promulgation of a false ideology to obscure and cover its real designs. - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2004 6:19 AM Subject: [PEN-L] Chris Doss's sources Yesterday, Chris Doss told PEN-L that there was ethnic cleansing in Chechnya, including Jews. Since demagogic charges of anti-Semitism has surfaced to such an extreme degree in recent years, I was particularly interested to see if there was hard evidence of this. So, instead of producing articles from respected sources, he cites 2 experts. One is Vladimir Bilenkin, a professional sectarian who has been living in the USA during the entire time under question and who helped to destroy the original Marxism list run by the Spoons Collective with his partner Bob Malecki. If he ever wrote anything worth taking seriously, I am not aware of it. The other is Sergei Yastrzhembsky, an adviser to Putin. You might as well cite Condoleeza Rice on Iraq. -- Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Chris Doss's sources
One mo' time: Looking for that thing called specificity, Mr. Proyect. And that would be a social specificity, analyzing the material forces at work driving the contending forces. As is your preferred style, you reproduce text unrelated to the issue at hand and say Here, look at this. I told you so. Told us what? Putin has lied? No shit? Really? I never knew that. And lied about Iraq to curry favor with the US? I am shocked and appalled. Newsflash: I did not just fall off a truckload of pumpkins. But what about Chechnya? To say that the Russians are conducting a brutal war, or that you personally find that war brutal, is not a political analysis. Ever read the accounts of the Red Cavalry in the Civil War? Brutal is a gross understatement. Or the advance of the Red Army through Germany in WW 2? Or the Soviet military in Afghanistan? And despite the brutality, the Red Cavalry, the Red Army, the Soviet military were, how to put this?, more aligned with the prospects for emancipation than their opponents were? I, for one, need much more information on the sources of the conflict. My relatively uninformed feeling has me aligning with the Russians again for several reasons, first of which is that dissolution of the Soviet Union, Balkanization on the grand scale, is itself and has been accompanied by a giant step backward in living standards, and I have read, although not confirmed, that Saudi/Pakistani money and training has been instrumental in supporting the separatists. - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2004 7:57 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Chris Doss's sources sartesian wrote: I'm sure, with the vast resources at his command, Mr. Proyect will be able to provide such demonstration. I thought we already established that the White House and the Kremlin are past masters at lying. === Russia Gave U.S. Intel on Iraq, Putin Says THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, June 19, 2004 ASTANA, Kazakhstan (AP) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday his government warned Washington that Saddam Hussein's regime was preparing attacks in the United States and its interests abroad -- an assertion that appears to bolster President Bush's contention that Iraq was a threat. Putin emphasized that the intelligence didn't cause Russia to waver from its firm opposition to the U.S.-led war last year, but his statement was the second this month in which he has offered at least some support for Bush on Iraq. ``After Sept. 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, the Russian special services ... received information that officials from Saddam's regime were preparing terrorist attacks in the United States and outside it against the U.S. military and other interests,'' Putin said. ``Despite that information ... Russia's position on Iraq remains unchanged,'' he said in the Kazakh capital, Astana, after regional economic and security summits. He said Russia didn't have any information that Saddam's regime had actually been behind any terrorist acts. ``It's one thing to have information that Saddam's regime is preparing terrorist attacks, (but) we didn't have information that it was involved in any known terrorist attacks,'' he said. Putin didn't elaborate on any details of the alleged plots or mention whether they were tied to al-Qaida. He said Bush had personally thanked one of the leaders of Russia's intelligence agencies for the information but that he couldn't comment on how critical it was in the U.S. decision to invade Iraq. In Washington, a U.S. official said Putin's information did not add to what the United States already knew about Saddam's intentions. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Putin's tip didn't give a time or place for a possible attack. Bush alleged Thursday that Saddam had ``numerous contacts'' with al-Qaida and said Iraqi agents had met with the terror network's leader, Osama bin Laden, in Sudan. Saddam ``was a threat because he had terrorist connections -- not only al-Qaida connections, but other connections to terrorist organizations,'' Bush said. However, a commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks reported this week that while there were contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq, they did not appear to have produced ``a collaborative relationship.'' Also Thursday, a top Russian diplomat called for international inspectors to resolve conclusively the question of whether Iraq had any weapons of mass destruction. ``This problem must be resolved ... because to a great extent it became the pretext for the start of the war against Iraq,'' the Interfax news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov as saying. He said such a finding would allow the U.N. Security Council to ``finally close the dossier on Iraqi weapons.'' In the wake of the invasion of Iraq, Putin sharply rebuked the United States
