Be a European, Smell Better
NY Times Magazine, 1/23/00 Gogol À Go-Go By chronicling the garish excesses of contemporary Russia, the novelist Victor Pelevin has earned the scorn of the Moscow literary world and the adulation of the country's youth. By JASON COWLEY Upon returning to Moscow recently from a stay in a Buddhist monastery in South Korea, the Russian novelist Victor Pelevin received a surprise phone call from an Orthodox priest. Why, the patriarch demanded to know, had Pelevin -- unlike the great Alexander Solzhenitsyn, or the even greater Leo Tolstoy -- neglected his Christianity? "I told him I hadn't neglected my Christianity," Pelevin says. "I grew up in an atheist country! He was unconvinced. He said that because I was popular with the young, I had a responsibility to set a good example. I was polite to the old man, but his expectations of me were ridiculous. I'm a writer. I have a responsibility to no one." Nearly anywhere else, this remark would seem like a harmless expression of artistic self-assertion. But no country is more haunted by the spirit of its dead writers than Russia; even today writers still occupy an emblematic position in society. Yet just as Moscow has escaped its Communist torpor for the willful chaos of post-Soviet life, so the Russian image of the novelist is no longer that of reverent seer or even heroic dissident. Rather, if anyone embodies the new image of the writer in Russia it is the 38-year-old Pelevin, a laconic semi-recluse with a shaved head, a fashionable interest in Zen meditation and an eccentric attachment to dark glasses. (He is seldom seen without them.) Even as pulp fiction and pornography increasingly fill Moscow bookstalls, Pelevin has emerged as that unusual thing: a genuinely popular serious writer. He is almost alone among his generation of Russian novelists in speaking with a voice authentically his own, and in trying to write about Russian life in its current idiom. It's a finger-clickingly contemporary voice: wry, exaggerated, wised-up, amused. His mode of writing about low life in a high style, his talent for the fantastic and the grotesque and his interest in drugs, computer games and junk culture have resonated with a generation for whom the novel was becoming too slow a form. And he is, unlike many fellow Russian writers whose fiction is largely preoccupied with the trauma of the Soviet past, not in flight from present difficulties. In fact, he embraces them with the ruthless ardor of a child pulling wings off a butterfly. "Generation P," Pelevin's most recent novel, was a summer sensation in Russia, selling more than 200,000 copies. (The translation to English is still being completed.) The book tracks the adventures of a skeptical intellectual, Vavilen Tatarsky, who becomes a kopiraiter -- an advertising copywriter -- adrift in a glamorously corrupt Moscow. He spends his days devising Russian versions of Western slogans: "Gucci for Men -- Be a European, Smell Better." The title is clearly a reference to America's jaded Generation X. But what does the "P" mean? "It could mean any one of three things," Pelevin says. "It could stand for Pepsi, or Pelevin, or" -- he uses a vulgar Russian slang term that can be translated loosely as "absolute catastrophe" -- or all three of these at once." So Pelevin's generation of liberal freedoms and designer excesses is also the generation of criminality, corruption and despair. "I feel disgusted by everything about my country," he says. "In the Soviet times you could escape from the evil of the state by withdrawing into the private spaces of your own head; but now the evil seems to be diffused everywhere. We are all tainted by it." Complete article at: http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/2123mag-cowley7.html Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
RE: textbook
This could be done through the archiving software used at CSF for example, which allows display of messages by thread topic, although it might not handle subthreads as well as other message board software. There is message board software out there, a decent one by O'Reilley that carries a small charge however, but there is probably freeware that would do the job as well. -- Nathan Newman It would be much better to maintain the "bulletin board" on the website itself. The Nation and Z Magazine utilize such software. Tomorrow when I return to work I will research the options. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Underdevelopment
From Arghiri Emmanuel's "Myths of Development versus Myths of Underdevelopment" in the New Left Review, 1974, Vol. 85, which is a reply to Bill Warren's article "Imperialism and Capitalist Industrialization" that had appeared 4 issues earlier. The chart is meant to illustrate the point that "What development presupposes is not industrialization but, first and foremost, an increase of productivity in agriculture such that those who remain in agriculture can feed those who leave it." ***Average Production in 'Direct Calories' Per Annum Per Male Employed Person*** 1960-4 18101840 All underdeveloped countries5.2 Of which Africa 4.9 Latin America 13.0 Latin America less Argentina9.1 Asia4.6 France 60.07.0 USA 180.0 21.5 UK 14.0 Germany 7.5 Belgium 10.0 (Emmanuel's numbers are based on P. Bairoch's "Diagnostic de l'Evolution Economique du Tiers-Monde", Paris 1970) Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
An appeal from Carlos Vilas
a message to his secretary Ms Pique. e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For those of you who do not know me well, my cv goes as an attachment (unfortunately I do not have an English version!). For all of you, Muchas gracias Carlos M. Vilas [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fax: (5411) 4345-2588 Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Richard Rorty and social security
In October 1996, academic pragmatist superstar Richard Rorty (along with Cornel West and Betty Friedan) shared the platform with AFL-CIO head John Sweeny at a teach-in held at Columbia University which was attended by several thousand students, unionists and assorted activists. Many of us, including me, held out the hope that this would be the prelude to a social movement of the sort that took place during the New Deal. We dreamed that the AFL-CIO would draw upon the ranks of thousands of college students who would be dispatched into the South to organize the unorganized. Most of all, we hoped that this even would signal a break with the kind of anti-Communism that characterized the old labor movement. As it turns out, things didn't quite move in that direction. The AFL-CIO has been able to accommodate itself quite nicely to the status quo. Drawing strength from a bull market and low unemployment, it has mostly endeavored to win strikes in well-established unions like the Teamsters and elect Democrats. Some hold out hope that the protests in Seattle will mark the emergence of a fighting labor movement once again, but it seems unlikely given the record of the past four years. While Sweeny and Hoffa have no trouble denouncing the oppression of labor in the third world, there has been virtually no movement to root out these conditions in places like Alabama and Mississippi, the third world within our borders. The other side of the equation is the intelligentsia who have attached themselves to the Sweeny bureaucracy, people like Richard Rorty whose view of labor-academic unity entails sweeping Vietnam under the rug. Instead of condemning the AFL-CIO for failing to effectively challenge the imperialist war, Rorty has lashed out at demonstrators for "alienating" Joe Six-Pack. Unlike Rorty, the intelligentsia of the 1930s knew how important it was to stake out a principled anti-imperialist position as writers like Hemingway rallied in defense of the Spanish Republic. In today's NY Times, Rorty finds himself on the wrong side of a key domestic policy question. He provides backhanded support for those who would weaken if not eliminate Social Security as an "entitlement". Although Rorty's op-ed piece is directed against legislation that would allow retirees to supplement their income, the logic points in the direction of turning the entire Social Security system into a "means" tested program: Making the Rich Richer By RICHARD RORTY A few days ago I got a nice letter from the Social Security Administration, telling me that I was entitled to some $1,600 a month, but that unfortunately I couldn't receive it because I was still earning a lot of money. Last week I opened the newspaper to find that the House of Representatives has voted unanimously to have the money sent to me anyway. The Senate and the president, it appears, are quite prepared to approve this change. So in the course of this year I shall get government checks for about $20,000. About $8,000 of it will go for federal and state taxes, but I shall still have a net $1,000 extra a month that I never expected to have. I do not feel entitled to that money. Like a lot of other Americans who are 68, I am making a very good living. When I stop working I will get a pension that ensures that I still live perfectly comfortably. I would like Congress to use the Social Security taxes I've paid over the last 45 years to promote the general welfare. (clip) === The problem with Rorty's tacitly "redistributive" proposal is that it dovetails with rightwing advice that Security Security be privatized. In a newspaper column regarding Social Security by William F. Buckley, titled "It's the rich who are on the welfare dole," he defined rich as being any family making over $ 20,000 per year. Buckley and other rightwingers have promoted privatizing Social Security for many years now, using Chile as a model. After the Pinochet coup, the Chicago boys dismantled the social security system as one of their first measures. Of course the measure to allow retirees to supplement their income through working has long been championed by the Republicans themselves. The repeal of the earnings limit also has become a popular cause lately among employers, many of whom once criticized it as a salve for the rich. The Clinton administration has advocated the idea for years, but only if it were accompanied by broader reforms to keep the Social Security system strong enough to withstand the retirement of the enormous baby boom generation starting in slightly more than a decade. So, perhaps it makes sense to describe Rorty's op-ed piece as one that resonates with both the liberal and conservative establishment, which after all has been exactly the agenda of the Clinton administration for the past 8 years. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Last night I watched "The Day the Earth Stood Still" on video. It was the first time I had seen it since its original theater appearance in 1951. It is one of the first films of the period to question the cold war even if on an allegorical basis, just as another science fiction flick "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" was designed to increase anti-Communist hysteria. A flying saucer lands in Washington, DC and discharges its two passengers, the humanoid Klaatu, played to a tee by Yorkshireman Michael Dennie who bears a striking resemblance to David Bowie, and his assistant Gort, an 8 foot robot with super-powers. Klaatu has come to the planet Earth to deliver a message to the assembled leaders of all governments. He belongs to an interplanetary confederation that has outlawed warfare that has become aware of the earthlings' recent experiments with guided missiles carrying nuclear warheads. They fear that eventually these types of weapons might be introduced into outer space. So an ultimatum is to be delivered. Unless these experiments are called to a halt, the confederation will send a fleet of robots to destroy the planet Earth. Klaatu can not even get to first base with the truculent and irrational earthlings. The Russian government will only attend a conference if it is based in Moscow, while the British are opposed to setting foot in Communist territory. Meanwhile, many Washingtonians believe that Klaatu is a Communist spy, while others simply want to eliminate him as a threat to the status quo. In order to find out more about the mores of the planet, Klaatu disappears into the streets of Washington and finds a furnished room in a house where Patricia Neal and her young son live. Klaatu takes the two into his confidence and they find themselves in solidarity with his mission. In the climax of the film, Neal rescues the planet from immanent destruction by giving "Don't shoot" instructions to the robot: "Gort! Klaatu barada nikto!" Klaatu also makes an effort to set up a meeting with the world's greatest scientist, Dr. Berhardt, who is played by Sam Jaffe, and other leading scientists. Bernhardt. Bernhardt is an obvious stand-in for Albert Einstein, who had come out repeatedly against atomic testing and for socialism during those insane years. Although director Robert Wise is better known for his "West Side Story" and other mainstream Hollywood flicks, there is some strong circumstantial evidence of leftist sympathies. He was chosen by Harry Belafonte to direct "Odds Against Tomorrow", a noir masterpiece that was written by blacklistee Abraham Polonsky and which challenged some of the major racial stereotypes of the 1950s. In the climactic scene of Robert Wise's 1951 science fiction film classic, is killed by a fear-mongering government agency, then resurrected by his robot charge Gort. Astonished by the power of this foreign technology, Patricia Neal asks him whether control over life and death is possible. Klaatu assures her that such powers belong only to the "Almighty Spirit" and that his life extension is good only "for a limited period," the duration of which "no one can tell." In Edmund North's original script, Gort resurrects Klaatu without limitation. But the movie industry's censors told the producers: "Only God can do that." North's other best-known writing credit was the screenplay for Francis Ford Coppola's "Patton," about which he stated, ''I hope those who've seen the picture will agree with me that it is not only a war picture, but a peace picture as well.'' The film's producer Julian Blaustein also produced "Broken Arrow," based on the Elliott Arnold novel "Blood Brother," Blaustein demonstrated great enlightenment for that time in Hollywood by working hard to portray Native Americans fairly. He employed 375 Apaches to perform in the film, build authentic wickiups and other props, play native instruments and teach the movie-makers traditional dances. "We have treated them as people, not savages," Blaustein told The Times in 1950. "We have tried to show that the only real 'heavies' are ignorance, misunderstanding and intolerance." It is very likely that Robert Wise, Edmund North and Julian Blaustein were all touched to one degree or another by the great outpouring of radical politics and culture of the 1930s and 40s. Their story is being told by Paul Buhle and others. It is worth emulating as we move toward a new radicalization provoked by the capitalist contradictions of the new millenium. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
British Imperialism and indigenous peoples
is Herndon, Jean O'Brien, and Anne Marie Plane independently bring into focus Indian efforts to cope with New England governments that increasingly denied the natives' existence. The sixth essay, by Hilary Beckles, is the exception that proves the rule, for though not on North America, it concerns American Indians: the Karifunas (Caribs) of the West Indies. The second pattern involves identity in a more prosaic sense than that conveyed by this collection. We meet here roughly two hundred eighty individuals with names, of whom some two-hundred- twenty are either Europeans or European-descended settlers, four are twentieth-century politicians, seven are Afro-Jamaicans, five are Caribbean natives, two are Australian Aborigines, one is an African-born freed slave, and, strikingly, forty-three are North American Indians (including two whose fathers were Britons). In other words, historians of North American and Caribbean Indians record individual names, while historians of the rest of the "empire," who nevertheless lace their articles with the names of Britons, do not much bother with the names of indigenous persons. This is not so much a criticism as an observation; in a volume that is so dedicated to identity, the attention to the names of indigenous individuals on one continent and its attendant islands, and the absence of individual names (unless "British") elsewhere, reveals a sharp difference between English- language scholarly traditions in each hemisphere. In the Western Hemisphere, scholars attend more to the indigenous "experience" -- which requires a name -- while in the Eastern they work harder to isolate broad historical "processes" and workable chronologies -- which require more attention to such impersonal forces as military finance, the drive for wealth, and the massive elaboration of racist feeling. Giving us both traditions, this volume enriches the revived field of British imperial history. Let us hope for more such encounters. Copyright (c) 2000 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other permission, please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Desk Set
itive, as Gandhi did. However, I do insist that man ends are not defined in the volume of goods and services his industrial machines produce. Instead, mans ends lie in the quality of life that increased leisure makes possible. And today, at least in America, more and more of us are freed to live life in dimensions which transcend survival, as measured in bread-and-butter terms. Consequently, not only must we today examine our work-ethic, but also our attitude toward play and leisure-time activity. "For example, it has been emphasized that ours is a spectator culture. It is, of course, but there are other signs already mentioned: do-it-yourself, travel, and so on. All these things point to something more than the spectator view. To begin with, I would examine what life would be like when we no longer need to eat our bread by the sweat of our brow. And how would our lives be changed if we realized that work is not a punishment for past sins and that play is not evil, but rather a creative expression of mans creative and artistic self? "As our industrial revolution advances, we come face to face with a world moving towards the 30-hour week, paid vacations, field, early retirement. How many workers dream of their chicken farm? For the. skilled operator and the maintenance man, going to the factory will perhaps not be so bad. On many operations there will be little to do except watch the machine. There will be time for talk-fest with the boys. Under such circumstances the factory kind of club where the worker goes to meet the boys will be one of the few man-dominated worlds left." [Thanks to Van Gosse, moderator of the Radical History mailing list, for suggesting that "Desk Set" was worth taking a second look at.] Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Irrational exuberance
NY Times, March 12, 2000 RECKONINGS / By PAUL KRUGMAN The Ponzi Paradigm Charles Ponzi wasn't the first to try it, but he has joined Dr. Bowdler and Captain Boycott among those whose names will forever be terms of abuse. And the classic scam that bears his name -- using money from new investors to pay off old investors, creating the illusion of a successful business -- shows no sign of losing its effectiveness. Robert Shiller's terrific new book, "Irrational Exuberance," contains a brief primer on how to concoct a Ponzi scheme. The first step is to come up with a plausible-sounding but complicated profit opportunity, one that is difficult to evaluate. Ponzi's purported business involved international postage reply coupons. In a more recent example, Albanian scammers convinced investors that they had a profitable money-laundering business. Complete article at: http://www.nytimes.com/library/opinion/krugman/031200krug.html Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Japan
NY Times, March 14, 2000 Japan Is Back in Recession, Statistics Show By STEPHANIE STROM TOKYO -- Defying official optimism, trillions of yen in government spending and other financial stimulants, Japan's economy showed its underlying weakness Monday in statistics that indicated a retreat back into recession during the final three months of 1999. The Japanese Economic Planning Agency said that the gross domestic product -- the total output of goods and services in the economy, the world's second- largest -- fell 1.4 percent in the October-through-December quarter. It was the second consecutive quarter of economic shrinkage, following a 1 percent decline from July through September. The back-to-back quarters of contraction put Japan officially back into the technical definition of a recession, extending a seesaw pattern of tentative recovery and pullback. The October-December decline was the biggest since the economy fell 2 percent in the spring of 1997 and the third-largest quarterly decline since the end of World War II. Full story at: http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/japan-econ.html Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: Re: Re: Re: Pro-ITN Libel Suit Post
By the way, this outcome undermines the argument that LM is some sinister tool of British capital, doesn't it? Doug LM is/was a bizarre libertarian magazine that had cut its ties to the left some time ago. Doug decided to publish in their pages fully knowing this. Meanwhile he derides Alex Cockburn for speaking at an antiwar conference run by libertarians. There is not such thing as "British capital". In adopting the rhetoric of the dogmatic left, one wonders which type of Marxism he has thrown overboard in an announcement to LBO-Talk. The Marxism of Gramsci, which understood intraclass ideological rivalries, or the Marxism of Bob Malecki. LM reflected the class interests of that segment of British capital politically aligned with the Tory Party. The anticommunism of the Thatcher years has become irrelevant to this camp, so that is why LM's "iconoclastic" views on foreign policy are no bother. After all, people like Pat Buchanan were saying much of the same thing here. Finally, on the question of free speech. If Marxists in power were constrained by this principle as enunciated by many here, the Cuban revolution would have been overthrown years ago. One might even argue that excess respect for free speech led to the overthrow of the FSLN in Nicaragua. (Michael, if you want to suspend my posting privileges for a week, go ahead. I wil understand.) Louis P.
Rentier's hoarding ?
How do you think the situation in Japan reflects on Keynes' theory? Is it a Well, Doug said that Japan confirms Marx rather than Keynes. I am not exactly sure whether a protracted slump is a confirmation of Marx, while a protracted expansion such as the one taking place in the USA is proof that Marx is irrelevant. After all, when Japan was expanding in the late 1970s and early 1980s, all the pundits--especially Thurow--argued that the Japanese model must be adopted by the stagnant USA. Why look at it in terms of monetary policy? Isn't there something more fundamental going on, namely competition between nations based on the production of automobiles, computers, and capital goods such as machine tools? In the world capitalist economy, there are winner nations and loser nations just as within a capitalist economy there are success stories like Bill Gates and loser stories. From NY Times Magazine http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/2319invisible-poor.1.html IN THE SHADOW OF WEALTH San Jose, Calif. Thomas A. McConnon, in his car outside an Innvision homeless shelter. Photograph by Jeff Riedel "I work as a night auditor and a bellhop at a small hotel, here in San Jose. And I've been in the National Guard for 15 years. About six months, I've been living here in the car. I divorced my wife recently, and I ended up like this from complications from the divorce. There aren't always beds at the shelter, but I can park outside and use the shower and get mail and get food. "I sleep in my clothes, and keep the tie on. I don't know why, part of that military thing, the discipline. You can get used to anything. They ask me at work how I'm doing. And I say fine, and of course I'm lying. But the boss recently said I didn't look so good. And I told him what's been going on. And so they just offered me a raise at work. I don't know how much it's going to be. I think a dollar would be too much. I want to earn it. Maybe 50 cents. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Rentier's hoarding ?
