Re: [Marxism] Stephen F. Cohen is not the man he used to be
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis Proyect wrote: > If Lenin hadn't died, he would have launched a fight against Stalin over the treatment of Ukraine. < Could Louis look into the same crystal ball and tell us whether JFK would have pulled U.S troops out of Vietnam? In the meantime, the rest of us will have to stick with events that actually happen. Marv Gandall wrote: > For someone who claims to know more about the Ukraine crisis than anyone else on the list you seem oblivious to the most elementary facts: ... < Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Lawrence & Wishart: despicable bourgeois profiteers
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Michael Yates wrote: > To demand that MIA take these works down after it has been distributing them free for years is pretty outrageous. < You identify something that probably caused much of the controversy. They granted MIA a no-fee right to post years ago. What changed? Apparently, they discovered a revenue stream. At best, they regard their current offerings as more important than wide access to a classic resource - a reversal of the choice they made decades ago when they put resources into the MECW project. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century online complete
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Andrew Pollack wrote: > ...glorifying income inequality as THE source of all ills and a progressive tax as the panacea. From Henry George through David Graeber and now Piketty, the monocausalists never go away. < To be fair, Piketty does not indict wealth inequality as the source of all ills. (He welcomes a large amount of inequality on Horatio Alger grounds.) His main concern is that rentier wealth threatens "democracy." As for monocausal, it depends on the cause. The capital-labor relation is a good candidate, no? My review of Piketty is at http://mltoday.com/professor-piketty-fights-orthodoxy-and-attacks-inequality Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Investigative reporter Robert Parry on Seymour Hersh and the sarin attack
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Parry reminds us with details how the U.S. attempt to lay the Ghouta sarin attack on the Assad regime fell apart: http://consortiumnews.com/2014/04/07/the-collapsing-syria-sarin-case/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Seymour Hersh's alternate reality
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis Proyect wrote: > I see that Charles Andrew and Vladimiro Giacche' are incapable of explaining what it is that impresses them so much about Hersh's reporting. < No, all you see is that I posted the link to Hersh's new report: http://www.lrb.co.uk/2014/04/06/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line At best the question is why I posted the link. I will bore you with the reason: any new report from this great journalist is worth reading. Each reader can assess Hersh's assertions for herself. But you have to read them first if you want to do that. Then you can weigh Louis' objections. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Seymour Hersh's alternate reality
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == If it will make our moderator happier, I'm happy to revise a three-line post: > For those who would like to evaluate the report by Hersh instead of reading an ad hominem attack on him, his article is at http://www.lrb.co.uk/2014/04/06/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line < to a two-line post: > For those who would like to read the reporting by Hersh instead of commentary on it: http://www.lrb.co.uk/2014/04/06/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line < Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Seymour Hersh's alternate reality
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == For those who would like to evaluate the report by Hersh instead of reading an ad hominem attack on him, his article is at http://www.lrb.co.uk/2014/04/06/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] John Cassidy: Is Surging Inequality Endemic to Capitalism? : The New Yorker
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Cassidy's piece is basically a muddy-it-up centrist response to Piketty's liberalism. For a Marxist review of Piketty's book, see http://mltoday.com/professor-piketty-fights-orthodoxy-and-attacks-inequality Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] ISO Snuff Porn
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Marc Solomon wrote (about Peter Camejo): "one narcissistic millionaire" I knew several progressives who placed their retirement in his hands at Progressive Asset Management (yes, when he was there) and lost it. They regard Camejo as little more than a swindler in finance, after being attracted by his political activity. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Hegel : 'hopeless baggage'?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Agreed that quantitative prediction is not the criterion of scientific knowledge. Nor replication, for that matter. The problem with positivism and the bourgeois social science to which Mark refers are they do not earn their claim to be scientific. If you look through Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management, you see that there is nothing scientific about it. He measures but he does no science. A scientific explanation does grasp something necessary, within specified conditions. It matters because scientific socialists have won the support of masses and achieved far more revolutionary change than the utopian socialists and the liberals who deny that the study of history can be scientific. Despite some -ion terms above, I apologize for not using words like "sublate," "mediate," and in a more modern vein "post-Quinean." Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Hegel : 'hopeless baggage'?