Louis' note on the dependency theory was also published on his list
(marxmail.org). I've been debating this issue with Louis and others on his
list. The note below is the response I posted on Louis' list.
Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
As I have mentioned previously, the two countries in
Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
the scholarly references are extremely useful.
I knew that was going to please Louis. By the way, the name is Alejandro
Dabat. Not Jorge Dabat.
going back 500 years, the position one takes on them often define one's
attitude toward contemporary questions
Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
In the July-August 1999 MR, a special issue on the state of the world,
there are articles by James Petras on Latin America and Stanislav Menshikov
on Russia that include interesting statistics on the wage share of national
income and GDP respectively (might be
Louis makes assertions of fact as if he really knew:
The SACP and the Mexican CP are [!]
basically reformist outfits and if fundamental change comes to those
countries, it will linked to forces to the left like the Zapatista
movement or the constellation of left intellectuals and trade unionists
Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
Does anybody know of a single source for these kinds of
statistics on a country-by-country basis? Basically, I am looking for wage
earners share of GDP or National Income, whichever is more useful (if they
are not in fact the same thing.)
Yes. Look them up in
Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
Please, we are trying to avoid this sort of communication.
On Thu, Jun 21, 2001 at 10:00:07AM -0400, Julio Huato wrote:
Louis makes assertions of fact as if he really knew:
The SACP and the Mexican CP are [!]
basically reformist outfits
Seth Sandronsky [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
Can anybody direct me to cites and sources concerning the nominal
and/or real wages of South Korean steelworkers versus U.S. steelworkers,
and
the most recent global rankings for steel exports to the U.S.?
Check the US Bureau of Labor Statistics web site
Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
Hernando Cortés on Mexico City in 1527:
This noble city contains many fine and magnificent houses; [etc.]
Tenochtitlán was the impressive center of the Aztec Empire, a despotism with
a steep social structure. At the top, there was a military, religious, and
Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
On Mexico's border, 'prosperity' has an ugly side
By Diego Ribadeneira, Globe Staff
NOGALES, Mexico -- Paradise lost. Those are the words many here use to
describe this remote and beautiful corner where Mexico meets Arizona.
A once-pristine region of deep blue
Louis Proyect [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
Actually, Cardenas's party--which your interviewee tonight described as
moribund--is very much in sync with Julio Huato. One supposes that its
embrace of NAFTA, as opposed to the romantic Chiapas unabomber-type
resistance to the imperialist penetration of Mexico
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
The holy trinity of Roemer, Elster, and Cohen seem quite reductionist
(back when they were doing Marxist stuff). The first two got into
methodological individualism, reducing all social phenomena to individual
decisions, while Cohen embraced another kind of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
very good as a basis of historical analysis? Perhaps it is the productivity
that comes from contradiction and ambiguity which gave Marxism its
conceptual
power.
That'd be a dubious productivity. On the premise of logical contradiction
and ambiguity anything can be
Mark Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
elsewhere. In 1999 Mexico downgraded its official reserve estimates by 20
Gigabarrels.
The Mexican government, especially since Zedillo, has been claiming that the
state monopoly, PEMEX, is in deep trouble. Fox has adopted a similar
position. It is somewhat
Sam Pawlett [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
At best, costlier energy means that less developed countries will not be
able
to industrialize the way the North has: through cheap energy. The only way
will be for the North to decrease consumption. Because of acute capital
shortage, countries of the South will
Sam Pawlett [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
How are they [poor countries as they develop] to pay for it [limiting
environmental damage]? World Bank loans? I try not to assume anything,
but it's safe to say that LDC countries will follow the path of least
resistance (i.e. the cheapest) towards
Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
Rich countries reduce pollution, in part, by exporting it to poor
countries.
If Third World countries get to grow, they are likely to be in a position to
limit or negotiate this in better terms.
Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
Julio Huato wrote:
IMO, the main obstacle to the development of capitalism in the Third
World is not imperialism.
What is?
Doug
To state it in general may not be particularly helpful. But here it goes.