Financial Times (London) February 29, 2000, Tuesday Surveys FTA1 HEADLINE: SURVEY - FT AUTO: Difficult times as the going gets tougher: JAPAN KOREA by Alexandra Harney and John Burton: The car manufacturers in both countries continue to feel the pinch with rationalisation on the cards When Yoshifumi Tsuji, chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers' Association, delivered his annual New Year's speech last month, the greeting bore an uncanny resemblance to those in previous years. "The past year was highlighted by the implementation of new economic stimulus measures by the Japanese government. These measures led to the emergence of clearly brighter prospects for the economy, yet consumption still did not recover to normal levels. "As a result, the automobile industry confronted a difficult business climate throughout the year," said Mr Tsuji, the former president of Nissan. The prolonged slump in Japanese consumer spending has dampened spirits at the country's once-proud carmakers. Nissan has joined forces with Renault after a brush with bankruptcy. Mitsubishi Motor has effectively bundled its truck division with Volvo's and is negotiating with partners about a deal on passenger cars. Even Mazda, until recently the darling of automotive analysts for its restructuring drive, issued an unexpectedly large profits warning earlier this month. A similar scenario is unfolding in Korea, where the prospect that two of its three carmakers may soon be acquired by foreign owners could result in the most dramatic change for the local car industry. The possible takeover of insolvent Daewoo Motor and its Ssangyong Motor subsidiary by one of possible four overseas suitors - General Motors, Ford Motor, DaimlerChrysler or Fiat - and Samsung Motors by Renault will break open Korea's closed car market. With foreign carmakers here to stay, the Asian automotive market will never be the same. In Japan, it is already forcing carmakers to cut costs and trim excess labour and loss-making subsidiaries and to revamp their research and development and marketing activities. Renault has pressured Nissan to implement 21,000 job cuts, including 16,500 in Japan, and reduce the number of suppliers by 50 per cent. But this is not the only headache for Japanese carmakers. With the outlook for the domestic economy uncertain, most analysts are expecting car and truck sales of about 5.9m units this year, only slightly above the 5.88m vehicles sold in 1999. The combination of foreign competition and sluggish demand is deepening the divide between winners and losers, one that even an economic recovery is not likely to erase. Toyota and Honda, with strong finances to fend off potential foreign buyers and healthy business in the US, have emerged in the winner's circle. (clip) Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Frontline program on nuclear power
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/ At 10:16 AM 3/24/00 -0600, you wrote: A friend of mine told me about a recent Frontline program on nuclear power that supposedly was very pro-nuclear, but very convincing (my friend is a talented physicist and felt that the arguments and evidence were very credible). Sorry to intrude on the economic discussions with something less economic in nature, but has anyone seen this program or heard anything about it? Bill Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Rentier's hoarding ?
portance of the East and Southeast Asian countries, and of many others. The market access that such countries enjoyed in the metropolis in the past is no longer available to them. Indeed, even in the matter of bailout following the crisis, the tough position adopted by the IMF vis à vis the East and Southeast Asian countries provided a contrast to the position adopted vis à vis Mexico earlier, and indicated the reduced strategic importance of these economies for imperialism. This fact must affect their growth rates. In short, we are witnessing a new phase in the history of capitalism. Not only will the metropolitan countries, taken as a whole, experience lower growth and higher unemployment than was average during the postwar period, but the whole third world will have lower growth than in the past. Poverty will increase in the third world as a result of the deflation-induced rise in the rate of surplus value, and assets will keep passing into the hands of metropolitan financiers. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
William Greider on American triumphalism
s. That will be a rare opening in itself. More important, the social ideas and moral values already being advanced by the new movement against corporate-led globalization should gain greater respect because their relevance as economic solutions will become clearer. Labor rights, corporate accountability, the sovereign power of poorer na- tions to determine their own destiny--these and other reform causes involve more than fairness. They also provide essential answers to the economic maladies and instabilities embedded in the present system. In a previous article ["Global Agenda," January 31] I described some modest first steps toward building new global rules for social and moral equity. Reforming the economics of globalization is obviously more daunting, but it starts with a simple proposition: The pursuit of common human values--what people around the world recognize as justice--is not in conflict with our economic self-interest; in fact, the two can be mutually reinforcing. * * * The core contradiction in the global economy--enduring overcapacity and inadequate demand--is usually obscured by the more visible dramas of financial crisis because it is located in the globalizing production system, the long-distance networks of factories and firms that produce the goods and services flowing in global trade. Corporate insecurity--the fear of falling behind, the need to keep driving down costs, including labor costs--is what generates globalization's greatest contradiction. Alongside energetic expansion and innovation, the system generates vast and growing overcapacity across most industrial sectors, from chemicals to airliners. My favorite example is the auto industry, which in the spring of 1998 had the global capacity to produce 80 million vehicles for a market that would buy fewer than 60 million. This excess sounds irrational (as it is), considering that the multinationals are esteemed for sophisticated strategic management. Yet each corporation decides (perhaps correctly) that it has no choice but to disperse and expand production for survival--moves that seem smart and necessary in their own terms but that collectively deepen the imbalances of overcapacity and quicken the chase for new markets. So we witness the recurring episodes of giddy overinvestment by firms, investors and developing nations, followed by financial breakdown. Then the process regains momentum and repeats itself somewhere else. The overcapacity is further deepened by the "Washington consensus" enforced by international lending institutions. The doctrine pushes more and more countries to pursue the export model of development pioneered by Japan, except without any of Japan's equalizing features--the social guarantees, full employment and minimized income inequality--or the protective measures that insulated its infant domestic industries from foreign competitors. The global system instead encourages countries to ignore or actively suppress labor rights and regularly opposes public-sector investment as a wasteful impediment to growth. Unlike developing Japan, South Korea or Taiwan, which shielded their producers, the new exporting nations are told they must keep their borders and financial systems wide open to foreign interests--that is, hostage to the global system--so they are unlikely to achieve the earlier success of Japan or the "tigers." The plain fact is that too many poor nations are now betting their futures on export-led growth--too many for most of them to succeed. These pro-capital, wage-retarding policies contribute substantially to insufficient demand worldwide, the flip side of overcapacity or overinvestment. One can now appreciate why the US market is so essential: If America taps out, who will buy all this stuff? The immediate pain would probably be felt most severely in poorer countries, which would lose their meager shares in global trade. Full article at: http://www.thenation.com Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Rentier's hoarding ?
the insanity of a crisis of overproduction. The Japanese are not starving and, with all their foreign asset holdings, have a few more cards to play in the international economy. So why should they worry that their balance sheets look grim by US accounting standards? The Washington Post, January 3, 2000, Monday, Final Edition Japan Inc. Workers Get Harsh Dose of Economic Reality; High Jobless Rate Gives Rise To Homeless Camps, Suicides Doug Struck; Kathryn Tolbert, Washington Post Foreign Service The line of blue-plastic huts along the banks of the Sumida River, built by the homeless here whose numbers have nearly doubled in four years, is one sign of Japan's painful economic restructuring. The human side of this upheaval in the Japanese workplace also is evident in the soaring suicide rate, in the new corps of jobless who spend their days on park benches so their families think they work, and in the despair of new graduates collecting rejection slips. Japan is perhaps uniquely ill-suited for the wrenching dislocation that other economies have experienced, including the "downsizing" of America's industrial base. The nation's post-World War II boom was built on an ideal of loyalty to one company, rewarded by lifetime employment. Now middle-aged men are thrust out of work in a culture where changing jobs is difficult, where unemployment still carries a stigma, where age discrimination is legal, and there is little social safety net. The country was shocked last March when one distressed longtime employee of the tire manufacturer Bridgestone Corp. committed suicide after holding his company president hostage. That was the most public of what were nearly 33,000 suicides, by far the highest number since World War II, and three times the number of automobile fatalities. Police, who keep careful track of this phenomenon, said the largest increase was in suicides caused by economic worries, including job loss and forced early retirement. Nobuhito Kimiwada, who helps run a legal help-line for distraught workers, said: "We talk about restructuring, but we ought to have a goal. One goal is to get more profit for stockholders. In the American system, there is a huge discrepancy between the rich and non-rich, at the expense of the workers. Is that what our goal should be? I seriously hope not." Japan's unemployment rate has been on a decade-long upward march. At 4.5 percent it seems low by American standards, but in Japan it is only a notch below last summer's 4.9 percent historic high. The unemployment rate among men 24 or younger is officially 10.7 percent, but analysts say it is likely much higher. The jobless also include many middle-aged men who will be unable to find jobs matching their skills or former salary. These are casualties of company cutbacks, such as the 51,000 Nissan Motor Co., Nippon Telephone Telegraph Corp. Mitsubishi Corp. announced recently. "People are not fired--it's not American-style layoffs," said Akira Takanashi, chairman of the government-sponsored Japan Institute of Labor. Instead, more than half of large companies have "early retirement" programs that encourage--or, in any cases, force--employees to quit as early as age 49. Those who do not take the hint can be treated heartlessly. Stories abound of employees shunned, with no work, no responsibility and no real contact with the other employees until they quit. (clip) Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Many Companies Are Forced to Dip Deeper Into Labor Pool (fwd)
NY Times: March 26, 2000 Many Companies Are Forced to Dip Deeper Into Labor Pool By LOUIS UCHITELLE K ANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Unable to find enough workers in the booming economy, American corporations are trying to expand the labor pool. Uh-oh. There goes our search engine... Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Who lost Russia?
emerging trading groups. Some banks made fortunes by handling the accounts of various state agencies, including the Treasury. Then, in connection with the scheme for privatizing state companies by the distribution of vouchers, a market for stocks was born before the mechanisms for registering stocks and efficiently settling transactions were properly in place, and long before the enterprises whose stocks were traded started to behave like companies. A culture of lawbreaking became ingrained long before the appropriate laws and regulations could be enacted. The proceeds from the voucher privatization scheme did not accrue either to the state or to the companies themselves. At first, the managers had to consolidate their control and service the debts they had incurred in the process of acquiring control; only afterward could they start generating earnings within the companies. Even then, it was more advantageous to hide the earnings than to report them unless they could hope to raise capital by selling shares. But only a few companies reached this stage. These arrangements could be justly described as robber capitalism, because the most effective way to accumulate private capital if one had hardly anything to start with was to appropriate the assets of the state. There were, of course, some exceptions. In an economy starved of services, it was possible to make money more or less legitimately by providing them, for example repair work or running hotels and restaurants. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: Query on Small Farmers
Check out the Monthly Review special issue on agriculture from a couple of years ago. There is a tremendous article by Richard Lewontin that not only makes the case that most farming is done by self-employed family farmers, but has the statistics to back up his argument. At 02:30 PM 3/28/00 -0600, you wrote: Does anyone have any good figures on the farm population of the United States? How many "small farmers" are left -- not counting those whose primary family income is from regular off-farm employment. Also, I'm not sure how to define "small farmer." Does this category add up to a politically significant sector of the population any longer? Carrol Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
E-Commerce
Mostly my day-to-day tasks revolve around keeping the Columbia University Financial Front-end System up and running. This involves keeping my nose buried in the technical minutiae of Sybase and Unix and away from users or other human beings. Sort of like a post-Fordist version of the coal shoveller who works in the engine room of Eugene O'Neill's "Hairy Ape". But today as a change of pace I sat in on a presentation by Chemdex corporation in order to help evaluate their product. Chemdex is a 2 1/2 year old company that provides a web-based solution to purchasers of what are called "reagants". These are the thousands of chemical and biological commodities used by scientific researchers at places like Columbia and major pharmaceutical corporations. A lot of these researchers operate on the premises of the converted Audubon Ballroom uptown where Malcolm X was killed. Community protest was defused through funding of local projects and provision of space for a Malcolm X exhibit in the lobby of the refurbished building. Most of the reagant vendors are very small operations, who can not provide timely pricing or product information. Chemdex expects to make its money by charging both the purchaser and the seller a fee on each transaction. It is what as known in E-Commerce parlance as a B2B outfit, or business to business. Most of you are probably familiar with so-called B2C's--business to consumer--like amazon.com. Although nearly all of these outfits are highly capitalized through the IPO's that mutual funds and wealthy investors are anxious to gobble up, they are also not making profits in most instances. The problem with such companies is that they do not produce anything. They are middle-men who seek the slimmest of profits through heavy volumes at pricing just above cost. Not only is their own survival questionable, they also put pressure on suppliers who are forced to compete with each other as to who can offer the lowest price. When a purchaser can cut through the bullshit of salesmen and advertising in cold pursuit of the best price on the Internet, there will be inevitable motion in the direction of creating just a few mega-suppliers offering an optimized price. Oddly enough, large scale automation seems poised to solve the "transformation problem" once and for all. The E-Commerce revolution not only will have destablizing effects on the capitalist economy in the course of making it more rational and competitive, it will also suggest ways in which alternative systems can make the best use of modern technology while dispensing with the profit motive. In a sense E-Commerce belongs to the world of Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward", which revels in the notion that technology under social control will make life more livable. Although William Morris, the socialist with romantic if not medieval sensibilities, lambasted Bellamy, it should be obvious that socialism will require both of their visions integrated into a whole. Electronic purchases done on the Internet will make possible the free time necessary to learn how to write illuminated manuscripts by hand. The utopian schemas of both Bellamy and Morris are a far cry from those of today that if anything are not utopian enough. John Roemer's coupon-based market socialism and the Hahnel-Albert networked computers participatory economics schema seem far too practical and at the same time far too visionary. Their practicality is meant to address the concerns about whether socialism can work, so they offer blueprints that it can. It is far too visionary since it fails to address the question of how social change takes place, namely out of the barrel of a gun. I actually saw the first hint of E-Commerce back in war-torn Nicaragua in the late 1980s, when a Tecnica volunteer created a database of all the spare parts in private and state-owned industry that could be used in a common pool. All that was required was a telecommunications interface to make it available across the country. That initiative and hundreds of others were destroyed in an anticommunist crusade. In the final analysis, it will only be a social transformation such as the kind that ousted Somoza that can make the full promise of E-Commerce possible. Or perhaps we should call it E-Communism. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Left Approach to China Trade: A Critical View
What's wrong w/Harry Wu screaming about lack of basic freedoms in China? From the PEN-L archives: The Houston Chronicle, February 4, 1996 Harry Wu just won't back off; Crusader dismisses criticism of his stance against China LYDIA LUM; Staff MILPITAS, Calif. - As soon as human rights crusader Harry Wu accused the World Bank of financing an agriculture project in China that used prison labor, the bank investigated his claim. But after a six-week, $ 200,000 probe of that project, as well as 159 other World Bank-financed efforts in China, bank officials announced they found no ties between any of their projects and prison labor. The incident perhaps best illustrates Wu's reputation as an apostle in human-rights issues. It also shows growing doubts about his accuracy. "Harry Wu is a major player, and we took his words seriously,'' said bank spokesman Graham Barrett. "We abhor forced labor, and we wouldn't want our money supporting it. But there is no evidence to substantiate Mr. Wu's claims.'' Wu, 59, drew headlines worldwide during a 66-day detention in China last summer. Immediately after returning to the United States, he resumed criticizing agencies and companies that he says support forced-labor camps in China. Targets of Wu's verbal assault have ranged from the World Bank to a wholesale tool shop in Houston. Imprisoned for 19 years in forced-labor camps, Wu has built a career trying to dismantle the laogai - a network of Chinese prison camps modeled after the Soviet gulag that tries to "reform'' minds of criminals and political undesirables through forced labor under dangerous conditions. Some prisoners languish for decades. Wu insists his accusations are well-researched, based on records and photos retrieved by him and a chain of Chinese informants. He says the World Bank could not have investigated thoroughly in only six weeks and is covering up. Wu - who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize during last summer's house arrest - speaks brashly about his legal troubles in China. He was convicted of stealing state secrets and impersonating a police officer stemming from undercover trips to China to document human rights abuses. During a stop at the University of St. Thomas last fall, he told his audience that owners of a southwest Houston shop knowingly import hammers, wrenches and other tools from forced-labor camps. U.S. law bans importing forced-labor goods. But U.S.Customs officials - who have issued import bans on 26 Chinese products since 1991 and credit Wu as one of their resources - say they found no proof of wrongdoing during several investigations of Houston companies with purported ties to Chinese prison labor. Employees at the tool shop declined comment when contacted by the Chronicle, but appeared surprised when told of Wu's accusation. Wu said he never spoke to the store's owner, basing his claim on records from a Chinese informant. "Like many other zealots, he is so convinced of the rightness of his own position,'' said James Feinerman, a Georgetown University professor of Chinese law who has testified at congressional hearings with Wu. "But things aren't always black and white. '' Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Left Approach to China Trade: A Critical View
Steve Philion: I agree with this text, of course. Note that the source is the same kind of source that Henry has so passionately attacked Doug for using when making criticisms of the labor regime in China. It's nice to see that it is alright to quote from the beast after all when discussing China But Henry is correct. There is an enormous propaganda offensive that is attempting to demonize the Chinese government. Although it comes from rightwing sources, it is used as a club by the liberal wing of the ruling class to extract concessions. Nobody in the west, from Clinton to Jesse Helms, gives a shit about human rights. We are much worse on prison labor than China. When Harry Wu goes around spreading lies, it allows Clinton to put pressure on China to accept trading terms less favorable than other countries who have much worse blemishes. You might think that the criticisms of Wu that I posted here and on the SR mailing list were easy to come by. They were not. I had to spend my entire lunch hour the other day finding material against him on Lexis-Nexis. (I had forgotten about the PEN-L post.) I kept doing searches on "Wu" and "exaggerations" or "Wu" and "inaccurate" until I found the 3 items that have found their way into email discussions. Keep in mind, however, that if you do a plain search on "Harry Wu", you will get back 904 hits. This means that for every 1 article telling the truth about this rightwing provocateur, you get 300 describing him as some kind of saint. No wonder there is so much Sinophobia going around on and off the Internet. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Left Approach to China Trade: A Critical View