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Mark Lause wrote: < Saying that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west is hardly a predictive science. > People were burned at the stake over the reason why the sun rises and sets. And communists are slaughtered over the reasons why capitalism makes people's lives hell, since the reasons have a lot to do with the solution. --- Mark Lause rejected the claim: > "that Marxism can, in some serious alchemical way, be a predictive science." < * Class struggle is inevitable under capitalism, no matter what reforms are achieved. * Cycles of downturn and recovery are inherent in capitalist accumulation. These are not predictions? They are serious although they do fall short of being alchemical. :) Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Hegel : 'hopeless baggage'?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Mark Lause rejected the claim: > "that Marxism can, in some serious alchemical way, be a predictive science." < * Class struggle is inevitable under capitalism, no matter what reforms are achieved. * Cycles of downturn and recovery are inherent in capitalist accumulation. These are not predictions? They are serious although they do fall short of being alchemical. :) Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Why celebrities (and the UN) love twitter and I hate it
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Twitter's Data Business Proves Lucrative Twitter Disclosed It Earned $47.5 Million From Selling Off Information It Gathers Elizabeth Dwoskin, Wall Street Journal, Oct. 7, 2013 "The United Nations is using algorithms derived from Twitter to pinpoint hot spots of social unrest." http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304441404579118531954483974 - - - Your tweet does not publish only its own content. It helps draw a public map of your organization, network, or movement. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Why celebrities love twitter and I hate it
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis Proyect: > I thought about trying to explain to him why it is important for the left to rally around such campaigns even if you understand what is wrong with Socialist Alternative. < Sawant moves masses to act; most will ignore SA -- 47 characters Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] source of quote
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Capital, I, chapter six http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htm found by search on: Marx "moral and historical element" Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] From a fellow IT veteran on the ACA website
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis Proyect wrote: "In the first stage, I would have provided a 'read only' portal to insurance companies along the lines of those travel websites that will show you all the hotels in Miami Beach that are 3 stars and above, etc. Once you see what's available, you will making a booking through the hotel. In stage two, I would have implemented the online registration." Many corporate and governmental computer projects are mismanaged for reasons explained by your IT source. The failure of the Obamacare portal is not the same. Obamacare gives huge subsidies to private health insurance corporations. The Administration insisted from the beginning that potential enrollees be quoted their price after subsidy. The full price was to be buried in tiny type. The political reality led to the problem of the Web portal. It cannot quote an after-subsidy price until it collects your "private" income, family and other data, farms it out for verification, and receives replies. This is the process that broke the portal. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Special Page at Monthly Review: Exchange with M. Heinrich on Crisis Theory
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Marx's law on the falling rate of profit has been used to tackle two problems of capitalist economy: * recurring crises and slumps, and * the turn in the contradiction between the forces and relations of production, when momentary resolution of class struggle by reform is no longer possible and revolution becomes the only way out. The law has successfully explained crises and slumps. Attempts to have it explain the arrival of the era of revolution have not proven out; a deeper analysis of accumulation and labor accomplishes that task. Heinrich merges the two uses of the law - a fine debating tactic! He shows no interest in working on either one of them in real life. His textualism is one consequence. Incidentally, the threads on this list concerning Heinrich were posted mostly in Feb.-May 2013. Not all the posts have his name in the Subject line. A search that retrieves most of the posts is "crisis theory" inurl:pipermail inurl:marxism where you also click on the option that the search engine does _not_ omit similar entries. Charles Andrews Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Interesting factoids
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == One more factoid, a sentence from Lenin with his sarcastic quotation marks: The year 1905 saw the tactical differences take final shape (the Bolshevik Congress, Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. in London, May 1905, and the Menshevik "conference" held in Geneva at the same time). --On Bolshevism, Jan. 1913 http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/jan/00.htm Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] best video EVER about Obamacare