In my opinion, the main obstacle to the development
michael pugliese [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
This sounds like the articulation of modes of production
approach reviewed back in the late 70's in NLR by Aidan-Foster-Carter.
Another part of what Julio says sounds like to me like the Peruvian
economist touted by Mario Vargas Llosa, and the late Richard
Michael Pugliese [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
I knew I should have phrased that differently!
No. It's fair, Michael. And thank you for all the URLs. I have heard of
de Soto before. Louis Proyect already honored me by associating me with
him. But I haven't read him directly. Now I should.
Sam Pawlett [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
Because it isn't happening [as they grow, poor countries are not showing
will or mechanisms to improve the enviroment]. The most industrialized of
the poor
countries (S.Korea, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia) are environmental
disasters. I've seen it first hand. There
Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
The Nancy Stukey paper seems like another statement of the environmental
Kuznets curve. Alan Krueger once presented this idea to the URPE meetings
at the economics meetings. It was far from convincing.
Some types of polluting behavior will indeed by cut
Yoshie:
The essence of imperialism may be best understood as what is
necessary to ensure the global reproduction of social relations of
capitalism, for which a variety of means -- including embargoes --
are used, depending on what changing circumstances demand. [Etc.]
I find this posting very
Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
Julio, I do not have any absolute proof, but I feel fairly confident that
most of the pollution caused by consumption in the United States occurs
offshore. The extractive industries are terribly destructive. Toxic
wastes are shipped abroad. Ugly industries,
This was sent to me off list by Michael Pugliese:
From: Michael Pugliese [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Fw: How to Stop Bush Amnesty of 3 Million Illegal Aliens
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 07:29:11 -0700
Julio Huato, I lurk on alot of Right-Wing lists. Give these nativists
Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
CB: Wouldn't the WTO, IMF, World Bank, U.S. Treasury, NAFTA, NATO, US war
machine, et al, combine to be this organ ?
I can't respond to Charles Brown's posting right now. But I'd like to
submit a note I sent to marxmail where I address issues that are very
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
Marx praised Ricardo for seeing how capitalism is expansionist (M - C -
M'). But the latter, unlike Marx, saw the problem -- including the falling
rate of profit -- as arising due to external processes (scarcity of land
raw materials).
You are right about
Oct 2, 2003:
- National Call-In Day: Urge President Bush and members of Congress to
support immigrants' rights. Make your toll-free calls any time on October 2
to the White House at 1-800-321-8268 and to Congress at 1-888-355-3588.
- Meet with Congress
- Rally and Picket. 2:30 pm. Join a UNITE
Jim Devine wrote:
the real action has to involve the development of a mass movement of the
left, something that will never come from the DP. Only when there's a
working-class movement outside of the electoral arena will the political
balance shift back in the human direction.
... which leads to
In his reply to Doug Henwood's article in the Nation, Peter Bohmer makes
points that are thought provoking. Confined to my bedroom due to a bad flu,
I will share with you some of my misery in the form of lengthy comments on
Peter's remarks. Forgive me. I won't happen again anytime soon.
Peter
to this, except -- as I said -- when helping the
family farm and the small farmer goes against the interest of the landless
rural- and urban working poor. In such case, I take view that one human
being is as worthy as any other human being.
Julio Huato
What production function do we reject? And on what grounds?
IMO, Anwar Shaikh's claim is that fitting an homothetic production function
on aggregate data is arbitrary. As they'd say in econometrics, there's an
identification problem because such data don't allow to single out the
parameters.
Dear Matías:
Nowhere did I say that the production function describes the value equation.
I said instead that it refers to the material substratum of the
capitalist value equation. The material substratum of value is use value.
By physical inputs I mean concrete labor power and means of
A friend of mine says this is an obituary published in The Times-Picayune,
New Orleans on 10/2/2003:
Word has been received that Gertrude M. Jones, 81, passed away on August
25, 2003, under the loving care of the nursing aides of Heritage Manor of
Mandeville, Louisiana. She was a native of
Kenneth Campbell wrote:
But this is lousy style:
I wouldn't mind his style.