Re: Chris Doss's sources
It is not control over oil that drives the US policy-- it was/is overproduction, the decline in profits, the dreaded collapse of oil prices. It is the need to destroy capital stock. We've had the argument before. We can show how fixed asset expenditures, rig counts, lifting costs, production costs, etc. have impacted the US oil industry profits, and driven policy decisions. The very least we must do is provide the same sort of analysis for Russia if we are going to claim similar policy motivations. As for Putin controlling the oil-- Russia's oil production has turned up with the jump in prices since 1999 and the constraint is not in production but in transportation. And transportation is the critical factor in the Caspian/Caucasus regions. In this regard US/Russia policies are divergent to say the least and conflictual to say it modestly. Which is another reason I, at this uninformed point, lean against national self-determination as a reason/cause/justification for the combat. Not accepting Putin's slogans/self-justification does not make the opposite position more left. - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2004 10:51 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Chris Doss's sources On Sun, 20 Jun 2004, sartesian wrote: One mo' time: Looking for that thing called specificity, Mr. Proyect. And that would be a social specificity, analyzing the material forces at work driving the contending forces. The same thing that is driving Putin is driving Bush: control over oil. You can't get more material than that. And both capitalist politicians use the same excuse, they are trying to defeat Islamic fundamentalism and spread democracy.
Re: Chris Doss's sources
Right on the money. A little smokestack lightning from the Detroit brother. - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2004 12:03 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Chris Doss's "sources" In a message dated 6/20/2004 12:51:51 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Sun, 20 Jun 2004, sartesian wrote: One mo' time: Looking for that thing called specificity, Mr. Proyect. And that would be a social specificity, analyzing the material forces at work driving the contending forces.The same thing that is driving Putin is driving Bush: control over oil.You can't get more material than that. And both capitalist politicians usethe same excuse, they are trying to defeat Islamic fundamentalism andspread democracy. Comment I could hardly locate Chechnya on the map, which is why I keep several maps of the world within reach.Having followed and studiedina general way the evolution of the Russian state, and Soviet history and the breakup of the Soviet Union into more or less warring bourgeois capitalist type states/fiefdom- and the political leaders in Chechnyaare not trying to found a Soviet type antyhing or socialist state, it seems to me that the motivation of a Putin and Bush are radically different and not reducible to profit motive or oil. This thing about oil has reach the level of the absurd in my opinion. Putin represents bourgeois property in Russia but not as an abstraction. He also represents distinct national interest and geopolitical considerations profoundly different from the Bush administration and the strategic interest our own imperial bourgeoisie. It is not so much the words politicians say that divine their interest and consideration by real history. For Bush and his administration to be in a remotely similar situation to Putin, they would have to face the material results of the dismantling of the USNA multinational state and the emergence of say Texas, Michigan, North Carolina or Mississippi and about eleven more states, as more than less independent states or regions. Sections of the Southwest of America would be gyrating between Mexico andant the US State proper. In such a situation what would I "support?" Does this not depend on events in Mexico? Sooner or later one must move beyond participatory democracy of the old student movement and try and understand real world politics. Then again to equate the Bush administration and the Putin administration, the former would have to face a combination of say a China and Russia alliance surrounding it with military bases and advocating the direct use of force. Self determination is the calling card of absolutely everyone - including Woodrow Wilson and in the context of America, if the blacks of Michigan and Chicago and say Mississippi demanded self determination and the formation of independent states, what would ones response be? Thepolitical reality of the decomposition of the multinational state structure of the former USSR contains some historical factors that are not subject to ideological declarations for democracy or the loud cry for human rights, which is the calling card of the militant imperialists - our imperialist in particular, in its war against the people of earth. What about history and geopolitical reality? For example the ruling people inside the Soviet Union were (white) Russians for a similar reason that the ruling peoples - not simply propertied class, in Americanare Anglo-American. I do not mean that the people of Chechnya were owned by the Russian people as whites once owned blacks, but that the imperial status of a people has much to do with their economic development and export of productive forces to less developed regions and areas. Here is the bottom line economic logic that placed many Russians at the top of the federated system. Does this process breed resentment? Yes, . . .especially - but not exclusively, by the aspiring petty bourgeois, bourgeois and criminal syndicates that want the spoils for themselves. These criminal syndicates are not just Chechnya or just Russian but a complex combination of both. For Bush to mirror Putin would also means that something like the Nation of Islam would control the state of Mississippi. Putin is going to do what any leader that comes to power in Russia is going to do in respects to how national interest are perceived in our geopolitical world. Do I support Putin? Of course not and if I did - Which I don't, it would be fairly meaningless, nor would I support the band of bourgeois nationalist criminals - many using the pre-Soviet networks economic and political networks and trade routes for their bourgeois class