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Please, no ad hominem retorts about the source not getting their video past "the party committee." No one said a word about the source. We said the content is right-wing. And please, no straw-man implication that we want to say something good about Obamacare. The job is to expose Obamacare for what it does to most people and for its giveaways to corporate capital. If we can set aside the cheap debating tricks, yes, what might trade unionists who have struggled to win better plans think? -- Trade unionists might wonder why there is nothing about the incentive in Obamacare to reduce full-time employees to part-time. -- They might wonder why there is nothing about the fact that Obamacare brands their plans "Cadillac" coverage and will soon heavily tax them into oblivion. -- They might wonder why no mention of the administrative exemptions given to employers while Taft-Hartley health coverage is decimated because the Administration will not do the same for them. -- They might wonder why Obama's early points for next year's federal budget include cuts in Medicare. -- If the trade unionist is aware that a majority of U.S. organized labor now supports Medicare for All, they might be just plain pissed at the video. No doubt we have common ground about the video, Michael. We probably agree that the German is enunciated to great comic effect. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Is Paul Krugman cribbing from Monthly Review?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis Proyect wrote: > When someone lost 50 percent of the value of their 401K or IRA in 2008 now sees it at 50 percent higher than its previous high-point, they become mollified. I say that as someone who has had many conversations with such people in Columbia IT. I am sure that someone who has a job as coal miner or UPS driver feels exactly the same way. < So sentiment goes up and down with the stock market? 1) Retirees who need to withdraw feel market down periods more intensely, with lasting effect since the account no longer receives contributions. 2) Don't lots of Columbia IT employees earn well above median wage (currently about $770 a week for full time workers)? The amounts in typical accounts are far too small to provide a comfortable retirement on top of Social Security. 401K accounts exacerbate wage inequality, because it is easier for a higher-income employee to save a given percentage of earnings, while lower-income workers must spend on current basic needs. 3) Want to bet on whether the typical workers' account will keep up with inflation over the next decade or two? That would be a compound of the performance of the stock market and the degree of plunder from the little guy in the market by Wall Street professionals. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] A Radical Vision for Victory
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == From the book review: "The [1966 Freedom] Budget keenly noted that poverty arises, above all, from a paucity of jobs. Written a decade before the shut down of American factories commenced full scale, it assumed the ongoing presence of good paying, unionized jobs, with other employment brought under a higher minimum wage legislation." Co-author Michael Yates, could you tell us how much the book, which sounds fascinating, goes into the point that capitalism cannot tolerate full employment for more than a moment? No right-wing counterattack in the ideological and political arenas is needed; capital slackens hiring when serious wage increases encroach on profits. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] History of the Left in the U.S.
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The major achievement of twentieth century communists in the U.S. was mass industrial trade unions. A good place to start is the memoir of the man who probably did the most of any one person to make it happen, Wyndham Mortimer: Organize! My Life as a Union Man. When you go on to read other books suggested in this thread, you see striking contrasts with the more removed histories (and the pettiness of the more factional accounts). ___ Wyndham Mortimer was born March 11, 1884 in Karthaus, Pennsylvania. His father, an immigrant English miner, and his Welsh mother were both supporters of the Knights of Labor. Mortimer, who entered the mines at the age of twelve, continued this tradition by becoming an active member of the United Mine Workers. When he left the mines at twenty-two, he worked in a steel plant and as a railway worker. He married Margaret Hunter in 1907, and in 1908 he joined the Socialist Party. He became an autoworker in 1917, when he joined the White Motor Co. in Cleveland. In 1932 he formed an independent union there, which became AFL Federal Local 18463. He was elected president of the local and also president of the Cleveland Auto Workers Council in 1934. Mortimer soon became critical of the AFL's reluctance to organize industrial workers and participated in the effort to establish a national industrial union for auto workers. He was a member of the bloc which succeeded in removing Francis Dillon from the presidency of the United Automobile Workers Union at the South Bend convention in 1936 and was elected First Vice President at that convention. Mortimer, who was somewhat older than his fellow UAW officers, was then sent to Flint, Michigan to begin an organizing drive among GM workers at the Fisher Body Co. This led to the Flint Sit-Down Strike of December 1936 and January 1937. He also participated in the negotiations, which resulted in GM's recognition of the UAW. --http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/files/LP001171.pdf Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Naomi Klein: How science is telling us all to revolt
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == This talk starts with basic science by a guy who knows. Then ge goes full bore into the revolutionary politics. It is one hour, but you will be shaken up within four minutes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sLBezzDbnM Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Request on info on USA and democracy.