I will add that when Henry chooses to be informative, he is one of the most informative and useful posters on the internet. But mostly he chooses to spout the obvious or spout nonsense. Carrol Yes, but without his intervention we'd be much worse off. It would be better, I suppose, if we had somebody like Marty Hart-Landsberg taking on the topic of China, but he is too busy with North Korea, another state that every high-minded leftist in the west loves to hate. You have to read Henry with a critical eye, which is the case for every other human being. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Left Approach to China Trade: A Critical View
Steve Philion wrote: I agree with Henry about Harry Wu. I think his attacks on Doug are based on much less valid reasoning. I believe there are some personal matters beneath the surface that explain this. Henry was Doug's broker 2 years ago involving a Hong Kong pork belly derivatives deal that went sour. Since it was based on a butterfly spread type margin call, Doug was short the broker and long the dealer. Doug pulled a fast one and converted his contract to a preferred stock/Ginnie Mae payable in Mexican pesos. After the Zapatistas began their offensive, the pesos lost most of their value against the Hong Kong yen. Henry has never forgiven him. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
ILL Request - Socialist Register 1992 (fwd)
Socialist Register is not exactly a magazine. It comes out once a year and contains articles that are related thematically. For example, Socialist Register 2000 is devoted to an examination of Utopia, which means how socialism can recapture the visionary goals of Marx and Engels, not how to start free-love communes in Vermont that grow soybeans and sing "Kumbaya" around the campfire. At 10:42 AM 3/30/00 -0500, you wrote: can i ask a question? Is "Socialist Register 1992" a collection of essays or a special volume of socialist register magazine? I saw a reference in someone else's paper to "Socialist Register 1992" edited by Miliband. there are articles by Wallerstein and Cox. I can not figure out if this is a book or special volume since my library does not seem to know. does any body know what "Socialist register 1992" is? I mean, is this a book other than the _Socialist Register_ magazine? I appreciate any help if possible.. Mine Aysen Doyran Phd Student Political Science SUNY/Albany Albany/NY Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Bubbles
NY Times, March 31, 2000 FLOYD NORRIS Modigliani's Message: It's a Bubble, and Bubbles Will Burst FRANCO MODIGLIANI says that the current mania for Internet and other technology stocks is not irrational. But it is a bubble, and it will burst. "I can show, really precisely, that there are two warranted prices for a share," Dr. Modigliani said in a telephone interview. The one he prefers is based on such fundamentals as earnings and growth rates. But, he added, "The bubble is rational in a certain sense." The expectation of growth "produces the growth, which confirms the expectation; people will buy it because it went up." The trouble, he said, is that the bubble price is naturally unstable. It can keep rising only so long as expectations keep growing. "But once you are convinced it is not growing anymore, nobody wants to hold a stock because it is overvalued. Everybody wants to get out and it collapses, beyond the fundamentals." Dr. Modigliani knows something about the fundamentals. Now 81 years old, he won the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics in 1985 in part because of his pioneering work in just what those fundamentals are. One of his insights -- which seemed odd back in the 1950's when he was first propounding it -- was that the value of a company's securities, including stocks and bonds, should be based on expected future profits, discounted by an appropriate interest rate. That also applies to the stock market as a whole. By that light, it is not easy to rationalize huge price-earnings ratios. Dr. Modigliani argues that it is impossible for the economy to grow as fast as the market seems to be forecasting, even if some companies will do very well. "You cannot believe that corporate earnings will rise forever at 7 percent," he said. Eventually, "the entire national income will be taken by profits." (clip) Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Hard times on the farm
New York Times, April 2, 2000 As Life for Family Farmers Worsens, the Toughest Wither By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF TRYON, Neb. -- Walking across the prairie, stepping carefully around cow pies, Mike Abel confesses that he has told his son and daughter not to follow in his line of work. He sounds for a moment like a repentant bank robber. But Mr. Abel, 45, is in an even less promising field: He is a cattle rancher. Ranchers like Mr. Abel on the lovely desolation of the Nebraska prairie near this hamlet, miles and miles from nowhere and nothing, evoke the gritty determination and toughness of John Wayne on a good day. These days the ranchers evoke something else -- poverty. This rural area, McPherson County, is by far the poorest county in the country, measured by per capita income. Federal statistics show that people in McPherson County earned an average of $3,961 in 1997, the most recent year for which statistics were available, compared with $5,666 for the next poorest county, Keya Paha, also in Nebraska. The richest, New York County, better known as Manhattan, had a per capita income of $68,686 in 1997. Cowboys like Mr. Abel might seem the last people to cry. But with much of the agricultural economy in deep distress, with dreams of family farms fading like old cow bones on the prairie, even the cowboys' lips are sometimes trembling. "What always hurt us was when we're at the table trying to figure out how to make a land payment, and the kids are seeing us crying as we wonder what happens if we can't make the payment," said Mr. Abel, a sturdy man with flecks of gray in close-cropped hair. "We'd always hoped this would be a family operation. But why should my son, Tyler, struggle and make money only two out of five years when he could get a good-paying job in the city somewhere?" While most of the American economy is going gangbusters, many rural areas are undergoing a wrenching restructuring that is impoverishing small ranchers and farmers, forcing them to sell out, depopulating large chunks of rural America and changing the way Americans get their food. The gains in farming and ranching efficiency are staggering, but so is the blow to the rural way of life. Just a few years ago, the United States thought it had a plan to revitalize the agriculture economy: the Freedom to Farm Act. Passed by the Republican Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1996, the law aimed to phase out subsidies but ease regulations and promote exports to make farming profitable without government aid. Almost everyone agrees that the law has not worked (although there is also a consensus that it is the other guy's fault). Direct federal payments to farmers last year rose to a record $23 billion. That is far more than the federal government spent on elementary and secondary education, school lunches and Head Start programs combined. With the failure of American farm policy, no one has much of a plan anymore, even though the present course appears unsustainable. The growing cost of federal farm programs, the replacement of small family farms with huge factory farms, the fading of rural hamlets -- all these point to historic changes under way in American agriculture. Yet the changes are happening without anyone guiding them or the nation paying them much heed. The poverty statistics can seem misleading to city dwellers, for the poor farming areas rarely have homeless people or anything like a slum, and in any case cattle and hog prices are rising this year. But prospects look dismal, adding to the pressure on many rural areas. The depopulation is evident in the grade school in Ringgold, a crossroads village in the east end of McPherson County. Leah Christopher, an effervescent eighth grader who is an outstanding gymnast, will graduate from the school in a few months at the top of her class, and at the bottom. She is the only eighth grader. The entire school, from kindergarten to the eighth grade, has only one teacher and seven students, four of them from Leah's family. Another grade school in the county has just four students and will drop to three next year. "I took a training course once where the other teachers were talking about using the school psychologist and other resources like that," said Elnora Neal, the teacher at the Ringgold school. "Well, I'm everything. At this school, I'm teacher, nurse, psychologist, P.E. teacher and janitor." McPherson County had 1,692 people in 1920, and since then its population has been steadily falling, to about 540 today. At its peak, it had 20 post offices, 5 towns and 63 school districts; now it has 1 post office, 5 schools and, if one is generous enough to include Ringgold, 2 towns. The average age in the county is in the late 50's, the average American farmer today is 54. Complete article at: http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/farm-poverty.html Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
columbia.com
f elite education and cultural institutions to capture the high-end knowledge/education market by creating a top knowledge destination web site. In discussing Columbia's digital media strategies in a February 29, 2000 letter to the faculty, President George Rupp wrote, "These new technologies offer opportunities for us to improve teaching and research at the University and also to extend our reach. But we will need to be sure that we realize the opportunities in ways that reaffirm our basic mission and our core values." Columbia University, The London School of Economics and Political Science, Cambridge University Press, The British Library, The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History and The New York Public Library will work with Fathom to develop high-quality digital media knowledge content for the Fathom site. Fathom will offer a wealth of free content, such as multimedia lectures, seminars, databases, publications, and performances. Working directly with the prominent faculty and curators of these institutions, Fathom will cover a wide range of subjects such as business and law, biology, computer science and technology, the arts, journalism, and physics. Fathom users will have the opportunity to interact and collaborate with the leading experts in their field. Fathom's unique architecture will provide a powerful "search and explore capability" that will allow users to follow their interests, independently or with expert guidance, across the widest possible range of subjects. "Fathom embraces the principles upon which the great learning institutions of the world were founded -- to create a community where ideas flourish, to stimulate intellectual curiosity, and to aid in professional development," said Ann Kirschner, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Fathom. "Fathom also reaffirms the founding principles of the Internet. By providing global access to these resources, Fathom holds the promise of knowledge without boundaries and a new medium for the exchange of ideas. It points ahead to a future where the acquisition and application of knowledge can be independent of economic status, time constraints, and geographic location." "Fathom and its partners are committed to creating a dynamic home for knowledge. It will harness the power of the Internet to enhance the learning experience without diluting the highest professional and scholarly standards," she said. "Fathom is far more than another distance learning site. We are creating a vibrant 'Main Street' for knowledge and education. We intend to go beyond the current limits of information sites scattered across the web and also go beyond online initiatives from individual schools. "Fathom will define the transformation of the on-line learning category into a broader interactive knowledge marketplace," Dr. Kirschner said. Significant growth in online education is expected over the next few years. According to IDC, an industry analyst, the size of the U.S. market for distance learning is already $2 billion and is projected to be $6 billion in 2002 and $9 billion by 2003, a growing component of the $750 billion higher education market in the U.S. alone. Enrollment in online programs is expected to increase at an annual rate of 30-35%. Only top universities and cultural institutions will be able to provide the level of faculty and instructor interactivity and evaluation that will distinguish on-line education and therefore will lead the development of this new category. Developed by top universities, Fathom will be the leading online destination for high-quality knowledge and education. The Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning has already had a major impact on campus-based education. In its first months, the Center has worked with more than 300 faculty members on projects ranging from simply putting a course syllabus on the Columbia network to such complicated online digitial projects as designing distance learning applications, creating graphical approaches to teaching and learning, and incorporating elaborate computer simulations in courses. The Center also runs an ambitious schedule of workshops for faculty and instructional staff about the use of computer and other new media technology in education. Meanwhile, Columbia Media Enterprises will provide support for faculty and staff developing digital tools and technologies that have commercial potential, and in that capacity, CME will play a role for digital media analogous to Columbia Innovation Enterprise's highly successful licensing and patenting efforts in other areas. As with the case of other patents and licenses, most of the revenue, if any, that accrue from these activities will be returned to the faculty and other developers, and all of whatever revenues the University receives will be invested to support education and research. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Marx's materialism
Ted Winslow: The best critical discussions of scientific materialism in relation to 20th century developments in science that I know are Whitehead's e.g. Science and the Modern World. He elaborates an alternative ontological foundation for science that allows consistently for internal relations, self-determination and final causation. Marx's materialism does the same thing, in my judgment. Interesting. This is the first attempt I've seen on or off the Internet to make an amalgam between Marx and Whitehead outside of David Harvey's "Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference". I wrote a detailed rebuttal that was rejected by Jim O'Connor, who like most modern Marxists has little use for Marx's rather strong materialist convictions. As it turns out, John Bellamy Foster's latest book Marx's Ecology puts forward a defense of materialism that is unlike any I've seen in recent years outside of Timpanaro. I, of course, agree with John completely and will have more to say in a detailed review of his book. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: Re: Marx's materialism
It's scary- I'm getting old enough to make going back to my dissertation bibliography nostalgic. Louis- wasn't this what you were also doing once at the Graduate Faculty of the New School?? Naw. Staying out of the war in Vietnam was more like it. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Democracy has brought us nothing but crisis
New York Times, April 3, 2000 The Gypsies of Slovakia: Despised and Despairing By STEVEN ERLANGER RUDNANY, Slovakia -- Darina Horvathova, 23, lives with her baby on the crumbling remains of an abandoned iron and mercury mine, without a husband, a job or indoor plumbing. The soil, under the mounds of uncollected trash, is known to be contaminated. But 500 Gypsies, or Roma as they are also known, live here in sickness and squalor in the shadow of a factory shut down when Communism died. The factory itself is now nothing but a broken concrete shell, having been dismantled for construction materials by the people here. Some live in wooden sheds; some in crumbling, filthy structures built for mineworkers in 1918. There is one water tap for the whole settlement, no toilets and not a single garbage container. "The government doesn't care about us at all," said Miss Horvathova, standing in a path of oily mud and trash. "They could put down some pebbles or pick up the garbage," she said. "Anything you put on is dirty immediately. Is this life?" Cyril and Petr Horvath, 26 and 23, both went to school, and Cyril trained as a bricklayer. But neither has a job. In fact, no Gypsy here has a regular job. "We want to work, but there is no work," said Cyril Horvath. "When you show up, they take one look at you, and that's it. They take only whites." Worsening conditions for Gypsies throughout Eastern Europe have caused thousands to try to emigrate, quickly wearing out any welcome from Western Europe. Their flight has created new pressure, most recently in Britain, to tighten visa, immigration and asylum rules to keep them out. Alojz Dunka, 58, is the unofficial mayor of this settlement on the outskirts of Rudnany, a town about seven miles east of Spisska Nova Ves, in the mountains of northeast Slovakia. He worked at the mine, which was shut down in 1992. "It was much better under Communism," he said. "Even with discrimination, it was possible to live. Democracy has brought us nothing but crisis." Full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/040300europe-gypsies.html Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
The new economy
In an interesting presentation at this weekend's Socialist Scholars Conference, Bill Tabb argued that while there is no qualitative difference between today's economy and the smokestack industry of the past, there are significant differences that must be acknowledged by radical economists. Among them he included e-commerce which he sees in terms similar to those I reported on the other day in relation to Chemdex corporation. The availability of direct purchasing over the Internet will facilitate downward pressure on pricing while making investment decisions more rational. Last week's NY Times had a full page ad for a new e-commerce company that will service the aerospace industry. Does this mean the end of $1000 screwdrivers? Bill did not address a question which occurred to me after his talk. In the old days, boom and bust was very much related to the heavy capital expenditures of industries that formed the core of American industry. For example, the sharp countours of the business cycle of the late 19th century was very much related to rapid expansion of the railroad industry, which required heavy outlays for rolling stock, bridges, etc. In the 1930s the collapse of the German economy was very much related to its concentration in steel and machine tool production, both of which require heavy fixed capital outlays. In the new economy, very few such expenditures are required. It is mostly about gathering together highly skilled people and supplying them with computers. Microsoft and aol.com can expand rapidly by adding bodies. If there is a downturn, there is no need to pay off the huge debts associated with steam engines, foundries, etc. Just lay off excess bodies. Would this be a possible explanation for the USA's ability to weather the financial crisis of 2 years ago? Perhaps the vulnerability of South Korea, etc. can be explained in terms of its continuing dependence on smokestack industries. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Facts contained in the liner notes to Moby's Everything is Wrong
--it takes 23 gallons of water to produce a pound of tomatoes, it takes 5,214 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef. true, but the water given to the cattle isn't totally wasted or destroyed. Eventually it evaporates and comes down as rain to feed the tomatoes. BTW, what are Moby's sources? Even the HARPERS' INDEX has footnotes. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine/JDevine.html He invites people to write him to get the sources. The water question is not so simple, especially in states like California that are naturally dry. When I was there a couple of months ago driving up the main interstate that runs through the agribusiness Central Valley, I saw signs every few miles urging opposition to proposed legislation that would interfere with access to water. Although water takes the form of rain, it does not manifest itself uniformly like lawn sprinklers. It is a scarce resource nowadays and becoming scarcer. Just ask Patrick Bond who has been deeply involved in water utilization struggles in South Africa. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Facts contained in the liner notes to Moby's Everything is Wrong
meltdown in the U.S. before 2005. in 1992, 430,000 people in the world died from cancers resulting from nuclear testing radiation. --more money is spent in the U.S. on nuclear weaponry in one year than was spent on housing from 1980-1992. --to date, cleaning up storage facilities for nuclear debris has cost taxpayers 200 billion dollars. --in 1989 the U.S. military used 200 billion barrels of oil, enough to keep all American public transit systems running for 22 years. --1 ton of toxic waste is produced by the U.S. military every minute. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: UE meeting and comment