What is unhelpful is his tactical misfiring.
At this juncture, you have an administration whose policies, domestic and
foreign, are exactly what the left is supposed to be against. Yet, Cockburn
is busy criticizing
Louis Proyect wrote:
Well, who else is supposed to criticize the Democrats? Salon.com? The
Nation Magazine? Bill Moyers?
[clip]
I think that the point of Counterpunch (and PEN-L) is to address the
necessity of transforming the system. We are facing a downward spiral in
bourgeois politics that
Yoshie wrote:
Barring another terrorist attack to the magnitude of 9.11.01, Bush is
finished [clip]
The Democratic victory in the 2004 presidential election is virtually
certain.
What are socialists to do, now that George W. Bush is losing the war and
will be losing the election in 2004? Remind
Paul Krugman wrote: And there are signs of an economic takeoff in at least
parts of India [...] every one of those development success stories was
based on export-led growth.
Then Michael Pollak made the following remark: India wasn't. Exports are
10% of its economy, like the US.
India is a big
In his column, Paul Krugman deals with the alternatives facing the Third
World.
Louis Proyect attacks him (and others) on the grounds that they cannot
accept [...] the proposition of an alternative to capitalism. I wish Louis
gave us a clearer idea of what he means by this.
The fact is that no
The New York Times
December 2, 2003
U.S. Sees Lesson for Insurgents in an Iraq Battle
By DEXTER FILKINS and IAN FISHER
SAMARRA, Iraq, Dec. 1 American commanders vowed Monday
[clip]
Speaking at the same meeting, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said
such attacks were being mounted by a
Doug Henwood wrote:
I don't see how the intelligent use of bourgeois stats and categories
doesn't accomplish the same task.
With a suitable definition of intelligent use, it must accomplish the same
task.
But then we cannot easily communicate the results to orthodox Marxists with
no or little
Joanna Bujes wrote:
What's tougher than that is to be able to stop thinking while remaining
conscious and highly sensitive. (not claiming to have achieved that
myself...)
I once heard a sport psychologist calling this state of mental awareness
being uptime. I would call it being outside -- i.e.,
Doug wrote:
You average leftist would say that this is too sunny a view - that NAFTA
has been destructive. Any comments on the report from people familiar with
Mexico?
I read the summary. I'll try to comment on it soon. I'd be interested to
know Valle's take as well.
Julio
Joanna,
Hope I didn't make things worse with my silly posting on Monday.
I read PEN-L mail on the archives, from new to old. That's not good -- I
know. I replied to your note on Question re basics without knowing the
context or what the thread was about. Sorry. No wonder Ralph felt
The last few weeks haven't been nice to me. A gut infection landed me in
hospitals, once in the Midwest and once in Mexico. So I've been unable to
follow the discussions in the lists.
These are my belated views on the electoral strategy of the U.S. left
recently discussed here:
We need to remove
Michael Perelman wrote:
That was the big fight during the New Deal. One wing of the Democratic
Party called for trust busting; the other, for organizing the potential of
larger economic formations.
Both sides have anti-progressive consequences.
Of course they do, without progressive
Ahmet Tonak wrote:
Any reaction to the following op-ed defense of Mankiw by Bhagwati. I
observe two flaws:
1) a complete misunderstanding of competition; Bhagwati attacks Kerry
because, Bhagwati thinks, Kerry is unable to see the connection between
outsourcing of jobs and the improve[ment of]
Doug Henwood wrote:
He's also very critical of the U.S. use of the WTO to tighten intellectual
property restrictions and of the confusion of capital account
liberalization with trade liberalization. He's not a wind-up free-trader.
Jagdish Bhagwati wrote [my remarks in brackets]:
The starvation
Hari Kumar wrote:
gini I understand as a coefficient allowing some guess at level of
equality. What is a Hefindahl please?
Thanks,
Hari
The Herfindahl is the sum of the squared market shares. H = 1 means
monopoly. H = 1/n (for n very large) means a perfectly competitive
market.