Knock, Knock
What was, for capitalism ascendant, its self-leavening was the conquering of new markets; the uprooting of all that had gone before; the transformation of all social relations in its self-image. And all this existed, for waxing capitalism, only as an abstraction, a tendency, an impulse. In the concrete, the impulse is obstructed, and conjoined with the very source of the obstruction. What was in theory the condition for development is in practice the limit of development and vice versa. The essential nature of capital is made manifest in its deviation, its aberration from its own code for growth. So that capital announces its triumph not in the destruction of all foregoing, pre-existing, archaic relations of land and labor, but in their embrace, accommodation, absorption into the plastic stream of exchanges called the market. Private property demands just such an embrace, just this accommodation, and private property is nearest and dearest to the bourgeoisie. http://wolfatthedoor.blogspot.com
Correction
Wrong URL, sorry http://thewolfatthedoor.blogspot.com It's the simple things that give us the most trouble
Mark Jones Still Wrong
From the WSJ of 16 June 04: OIL MAJORS REPLACE JUST 75% OF RESERVES PUMPED, STUDY SAYS London-Oil companies replaced only 75% of the reserves they pumped during the past few years, far below what Securities and Exchange Commission filing indicate, a report by Deutsche Bank AG says. SEC filings by oil major show companies increased their total oil reserves, replacing 116% of what they pumped during 20001-2003. But Deutsche Bank says those figures represent historic discoveries that companies booked later and don't reflect genuinely new finds. The report found oil majors increased their reserves at a rate 20% lower than during the 1990s, partly as a result of a cut of nearly a third in exploration budgets, as companies streamlined operations after a series of measures. In additions, companiesfocused more on getting out the oil that had already discovered. BP PLEC, meanwhile, said in its closely followed annual statistical report that world oil reserves, as of the end of 2003 are sufficient to support current global production levels of nearly 77 million barrels a day for the next 41 years. Hmmm.replacement rates declining after draconian cuts in exploration budgets due to fixed asset elimination due to streamlining operations due to mergers... Hey I did NOT write the article.
Re: Putin
Why Michael, this is being nice... You should see how it's done on the railroad - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, June 19, 2004 2:44 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Putin I am glad that the flame has subsided. I am leaving to go out east early tomorrow to visit my Dad in the hospital. I still might be able to participate here, but please, just in case I loose touch, be nice. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Mark Jones Still Wrong
No, but the list has been peppered with reports that Mark Jones was right headlining stories of reserve reductions taken by Shell, etc. The point is that the decline in the replacement rate is economically determined by a social catergory--profit-- not geologically determined by some hypothetical peak. - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, June 19, 2004 2:42 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Mark Jones Still Wrong As I mentioned before, reserves are a theoretical entity, estimated by the corporation. They can be real or Enron-like. The Shell game reminds us how theoretical they can be. Increasing or decreasing reserves, especially over a short period do not constitute convincing evidence. David, of course, did not say that they did constitute evidence, nor did anyone say that falling reserve are proof. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: Mark Jones Still Wrong
One more thing: Reserves are not a theoretical entity. SEC requirements are quite stringent (which is what got Shell in trouble), and required proof of existence at the wellhead. In fact, the majors are upset that the SEC will not relax its modification to the rule-- allowing seismic and 3D imaging technology data equal status as the wellhead-- for any other location than deepwater Gulf of Mexico. - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, June 19, 2004 2:42 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Mark Jones Still Wrong As I mentioned before, reserves are a theoretical entity, estimated by the corporation. They can be real or Enron-like. The Shell game reminds us how theoretical they can be. Increasing or decreasing reserves, especially over a short period do not constitute convincing evidence. David, of course, did not say that they did constitute evidence, nor did anyone say that falling reserve are proof. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
You Are How You Eat
http://thewolfatthedoor.blogspot.com/ Enjoy