At 10:36 PM 4/3/00 -0400, Michael Yates wrote: I went to the meeting early so I could hear the other presentations. The first speaker was Mike Dolan of Seattle WTO protest fame. Mike Dolan runs an outfit called Global Trade Watch that is a wing of Ralph Nader's Public Citizen. Since Dolan's China-bashing seems suspiciously linked to the sort of advocacy found in the ranks of some of our more backward-looking unions (UNITE, United Steelworkers), I was curious to see if could find evidence of funding from these quarters on Nader's website or in Lexis-Nexis. I discovered something very interesting. Nonprofits are not required to divulge the identify of donors of more than $200. So Public Citizen (and the Sierra Club) take advantage of this. Although it seems highly dubious for groups charged with the responsibility for opening up "civil society" to hide their financing in this manner, it actually reflects their "inside the beltway" mentality and willingness to cooperate with the powers-that-be. Nader reluctance to run a high-profile campaign for President on the Green Party ticket last go-round, clearly related to an unwillingness to raise and spend money on the order of his Public Citizen, could very likely be related to his embarrassment over some of their sources. Meanwhile, I discovered that Morris Dees is the treasurer of Public Citizen, which goes a long way in explaining the rather shady attitude toward funding. Dees runs a nonprofit in the South that raises money on the basis of northern liberal hysteria about the Klan, but does very little to actually confront the Klan. Interestingly enough, Dees has gone on an ideological offensive against the Green contingent of the Seattle protestors whom he regards as romantic reactionaries in broad brushstrokes that evokes LM magazine. Alex Cockburn and his co-editor Jeff St. Clair have made an amalgam between Doug Henwood and Dees on the most flimsy grounds. Supposedly the "snooty" LBO would also find grounds to disparage the environmentalists. Obviously the evidence is just the opposite. Doug and LBO has, to its credit, identified completely with the sea turtle contingent. People like Dolan and Ralph Nader expose a problem in this emerging movement that was addressed at an interesting panel at this weekend's Socialist Scholars Conference titled "After Seattle: a New Internationalism?" Tania Noctiummes, who advises French trade unions on questions such as MAI, made some very cogent points. She said that the discourse around the Seattle protests, especially from figures like Dolan, revolves around "citizens" and "civil society". Such classless categories can obviously lead to all sorts of confusions with respect to our attitude toward the ruling class. Are Bill Clinton and the sea turtle protestors both "citizens" in pursuit of a common political goal? Given Clinton's demagogic appeals and the past record of inside-the-beltway operations like the Sierra Club and Public Citizen, one would have to say that an alternative--namely socialist--is required. She also pointed out that there has been very confused thinking about what it means to be engaged in struggle around "international" issues. After all, the main terrain is the national state even when it comes to global trade agreements such as the WTO itself. The trade unions and NGO's involved in the Seattle protests tend to sow confusion on these questions because politically they are reluctant to confront their own ruling class. It is much easier to confront the Chinese government on prison labor than our own apparently. Wouldn't it make for an interesting leap forward in the class struggle if the AFL-CIO announced that it would organize prison laborers in the USA? They haven't lifted a finger for welfare recipients, so I wouldn't hold my breath. Doug Henwood spoke on the same panel as Tania Noctiummes and made many excellent points, including the need to steer clear of China-bashing. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
A teach-in on global justice
Dear Friends, Please spread the word around to your lists and to your friends not on these lists. Apologies in advance, because I'm sure this will conflict with other events already scheduled. Thanks for your help. Also, if you reply, please do not hit "reply to all." Thanks. Daniel Cahill-O'Connell [EMAIL PROTECTED] +++ Seattle Comes to Washington: The WTO, World Bank, IMF, and You A Teach-In on Global Justice And the New World Order When? Friday, April 7, 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. Where? Herzfeld Auditorium, Hannan Hall, The Catholic University of America Come and learn what the upcoming protests against the World Bank and the IMF are all about. Learn about the global movement calling for cancellation of developing country debt. Hear what World Bank and IMF policies have done to promote the debt treadmill and "globalization" at the expense of working people around the world. Participate in discussions of what we can do today to change directions and construct a more just world economy. 1:00 -- Welcome 1:15 -- What is the Jubilee 2000 Campaign to cancel debt? David Bryden Jubilee 2000 USA Carlos Pacheco Jubilee 2000 Coalition Nicaragua Chrispin Mphuka Jubilee 2000 Zambia Campaign 3:00 -- A Global Uprising for a More Just and Equitable World Njoki Njoroge Njehu 50 Years is Enough Network 3:45 -- What Do World Bank and IMF Policies Mean for the Environment? Carol Welch Friends of the Earth 4:15 -- Towards Alternatives to Structural Adjustment Nancy Alexander Globalization Challenge Sponsored by the Peace and Justice Studies Program, The Catholic University of America For further information contact Dr. William A. Barbieri, Director of Peace and World Order Studies, Catholic University at 202.319.5700 ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Or Daniel Cahill-O'Connell 202.319.5488/5773 ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
three bears metaphor killed
Summary: The cheering of the U.S. economy's success should be tempered by the fact of private debt accumulation. I ran across an article by Harry Braverman in the '56 American Socialist that makes almost the identical point. And only 6 months earlier there is an article on automation by Harry or co-editor Bert Cochran (they went on to launch Piel's Beer after the magazine collapsed) which warns about the looming unemployment crisis. How, the article argues, can the 1950s boom be maintained when computers are replacing workers left and right. The statistics are convincing--as far as they go. I am tempted to call myself a Henwoodite, at least on these type questions. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: thinning ozone
On the way to work, I heard a report on U.S. National Public Radio that indicated that experts were shocked because the Arctic ozone layer was thinner than expected: the expected recovery of that layer had been slowed, where the recovery was expected because ozone-depleting chloroflourocarbons (CFCs) had stopped being used. Recovery is slowing down because of abnormally low temperatures in the stratosphere, according to William Stevens in today's NY Times: === The ozone layer is expected to recover eventually, possibly by the mid-21st century. But computer simulations of the atmosphere have suggested that lower temperatures in the stratosphere, about 11 miles high, could increase the rate of ozone depletion in the meantime, delaying recovery by a decade or two. Measurements taken by instruments carried aloft by aircraft and balloons over the past winter have found that temperatures in the crucial layer of the Arctic atmosphere were, indeed, among the lowest on record, and that ozone losses of more than 60 percent occurred. In three of the last five winters, stratospheric temperatures in the Arctic were lower and more persistent, and covered a wider area, than at any other time in the last 20 years, said Dr. Ross Salawitch, an ozone researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who was one of hundreds of American and European scientists from many institutions involved in the recent Arctic survey. The survey's results were announced yesterday by the Pasadena laboratory and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Most Arctic winters in the last decade brought unusually low ozone coincident with an unusually cold stratosphere, according to the World Meteorological Organization. When the Arctic region cools, "that's bad news for the ozone," Dr. Salawitch said, adding that the new data has "really solidified our view" that the ozone layer is sensitive not only to ozone-destroying chemicals, but also to temperature. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Diamonds and colonialism (fwd)
I really wonder why New York Times and bourgeois sources like this suddenly rediscover Africa's heritage of colonalism!! Overall, it does not seem to me more than an "orientalist" sympaty of reconstructing the "other": we killed the folks, and let's do something to compansate it. o!!.. Mine The NY Times is much more complex. There are continual battles going on over how to report, either in the interests of the truth or in the interests of the State Department. Raymond Bonner was an honest reporter who dared to question the Reaganite line on Central America. Finally he was purged. I think everybody should read the NY Times on a daily basis, either in print or on the web. It is the best newspaper in the world, regardless of its editorial stance. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Conference announcement
This message comes to you on behalf of the conference committee of the Conference of Socialist Economists (CSE). CSE will be holding a conference on 1st and 2nd July 2000 in London, entitled Global Capital and Global Struggles; Strategies, Alliances, Alternatives. The aim is to promote a dialogue between academics and activists on the process of neoliberal globalisation and how to resist it. Topics such as the Seattle Round, the politics of the IMF/World Bank, Fortress Europe, the internationalisation of the labour movement, etc. will be discussed (see text at the end of the message). We are looking for other organisations and web sites through which to publicise the conference. If you or your organisation can help in this way, please either:- 1) distribute what follows in cyberspace or on paper, preferably in the `attached file' version which can be printed out as a proper leaflet 2)contact us and we will send you paper leaflets - say how many you can use and where they should be sent 3) consider if you could mention the conference and the CSE web site in your magazine, newsletter etc 4) consider if you could do some kind of `swap deal' on publicity with CSE - you put our leaflets in your mailing, we put yours in ours; reply by e-mail in the first instance to open discussions about this Details of the conference will also be posted in the next fortnight on www.gn.apc.org/cse, where in due course you will be able to download summaries of the talks to be discussed. Thanks for your support Anne Gray === Everyone welcome to an international conference on GLOBAL CAPITAL AND GLOBAL STRUGGLES: STRATEGIES, ALLIANCES, ALTERNATIVES 10am-6pm Saturday-Sunday 1st-2nd July 2000 University of London Union (ULU), Malet St, London WC1 New networks of struggles are posing a serious threat to neoliberal globalization. Their slogans include, 'No issue is single', 'Let our resistance be as transnational as capital', and 'No new round -- WTO turnaround'. This conference aims to involve intellectuals and activists in debate on global capital's strategies today, as well as counter-strategies and alternatives. Questions for debate include Why is global capital liberalizing trade, production and finance? How do social movements build alliances at the local and global level? What strategies could build on their strengths and overcome their limitations? What alternative models of international economy are being promoted? Plenary talks John Holloway, 'Changing the world without taking power' Andy Mathers Graham Taylor, 'Europe-wide struggles against neoliberalism' Stuart Rosewarne, 'Migrant workers, citizenship and labour markets' Silvia Federici, 'New forms of anti-capitalist internationalism' Hugo Radice, 'Globalization, labour and socialist renewal' Workshops Workshop talks and discussions include a diverse range of issues and struggles, e.g. ideologies of social movements, global-local dynamics, community politics, GM seeds, privatization of public services, environmental governance, New Labour's Knowledge Economy, financial liberalization, labour exploitation, trade unions, immigrant workers, EMU, Third World debt crunch. Registration fees: #60 institutionally-funded, #15 high-waged, #10 low-waged, #5 unwaged. Sponsored by the Conference of Socialist Economists (CSE) All details -- programme, abstracts, papers, accommodation info -- will be provided on the CSE webpage, www.gn.apc.org/cse CSE 2000 Registration Form The registration form is also available on the webpage, www.gn.apc.org/cse It can be sent by post with a cheque, payable to 'CSE'. Or it can be sent by email with credit card details. Registration fees: #60 institutionally-funded, #15 high-waged, #10 low-waged, #5 unwaged. Name Institution Address Email Amount paid (see rates above) Cheque enclosed? Credit card bookings name of card holder card type number expiry date Send to: CSE Registration Dr Alfredo Saad Filho South Bank University Business School 103 Borough Road London SE1 0AA UK email [EMAIL PROTECTED] Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Atheist professor fired (forwarded from Jim Farmelant)
KANSAS FIRES FREETHINKER PROFESSOR Texans know Fred Whitehead, Ph.D. from his talk on Freethought history at the 1999 Atheist Alliance convention and his research into Comfort's German Freethinkers. Fred is an outspoken advocate of freethought nationally and at his university. It got him fired last week from his Kansas University professorship in medical humanities after 21 years of teaching. His "research does not fit the mission of the Medical School," said Dr. Deborah Powell, Executive Dean of the School. "This is surely the most extensive peer review in the entire history of the University," Whitehead responded. "The Medical Center has many religion-based events, such as an annual Religion and Medicine symposium. Yet last November, when I sponsored a national conference at this center on the Evolution Controversy, I was harassed by two administrators. My subsequent proposal that I work in the field of science education in Kansas has been rejected by the University. There is a clear pattern of favoritism for religious expression, while a secular humanist like me is dismissed entirely." On his complaint to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Whitehead listed his religion as "Freethinker." His religious belief not being accommodated is "academic freedom." Whitehead thus continues the American intellectual tradition of Thomas Paine and Robert Ingersoll. More than 150 letters of support have arrived at Kansas University from 34 States and 11 nations. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Diamonds and colonialism
n an engagement ring, the greater their love. In the 1960's, a similar campaign in Japan created a diamond engagement ring "tradition." Diamonds spilling out of Angola's war zone have had a destabilizing effect on the cartel, first by increasing the supply of gem-quality stones and then by tarring the reputation of De Beers as a company that trafficked in blood-stained goods. To maintain world prices, De Beers bought up a sizable amount of what Unita was selling - although the company insists that it bought the diamonds on the open market without any direct dealings with the rebels, and that it stopped all buying when the embargo was imposed in 1998. Global Witness, a London-based human rights group, embarrassed De Beers in October of 1998 with a report that showed - citing the company's own annual reports - how the cartel had pumped large amounts of money into the coffers of the rebels as the war escalated. A year later, De Beers took decisive action. The company declared last October that it would not buy any diamonds that originate in Angola, except from one government-controlled mine. Some diamond experts said De Beers' announcement, while laudable, came late - after Unita, having exhausted the easy pickings in Angola's alluvial mines and having lost considerable territory to Angolan government forces, could no longer roil the world market with high quality stones. De Beers moved again last month to sanitize the image of the diamonds it sells. As of March 26, the company says it can guarantee that none of its diamonds originate with African rebels, but come instead from its own mines in South African, Botswana or Namibia, or are bought from mines in Russia or Australia. Human rights groups have welcomed De Beers' moves and praise the company for taking steps they say the entire diamond industry should follow. Rebel-mined diamonds, though, can still find their way out of Africa. About a third of diamonds imported into the United States are purchased from traders who are not employed by De Beers and are not bound by its new rules. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: genome news
this sounds like an effort to drive up the value of Celera's stock (if it is a "public" company). Scientists aren't supposed to announce results before they have them. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine There's something more insidious going on here besides insider trading. The San Francisco Chronicle AUGUST 1, 1992: A controversial notion that biology, not social factors, is to blame for criminal behavior has ignited a debate among scholars and led a federal agency to freeze money for a symposium dealing with the subject. The idea that humans may have a genetic predisposition to lawlessness has disturbed researchers who say that the theories may provide a modern-day underpinning for old racist beliefs and be used as a new form of control for blacks and members of other minority groups. A conference planned for October at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland was supposed to bring together scholars and government officials to look at the genetic influences on crime. The conference is sponsored by the Human Genome Project, a $ 3 billion government research project designed to identify 100,000 human genes. But the proposed gathering has come under fire for seeming to dismiss an entire body of research that says that criminal behavior has its roots in personality and socioeconomic background, as well as family influences. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: the expression political economy
Encyclopedia Britannica: POLITICAL ECONOMY branch of social science, which later developed into economics, concerned with the raising of revenue by the state and the increase of the state's general resources. The term was introduced about the beginning of the 17th century to describe the study of the problems of the princely states, which at the close of the Middle Ages in Europe replaced the feudal-ecclesiastical political order. Adam Smith, the first to present a comprehensive systematized study, seemed to equate political economy with the treatment of "the nature and causes of the wealth of nations." After the nationalistic epoch gave way to individualism or liberalism in the late 18th century, the older state-oriented literature came to be called mercantilism. Works in this period, including David Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817) and John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy (1848), gave increased attention to problems of value and distribution. The term economics replaced political economy in general usage during the 20th century; the change of name accompanied the expansion of the discipline itself, which had become subdivided into a number of specialties. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
OPEC's new president
New York Times, April 7, 2000 Venezuelan Calls Tune in OPEC's Price Tactics By LARRY ROHTER CARACAS, Venezuela, April 6 -- For helping to engineer the spectacular rise in oil prices over the last year, fellow members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries have rewarded him with the group's presidency. Now Alí Rodríguez Araque, Venezuela's minister of energy, faces the daunting task of stabilizing prices at a level that both producers and consumers will find acceptable. Mr. Rodríguez's sudden emergence as OPEC's public face is just one sign of the higher profile in international energy affairs that Venezuela is vigorously seeking. Since President Hugo Chávez took office 14 months ago, this nation of 23 million people, the largest exporter of oil outside the Middle East and the leading supplier to the United States in recent years, has gone from lamb to lion on oil matters. "Under this government, Venezuela has been tremendously assertive, showing that we have our own identity and our own way of doing things," said Alan J. Viergutz, a former president of the Venezuelan Oil Chamber, the main industry group here. "That stands in complete contrast to the previous government, which if not anti-OPEC did not believe in OPEC solidarity." (clip) At first glance, Mr. Rodríguez may seem an odd choice to be overseeing the calibration of supply and demand for a commodity that is essential to modern global capitalism. He was active in a Cuban-inspired guerrilla group in the 1960's and is still a member of a party that is on the far left fringe of Mr. Chávez's coalition. Eventually, though, he abandoned armed revolutionary struggle and, equipped with a law degree earned in 1961, entered conventional politics. It was after being elected to the lower house of the Venezuelan Congress in 1983 that his interest in oil policy blossomed. He gradually rose to chairman of that body's energy committee and became a member of the National Energy Council. "Alí is entirely the contrary of the image or stereotype you would have of a guerrilla fighter," said Dr. Viergutz, who is president of an oil investment company and helped develop the oil band concept. "He is a very flexible, prudent and open-minded person, and though he may have been a Communist, he has come to see there are other economic systems besides the state-oriented model." Legislation has been introduced in the United States Congress to punish oil producers for driving up gasoline prices, a move interpreted here as specifically aimed at Venezuela. OPEC's decision in Vienna to increase output by 1.7 million barrels a day appears to have headed off an immediate showdown, but even so there are other areas in which conflict between the United States and Venezuela may be looming. As part of the higher profile in world energy policy it has been seeking, the Chávez government has sought and been granted an OPEC heads of state meeting, scheduled to be held here in September. Mr. Chávez has a tour of the Mideast scheduled for June, and he is expected to personally invite two of Washington's most bitter enemies, the Libyan leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi, and President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, to attend the conference. In addition, the state oil company, acting on Mr. Chávez's orders, has expressed interest in investing in the Cuban oil industry. If it does, oil analysts here have pointed out, it will almost certainly run afoul of United States legislation that calls for sanctions against foreign companies that make use of American assets nationalized in Cuba without compensation. "Venezuela has always been a major oil producer and exporter," a foreign oil analyst here said. "What has changed is that this government is now prepared to use that weight to become a major player on the international scene." Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: the expression political economy
As I mentioned in the last note, Marshall was instrumental in formalizing economics, because he resented people from other fields interjecting themselves into economic debates. -- Michael Perelman Thank goodness he's not subbed to PEN-L. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Which Way to a New American Radicalism?