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Yup, Freeman worries about too many college students. Powell misses that. He wants make sure the students acquire a proper appreciation of capitalism. The courtiers were still trying to identify the oligarchs' problem with precision and figure out what to do about it. michael perelman quoted: > Moskowitz, Ron. 1970. "Professor Sees Peril in Education." San Francisco Chronicle (30 October). Governor Reagan's aide Roger Freeman, who later served as President Nixon's educational policy advisor, while he was working at the time for California Governor Ronald Reagan's reelection campaign, commented on Reagan's education policy: "We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. That's dynamite! We have to be selective about who we allow to through higher education. If not, we will have a large number of highly trained and unemployed people." < Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] An untested system?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == michael perelman wrote: > Has any launch of a large scale public software system been a success, except for the private contractors? < Assuming the feds used mainframes to implement Medicare when it passed in 1965, that seems to have been a smooth launch. The key decision that led to the IT collapse of Obamacare's exchanges was this: You do not get the true price for the plans on the exchange. The website requires you to enter enough information that it can decide your eligibility for a subsidy and compute it; then the site quotes you after-subsidy prices. (The subsidy amount might be buried in an obscure link.) To enter that information, you must create an account. And after you enter your personal data, the server transmits it to a number of places for verification, including a private credit card reporting agency. Then a module run on Oracle software receives the replies. This software has a reputation for rejecting input not conforming to extremely tight formatting rules. (A report about the process, wrapped in reactionary spin, is at http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/10/14/obamacares-website-is-crashing-because-it-doesnt-want-you-to-know-health-plans-true-costs/ ) All this work, requiring no problem at any of the summoned verification systems, is the source of crashes and chokeups. The failure to test properly was the consequence of a political decision that simply could not be implemented in the available time. Politics at the top: We will not show people the outrageous prices that private insurers get from Obamacare. That overrode reality reports from the tech workers. It is analogous to the war against Vietnam when Kissinger and Westmoreland required underestimates of Viet Minh strength and overestimates of enemy kills. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] New book: Destruction of Meaning
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == "which values the 'new individual' above collective, historically contextualised subjectivity" Should we struggle against ahistorically contextualized subjectivity -- or historically decontextualized subjectivity? People wanna know! Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Obamacare
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Mr. A. Roy obviously speaks for business. The blow to Taft-Hartley health plans will be followed by more cutbacks confirming that Obamacare is an attack on health care for everyone but the rich. * The exchanges offer a tier of plans. At one end are low-premium plans that hardly amount to health insurance; you are charged huge deductibles and co-pays whenever you really need care. At the other end, decent coverage is expensive and sure to become more so as health insurance corporations and hospital chains resume their squeeze in a year or two after a glorious beginning for Obamacare. * Employer plans resembling the best options in the exchanges are called "Cadillac" care. A punitive 40% tax that kicks in come 2018 will destroy them. * And we already see how Medicaid has been delegated to states for erosion. The funding is not there, so either more people are covered and care for all enrollees deteriorates, or barriers exclude many of the people who were supposed to get into Medicaid. Mr. Roy is clever. He exploits the old contradiction between business unionism and social movement unionism. Yes, T-H plans are important selling points for business unionists. On the other side, hundreds of union locals are on record in favor of Medicare for All. The social union strategy is that you fight for all workers' needs on the government policy front and the community front as well as for your own members, showing workers that they need the union. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Soaring use of Chinese yuan to settle trades reflects its rapid economic rise
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == When a currency is used in a significant amount of trade, the issuing country gains flexibility. It can buy from other countries - including the "purchase" of investments - without having to sell first. Wider use of the renminbi also facilitates foreign investment in China, which seems to remain one of the anchors of Chinese capitalism run by a local capitalist class that writes the rules while it bargains with international capitals over divinding the spoils of exploitation. Ralph Johansen wrote: > I have the impression that the currency used for payment is not particularly significant. What counts is what currency commodities are priced in, and that is not changing. Is this not accurate? < Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] What Lenin thought a vanguard was
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis Proyect wrote: > ...in a nation of close to 300 million, people like Laurie Poitras and Michael Moore until he degenerated have furnished "the most revolutionary appraisal". < Michael Moore until he degenerated is in the fine tradition of Upton Sinclair - muckraker, reformer, radical, not a source of revolutionary appraisals. (And the Census estimates, as of a few moments ago, 316,492,000.) Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] How Laura Poitras Helped Snowden Spill His Secrets - NYTimes.com
==
Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
==
S. Mage wrote:
>
"Land, Peace, and Bread" was the slogan of the masses in the March
revolution.