Re: Agent Orange in Vietnam
Or... you could say the US is a highly successful state, serving well the class it was created to serve. - Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 14, 2004 1:59 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Agent Orange in Vietnam Ken writes: Seems the US is a failed state in terms of failing to take responsibility for its actions and accepting the rules of law and warfare as applying only to others not to itself. It is not surprising it bribes states to exempt it from being tried for war crimes. Yes, the US is a failed state in moral terms. (aren't most states?) Usually, however, the term failed state refers to a state that doesn't even provide law and order within its own territory (often because government officials are acting like gangsters). The US provides a failed state in Iraq, for example. jd
Re: Agent Orange in Vietnam
Correct, but do you think the US, historically, is the most successful capitalist state, and its mistakes are part of that historical success? Agent Orange in Vietnam a failure? Not hardly, according to the bourgeoisie. Two million dead in Vietnam a failure? Not to the bourgeoisie. Iraq a failure? To the bourgeoisie, only in its execution, only because the US has lost control of the battlefield. Law and order? They could care less. It's all about property. Follow the cash. - Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 14, 2004 5:13 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Agent Orange in Vietnam you think that the war against Iraq is successful from the point of view of the US ruling class? or even from the point of view of the Bushite fraction of that class? The ruling class sometimes f*cks up. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine From: sartesian [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Or... you could say the US is a highly successful state, serving well the class it was created to serve. I wrote: Yes, the US is a failed state in moral terms. (aren't most states?) Usually, however, the term failed state refers to a state that doesn't even provide law and order within its own territory (often because government officials are acting like gangsters). The US provides a failed state in Iraq, for example. jd
Re: Agent Orange in Vietnam
This is about the point where we have to call a halt-- when we start ranking bourgeois viciousness by more vicious, less vicious, somewhat less vicious, somewhat more vicious. Let's just say that the same system that employed agent Orange, a product of a certain level of technical development, now employs depleted uranium, the product of another level of technical development, for the same general purpose. - Original Message - From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 14, 2004 6:47 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Agent Orange in Vietnam Is Agent Orange worse than deplete uranium? -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Re: remembering reagan
You didn't miss a thing Maybe he died, but how could anyone tell? - Original Message - From: Michael Hoover [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2004 4:51 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] remembering reagan did reagan croak or something, gee, guess i missed it, didn't see anything in the news, seems there would have at least been a press release or obit notice... michael hoover
Re: The Story of the Second Front
Chris, David M. Glantz, former US military historian at the US War College, has written a number of great books on the Soviet armies during WWII. These books describe the tensions between the allies and give proper credit to the Soviets as the primary engine of the Nazi defeat. The Battle of Kursk When Titans Clash The Battlefor Leningrad are three. Hats of to Vatutin
from the USDA ERS
Compared with children of nonworking mothers, children of full-time working mothers have lower overall HEI (Healthy Eating Index) scores, lower intake of iron and fiber, and higher intake of soda and fried potatoes, even after taking into account differences in maternal and other family http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/efan04006/efan04006-1/ And volume 2: Study results indicate that households with working mothers spend more on food and have higher levels of food sufficiency than households without working mothers. Working mothers, however, participate less in meal planning, shopping, and food preparation. The children of working mothers are more likely to skip morning meals, rely more on away-from-home food sources, spend more time watching TV and videos, and face significantly greater risk of overweight. http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/efan04006/efan04006-2/
Re: Further confirmation of Mark Jones
aren't there enough examples of resource exhaustion for other species (often brought about by man) that has in fact led to their extinction? or is it that man will wipe out other species with his technological progress, but use the same (technological progress) to generate infinite resources for himself? --ravi __ See for example Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick The German Ideology Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as the begin to produce their means of subsistence
Re: Further confirmation of Mark Jones