ive wherever possible inside the unions, instead of a pro-Democrat adventure. We are convinced that this is the correct approach re-creating a virile, principled, and confident socialist cadre in America. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: genome news (fwd)
. . . This line of attack against the Clintonites is being led by Dick Gephardt and the business and big labor forces behind him. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), whose funding comes from the Rockefeller Foundation, C.S. Mott (GM), Russell Sage (Cabot gas and banking money), sets forth the line Gephardt has been offering . . . From what I can gather, the policies of EPI are determined more by the AFL-CIO bigwigs on the board rather than the philanthropic establishment. But I would have assumed that EPI, following the lead of similar groups such as the Sierra Club and Public Citizen, does not disclose the identity of major donors. As far as getting funding from Stuart Mott and the Rockefeller Foundation is concerned, virtually the entire liberal left is implicated, from the Nation Magazine to all of the mainstream Green groups. For that matter, my own organization was always hitting up Mott and the Rockefellers, as well as the Ford Foundation. Sort of like Lenin taking a ride on a German train. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
From Tom Kruse in Bolivia
Francisco Chronicle or San Jose Mercury (Bechtels hometown papers) lifting up the theme, "The Bechtel Corporations Fingerprints on Bolivias Bloodshed". 2) Public Action: I will also feed this information to my activist e-mail list of more than 1,000 this afternoon, asking for people to immediately write and e-mail Bechtels Chairman, Riley Bechtel, demanding that the company honor the wishes of the people of Bolivia and leave, allowing an end to the violence they have created. I will also try to get Global Exchange to take this on with some organized action at Bechtels headquarters in San Francisco. BACKGROUND FACTS Aguas del Tunari is a consortium led by London-based International Water Limited (IWL). IWL was originally a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bechtel Enterprises Holdings, Inc. (BEn) which is the project development and financing arm of the Bechtel Corporation. In 1999 Bechtel sold a 50% interest in IWL to Edison S.p.A. of Italy. (sources: Reuters and Bechtel Web Site) Bechtel is a global giant, posting more than $12.6 billion in revenue in 1998, $2.4 just on their projects in Latin America. IWL is its arm through which it pursues water privatization projects, such as Aguas del Tunari. Bechtel trumpets that IWL "with its partners, it is presently providing water and wastewater services to nearly six million customers in the Philippines, Australia, Scotland, and Bolivia and completing negotiations on agreements in India, Poland, and Scotland for facilities that will serve an additional one million customers." Tom Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia TelFax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 TelCel: 017-22253 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Latino demographics and the labor movement
The San Francisco Chronicle, MARCH 27, 1996, WEDNESDAY, FINAL EDITION Census Shows a Turning Point -- Hispanics Increasing the Fastest Ramon G. McLeod, Chronicle Staff Writer The number of Hispanics being added to the U.S. population now exceeds that of non-Hispanic whites -- the first time whites have trailed another group since at least the 18th century. The historic turning point happened in the 1993-'94 fiscal year, when the Hispanic population increased by 902,000 and the non-Hispanic white population increased by 883,000, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report being issued today. The pattern was repeated in 1994-'95 and is expected to continue well into the 21st century, when the nation's non-Hispanic white population will be less than half the population, given current immigration and birthrate projections. ''We are locked in the largest demographic change in U.S. history,'' said Charles Kamsaki, a vice president at the National Council of La Raza, a Latino public policy research organization in Washington, D.C. ''Nothing is going to change that, and we ought to begin to have some rational debate about what we need to do as a nation to deal with these changes.'' (clip) === New York Times, April 9, 2000 Janitors March in Los Angeles After Voting to Begin a Strike By THE NEW YORK TIMES LOS ANGELES, April 8 -- In the 15 years Maria Santania has worked as a janitor here, her pay has increased $2 an hour, to $6.50. To earn it, she vacuums, dusts and scrubs two floors of an office building on South Hope Street in downtown Los Angeles -- 100 law offices and consulates filled with thick carpeting and cherry wood desks that she is regularly warned not to damage. At night Ms. Santania, who came to the United States from El Salvador 18 years ago, goes home to a one-bedroom apartment in the Koreatown section of mid-Los Angeles that she shares with her two children; she separated from her husband six years ago. The rent, $550, amounts to more than two weeks of her salary before taxes. So on Friday, she joined thousands of striking janitors -- police and union officials estimated a crowd of 3,000 -- marching 10 miles down Wilshire Boulevard in search of a larger pay increase. Multiyear janitorial contracts are lapsing in several major American cities this year, including San Francisco, San Jose and Chicago, but Los Angeles's was the first to expire with no agreement in sight. The strike came after janitors voted to reject a pay plan put forward by a group of building maintenance companies that would have offered a 50-cent raise the first year and 40-cent raises the next two years. The workers are seeking a $3 increase in their hourly pay over the next three years. "I don't like to be here," Ms. Santania said. "I'd like to be working. But I can't accept 50 cents." The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson and other civil rights leaders and political figures led marchers on Thursday and Friday. And leaders of the union, the Service Employees International Union, which represents about 8,500 janitors in Los Angeles, said workers would not go back until they got a better offer. "There needs to be a dramatic increase in order for them to move above the federal poverty line," about $15,000 annually for a family of four, said Blanca Gallegos, a union leader. "They're not going back until the contractors come back with an offer they can accept, that would be a livable wage." Full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/janitors-protest.html Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Joseph Stiglitz and the April 16th protests
New York Times, April 9, 2000 Seattle Protesters Are Back, With a New Target By JOSEPH KAHN WASHINGTON, April 8 -- For Beka Economopoulos, a 25-year-old environmental campaigner with a premature streak of gray in her long black hair, the drive to shut down the world's financial institutions began in Seattle's King County Jail. She and about 250 other women spent five days there shortly after Thanksgiving last year, most of them arrested for refusing to disperse when the Seattle police told them to move on. Inside the cells, they planned an encore. "For five days they only thing we talked about was how to take this to the next level," said Ms. Economopoulos, a Washington native who now spends full time on this mix of environmental and economic causes. "You go through that, you know, and you're hooked." Many of the people who disrupted the Seattle meeting of the World Trade Organization are reassembling in Washington this week, where they have identified as their targets two older, richer and savvier agents of the global economy: the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Students, church groups, environmentalists and labor unions, a few of them planning to scale buildings and block traffic, say they want to disrupt the spring meetings of both groups. (clip) Many of the protesters view the World Bank and the I.M.F. as global loan sharks, hooking lower-income nations on cheap debt and then insisting that they adopt free markets, unlimited investment, privatization and restrained government spending, or risk a cutoff in new aid. They are armed with research that they say shows some of the poorest countries that get World Bank and I.M.F. assistance, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, have become dependent on loans. Even when the policies work, they often come at the expense of the environment, others argue. The bank and the fund sometimes require aid recipients to curtail spending and increase exports to earn hard currency. To meet those targets, governments often slash environmental protection budgets, they contend. "You cannot conceive of policies more diametrically opposed to sound management of resources, " said Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth. Some protesters have treated Mr. Sachs and Joseph E. Stiglitz, the recently departed chief economist of the World Bank, as intellectual leaders. Mr. Stiglitz's scathing insider critiques have contributed to a raging debate in universities and in Congress about the effectiveness of the agencies. Indeed, the protesters have implicit allies on the right. A commission appointed by the Republican-controlled Congress called last month for an end to long-term loans of the type criticized by environmentalists. The commission also said the bank should make more grants, rather than loans. "Underneath it all is a feeling that globalization has not brought the benefits to the poor as promised," Mr. Stiglitz said. "The architecture of the world financial system is decided by finance ministers behind closed doors, but farmers and small businessmen are the ones who get hurt." Full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/040900wto-protest.html Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: GANG OF 3 REVIEWs of ReORIENT
Just by coincidence, I am in the next to final chapter of Frank's book, which I strongly recommend to PEN-L'ers. Just a few tentative conclusions: 1. While repeatedly condemning Marx and Weber in the same breath, Frank seems either unaware or willfully refuses to engage with the late Marx or Marxism of a more recent vintage. For example, you can not find any reference to Aijaz Ahmad's discussion of Marx and oriental despotism in his fine "In Theory" which puts the whole question into some kind of historical context. The 1853 Herald Tribune articles were based on information that was clearly inadequate. When Marx learned more about India and British colonialism, he altered his views. For a first-rank scholar like Frank to ignore these matters is frankly unforgivable. 2. Frank advances two interrelated arguments that I have not seen before as an attempt to explain the victory of the west. One, he says that the east was a victory of its own success. The period from 1400-1800 which was marked by dominance of India and Asia in world trade (4 out of 5 commodities in circulation originated in the east) led to a depletion of resources. By the same token, the west took the lead from 1800 onwards because of the capital that had been accumulated in the new world through theft but--just as importantly--also because the high cost of labor, particularly in the new world, forced it to introduce labor-saving technology. So the explanation for new machinery is not in the "restlessness" of the west, but sheer economic necessity. 3. Frank predicts that the west will fall and the east will rise again. Although the details to support this argument are found in the final chapter, I can surmise he is referring to the explosive growth of China and the tigers. The implication, of course, is that this will eventually lead to its fall once again and the rise of the west ad infinitum. This rise and fall dynamic is closely related to Frank's use of Kondratieff long-wave theory which I find inadequate, since it confuses cause with effect. More importantly, this view of history seems to owe more to Vico than any which would offer an opportunity for genuine human liberation. By casting off Marx, Andre Gunder Frank has eliminated the one possibility for abolishing the oppressive cyclical historical pattern which will leave one elite or another in power. I will have more to say. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: re: janitors strike
Los Angeles Times, August 8, 1995: The Service Employees International Union took desperately poor, Latino immigrant janitors and turned them into a militant army of in-your-face protesters powerful enough to force Los Angeles' biggest cleaning companies to unionize. Now, the janitors and other rank-and-file members of the organization are using their tactics within the union itself, staging a hunger strike to protest leadership they say is unresponsive, undemocratic, even racist. The disaffected members appear to be operating from a position of strength: They ran a 21-person dissident slate called the Multiracial Alliance in Local 399's June elections and won, taking control of the union's executive board. But longtime Local 399 President Jim Zellers has blocked the new board's directives to set up a grievance committee, fire some union officials and tear down a locked door in the union's anteroom that separates members from union representatives. So Thursday, a dozen dissidents launched a hunger strike in front of the union building, vowing to forsake food until the union leadership gives them the power they say their faction won at the ballot box. Zellers and union members who support him say the dissidents won by using a timeworn but unscrupulous technique: patronage, essentially promising supporters union jobs. Zellers decries the dissidents' tactics: threatening to storm the building, picketing outside with signs complaining about white leadership. He said the lead dissident, Cesar A. Oliva Sanchez, cannot speak English to conduct negotiations with cleaning company executives and lacks the experience to do the job. The rift caused by the dissidents, Zellers said, threatens to undo dizzying gains by the local -- one of California's largest -- that made 399's "Justice for Janitors" campaign a national model. (clip) === Los Angeles Times, May 15, 1999, Saturday, Home Edition Leaders of a local janitors union will sign a formal partnership with Mexican union leaders Tuesday, a move that reflects the growing level of international cooperation in the labor movement. "With the advancement of globalization, and the wealth shifting into fewer hands, it's good to have those alliances," said Mike Garcia, president of the Service Employees International Union, Local 1877, which represents 22,000 California janitors and other service workers. The majority are Spanish-speaking immigrants, Garcia said. He will sign the partnership in Los Angeles with Francisco Hernandez Juarez, a top official of Mexico's fast-growing Telephone Workers Union, which also represents a large number of janitors. The two unions cooperated three years ago in a campaign to organize janitors at Hewlett-Packard Co. (clip) Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: Re: guns, germs, steel
Once every couple of weeks I play chess with John and Jeffrey. Jeffrey is a long-time Nation subscriber and John, a lawyer by profession, is the kind of New Yorker who voted for Giuliani. I usually let the two of them argue politics since the gap between John and me is too wide to allow civil debate. A couple of weeks ago, against my better judgement, I attempted to explain to him why the Kennewick Man's bones should stay out of the hands of "scientists". John has a tremendous ability to ferret out books that answer his 'bete noires', Afrocentrists, left-liberals like Jeffrey and anybody else who thinks that white society is responsible for black peoples' woes. He snapped up Jim Sleeper's "Liberal Racism" while the ink was still wet and has committed Mary Lefkowitz's screed against Martin Bernal to memory. As soon as it came out, he began waving Jared Diamond's book in our face. "See," he shouted, "we had nothing to do with black people's suffering." I do know that Jim Blaut makes a few dismissive comments in Diamond's direction. Myself, I have yet to see anything in the reviews that would make me want to delve into his book. I first stumbled across Diamond about ten years ago, when reviews portrayed him as a sociobiologist in the Robert Ardrey mold. Here's one to give you a flavor for how he was perceived in the press. I am just not motivated to read these characters, who seem to be a subspecies of social Darwinism. Financial Times (London) June 1, 1991, Saturday Books; A 'Naked Ape' for grown-ups By ANDREW CLEMENTS THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD CHIMPANZEE by Jared Diamond Radius Pounds 16.99, 360 pages A NAKED Ape for grown-ups, Jared Diamond's fascinating examination of Homo sapiens as large mammal delves into all those areas of human behaviour that Desmond Morris exposed so titillatingly to public gaze 25 years ago. Human socio-biology has come a long way since then and Diamond, a physiologist by training and ornithologist by parallel career, has laced its disparate strands into a fascinating portrait with more than enough uncomfortable facts to stop any dinner-party conversation right in its tracks. To a disinterested observer from another planet, he reminds us, humanity would be classified as just another large ape, a very close cousin to the chimpanzees. We share more than 98 per cent of our genes with the two chimp species, giving a closer correlation than between birds like the Chiffchaff and Willow Warbler that are indistinguishable to the casual observer. But that extra two per cent has made all the difference, and has been responsible for everything that stems from our upright posture, larger brains and strange sex and social lives. Those behavioural differences, Diamond argues, have been at least as important as sheer brain capacity in lifting us above our congeners. (clip) Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: Re: guns, germs, steel
the east African coast, the House of Peace, have a name from a language whose heartland is two thousand miles north? Because, he would say, that region is not Africa, that is, Black Africa. Why isn't Dar-es-Salaam considered part of Black Africa? For that matter, what constitutes Black Africa? I think it might make sense to distinguish Subsaharan Africa from North Africa, but from a socioeconomic perspective Dar-es-Salaam and Timbuktu certainly can be grouped together. More relevant to the question under consideration is what happened to places like Timbuktu or Dar-es-Salaam historically. While they were not as central to world trade as Kalkut or Malacca, neither could they be accurately described as "backward". After visiting Timbuktu in 1352, Abu Ibn Battuta wrote in his "Book of Travels", "There is complete security in their country. Neither traveler nor inhabitant in it has anything to fear from robbers or men of violence." Two centuries later, a Spanish Moor, Wazzan Zayyati -- known by the pen name Leo Africanus -- praised the city as a haven for "a great store of doctors, judges, priests and other learned men that are bountifully maintained at the king's expense." Timbuktu's scholars taught thousands of students and maintained large private libraries. That era ended in 1591, when a Moroccan army destroyed Songhai, the empire that housed Timbuktu. Portuguese navigators accelerated its descent into poverty by destroying the city's commercial viability, in much the same manner as Great Britain did in India after the Battle of Plessy. Timbuktu's fall was about conquest by human beings, not germs. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: Re: Re: guns, germs, steel
Ricardo says that Diamond is a direct challenge to dependency theory. I think that he would agree that institutions play a larger role after 1600 than before. He deals with before that time. I've been browsing through Lexis-Nexis this afternoon on and off trying to get a handle on Diamond. It appears that his theory lends itself to rather clearcut differences between let's say the British settlers and the aborigines of Australia and why one group conquered another. However, it seems rather banal to spend 900 pages or so making this argument. This, however, is not what is gnawing at people involved in trying to understand why Europe prevailed. It has to do with Europe's relationship to India and China. The one thing I didn't mention in my note on Frank earlier is the powerful mass of evidence he produces on behalf of the argument that between 1400 and 1800 China and India were more "advanced" than Europe. Not only did they produce more wealth, they were also more efficient from a Weberian standpoint. Although Diamond's book is meant to explain how these roles were reversed, I can't see how. Animals were domesticated in Asia as well as Europe. China had the largest iron foundaries in the world in the 1600s. I would suggest that the biggest problem with Diamond's book is that it encourages a fatalistic attitude. The inequality of nations is attributed to the "luck of the draw". Some people were lucky enough to be born in hospitable geographical locales while others bought losing tickets. While it is commendable that he wrote the book in order to refute racist myths about the superiority of whites, we should realize that very few people nowadays preach racial superiority. Our main problem is not the kind of ideology that prevailed in the 19th century, but rather one that adapts to the status quo. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: Re: guns, germs, steel
I agree with Lou. But on this an interesting exchange took place in Toronto Star a few years ago. A Somalian refugee wrote a letter chastising the black community for not doing more for refugees from that part of the world. Some one responded that it was because they did not consider Somalians and Ethiopians to be black. I haven't been able to figure it out, but that is what it said. Rod Hay The cultural history of Ethiopia and its connections with the black community in the US is extremely complex and interesting. There are several factors that create an inner tension that has never quite been resolved: 1. Ethiopia under the Solomonic dynasties was not only allied with European Christian nations, it viewed non-Christian nationalities in the southern regions as inferior, even though they were racially indistinguishable. 2. Ethiopia was the only nation that resisted colonialism successfully. At the battle of Adwa in 1896, the Italians were sent packing. This served to inspire black people everywhere, including Marcus Garvey. Garvey and Haile Selassie became heroes to the Rastafarians in Jamaica. (Ras Tafari was Selassie's name before becoming emperor.) 3. Despite the solidarity with Ethiopia, their emperors never oriented to the grass roots of the black community in the Americas. Selassie identified with the ruling classes and collaborated closely with the militaries in Great Britain and the US. So despite the symbolic importance of the name Abyssinian Baptist Church (Adam Clayton Powell's parish), Selassie never spent time there. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Forrester Research: Most dot-com retailers face 'imminent demise'
http://www.computerworld.com/home/print.nsf/all/000411D466 Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Crane World
Filmed in an extremely gritty, almost sepia, black-and-white, "Crane World"
depicts a overweight, middle-aged Argentinian construction worker named
Rulo who is one step away from permanent unemployment. As part of a growing
neo-realist renaissance including films such as "La Ciudad" and "Central
Station," they offer a single-minded focus on the losers in the new, highly
competitive world economy. By the same token, none offers a vision of how
this situation might improve, least of all through the examples of their
characters, who are adrift like pieces of wood in a stormy sea.
Rulo, played by Luis Margani, has been trained by a friend to operate a
crane on a construction site in downtown Buenos Aires. The new job would
offer the 49 year old not only some security, but a sense of dignity. His
life has been a string of one dead-end odd-job after another. None has
provided him with income beyond what is necessary to sustain a very modest
life-style. He lives in a cramped apartment and drives to the construction
site in a battered sedan that periodically breaks down on the city streets.
None of this bothers the affable Rulo, who is always looking on the bright
side.
His pleasures are modest. Hanging out with male buddies, he prepares
barbecue in his kitchen, watches soccer matches on television, tinkers with
engines and chain-smokes cigarettes. The highlight of his life has been a
gig in his youth as a bass player with a rock band called the Seventh
Regiment, named after the military unit two of the band members served with.
An encounter with the proprietress of a sandwich stand near the
construction site leads to a new romance, soon after the woman reveals that
she was a big fan of the band. Keeping with his good-natured personality,
he only chuckles when she blurts out that he used to be so skinny. What
happened to him? He replies that we all get older.
Victim of his own excesses, Rulo discovers that his overweight condition
and general poor health excludes him from the crane operator's job he had
been banking on. In desperation he travels south to an arid and desolate
Patagonia where he has been told that another crane operator's job is just
waiting for him. Not only is the construction site willing to overlook the
physical condition of the workers, it soon becomes obvious that the
employer hardly cares whether they live or die.
A group of a dozen or so men, including Rulo, live in a run-down dormitory
where there is no running water. They work day and night in harsh
conditions. When the boss neglects to provide lunch day after day, the men
hold a meeting to discuss their options. We can not let them treat us this
way, one worker says. During the meeting Rulo remains silent.
Eventually they are all laid off. In a scene that epitomizes Rulo's
seemingly foolish determination to put the best spin on a bad situation, he
meets with the foreman who is putting him on a truck back to Buenos Aires.
They exchange pleasantries about how nice it is to have friends and to
share good times. In the final scene, we see a grim-faced Rulo in his
darkened apartment smoking a cigarette. What it lacks in dramatic
resolution, it more than makes up for in honesty about this character and
his lot in life.
The Rulos of this world constitute the overwhelming majority. All they are
looking for is the opportunity to share simple pleasures with friends and
loved ones. Driven by the lash of an increasingly competitive labor market,
they are forced to wander from country to country, or within a country
itself, looking for a permanent job that pays a decent living wage. At one
time Argentina had a powerful labor movement that influenced film-makers.
That labor movement, as is the case in the rest of the world, has been in
retreat. When it is reborn, it certainly will inspire a different kind of
movie with a different kind of central character. In the meantime, it is
essential that directors like Pablo Trapero have the audacity to describe
the world as it is, in contradistinction to the pleasant lies coming out of
Hollywood and its outposts overseas.
("Crane World" is currently being shown at the Screening Room in New York
City. It closes on April 13.)