<
I don't know whether Lenin distilled these points from a mass of
information or noticed them in news reports. But he stated their
importance in March:
Confining ourselves for the present to an analysis of the class struggle
and the alignment of class forces at this stage of the revolution, we
have still to put the question: who are the proletariat’s allies in this
revolution? It has two allies: first, the broad mass of the
semi-proletarian and partly also of the small-peasant population, who
number scores of millions and constitute the overwhelming majority of
the population of Russia. For this mass peace, bread, freedom and land
are _essential_.
--First letter from Afar. Written on March 7 (20), 1917; published in
Pravda Nos. 14 and 15, March 21 and 22, 1917
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/lfafar/first.htm
And to second Mark L.'s usual incisive observation about the backward
situation in the U.S., how many sects give a clear ("literal-minded" in
the language of the Unrepentant Snarkist) one-page socialist program?
Surely that is their job -- as well as to hail, honor, and defend Ed
Snowden.
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Re: [Marxism] How Laura Poitras Helped Snowden Spill His Secrets - NYTimes.com
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis Proyect wrote: > I consider documentary filmmakers like her to be part of an emerging informal vanguard in the true sense. For very little financial reward and often great risks (Poitras worked completely on her own in Iraq filming "My Country, My Country"), they change more minds about social reality than all of the sect newspapers put together. < They change minds about social facts. Snowden's, Poitras' and Greenwald's sacrifice of personal security and their willingness to forego rewards of playing the game are as noble as it gets. But it has little to do with a vanguard in a revolutionary sense. For all Lenin's rightful insistence on the importance that the RSDLP have its own newspaper, anyone who thinks that articles in Iskra led to 1917 is sadly mistaken. "Only the Bolsheviks stood uncompromisingly for peace, land, and bread -- the slogan Lenin had given them in April" (Harrison Salisbury!) - and were willing to take power when it could be taken. By that time, most Bolsheviks had been party members a few weeks or several months. Don't think the same pattern will be repeated today? A useful question to investigate, but turning "vanguard" into a Gumby concept able to bend any which way does not provide an answer. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Vietnam Seeks to Lure Students to Study Marxism With Free Tuition
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == This item is not about ideology. It raises a materialist question: are opportunities to prosper as a party cadre declining while opportunities to be a business manager are expanding? Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] George Zimmerman Juror Says He 'Got Away With Murder' - ABC News
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == If you read the story instead of taking the Subject line of this thread as an accurate distillation, you find a confused juror: -- When asked by Roberts whether the case should have gone to trial, Maddy said, "I don't think so." -- "That's where I felt confused, where if a person kills someone, then you get charged for it. But as the law was read to me, if you have no proof that he killed him intentionally, you can't say he's guilty." -- "George Zimmerman got away with murder, but you can't get away from God. And at the end of the day, he's going to have a lot of questions and answers he has to deal with." The commandment says, Thou shalt not kill. It does not say, Thou shalt not murder. The juror never had to sort this out previous to the trial. If someone has you pinned on the ground and pounds your head against the pavement, at what point do you decide you cannot free yourself by thrashing around, that you might die, and that it has come to your life or his? Chilling stuff to the juror and to anyone with a heart. But not reducible to, Zimmerman got away with murder. And notice how far away such questions stray from the institutional oppression of Black people. Face it, this incident is not a good vehicle for agitation. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] New Study of Foragers Undermines Claim That War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Correction: Therefore, a hypothesis worth investigating would be: the ratio of aggressive to cooperative behavior declined during the foraging era. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] New Study of Foragers Undermines Claim That War Has Deep Evolutionary Roots
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Shane wrote: But our intimate cousins, the chimpanzees, do exhibit such behavior. Louis wrote: How odd to see people in this day and age channeling Robert Ardrey. If we set aside unproductive name-calling, we can understand something from Shane's observation: The social behavior, aggressive or cooperative or some amalgam, of primate species can apparently vary widely. Human species were foragers during a period of two million years. Presumably, the governance of behavior by the consequences of labor increased in stages over that long period, while the determination of behavior by instinct and conditioned responses decreased. Therefore, a hypothesis worth investigating would be: the ratio of cooperative to aggressive behavior declined during the foraging era. The reported study only examined remnant existing foraging societies studied by ethnographers. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Black block imbeciles at it again