Julio
Gassler Robert wrote:
The problem is that concepts like heteroskedasticity refer to samples and
how well they reflect the total population. Here we have the total
population of US presidential elections, so we do not need statistical
inference.
Actually we do need statistical inference. We do
Louis Proyect's comments on Wilentz's article in the Nation are very
persuasive. However, I do disagree with Louis on the following:
When you accept Bill Clinton's right to interfere in Haiti's internal
affairs on a good will basis, the door is also opened to George W. Bush's
more openly hostile
James Devine wrote:
I wonder if Paul Krugman is embarrassed to appear on the same op-ed page as
this fellow:
He should... the same way we all should feel embarrassed for sharing the
same federal administration with David Brooks. It may be as hard for us to
alter the White House's policies as for
Louis Proyect wrote:
This is now the 3rd list that DMS has departed from. [Etc.]
It's not appropriate to say things about David now that he has left the list
and cannot defend himself on it. It's Michael's prerogative to ask us to
follow certain guidelines and exclude us from the list if he so
dd wrote:
Fischer Black used to call the stock market efficient because in his view
it was almost always between 50% and 200% of fair value (he wasn't joking
either; this was seriously his view and he nevertheless believed that the
stock market was informative and regarded himself as an efficient
Professor Michael Perelman wrote:
While I'm replying, I meant to tell Professor Perelman [MY GOD! EVEN MY
STUDENTS DON'T CALL ME THAT!!!]
:-)
Julio
_
Charla con tus amigos en línea mediante MSN Messenger:
You guys are too quick. I'll be repeating points others made while I was
typing or sleeping. Here it is anyway.
* * *
David B. Shemano wrote:
What is that word Marxists like to use to describe unreal objects that
people think are real? Fetish? You see a bogeyman called a corporation.
You
Louis Proyect wrote:
To begin with, there was absolutely nothing about Venezuela or Haiti--two
of the more important hot spots in the world today.
I'd have loved to hear the discussion on Organizing in the U.S. South, but
I wasn't able to. Did anybody on the list go to this meeting yesterday
Louis Proyect cites Marx:
Where the working class is not yet far enough advanced in its organization
to undertake a decisive campaign against the collective power, i.e., the
political power, of the ruling classes, it must at any rate be trained for
this by continual agitation against this power
Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
It costs a left-wing candidate more to run in the Democratic presidential
caucuses and primaries than to run as a Green candidate in the general
election. Howard Dean spent over $40 million, did not win a single
primary, and got forced out on February 18, 2004 [etc.]
I
soula avramidis wrote:
it is like when it becomes more expensive to draw oil out of the ground,
going for control of high reserves of cheaply mined Arab oil (1 dollar per
barrel) makes for a hell business, both in itself and insofar as you
strangle others with it.
Given what they know now, is it
Louis Proyect:
I am simply opposed to the notion that the Earth can sustain the life-style
of a New Jersey suburbanite. Just project 10 billion people with Jeep V8s,
central air conditioning, lawns, a TV in every room, beef 5 times a week,
etc. Simply can't be accomplished under any social
k hanly wrote:
The Japanese know that access to energy resources is essential for their
capitalists and the US knows the same.
Access to food is essential for people in Brooklyn. There's some food
stored in supermarkets, grocery stores, etc. But usually we don't steal it.
We buy it at the
I'd love to reply to Paul's detailed argument. I regret that he decides not
to engage. Hopefully we'll continue the conversation at another time.
Julio
_
Charla con tus amigos en línea mediante MSN Messenger:
ravi wrote on another thread:
being opposed to a notion means that you think the notion is incorrect.
that statement has meaning (in discourse) irrespective of how one expresses
one's opposition. of course, i could continue in your style and list the
positions or responses i wish to restrict you
Charles Brown wrote on a retired thread:
CB: Fossil fuels are such a strategic resource in the world's technological
regime, that even if their depletion will occur in 2115, humanity might
start to modify radically our mode of production now in order to deal with
the loss over one hundred years
(My last posting for a while, Mike.)