This is not exactly correct. Timber supplies to Britain from colonial America were always inadequate. Britain depended primarily on the Baltic countries. See, for a brief overview: http://www.fact-index.com/t/ti/timber.html - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2004 8:24 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Further confirmation of Mark Jones ravi wrote: aren't there enough examples of resource exhaustion for other species (often brought about by man) that has in fact led to their extinction? or is it that man will wipe out other species with his technological progress, but use the same (technological progress) to generate infinite resources for himself? A spatial dimension in David Harvey terms has to be taken into account. Great Britain basically experienced deforestation during its early capitalist development but was able to find substitutes in the Americas. Maybe that's why the capitalist class is wasting so much money in these space expeditions to Mars. -- Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
Re: Further confirmation of Mark Jones
Here we go again: I read it in the (New York Times, Newsweek, National Geographic, the National Enquirer, All of the Above); I saw it on TV; I heard (Colin Campbell, Mike Davis, Homer Simpson, All of the Above) say it. Ergo Mark Jones was right. Amazing. In the very midst of the exposure of the natural gas crisis of the 2000, 2001 as market manipulations; in the very midst of the revelation that crude and refined petroleum stocks in the US and the advanced countries are at record levels, thus generating high spot prices, allowing companies to book inventory valuation based profits; despite the fact that natural gas prices soared as a response too price reductions after the bringing to market of new supplies; despite the fact that Shell's reserve reductions, like its reserve inflation, were accounting adjustments and accounting tricks; despite the fact that gasoline price increases have been shown to be the product of similar market manipulations, based in part of fixed asset reductions and production restrictions-- despite all that the sky is falling; chicken little is right; and so was Hobbes because the future is nasty brutish and short, so close out your positions and take the money and run. Even though reserves have risen, output has fallen... This should tell us something, as reserves have risen, and output has fallen as a result of the mega-mergers of the 90s which allowed the combined companies the luxury of booking combined reserves while struggling with the overweight combined fixed assets. You can look it up. Actually you can look it down, in the very same article in the NYT: What we have now is meaningless data, Mr. Simmons said. Big oil companies once prided themselves on conservative reserve estimates. But today, to justify multibillion-dollar investments in politically or technologically risky fields, companies have become much more aggressive, he said. Mr. Simmons is making a social, economic analysis. Not a geological one. Call me old-fashioned, but.. I would think Marxists would want to look at rates of return, fixed asset levels rather than geology before making determinations as to the real reasons for changes in output.
Re: Further confirmation of Mark Jones
I am in general not known for agreeing with others, but hey in an infinite universe The point is, if predicative science is inherently unreliable, then clearly we need to look at the function of such predictions, and that function is ideological, to obscure the origins of economic, social, distress, by attributing those origins to nature, geology, limits, or the greedy, destructive nature of human beings as a biological entity. There is predicition and there is prediction; to confuse science, and/or nature, with class, with the expropriation of labor and the aggrandizement of profit is to wind up supporting a status-quo in its decay. We all should remember that among other things, Mark Jones, predicted that Bush was all bluff, and would never, absolutely never risk an invasion of Iraq. I think Mark's prediction here was part of an organic unity with his other predictions about reserves, supplies, and the future of capitalism.
Re: Further confirmation of Mark Jones
You know what I like about baseball? Almost everything, but most of all that anybody can play the game, once social impediments are removed. There is no biological, natural restriction on learning and playing the game. All the restrictions are social in nature and exist to be overthrown. The first step is to distinguish between the social and natural... So like if the game is suspended because of rain, that doesn't mean the players don't know how to play the game. War is not a storm cloud. War is not a natural, biological, geological event. The arguments for petroleum scarcity are all disguised as geological, natural, scientific arguments. Lots of people have been right and wrong. Geologists were absolutely right that large supplies of petroleum would never be found below ground in Titusville, Pa., Spindletop, and East Texas, until large reserves of petroleum were found exactly there. Batter up. - Original Message - From: Paul Zarembka [EMAIL PROTECTED] I suppose knowing about storm clouds for wars doesn't matter either, although I don't recall any Marxist who didn't care about that issue. Paul
Re: Further confirmation of Mark Jones
- Original Message - From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In other words, our time and energy needs to be spent in turning greens red, not in the hopeless task of bringing more people into the general movement through green agitation. The knowledge we had by 1980 of the ongoing damage to our living space by capitalist progress was sufficient to produce a sizeable green movement, and the added knowledge of the last 25 years has been of no added political impact. Or perhaps it even has had a negative impact, by adding weight to the lesser evil strategies that keep so many leftists tied to the tail of the DP. Carrol ___ At the risk of undermining Carrol's credibility on this issue--- I agree exactly.