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The first protests after the verdict were targeted -- except in Oakland, California. At least, that is what I saw in the national media. Three days after the verdict there was some aimless rioting in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles, while Oakland was the scene of its third day of stupidity, like throwing trash cans at random cars coming along the street. Same thing happened during Occupy. In most cities the main issue remained 99 percent versus 1 percent. But in Oakland, except for one wonderful day (a march of 10,000 on the Port), aimless vandalism on ordinary folks' cars and apartment windows, and a chaotic encampment that could not exclude street criminals shooting people, became the dominant note, covered by agitation about police brutality. The larger issues disappeared. This is specific to Oakland, not the San Francisco Bay Area. Somethin' weird about the city. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The Marxists Who Explained the Nazis to Washington
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Actually, Neumann, Marcuse and company were social democrats, not Marxists. But what a turnaround. Today, Washington does all it can to explain nazism to social democrats. The latter seem to have trouble learning. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Glenn Greenwald: 'Good journalism is defined by how much you anger the powerful'
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Greenwald performed an invaluable service. Without him, Snowden might never have gotten the news out so far and wide. Greenwald is, of course, a messenger, not the message. In this speech to an audience interested in socialism, Greenwald pushes the bourgeois democratic approach to the limit. He stresses the need to know about the total surveillance state so that ... the limits and uses of the technology can be decided democratically. No hint that such an outcome is wholly imaginary. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Profits Without Production
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Here Krugman displays the best and worst of his insight. He sees an important contrast, he infers a couple of consequences in the sphere of exchange, but he misses the material change -- a change in the nature of labor that brings the conflict between capitalist relations and human progress to a final barrier. Charles Andrews No Rich, No Poor Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] What is the Purpose of Marx's Value Theory?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The fetishism of commodities helps us understand the economic determination of many social horrors. It is hardly the sole purpose of value theory. For people who want to make the world a better place, one purpose of value theory is scientific. We want to understand the motion and development of capitalist economy; understand what is happening now that did not happen before, and why; and understand what our program must be if indeed we are to make the world a better place. Not our emotional wish; our program. As the discussion on crises a few week ago showed, Heinrich and his current cheerleader here are simply not interested in science. No rich, no poor. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Boston bombing: likely fallout
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == You're right, Shane. He only knew that he had a big day coming up. I guess that's why LBJ spent the night before his debate with Barry Goldwater getting drunk instead of studying your doctoral dissertation. - - - - Charlie wrote: At least one of the 9/11 airplane hijackers spent his last night at a strip club in Florida. Never did understand that for one's final hours, whether you are religious or secular Shane wrote: But why do you think that he knew that he was on a *suicide* mission? Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Boston bombing: likely fallout
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == These two young men seem completely ordinary moving around in secular life. If their mindset was Islamic, it is certainly different than the loud expressions of religious irrationality that go with the stereotype of Muslims. At least one of the 9/11 airplane hijackers spent his last night at a strip club in Florida. Never did understand that for one's final hours, whether you are religious or secular, Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Marx's crisis theory
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == "It is questionable, however, whether or to what extent the presentation of the 'shapings of the total process' envisioned by Marx for book III is at all possible in abstraction from the state and the world market. If, however, this is in fact not possible, then the construction of Capital as a whole is called into question." James P. wrote: ~ Is this from the book? No, it is from Heinrich's essay in the April 2013 issue of Monthly Review. Almost at the end. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Marx's crisis theory
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Heinrich merges two applications of the rate of profit for his attack: its explanation of inevitable crises in capitalism, and as an explanation of capitalism arriving at a point where it breaks down or its economic failure drives people to revolution. The crisis aspect does not depend on a rising organic composition of capital. (See for example my From Capitalism to Equality, chapter five.) Ignorin that, Heinrich pounds away at organic composition in his observations about the math, although he carefully avoids the word "organic." The barrier that capitalism reaches, signaling that its relations of production (with the wage relation at the heart) have become an impassable fetter on development, is another matter. Arguments that a rising organic composition brings capitalism to this barrier have never held up. Marx founded the science of history. The basic concepts are sound. That does not mean that Marx explained everything without error. But if you want to throw out the entire science, you start with a problem and enlarge it to the whole. Heinrich, by not sorting out these two matters related to the rate of profit, disparages the whole labor theory of value that Marx gave us along with its results about surplus value, class struggle, and the capitalists' necessary and inhuman devotion to the rate of profit above all else. And so Heinrich declares that Marx only dimly realized late in life that he had failed because in economics everything depends on everything else: "It is questionable, however, whether or to what extent the presentation of the 'shapings of the total process' envisioned by Marx for book III is at all possible in abstraction from the state and the world market. If, however, this is in fact not possible, then the construction of Capital as a whole is called into question." Despicable stuff. Charles Andrews Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] John Foster is not speaking at the British SWP Marxism 2013 Festival in London this July