James Devine wrote:
Capitalism always involves a contradiction between capital's interest (the
long-term interest of the capitalist class as a whole) and those of
competing individual capitalists. (One might liken this contradiction to
the public goods
k hanly wrote:
Marx's hypothesis is surely not that it is a voluntary market transaction
but a forced transaction because the capitalists own the means of
production and the workers do not and have no means of access except
through wage slavery. They cannot themselves produce and support
MICHAEL YATES wrote:
What exactly about capitalism today is progressive?
Progress under capitalism is not tidy, but we can tell grain from hay.
The most significant, in-the-face progressive happening that comes to my
mind is that, in the last 2-3 decades, *capitalist production* in central
India
My note in brackets. Let's carpet-bag this summer in the swing states.
Florida has nice beaches and people who could get Bush out of the White
House. - Julio
The Nation
Getting Out Every Vote
by JEFF BLUM
[posted online on April 8, 2004]
How can progressives substantially increase the number
Paul Krugman has been worried lately about a possible oil shortage:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/14/opinion/14KRUG.html?th. He focuses on
the recessionary and inflationary impact on the U.S. But China should be a
bigger concern (I mean, under the radical assumption that one Chinese is
just as
Tom Walker wrote:
We need to be careful about three distinct relationships here that tend to
get confused one for another: wealth, value and capital. Perhaps the
confusion results from the fact that they can be readily exchanged for each
other. Perhaps capitalism results from the fact that they
Tom Walker wrote:
But capital is all about the past: dead labour.
Or so the Germans would have us believe.
Those who appropriated the most dead labour in the past are entitled to
appropriate more dead labour, compounded, in the future. Doesn't matter if
you appropriated it there then and here now.
Michael Perelman wrote:
Sometime ago, I believe on pen-l, I questioned Brad DeLong's insistence
that increasing aggregate income meant that the people were doing better,
whether in India or China. I had not seen an indication that the BJP was
in trouble before the election. India was, by all
Michael Perelman wrote:
Of course, Mark Jones is ultimately correct. At some point natural
conditions will drive up the price of hydrocarbons. The only question is
about timing.
My impression is that Mark Jones' argument was about the timing of the
event. Who would deny that as a resource is
pooled cross-section equations in which it is not possible to correct for
the endogeneity of sexual activity. The statistical results should be
treated cautiously
Right, chicken and egg... because we happy people tend to attract and have
significantly more sex than the grumpy ones. :-)
Let's be clear: Louis Proyect and I are the only list members who can
legitimately claim expertise in oil forecasting. The rest of you are just a
bunch of amateurs.
But that's okay. Louis will continue sharing his wisdom by Lexis-Nexing an
endless stream of well selected journalistic articles,
Michael Perelman wrote:
how much of an interest rate hit, can the economy take without reeling.
I looked at the Flow of Funds.
From 2001Q1 to 2004Q1, total outstanding debt in the U.S. grew at 1.8%
quarterly. I suppose debt tends to grow faster than the GDP, but isn't this
too brisk a pace
Doug Henwood wrote:
H, I think it's worth testing the hypothesis that when PEN-L gets a
thread going on economic vulnerability, the economy is about to accelerate.
This is a good real-time test.
Good point. There's an upswing. Some financials will get fixed and debts
will be rolled over.
Carrol Cox wrote:
I don't think estimates of total wealth tell one much. What counts for
your purposes is the flow of material goods and services available at any
given moment. Or perhaps the productive capacity if everyone were employed,
but I doubt anyone could make even a wild estimate of that.
In one of the last paragraphs of my previous posting, I wrote:
Say, the labor force will grow at 4% per year in the future and per-capita
income at 1%.
I meant:
Say, the POPULATION will grow at 4% per year in the future and per-capita
income at 1%. Doug's figure is per capita, not per worker.
Daniel Davies wrote:
Surely this is the entire problem at the heart of the Cambridge Capital
Controversy; you can't work out what the total amount of capital is without
making an assumption about the rate of profit and vice versa.
You caught me! Yes, you're absolutely right. My exercise is
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