Louis Proyect
(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: Anti-Eurocentrism: Idealist Diversion from Anti-racism/anti-imperialism
Carrol Cox wrote: The ongoing critique in scholastic circles of "euro-centrism" more and more appears as a member of that large family of ideological persuasions generally called "post-modernism," defined here as a purely academic compensation for the material defeats the movements of the '60s. An interesting but wrong observation. It is true that the very same people who hate postmodernism also hate anti-Eurocentrism. You can see this most clearly in the obsessions of New Republic magazine which has provided a platform for major assaults on both Judith Butler and Martin Bernal. But just because there is an attack on both parties, it logically false to assume that they represent the same sort of thing. Bernal's research is about correcting history. Butler's work has very little to do with history, as would be expected with any postmodernist. Marxism could have an ambivalent attitude toward the anti-Eurocentric scholars for obvious reasons. While the "Asiatic Mode of Production" has been pretty much shown to be a misguided effort, there are underlying tendencies in Marx and Engels which would explain how they arrived at the theory. I personally believe that they must be rooted out for Marxism to move forward. To put it succinctly as possible, the Marxist understanding of historical stages was pretty much adopted from bourgeois historians and social scientists of the 18th century with minor alterations. For a full explication of this, I recommend Meek's "Social Science and the Ignoble Savage." There are practical political questions that relate to the theoretical disputes. For example, Asian Marxists have had to grapple with questions such as the role of the bourgeosie. If the Asiatic Mode of Production has some merit, then why not champion European colonization to some extent? Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: guns, germs, steel
And when they accuse anti-racist authors *whom* *they* *have* *not* *read* of racism, they look *really* *stupid*... Brad DeLong Actually, nobody has charged Jared Diamond with racism, only geographical determinism. For that matter the review that Chris Kromm forwarded made the explicit point that Diamond is sympathetic toward stone age type peoples. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: Re: Anti-Eurocentrism: Idealist Diversion from Anti-racism/anti-imperialism
Term 'eurocentrism' is problematic although conception that eurocentrism is colonizer's model of world (as jim blaut, no postmodernist, calls it) seesm generally agreeable. Term can, however, flatten complexity of european culture and history that includes peripheral regions, social classes, marginalized and stigmatized peoples. Simplistic inversion positing europe as 'evil' and turning colonialist model on its head remains eurocentric since focus remains on Europe (and lets third world elites off hook). Michael Hoover These points are made most forcefully in Aijaz Ahmad's "In Theory", which includes a rather bitter attack on Edward Said. I have to mention that I just came back from the Columbia Library and was browsing through Samir Amin's reply to "Re-Orient" that appeared in V.3 1999 of "Review", Wallerstein's journal. I saw that he had the good sense to agree with me on the matter of Frank falling into a cyclical view of history. Amin also mentions that he gave the Asiatic Mode of Production a good biffing back in 1957, but still insists that Marx is essential for understanding world history. I can't disagree. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: Re: Anti-Eurocentrism: Idealist Diversion from Anti-racism/anti-imperialism
Naming calling lets off frustration, but silencing an "opponent" is a pretty hollow victory. And advances the cause not at all. And then, there are those who delight in disrupting left discourse, with shouting denunciations of ill defined crimes, that the perpetrator couldn't possible understand or avoid. Rod This is not about "name-calling". It is about whether the Asiatic Mode of Production is a valid scientific view or something mired in Eurocentric conceptions of the early 19th century. The whole point of Frank's scholarship (and Blaut's) is to refute this theory and the generally inaccurate--and often racist--world view it is built on. Let me repeat. This is about the Asiatic Mode of Production, not "political correctness". Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Steelworkers
New York Times, April 12, 2000 U.S. Labor on Offensive Against China Trade Deal By DAVID STOUT WASHINGTON, April 12 -- Worried that doing business with China will crowd American workers out of the global economy, thousands of union men and women flocked to Capitol Hill today to condemn the idea of normal trade relations with Beijing. "Don't give China a blank check" was one of the more popular slogans of the day, appearing on many signs carried by steelworkers, auto workers, government workers, teachers and others who congregated on a sunny but brisk day. Full-trade status with China would allow that country's goods to come into the United States as do goods from many other countries: without high tariffs. In return, China would be obliged to open its markets to a multitude of American goods. But as he rallied his troops, Teamsters President James Hoffa sneered at the notion that China can be trusted. "Let's keep China on probation," he said. "They've got blood on their hands." (clip) But there was poignancy as well in the chill air, as personified by Mike Orange, a steelworker from Grove City, Pa. A trustee of his union local, Mr. Orange has been making and shaping steel for 44 years. Now, his working days are winding down, and maybe it's just as well, he said. The plant where he's worked all these years is a lot quieter than it was in the old days, thanks to spin-offs and downsizing and other features of the new economy. "When I started there, it had about 2,400 workers," he reminisced. And now? "About 25." === New York Times, September 28, 1990 Judge Fines USX $4.1 Million in Conspiracy Case By RONALD SMOTHERS, Special to The New York Times A Federal District judge here levied the maximum possible fine on the USX Corporation today and gave prison terms to two top union officials who had been found guilty of conspiring with the company to obtain lucrative pensions in exchange for granting concessions in labor negotiations. The judge, E. B. Haltom, fined the steel company $4.1 million and ordered it to repay nearly $300,000 to the pension fund, which had illegally paid pensions to the union officials. Judge Haltom said he had chosen the maximum fine in an attempt to punish and deter the company from repeating the offenses. The company was found guilty of 14 counts of conspiracy, violations of Federal labor law and mail fraud in a four-month trial that ended in July. The two officials of the United Steelworkers of America, Thermon Phillips, 62 years old, and E. B. Rich, 60, drew prison terms of two and a half and three years, respectively. Mr. Phillips is district director for union locals in several Southern states and he conducted labor negotiations for locals in the region. Mr. Rich was his chief aide. (clip) The case dates back to a period of upheaval in the steel industry in the early 80's in which factory after factory succumbed to the effects of a recession and foreign competition. It was a time of retrenchment in which Birmingham's huge Fairfield Works, with its 3,500 employees, faced a shutdown. Mr. Phillips, who sits on the union's international board, was at the center of the scramble to save jobs here. On Christmas Eve 1983, he and Mr. Rich entered into an agreement that kept the Fairfield Works open while granting concessions in the number of jobs and incentive pay and dropping of all pending grievances. The work force was to be cut by 1,500 employees, who would retire and receive pensions. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Info from Tom Kruse
Dear Mike, Lou, Michael, and Doug: Could you please post this? Many thanks! Tom === Dear Friends: A web site is now up and running with information, images and analysis of the "Water War" in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Massive popular struggle have just ousted the Bechtel affiliate that had bought the water system, in a privatization program pushed by the World Bank and corruply implemtend by the Bolivian government. This is a very important, though still vulnerable, victory against the forces of neo-liberal globalziation. Please go to: http://www.americas.org ... and click on Bolivian Water War under "What's Hot" Many thanks to the good people at the Resource Center of the Americas for their swift help in launching the site. Tom Kruse Tom Kruse Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia TelFax: (591-4) 248242, 500849 TelCel: 017-22253 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
An Argentinian comments on Crane World review
Thank you Lou for your article about Crane World. It happens that Pablo Trapero is a good friend of mine, a very creative 26 years old man. It has been admirable too the tenacity of Pablo in filming this his first long film that I know from the very beginning. There is something of the italian neorealism in his work, playing with non professional actors, making a low budget film. It is very true that Pablo's film is hopeless: the feeling that today we are bad, but tomorrow it can be absolutely worse. It expresses what the last twenty years have meant for us. Pablo belongs to a generation who was born when the military coup in 1976. They didn't live the peronism and the industrial Argentina. They only know economic liberalism, retreat of the popular forces and, as you point it, the retreat of trade unions and the impoverishment of workers and middle classes. They are basically sceptical about politics. Better said, politics means for them corruption and dirty business. They have no confidence in political parties, don't like ideological discussions and prefer more films and rock music than books and literature. Fortunately, Pablo Trapero has kept a warm solidarity with his own social roots, the low middle class of the Big Buenos Aires, this wide sea of workers, unemployed people, little store owners and poor men and women. And he likes the healthy tradition of realism. I'm very glad that you could see the film in NY. Un abrazo Julio FB Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: Re: Anti-Eurocentrism: Idealist Diversion fromAnti-racism/anti-imperialism
Ted Winslow: An important psychological factor in each case is "compensation" in the form of disguised satisfaction of motives that would generate intolerable anxiety if expressed and pursued consciously. The unconscious motivation is murderous, sadistic hate. In each of the cases above, this motivation is sufficiently disguised that it does not provoke the anxiety. Wouldn't Prozac help? Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
American Socialist, American Indian
ly a few of the important issues that are being resolved to the disadvantage of the Indian. There are, for example, bills passed by Congress since 1952 which abolish tribal constitutions, abrogate Federal treaties, break up tribal properties, and eliminate government trusteeship of funds. Other laws have been passed to destroy the corporate status of the tribe, inaugurated under the New Deal. The government intends to expropriate Indian funds to finance the activities of the Indian Bureau. The United States has, in fact, sought in every way to conceal the obvious fact that the Indian is a full citizen of the United States and is entitled to the same rights as any other American. This has enabled selfish interests to bend the processes of local, state, and Federal government to the purpose of confiscating land and resources of Indians heretofore under strict protection of the law. It is the duty of every citizen, when he has full knowledge that the rights of others are endangered, to register his disapproval and to work to defeat attempts to destroy basic human rights. If we allow the Indian to be extinguished as a group, we will have aided in the most vicious crime that history can record, the crime of genocide--for whether he is exterminated by absorption or by slow death as a result of his failure to assimilate, the fact remains that his extinction will have been brought about by organized illegal methods, against his will, under the aegis of our government. Ira Hayes, Pima Indian, one of the men who helped raise the flag at Surabachi, and appearing in the immortal photo by Joe Rosenthal, was found dead, in the gutter, in the company of the bottle, degraded, unable to cope with the barriers raised against his people. He is symbolic of the problem facing his people. The Indian lacks opportunity for full employment, because of prejudice, and his own lack of training. His poverty can most always be attributed to badly neglected lands which were poor even when he was forced to move to them. The Indian has proven, however, that, given the opportunity, as among the Mesqualero Apache, he can produce enough for himself and a surplus for sale. The Hopi and Navajo have demonstrated that, with intelligent government supervision and aid, he can build as successfully as the white farmer with the same supervision and aid. The white man has an especial responsibility to the Indian whose lands he conquered and whose culture he destroyed. We should have the same respect for Chief Joseph, Logan, Cornstalk, Tecumseh, as we hold for all heroes of a lost cause, and Hollywood's interpretation to the contrary notwithstanding all were greater as human beings and as leaders than either Custer or Crockett. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
The Nike campaign and African-Americans
rpose of maximizing profits? This question has already been answered by a myriad of people: UC Irvine's Vietnamese American Coalition unleashed a year of Nike awareness activities; USSA, the United States Student Association, passed a resolution condemning Nike (thanks to the lobbying efforts of the National People of Color Student Caucus); NOW, the National Organization of Women, passed a conference resolution condemning Nike last year; Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury comic strip highlights Nike's abuses in over 1,200 newspapers across the country; Nike shareholders have repeatedly tried to pass a resolution that would institute independent monitoring and a livable wage for factory workers overseas; and finally there are hundreds of concerned individuals like Ceirin Connolly (age 12) from Gloria Davis Middle School in Bayview, who came up with the idea of doing a letter-writing campaign to Michael Jordan, asking him to do the right thing. People are taking a stand, and I welcome anyone who wants to help make presentations in schools or wants to protest on October 18th for International Nike Awareness Day. For information, call me at 415-255-7296 or e-mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sincereley, Kimberly Miyoshi Corporate Accountability Organizer - Global Exchange --- This feature produced by Corporate Watch and Sweatshop Watch. -30- [Articles on BRC-NEWS may be forwarded and posted on other mailing lists, as long as the wording/attribution is not altered in any way. In particular, if there is a reference to a web site where an article was originally located, please do *not* remove that. Unless stated otherwise, do *not* publish or post the entire text of any articles on web sites or in print, without getting *explicit* permission from the article author or copyright holder. Check the fair use provisions of the copyright law in your country for details on what you can and can't do. As a courtesy, we'd appreciate it if you let folks know how to subscribe to BRC-NEWS, by leaving in the first five lines of the signature below.] -- BRC-NEWS: Black Radical Congress - General News Articles/Reports -- Subscribe: Email "subscribe brc-news" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Unsubscribe: Email "unsubscribe brc-news" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Digest: Email "subscribe brc-news-digest" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Archive: http://www.egroups.com/group/brc-news (When accessing for the first time, set the "Delivery Mode" to "Read On The Web Only") -- Questions/Problems: Send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- www.blackradicalcongress.org| BRC |[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Fidel Castro on globalization
ually say: "Homeland or Death!" At this Summit of the Third World countries we would have to say: "We either unite and establish close cooperation, or we die!" Thank you, very much. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: Re: eurocentrism
CB: Those atllases are probably made with a eurocentric conception. In terms of geographical mass, Europe is just Northwest Asia. No reason to make Europe a separate continent. --- Whenever A.G. Frank refers to Europe as a peninsula, I get a smile out of that. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Marxist professors favored in NYC union election
or reformers have pricked up their ears. "The former leadership of the PSC was an integral part of the trade union movement that played dead for the last 25 years," says Ray Markey, president of the librarians' local and a prominent reformer in DC 37. When corruption rocked DC 37 last year, neither Boris nor Polishook spoke out in support of the reformers, says Markey, but the entire leadership of the New Caucus did. "Bowen's slate is against the trade union politics of the past, which have been a disaster," he says. "We're very, very close," says Aronowitz, who's running as a delegate. "We could be the first insurgency to take over a substantial union in New York City and the first academic union to be led by activist intellectuals. We've decided it's time, through winning leadership of the union, to take responsibility for the survival of the university." Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Vietnam today
New York Times, April 13, 2000 VIETNAM TODAY: A DIFFERENT WAR Vietnam Finds an Old Foe Has New Allure By SETH MYDANS Apart from China, only Vietnam is attempting the acrobatic feat of creating a capitalist economy under the control of a Communist government. Clearly, though, it is suffering from a greater fear of heights. Though Vietnamese leaders insist that they follow no outside models, they thrive on cautionary tales: the Soviet Union that collapsed when it loosened its government's grip, Indonesia that dissolved into disorder with the ouster of a strong leader, Asian economies that imploded because of their dependence on the global marketplace. Dennis de Tray, the International Monetary Fund's senior resident representative in Vietnam, says the country has its own successful model to emulate in opening its economy -- the decision a decade ago to end collectivized agriculture. "They went from near starvation to the world's second largest rice exporter overnight," Mr. de Tray said. "And they did it with one simple change, by letting farmers keep their own rice. If you lived through this, why not just go ahead, guys, go for it. This is as good an example as I've seen in the world." Indeed, he said, despite Vietnam's current stagnation, it has covered a good deal of ground in the last decade. "Ten years ago this was a country that did not even have the vocabulary of trade, the vocabulary of a legal system, the vocabulary of economics, the vocabulary of a central banking system," he said. "So why are they hesitating now to take the next step?" With a per capita income of just $360 a year, Vietnam is one of the poorest nations in the world, with nearly 80 percent of its population in the countryside, most of them on the edge of poverty. The government, whatever its political agenda, is clearly committed to raising living standards, according to political analysts. But with agriculture making up only a small part of national income, the next liberalizations must come in a growth of private enterprise in other sectors, foreign experts agree. At the moment, medium or large-scale private companies make up less than 2 percent of the economy. "Vietnam needs to open up the domestic private sector to get things going beyond photocopy stands and noodle shops, to get people investing in small manufacturing businesses instead of just providing a service to their neighbors," said Robert Templer, the author of "Shadows and Wind: A View of Modern Vietnam" (Little, Brown 1998). And, said one Vietnamese who owns a small business in Hanoi, local bureaucrats who enforce scores of often ambiguous regulations must undergo a fundamental shift in attitude. "It has to be 'do whatever is not forbidden,' " he said, "rather than 'do only what is permitted.' " But under Vietnam's political system, none of this is so simple. First, both Vietnamese and foreign experts say, the government is hobbled by a decision-making process that demands consensus -- some say unanimity -- in a leadership with increasingly diverse economic interests. A veto, it seems, can come from just about anywhere. Second, the government is not yet convinced it can carry out its acrobatic balancing act, fearing that an open marketplace will lead to political pluralism. Thus, every time the economy opens up a bit, it seems, restrictions on free speech and political activity grow tighter and political rhetoric grows harsher. At this moment of uncertainty, for example, almost no nonofficial Vietnamese would allow their names to be printed in this article. As one businessman in Ho Chi Minh City put it, with a touch of bitterness, "We have freedom here, but it is under control." Full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/041300vietnam-overview.html Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: what's happening?