Re: Further confirmation of Mark Jones
- Original Message - From: Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, June 12, 2004 10:00 AM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Further confirmation of Mark Jones I suspect we're closer to a price peak than further sustained increases. Doug __ Frightening. I agree again. Think the $40 range is the break price. Already some Asian economies are suffering, not to mention transportation concerns, airlines, RRs, etc. (Second largest consumer of petroleum in the US? Union Pacific RR) And when it blows, flaring off all that gas is going to be a hell of a task. In the meantime, advertising for myself and my spleen: http://thewolfatthedoor.blogspot.com/
Oil on Trouble Waters
Try this: http://thewolfatthedoor.blogspot.com/
More Oil on Trouble Waters
From the World Bank Survey of the Russian Economy: 30. Russia's economy remains fundamentally dependent on oil and gas. According to offical statistics, approximately 80 percent of Russian exports in 2003 were natural resources, and 55 percent of all exports were from the oil and gas sector. More than 60 percent of Russia's fixed capital investments either go into the hydrocarbon industries or are in one way or another related to the public purse. The budget itself is dependent on oil and gas: 37 percent of federal budget revenues originate from hydrocarbons
Re: Hubbert's peak
It is possible to twist and turn and refer to statistical relativism and do all sorts of things to make Hubbert appear less Hubbertist than he was and his predictions appear more accurate than they are, but doing that obscures the kernel of the Hubbertist message-- and that message is not one of conservation, price increases, tax, etc... It is quite clearly a message of approaching apocalypse, an absolute, irreversible, depletion of hydrocarbon fuels. These fuels are mis-identified as fossil fuel where there is in all actuality very little evidence that supports the notion that oil, natural gas, and gas liquids are the products of compressed and heated biomass. The Hubbertist message, the ringing sound of the bell curve, is extinction. Read Campbell, Deffeyes, etc. and see for yourself. One can say the bell curve isn't important, but it absolutely is essential to the Hubbertists; Campbell, Deffeyes, Laherrere includeed. To say the bell curve applies quite well to mineral production is to beg the obvious question, where? Nickel? Iron? Bauxite? Are we running out? Has production of those minerals followed a bell curve based in ascent and decline on reserves, reserve discovery, and depletion? The curves produced by the post-Hubbert Hubbertists rely on data manipulation, not true data analysis-- see for example the Hubbertists manipulation of data on North Sea discoveries to show that over time the size of the discoveries systematically declined. Which gets us to another point, and the one where industry, ideology, and cash flow meet: The Hubbertists have created a veritable industry out of predicting catastrophe. They've been at it for awhile, and after 1999 OPEC rescued them, just as it rescued the oil industry, from low rates of return. Hubbert and the Hubbertists are in no way shape or form describing, analyzing, marginal rates of return. They pretend to describe absolute, inevitable depletion. They manufacture an ideology, a pseudo-erudite hysteria which is a self-blind product of a falling rate of return in the industry. If you examine rates of return on investment in the oil industry in the US, you will see that the return peaks on 1970 and then falls, along with production. What I haven't seen is Hubbert's 1956 paper predicting this exact date. It may exist. I would appreciate a reference to the original prediction I would like to know where the bell curve has correctly predicted, not increased costs of extraction, but absolute depletion and scarcity-- and a deficiency where say it takes more aluminum to find bauxite than the bauxite can yield? Has the bell curve explained iron ore production, nickel, - Original Message - From: Yoshie Furuhashi [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2004 3:42 PM Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Hubbert's peak Michael Perelman wrote: Hasn't been a decade since a major oil discovery has occured? So do you think we'll run out of oil - in the economic, not physical sense - before we choke on the smoke and CO2? Doug Higher prices can cause stagflation, before the oil industry invents new technology to make oil production cheaper again and/or other industries learn to economize on oil. -- Yoshie * Critical Montages: http://montages.blogspot.com/ * 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/