I have been expecting something like this for a long time, but so far nothing has happened. If it continues, what dog will Clinton wag? Michael Perelman Actually, I think it is clear that the Miami mess was not cooked up as some kind of attempt to divert the public's attention from the economy or anything else. It has been something of a revelation--in fact--that there is so little interest in the affair on LBO-Talk or PEN-L. In reality the confrontation between the Cuban goverment and US capitalism revolves around core issues that have yet to be resolved. In some ways the analogy that keeps cropping up in the press about Orville Faubus or George Wallace defying the federal government are most apt. While nominally committed to integration, the Democratic Party included the Dixiecrats. The reason that the government has been so spineless with respect to the kidnappers is that it is ambivalent about their role in American society. It needs the Miami gusanos as much as US capitalism needed (and needs) the KKK. Instruments of terror such as these can be used to intimidate liberation movements overseas or within our borders. It is interesting to compare FBI collusion with the Klan murderers and CIA support for the criminals who have set off bombs on Cuban civilian airliners, among other things. The criminals are never apprehended for some odd reason. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Roger Milliken
The New Republic, Jan. 10 The man behind the anti-free-trade revolt. Silent Partner By RYAN LIZZA I'm on the phone with Mike Dolan, the Public Citizen activist who led the charge against the World Trade Organization in Seattle a month ago. The lefty Dolan is packing for a much-needed vacation to (where else?) Cuba as he banters in his friendly, Jesse Ventura-esque voice about his yearlong effort to bring the anti-free-trade movement to the Pacific Northwest. "I was the first one out there," he says. "I pulled together a whole lot of people." Suddenly we're interrupted. "I'm sorry; I have to put you on hold for a second," he says. Three minutes later, he's back on the line, telling me he can no longer talk with me. His boss, Lori Wallach, chief Washington lobbyist for Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, has just instructed him to end our on-the-record conversation. "You and I," he says, "are about to go on deep background, OK?" What's the problem? Something that has been whispered about on the left for some time now: the suspicion that Roger Milliken--billionaire textile magnate from South Carolina, founding member of the conservative movement, and patron of right-wing causes for almost 50 years--has been quietly financing the anti-globalization efforts of Public Citizen and related organizations. "This is the dirty little secret in the anti-free-trade crowd," says one prominent left-of-center activist. If it's true, then a man who once banned Xerox copiers from his offices because the company sponsored a documentary about civil rights played a key role in filling the streets of Seattle with protesters in December. "They were out there [in Seattle] months in advance. They were paying for offices and computers. Where did all that money come from?" asks one economist whose organization is a member of Citizens Trade Campaign, the anti-globalization coalition of environmental, labor, and other progressive groups dominated by Public Citizen. Milliken, Public Citizen, and the Citizens Trade Campaign all give the same answer when asked about a financial relationship: they will neither confirm nor deny it. But what is clear is that Milliken's decade-long fight against free trade is finally bearing fruit. Full story at: http://www.tnr.com/011000/lizza011000.html Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
The conjuncture
st time in years there are signs of an incipient radicalization as thousands of youth join in campaigns to fight against sweatshops and ecological despoliation. This takes place in the context of a changed environment in the trade unions, as the hard-core anticommunism of the old guard no longer exists. As one might expect in the early stages of a radicalization, the class lines are not clearly delineated. This is reflected most clearly in some of the troubling aspects of the new movement around trade with China. Although the anti-sweatshop movement involves some of the most dedicated new radicals on campus, the fact remains that the nationalist bureaucracy of UNITE, the textile workers union, provides funding for most of the groups. It would be a sectarian mistake to condemn this new movement as a conspiracy of the nationalist sectors of the trade union movement. Instead Marxists must find a way to propose concrete alternatives to trade barriers that would lead to better working conditions and higher wages for workers employed by Nike, etc. The answers to these sorts of questions require a deeper engagement with Marxism. In the past decade or so, Marxism has had to confront challenges on many fronts. From within the academy, it has had to answer the arguments of postmodernists who question the validity of revolutionary change as a project. While cast in all sorts of philosophical gobbledygook, the objections are no different than they were in the 1950s, another period of deep reaction. They all boil down to the same thing, namely that attempts to transform society along the lines of a "utopian idea" (ie., grand narrative, etc.) lead to gulags and Pol Pot. Politically there is very little to distinguish between Hannah Arendt and Baudrillard, although Arendt made her points with much more clarity and conviction than the wisecracking carnival barker Baudrillard. If the period we are on the precipice of turns out to be something like the 1930s and 1960s combined, Marxism will find that most of the answers to its opponents are contained in objective reality itself, which will be much more radical than anything we can dream of. As we enter that period, it will be very important for Marxists to be very open-minded and generous with those we have debated with in the past. A united front against the ruling class can not be made on the basis of some litmus test which requires all of the "politically correct" answers to a battery of questions. In general, actions will speak louder than words. It doesn't really matter what one thinks of Derrida as long as one understand that it is necessary to demonstrate against the IMF. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: Saturday
Max wrote: Just back from the festivities. I have no idea if or how the WB/IMF proceedings have been affected. It was quite clear, however, that downtown D.C. was shut down. For the convenience of the WB/IMF, the police blocked off a huge area in the heart of downtown. There were few cars to be seen on the fringes of the IMF zone, almost all stores shut down. The "Delhi Deli" near Pennsylvania and 20th did a great business. Great reporting. This is why the Internet was created. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
A People's History of the World
ant qualification. The account given by Harman of the rise of Nazism does not, in my view, sufficiently register the disastrous failure of the Social Democrats and Communists to form a democratic front. In my view Trotsky's grasp of the terrible threat in Germany was sounder than his sense of what was happening in France; on the evidence here Harman might put it the other way round. Likewise the boost given to social reform and decolonisation by the defeat of the Axis powers is somewhat underplayed. The narrative approach naturally tends to stress what happens rather than to note what does not happen. Thus Harman does not ponder the fact that workers' councils and soviet-type bodies did not arise in France in May 1968, or Portugal and Spain in the mid-1970s or in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in 1989. In all these cases the popular longing for a more democratic order was to be cheated to a greater or lesser extent but calls for 'workers' self management' or 'workers' power' seemed abstract if counterposed to elections based on universal suffrage. But my reservations on such points detract little from my appreciation of Harman's achievement in this book. The dovetailed accounts of historical developments across seven or eight millennia are always interesting, usually well informed and sometimes highly original. The left has no dearth of polemics concerning the major events of the 20th century. On the other hand it has few accounts which convey as well as this book does the broad sweep of human history. Notes 1. Those interested in such claims might like to consult A. Maddison, China's Growth in the Long Run (New York, 1999). Issue 86 of INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM, quarterly journal of the Socialist Workers Party (Britain) Published March 2000 Copyright © International Socialism Spring 2000 http://www.internationalsocialist.org/pubs/isj.html -- Those interested in ordering the book or finding out more information about it and other Bookmarks titles should contact the following email addresses: Britain and Europe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] US, Canada Mexico: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australia New Zealand: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Pacifica board/Nation Magazine collusion
[The current issue of the Nation Magazine has an article by John Dignes that supports the NPR-ization of the radical FM radio network that broadcasts Doug Henwood's excellent radio show as well as some other show that at least to me are less than excellent. But radical they are. The Nation article has touched off an interesting series of posts on their bulletin board, including this one by Bob Feldman] Your article fails to mention the role a major investor in The Nation, Alan Sagner, has played in promoting the NPRization/Corporatization process at Pacifica's 5 radio stations. Nation Investor Sagner has been the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting board during the 1990s. And he sat on the CPB board during a period when a magazine in which he invests, The Nation, was able to increase its subscriptions by using Pacifica's radio stations to promote the magazine on the Pacifica-aired Radio Nation program. While Nation Investor Sagner (who has also been affiliated with Columbia University in recent year) was the CPB chairperson, the CPB board refused to respond positively to Pacifica listener complaints about the undemocratic policies of the Pacifica board. Nation Investor Sagner also was on the board when former Voice of America Deputy Director Robert Coonrad (who also headed Radio Marti) was authorized to be the CEO of the CPB which funds 15 to 20% of the previously listener-sponsored radio network that helped promote a magazine in which a CPB board member invested. Your article also fails to mention that the Magazine Journalism Center director at the Columbia School of Journalism where you work is Victor Navasky, the editorial director of The Nation that has profited from its 1990s collaboration with the Pacifica National Board and a CPB board which includes Nation Investor Alan Sagner. Your article also doesn't indicate that a member of the Nation Institute board of trustees, NYU Graduate School Dean Catharine Stimpson, is the former "Genius Grant" Program director of the MacArthur Foundation which you indicate now helps fund Pacifica's "Democracy Now" show. Nor does your article indicate that Nation Institue Trustee Stimpson has sat on the PBS board of directors during the 1990s representing the special interests of WNET-Channel 13 at the same time Nation Investor Sagner sat on the CPB board which authorized Lynn Chadwick to attempt to NPRize and Corporatize Pacifica's radio stations. Until The Nation begins to be upfront with its readers about the degree to which it is linked to the CPB/PBS folks involved in an attempt to turn the Pacifica Foundation's radio stations into an instrument of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and a slightly left version of NPR, its coverage of the 1999 Pacifica Listeners Revolt and the continued campaign to establish Listener Empowerment at Pacific's radio station will remain intellectually, politically and morally shallow. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Deja vu?
Financial Times (London), September 8, 1990, Saturday The Japanese wonder-ride bumps back to earth IT IS the slow-motion crash which almost everybody outside Japan saw coming. This week the Japanese stock market was testing its low point, nearly 40 per cent below the crazy peak reached at the end of last December when the Nikkei average topped out at 38,900. Even after such a serious set-back there are still plenty of bears around. It may seem bad enough that the Nikkei is languishing around the 24,000 mark, but you can easily find pundits willing to project the Tokyo market down to 21,000 or even 15,000. [It is now at 19,000]. (clip) The Japanese stock market miracle could not continue into the '90s, although it was a wonderful ride while it lasted. The returns over the past decade were fabulous. If you had put Pounds 1,000 into a typical Japanese specialist unit trust at the beginning of 1980, that would have been worth Pounds 11,770 last January 1. At that point, of course, you should have sold. By now you would be lucky if your holding were worth more than Pounds 8,000. The bursting of the bubble has scarcely been surprising. At the peak, typical dividend yields were under 0.5 per cent, and price-earnings ratios were 60 or 70. There were long and inconclusive arguments about the extent to which Japanese companies have had hidden earnings which should be added back to make their p/e ratios comparable with those in the US or Europe. But, on the superficial numbers, many Japanese stocks last year were being valued at three or four times as much as they would be in the US. Such was the measure of the possible downside risk. With this in mind, foreigners have been selling Japanese stocks in the past few years, though many of them got out too soon. After all, the Tokyo market brushed aside the Wall Street crash of October 1987 with amazing aplomb. What finally pricked the Japanese asset price bubble was the tightening of monetary policy. During the '80s Japanese interest rates fell steadily; bond yields dropped from near 10 per cent in 1980 to about 4 per cent in 1988; while the official short-term discount rate was reduced from from almost 7 per cent to 2.4 per cent over the same time-span. Money was so cheap that the prices of assets such as shares and property (not to mention Van Gogh paintings) became detached from reality. But last year the Bank of Japan, worried by the dizzy property price spiral and the weakness of the yen, began to change tack. Its short-term discount rate has now been lifted in five stages to 6 per cent, and long bonds yield 8 per cent. These dramatic moves have forced the equity market to attempt to reconnect with the real world. But at what level will it touch bottom? Some Tokyo watchers derive comfort from the fact that a few big Japanese industrial stocks such as Matsushita now have ratings which are reasonably in line with international levels. Value investors, the ones who look at individual company fundamentals, are starting to take an interest in Tokyo after years of steering well clear. But the average p/e is probably still well over 30. Some sectors, particularly financials, remain at silly prices to western eyes. The realignment of the Japanese equity market could take some time to be completed, and amateur investors should keep on the sidelines. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: RE: Pacifica board/Nation Magazine collusion
I tuned into our local Pacifica station during both Seattle and this past week-end. In the former case they were playing records, in the latter they had on a program about local theater. I am really glad I signed the stringers' petition. WPFW sucks real bad. Meanwhile, Amy Goodman was on the stage at the demonstration. mbs posted to the Nation bulletin board by Merl Hills on Apr 16th 2000 02:37:30 PM: Why is there no discussion or investigation of the many reports coming out that former Voice of America employees have worked their way up from volunteers to positions of responsibility at WPFW -- Pacifica's Washington D.C. Station? Why is there no discussion of Bessie Wash's pressure on the Pacifica Network News to tone it down so as not to offend the many WPFW listeners who work at the Pentagon? Given the recent admission that PSYOPS interns were working in the CNN and NPR newsrooms during the war in Kosovo,these reports have taken on an even more ominous credibility. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: Castro's call for Abolition of IMF (fwd)
At 07:44 AM 4/17/00 +0100, you wrote: Did Castro call for the abolition or the elimination of the IMF? What has he proposed instead? Fidel Castro: As far as the latest financial crisis is concerned, the IMF showed a lack of foresight and a clumsy handling of the situation. It imposed its conditioning clauses that paralyzed the governments social development policies thus creating serious domestic hazards and preventing access to the necessary resources when they were most needed. It is high time for the Third World to strongly demand the removal of an institution that neither provides stability to the world economy nor works to deliver preventive funds to the debtors to avoid their liquidity crises; it rather protects and rescues the creditors. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Rhetorical questions about Marx
The present investigation derives much of its significance, with respect to the reinterpretation of Marx, from the light that it throws on various natural anomalies, hitherto unexplained, in Marxs intellectual development: Why did Marx write his doctoral thesis on the ancient atomists? What were the roots of his materialist critique of Hegel (given the superficial nature of Feuerbachian materialism and the philosophical inadequacies of political economy)? What was Marxs relationship to the Enlightenment? How does one explain the fact that in The Holy Family Marx expressed great esteem for the work of Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke? Why did Marx engage in the systematic study of natural and physical science throughout his life? What lay behind Marxs complex, continuing critique of Malthusian theory? How do we explain the sudden shift, from friend to foe, in Marxs attitude toward Proudhon? Why did Marx declare that Liebig was more important than all of the political economists put together for an understanding of the development of capitalist agriculture? What explanation are we to give for Marxs statement that Darwins theory of natural selection provided "the basis in natural history for our view"? Why did Marx devote his last years principally to ethnological studies, rather than completing Capital? Answers to these and other vexing questions that have long puzzled analysts of Marxs vast corpus are provided here, and strongly reinforce the view that Marxs work cannot be fully comprehended without an understanding of his materialist conception of nature, and its relation to the materialist conception of history. Marxs social thought, in other words, is inextricably bound to an ecological world-view. (Concluding paragraph in the introduction to John Bellamy Foster's "Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature") Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
The war on drugs
The New York Times, March 31, 2000, Friday, Late Edition - Final House Passes Bill To Help Colombia Fight Drug Trade By ERIC SCHMITT After two days of debate, the House today approved a $12.7 billion emergency spending bill whose centerpiece commits the United States to train and equip Colombia's security forces to combat drug traffickers in a country where the narcotics trade and guerrilla insurgency have blurred. Not since the Central American civil wars of the 1980's has the United States tried to throw such political, diplomatic and military backing behind a crucial Latin American ally threatened by insurgency. The bipartisan House vote today, 263 to 146, approved an emergency package that also includes money for the Pentagon to pay for the peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, and for flood disaster relief in North Carolina. But most significantly, the House has cast judgment on a plan backed by the Clinton administration to spend $1.7 billion during two years to help Colombia and other Andean countries, despite critics' complaints that the anti-drug plan is ill-conceived and could drag the United States into an open-ended conflict that has already cost tens of thousands of lives during the past 40 years. "This program will strengthen democratic government, the rule of law, economic stability and human rights in that beleaguered country," said Barry R. McCaffrey, the White House drug policy director. (clip) === New York Times, April 18, 2000, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final Colonel Says He Used Cash From Wife's Drug Smuggling By ALAN FEUER A United States Army officer who once oversaw the government's antidrug wars in Colombia admitted yesterday that he had paid his household bills with thousands of dollars he knew his wife had received from smuggling heroin from Bogota to Manhattan and Queens. The officer, Col. James C. Hiett, made his admission in Federal District Court in Brooklyn while pleading guilty to failing to report that he knew that his wife, Laurie Anne Hiett, had been laundering the profits of her drug smuggling. In January, Mrs. Hiett admitted that she had sent six packages of heroin wrapped in brown paper through diplomatic mail. With his chin held high and back straight, Colonel Hiett stood before Judge Edward R. Korman and said crisply and quietly that his wife had given him $25,000 last April after traveling twice between Colombia and New York City. But he insisted that he did not know the money had come from drug smuggling until Army investigators told him. "As a result of my conversations with the Army investigators, I then knew that the cash my wife had previously given me came from drug trafficking," he said. "I then took steps to dissipate this cash by paying bills as possible, and depositing some of the cash in our accounts." (clip) Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Russian entrepreneurs
New York Times, April 18, 2000 Power-Line Thieves Loot Russia, Often Risking Death or Maiming By PATRICK E. TYLER PROKOPYEVSK, Russia, April 15 -- Maksim Naumenko, a 12-year-old boy with a slight build and a cherub's face, had just stolen a goodly length of copper wire from the Tyrginskaya Coal Mine one afternoon last month when he and his buddy, Sergei, returned to the place where they had spotted a second cable that would add to the day's haul. "The first one was dead and we cut it and hid it, and then we came back to take another one, but it turned out to be live," Maksim said weakly from the intensive care unit where he was recovering last week. When Maksim reached for the wire with his left hand, a "bright explosion" went off before his eyes and the current seized him violently. Somehow he managed to pull his hand away, but when he looked down, all he could see and smell was charred flesh. The electric shock had so burned his thumb and forefinger that they later had to be amputated. That was more than unfortunate, because two years ago, when Maksim was 10, he lost two fingers on his right hand while trying to steal copper wire from a power pole. In an epidemic that has led to 700 electrocutions nationwide and more than 500 deaths from electric shock last year, thieves and pilferers -- among them the desperately poor and homeless like Maksim -- and criminal gangs are shredding Russia's networks of electric transmission lines, communication cables and anything else that can be sold as scrap metal in a market that has surged tenfold to twentyfold in the last five years. Government power engineers estimate that more than 15,000 miles of power lines have been pulled down in recent years from the country's electrical grid, plunging millions of Russian households into darkness for weeks at a time. Thousands of additional miles of line are disappearing from telephone poles, railroad power systems and military complexes. "This is a very serious problem across the country," said Aleksandr V. Trapeznikov, spokesman for the national electric conglomerate, whose engineers have been trying to cope with the calamity. Last year alone, Mr. Trapeznikov said, more than 2,000 tons of high-voltage aluminum cables were ripped off their pylons, at a cost of more than $40 million. Some of the material is melted down into ingots and shipped out of the ports of St. Petersburg and Vladivostok to markets in Europe, the Middle East and China. The rest goes out as heaps and coils. Here among the coal fields of southwestern Siberia, some are calling this phenomenon the "copper rush," but aluminum and other nonferrous metals are also in great demand as strong world prices for scrap metal have added to the incentive in these times of economic depression in Russia to attack the country's foundations and sell the bits for hard currency abroad. The crisis has seen high-voltage lines stripped off their towers and nuclear submarines cut off from communication with their national commanders. Aluminum phone booths have disappeared in some cities, while rocket motors and fuel tanks, torpedo parts and copper shell casings have flooded out of military warehouses and into illegal markets. Full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/041800russia-electricity.html Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Silicon Valley janitors
New York Times, April 18, 2000 Janitors Struggle at the Edges of Silicon Valley's Success By STEVEN GREENHOUSE SAN JOSE, Calif. -- From 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. each night, Guadalupe Herrera cleans offices at that pinnacle of high-tech success, Cisco Systems, and then she heads home to the garage where she, her husband and two sons live. When María Godinez returns late each night from her $8-an-hour janitor's job at Sun Microsystems, she slips into the bedroom she shares with her husband and five children: part of a single-family house where four families and 22 people live. Rosalba Ceballos, who also lives in a garage, vacuums carpets and cleans bathrooms at another Silicon Valley success story, KLA-Tencor, but because her rent comes to three-fourths of that job's monthly pay she juggles two other jobs to support herself and her three children. High-flying companies like Cisco and Sun can rightfully boast that they have created a new class of employees -- stock option millionaires -- but they have given rise to another class of workers as well: the invisible toilers, for the most part janitors, who earn too little to afford decent housing in a booming region. "It's not good that these companies are making so much money, while they're benefiting from the low wages they pay us," said Mrs. Herrera, whose husband works as a $7-an-hour janitor at a nearby nursing home. "It's not fair that they do this with us. In reality, we need more." The janitors, almost all of them immigrants from Mexico or Central America, many of them here illegally, are whipsawed by two powerful forces: the influx of immigrants is putting downward pressures on wages while the region's red-hot economy is pushing housing costs skyward. As a result, the rent that many janitors pay for garages usually exceeds half their monthly take-home pay and often equals what people elsewhere in the country pay for a two-bedroom apartment. Many high-technology companies said they do not have any responsibility for their janitors' wages or living conditions. The janitors, company officials say, are not their employees, but rather those of cleaning contractors hired by the electronics companies that have made this region symbolize the New Economy. Kern Beare, a spokesman for KLA-Tencor, declined to discuss the janitors' situation, saying, "The janitors are not our employees, and we don't comment upon other companies' employees." Mike Garcia, president of a union local that represents thousands of California janitors, called the companies' position indefensible, insisting that they were hiding behind subcontracting rules to dodge their responsibilities to the people who empty their wastebaskets and dust their shelves. Whether the janitors work directly or indirectly for them, Mr. Garcia said, Silicon Valley stars like Cisco and Sun have a moral obligation to make sure these workers do not live in poverty. "These companies have a heavy responsibility," said Mr. Garcia, president of Local 1877 of the Service Employees International Union. "They can try to hide behind their cleaning contractors, but what they should really do is take responsibility for the plight of their janitors and their poorest workers. They should give them a fair wage that will lift them out of poverty." Mr. Garcia, a leader in his union's Justice for Janitors campaign, said something was wildly askew when Silicon Valley's elite raked in millions in stock options, while the workers who hold the grimiest, least desirable jobs earned so little that they lived in garages. Amy Dean, director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s Silicon Valley office, said, "Unfortunately, the New Economy is looking a lot like an hourglass with a lot of high-paid, high-tech jobs at the high end and an enormous proliferation of low-wage service jobs at the bottom." Full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/silicon-janitor.html Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Re: Re: Pacifica board/Nation Magazine collusion
Thanks for the kind words, Lou, but I've been reading Feldman's stuff for years on the FreePacifica lists, and he's really off base on this. Feldman takes a useful technique - tracing board links and such - and goes into overdrive with it. I'm not unfamiliar with the internal workings of The Nation, and believe me, Sagner has no influence on the magazine's content. There are many stories one could tell about The Nation and Pacifica, but that's not one of them. Doug Actually, that led to further exchanges: posted by Victor Navasky on Apr 17th 2000 02:21:32 PM Not only that but I'm also on the board of the Author's Guild, The Whistle Blower's Project and have served for any number of years on the boards of PEN, Swarthmore College, The Little Red School House and others.. Do you think there's any chance that Ford and/or MacArthur could be persuaded to help any of these worthy institutions? PS I (like The Nation) was against the Gulf war, but don't tell anybody. posted by Louis Proyect on Apr 18th 2000 10:49:18 AM Yes, Victor, you are on many boards. But that is part of the problem, don't you see? The non-profit board is a curious institution. People with access to funds, particularly from the more guilt-ridden trust-fund offspring of one robber baron or another, like to feel good by doing good. Hence, all the foundations setting agendas for the radical movement. My own organization Tecnica lost all its funding after Chamorro was elected president of Nicaragua. We were told by the Funding Exchange that Nicaragua was no longer "sexy". AIDS fightback was. The whole point of Pacifica is to break with that model and make the stations beholden to the grass roots. If Pacifica becomes a leftish clone of NPR, beholden to the philanthropic moods of people like Stewart Mott or Alan Sagner, we're doomed. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Japan: the China of the 1930's
The thirties saw Japan leaping forward from the advanced positions conquered during the World War, when it had consolidated its grip on Eastern markets. Now it expanded into the next ring of countries--India, the Dutch Indies and the British colonies in East Asia. While Britains share of Indias cotton cloth market fell from 97.1 per cent in 1913-14 to 47.3 per cent in 1935, Japans share rose from 0.3 per cent (1913-14) to 50.9 per cent (1935)--taking over the entire British loss. Many of these countries retaliated with quotas and tariffs in the years 1933-34, whereupon Japan moved into Latin America. Exports to Central America increased from 3 million yen in 1931 to 41 million yen in 1936, and to South America from 10 million yen to Y69 million in the same period. . . Even where Japan did not take over a market, the high price of British exports often stimulated the growth of local production, as in Egypt. Moreover, as a percentage of Japans exports, semi-manufactures (including raw silk) fell from 51.8 per cent of the total in 1914 to 26.4 per cent in 1937; and between 1934 and 1936 the percentage of Japans exports which went to free markets rose from 56 to 65 per cent. This economic threat led Western business into startling revelations about factory conditions in Japan, particularly in Britain, which in 1929 had still been labouring under the hangover of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Books attacking working conditions in Japan began to appear. As well as the League of Nations, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) was mobilized in a particularly hypocritical campaign since Britain and France had expressly prevented ILO stipulations being applied to their sweat-shops in China when the organization was originally founded. What incensed the Western powers more than anything was Japans refusal to kowtow to unilateral imperialist self-righteousness: Japanese delegates would turn up at international conferences and harangue the delegates with the history of the extermination of the American Indians or the development of the Lancashire textile industry, or contemporary colonialism in Hong Kong. It was Japans insistence on denouncing inequality among imperialists which angered the West--not least because it was a line to which there was no ready answer. Ordinary imperialists were no problem; anti-imperialists could be written off as terrorists or demagogues; but a fellow imperialist who both refused to abide by the rules and in practice caused grave economic trouble was more than could be tolerated. (From "A Political History of Japanese Capitalism" by Jon Halliday) Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Re: Re: PK on A16
I think Paul's gotcha. A strong bias against relatively small-scale rural producers has been one of the worst things about African state-led development over the past generation (see Robert Bates's _Markets and States in Tropical Africa_, or Dumont's _False Start in Africa_). And it does look like this Mozambiquan export tax is a remnant of that bias. After all, successful episodes of state-led development involve export promotions much more than export taxes... Brad DeLong This misses the whole point. Export agriculture is a no-win proposition, especially since the price of commodities such as cocoa, cashews, coffee and other goodies destined for the western grocery stores are not only grown at the expense of food for local markets, but tend to decline in price since imperialism can put pressure on weaker countries to all produce such goods. With respect to coffee, for instance, it is nearly impossible for "peripheral" countries to develop cartels like OPEC, because the multinational middle-men like Planters, etc., can find ways to lure a weaker producer into violating a trade agreement. The real story about Mozambique is naturally excluded from Krugman's consideration and that is namely the horrific war imposed on the Mozambiquan people by South Africa and its various scummy fascist allies, including the Reagan administration. The Portuguese had drained the economy for most of a century, then when an attempt was made to reconstruct the economy after a costly civil war, a new war began. Mozambique is regarded by cold warriors as a vindication of their superior wisdom now that a modicum of peace, accompanied by outside investment, has given the appearance of progress. Behind all the glad talk, it is obvious that nothing much has changed. The real story in Mozambique today is not about cashew nuts, it is about flooding. As in the case of Venezuela, Honduras and other victims of "natural" disasters, the cause of widespread suffering and death is very likely rooted in violent weather patterns spawned by global warming. As imperialism turns these countries into faucets out of which pour coffee and cashew nuts, they are rewarded with cyclones and IMF debt. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Questioning free-market liberalism
s and the longevity of the global system that American planners established after World War II, a system that was long obscured by cold war obsessions. Full article at: http://www.thenation.com Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
South Korean fire sale
New York Times, April 22, 2000 Renault Agrees to Buy Troubled Samsung Motors By JOHN TAGLIABUE PARIS, April 21 -- Renault, the French automaker, reached an agreement today to acquire the ailing Samsung Motors of South Korea, concluding its second major acquisition in Asia in the last year. Renault, which last year acquired 37 percent of Nissan, the troubled Japanese carmaker, said last month that it hoped the takeover of Samsung Motors would enable it to challenge Hyundai, the market leader in South Korea, by securing 10 percent to 15 percent of the nation's automobile market. Financial details of the Samsung acquisition were not announced, but Renault is believed to have agreed to pay $340 million to $350 million. Renault is expected to pay about $100 million immediately, and the rest over 10 years. Renault will also assume about $200 million in Samsung debt. The acquisition agreement was reached after four months of negotiations when Samsung's South Korean creditors, led by Hanvit Bank, agreed to settle $262 million in debt that the French carmaker had discovered. The deal represents the latest entry by a Western carmaker into the Asian market, which was shaken badly by the region's economic crisis in 1998. Last month, DaimlerChrysler agreed to pay $2.1 billion for a 33 percent stake in Mitsubishi Motors. The last two years, seven of Japan's 11 carmakers have linked up in various degrees with foreign partners. Another South Korean carmaker, Daewoo, is up for sale, and Western carmakers, including General Motors, Ford Motor, DaimlerChrysler and Fiat of Italy, are bidding for control. Full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/renault-samsung.html Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
The Typical American Doesn't Have Much to Gain from Globalization
GLOBALISM ON THE ROPES The Typical American Doesn't Have Much to Gain from Globalization Mark Weisbrot is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. "Power," Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers once said, "is the ability of a labor union like the UAW to make the most powerful corporation in the world, General Motors, say 'Yes' when it wants to say 'No.' That's power." On December 1, 1999, as clouds of tear gas hovered over the streets of Seattle, President Clinton said yes to 50,000 protesters, when he wanted to say no. He agreed, in principle, to making labor rights an enforceable condition for trade among the countries of the World Trade Organization. That's not to say that he meant it - quite the contrary, in fact. The process proposed by the administration would take decades, and is unlikely to ever yield meaningful results. But that is not what mattered, since the immediate effect of his statement was to scuttle the millennium round of the WTO. Clinton knew that would be the result of his speech; he didn't want it, but he went ahead with it anyway. This is what happens when a broad cross-section of labor, the environmental movement, the religious community and campus activists put aside their differences to pursue a common goal. This grand coming together also made for great theater: the Seattle police, overdressed in their gas masks and riot gear; black-masked anarchists; environmentalists in sea-turtle costumes; bare-breasted Lesbian Avengers with "BGH-free" scrawled across their chests; and giant puppets and protesters on stilts with huge glowing wings of the monarch butterfly (the kind that seems to have trouble with the pollen from genetically modified corn). Greenpeace floated a big green condom over the labor march that said "Practice Safe Trade." The pundits were not amused. The prospect that, as one businessman said at the World Economic Forum in Davos the next month, "we could lose" seems to have touched a raw nerve. Michael Kelly, writing in the Washington Post, accused President Clinton of taking "a dive in Seattle for labor, the enviros and the loony left." For Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, the protests were "ridiculous," "crazy," carried out by "a Noah's ark of flat-earth advocates, protectionist trade unions and yuppies looking for their 1960's fix." George Will noted that "semi-autarky has been the left's recurrent temptation. Protectionism is imperative for the left's agenda, which is ever-increasing government allocation of wealth and opportunity." Michael Kinsley assured readers of Time that "the WTO is OK" - without saying anything about what it does - and urged them to "do the math. Or take it on faith." These mostly contemptuous dismissals betray an underlying intellectual weakness. There are good reasons that the defenders of the status quo do not wish to engage their critics on these issues. While they have been largely successful in pretending that they have the bulk of economic research and theory on their side, this turns out not to be true. Let us begin with the simplest, commonly accepted definition of globalization: an increase in international trade and investment. Is this necessarily beneficial for everyone involved? Or even for the majority of people in any given country? In the United States, trade is now almost twice as large, as a percentage of GDP, as it was in 1973. Foreign investment, both outward and inward, has also risen sharply. At the same time, the median real wage in the United States has been stagnant over the past twenty-six years. This one statistic tells a very big story, a fact which the more ardent advocates either don't understand or pretend they don't. Median: that means the fiftieth percentile, i.e., half of the entire labor force is at or below that wage. This includes office workers, supervisors, everyone working for a wage or salary - not just textile workers or people in industries that are hard hit by import competition or runaway shops. Real: that means adjusted for inflation, and quality changes. It is not acceptable to argue, as is often done, that the typical household now has a microwave and a VCR. That has already been taken into account in calculating the real wage. This means that over the last twenty-six years, the typical wage or salary earner has not shared in the gains from economic growth. Now compare this result to the previous twenty-six years (1946-1973), in which foreign trade and investment formed a much smaller part of the U.S. economy, and was more restricted. During this time, the typical wage increased by about eighty percent. This is one reason why it is so uncommon for anyone to defend the era of globalization on its merits. opportunities for a better world. Full article at: http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2000/03/03/2.html Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
When Karl Marx played the stock market
e municipal sinecure of Constable of the Vestry of St Pancras. Engels thought this hilarious: Salut, ô connétable de Saint Pancrace! Now you should get yourself a worthy outfit: a red nightshirt, white nightcap, down at-heel slippers, white pants, a long clay pipe and a pot of porter. But Marx boycotted the swearing-in, quoting the advice of an Irish neighbour that I should tell them that I was a foreigner and that they should kiss me on the arse. Ever since the split in the Communist League he had been a resolute non-joiner, spurning any committee or party that tried to recruit him. I am greatly pleased by the public, authentic isolation in which we two, you and I, now find ourselves, he had told Engels as long ago as February 1851, and it would certainly take more than St Pancras philistines to entice him out of this long hibernation. Nevertheless, after thirteen years of authentic isolation (if not exactly peace and quiet) Marx did now feel ready to emerge. The first hint of a new mood can be seen in his enthusiastic reaction to the 1863 uprising in Poland against Tsarist oppression. What do you think of the Polish business? he asked Engels on 13 February. This much is certain, the era of revolution has now fairly opened in Europe once more. Four days later he decided that Prussias intervention on behalf of the Tsar against the Polish insurgents impels us to speak. At that stage he was thinking merely of a pamphlet or manifesto and indeed he published a short Proclamation on Poland in November. Little did he imagine that within another twelve months he would be the de facto leader of the first mass movement of the international working classes. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
Perry Anderson's diminished expectations plus annotations
opianism is the last thing that Marxists need to get involved with. What all these left professors can't understand is that it requires an agency to effect historical change, not utopian wet-dreams. An agency like the underpaid janitors who clean their office toilets after they go home at night.] What kind of stance should NLR adopt in this new situation? Its general approach, I believe, should be an uncompromising realism. Uncompromising in both senses: refusing any accommodation with the ruling system, and rejecting every piety and euphemism that would understate its power. No sterile maximalism follows. [Maximalism? I guess this means revolution. What can't these mandarins learn to speak clearly?] The journal should always be in sympathy with strivings for a better life, no matter how modest their scope. [A better life? Who needs NLR for this? I can read the UTNE Reader and get much sounder advice about what kind of natural toothpaste to use, etc.] But it can support any local movements or limited reforms, without pretending that they alter the nature of the system. [Somebody explain to Perry Anderson about the dialectical relationship between reform and revolution.] What it cannot-or should not-do is either lend credence to illusions that the system is moving in a steadily progressive direction, or sustain conformist myths that it urgently needs to be shielded from reactionary forces: attitudes on display, to take two recent examples, in the rallying to Princess and President by the bien-pensant left, as if the British monarchy needed to be more popular or the American Presidency more protected. Hysteria of this kind should be sharply attacked. [I agree. The next Marxist I run into who defends the Queen will get a poke in the eye.] Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
A.G. Frank and his critics
Many thanks to Mine for info on the 1999, number 3 of "Review", published by Wallerstein's Braudel Center. I ordered it because I was extremely interested to see what Arrighi, Wallerstein and Amin had to say on A.G. Frank's "Re-Orient" which I had just finished reading. I wasn't disappointed. It is a real eye-opener and would be of particular interest to anybody who participated in threads on PEN-L about the Brenner thesis or Jared Diamond. (BTW, Jim Blaut's new book "8 Eurocentrist Historians, available soon from Guilford, has a chapter on Diamond.) I had no idea that the divisions between Frank and the other 3 were so deep. There's a tendency to assume that anti-Eurocentric thinkers, because they share a critique of the Asiatic Mode of Production theory, etc., might be united on the question of how capitalism emerged. Nothing could be further from the truth. The useful thing about the "Review" is that it encapsulates the thinking of key figures in this current and shows how they contrast with an extreme dialectical pole within it. Amin comes from a Marxist perspective and argues that Frank fails to appreciate the radically different nature of the industrial revolution, which is not too surprising when you consider Frank's argument in "Re-Orient" that there is no such thing as capitalism () Arrighi notes that there is almost zero concern with military and political matters in Frank's book, which would go a long way in explaining the rise of the west. I have Arrighi's "The Long 20th Century" and plan to tackle it before long. Wallerstein is probably the most devastating of the 3. With dry polemical style, he points out that Frank's obsession with "trade" in some ways is a hearkening back to his roots as a U. of Chicago Friedmanite economist. The Review costs $10 and can be ordered from http://fbc.binghamton.edu/. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Tom Kruse reports/photos from Bolivia
Go to http://www.americas.org/ and click 'Bolivian Water War'. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Samir Amin: Not a Happy Ending
urling of a US military empire, to which all nations must be compelled to submit. No other project may be tolerated within this perspective, not even the European project of subaltern NATO allies, and especially not a project entailing some degree of autonomy, like China's, which must be broken by force, if necessary. This vision of a unipolar world is being increasingly opposed by that of a multipolar globalisation, the only strategy that would allow the different regions of the world to achieve acceptable social development, and would thereby foster social democratisation and the reduction of motives for conflict. The hegemonistic strategy of the US and its NATO allies is today the main enemy of social progress, democracy and peace. The 21st century will not be "America's century". It will be one of vast conflicts, and the rise of social struggles that question the disproportionate ambition of Washington and of capital. The crisis is exacerbating contradictions within the blocs of dominant classes. These conflicts must take on increasingly acute international dimensions, and therefore pit states and groups of states against each other. One can already discern the first hints of a conflict between the US, Japan, and their faithful Australian ally, on one hand, and China and the other Asian countries, on the other. Nor is it difficult to envisage the rebirth of a conflict between the US and Russia, if the latter manages to extricate itself from the spiral Boris Yeltsin has dragged it into. And if the European Left could free itself from its submission to the double dictate of capital and Washington, it would be possible to imagine that the new European strategy would be articulated on those of Russia, China, India and the Third World in general, in the perspective of a necessary multipolar construction effort. If this does not come about, the European project itself will fade away. The central question, therefore, is how conflicts and social struggles (it is important to differentiate between the two) will be articulated. Which will triumph? Will social struggles be subordinated, enframed by conflicts and therefore mastered by the dominant powers, even instrumentalised to the benefit of these powers? Or will social struggles, on the contrary, conquer their autonomy and force the major powers to conform to their exigencies? Of course, I do not imagine that the conflicts and struggles of the 21st century will produce a remake of the 20th century. History does not repeat itself according to a cyclical model. Today's societies are confronted by new challenges on all levels. But precisely because the immanent contradictions of capitalism are sharper at the end of the century than they were at its beginning, and because the means of destruction are also far greater than they were, the alternatives, for the 21st century more than ever before, are "socialism or barbarism". Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
Regulation theory
There's an article in the Braudel Center journal I referred to yesterday (in reference to Frank and his critics )dealing with Maori capitalism in New Zealand, which is apparently influenced by regulation theory. Wallerstein also refers to it in his article as one of among different contending interpretations of why capitalism arose in the west. (As opposed to Marxism, world systems theory and one or two others.) With all the brilliant people on PEN-L, can somebody provide a 2 or 3 paragraph explanation? I am just not motivated to read a whole book with everything else I am involved with right now. Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
How Nike blackmails Vietnam
cleaning and maintenance on those days. Looking perturbed, Mr. Monteiro said he would discourage the practice. Unlike previous Nike executives in Vietnam, Mr. Monteiro is neither secretive nor particularly defensive about the company's labor practices. He says he welcomes inspections of the factories by outside monitors like Mr. O'Rourke. "We closed down after the controversy," Mr. Monteiro said. "In retrospect, it was a mistake. But you learn and you move on." Nike has also learned that there are some battles not worth joining. The Vietnamese government, for example, is considering whether to reduce the workweek to 40 hours from 48. The American Chamber of Commerce has urged Nike, as the largest foreign employer, to lobby against the change. While Nike holds that a shorter week would hurt Vietnam's competitiveness, it is saying little in the debate. "I could never come out in public and ask the Vietnamese government not to have people work fewer hours," said Chris Helzer, Nike's director of government affairs. "We'd get strung up." Besides, with the trade agreement hanging in the balance, Mr. Helzer noted that there were far worse threats to Vietnam's competitiveness. Full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/042800vietam-nike.html Louis Proyect (The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