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == They apologize for listing John Bellamy Foster. It was supposed to be John Foster Dulles. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Heinrich
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Paul Cockshott wrote: "If you reject the independent measurability of labour inputs then you reject any possibility of putting the labour theory of value to the test. It is impossible to prove that value rather than energy for example is the source of value." No, a theory can be tested by comparing developments it logically leads to with what actually happens - all while a basic entity of the theory is not directly measurable, not observable. For example, statistical mechanics in the nineteenth century theorized tiny particles and their motion without being able to observe or measure them individually. The theory derived verifiable macro-quantities of gases, extending Boyle's law. Similarly, the labor theory of value leads to explanations of crises and other macro-economic developments that accord with actual history - without measuring the _abstract_ labor in commodities. Of course you can look at actual hours of labor input, examine the fate of firms using one technology and another, bring in other conditions like firms' access to credit and distribution channels - and perhaps offer an explanation of individual prices. This would be analogous to the progress of physics, now able to make microscopic measurements of individual molecules that had previously been a concept within a theory. One difference is that social measurements at individual firm level are hidden by the secrecy of the firm. No one says that Farjoun and Machover should not examine data. Physics has driven its investigations to smaller and smaller distances. (It has probed trans-galactic distances, too, but with fewer and less solid results.) That has been very fruitful in practical inventions. In contrast, the practical task of historical materialism is deeper understanding of the broad sweep of national and international history today, such as explaining the historic decline since 1973 of workers' real earnings in the U.S. (See No Rich, No Poor.) The above statement by Cockshott is closer to the positivism of Karl Popper than to historical materialism. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] A critical article by Cockshott - no context for quote from Engels
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == DNA metaphor aside, the bare quote from Engels has almost nothing to do with the subsequent value theory of Marx. As _not_ included in the quote, Engels in 1843 roughly meant use-value for "utility," and you know the distinction that Marx drew between use-value and value. The quote contributes nothing to a critique of Cockshott's concept of value. On Feb 17, 2013, at 3:26 PM, Charlie wrote: Shane Mage wrote: "Value is the relation of production costs to utility." (Engels) What is the point of a bare quote from Engels without its 1843 date, before Marx and he had studied value theory in depth? http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/df-jahrbucher/outlines.htm Shane Mage replied: Because it was the initial formulation of their value theory, the DNA- containing seed out of which their whole theoretical tree grew. (like the "scenes from Faust" that Berlioz wrote at the same age, out of which the whole magnificent structure of the "Damnation" grew). Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] A critical article by Cockshott - no context for quote from Engels
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Shane Mage wrote: "Value is the relation of production costs to utility." (Engels) What is the point of a bare quote from Engels without its 1843 date, before Marx and he had studied value theory in depth? http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/df-jahrbucher/outlines.htm Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] 3D printing and communism. Any opinions from tech-savvy comrades?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Yes, we can all manufacture for Wal-Mart. Offered as a stimulating observation, not a flippant remark. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Is Growth Over?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The issue is not, must methods of production change to avoid disasters of climate and biosphere. The question posed was, must we produce and consume _less_? "Less" can be defined many ways, but we have all read pronouncements that we must become ascetics. The more sophisticated phrasing is that the earth has finite resources. Still no answer to the question, what resource do we overuse for which we can never find a replacement? Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Is Growth Over?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Hans: "The reason for this catastrophe is the overuse of the planet's resources by human production and consumption." The evidence is that catastrophe and plenty of local and regional disasters before that threaten because of overuse of _certain_ resources in production and consumption, such as petroleum and its derivatives. Which overused resource do we know to be irreplaceable now and forever? Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Law of Value (was Re: Did the Cuban Revolution enforce socialist realism?)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Shane Mage wrote: > Thus socialism, as Marxists should conceive it, necessarily combines labor and commodity markets (differing from markets under capitalism by being radically egalitarian in the distribution of income and hence of effective demand, by doing away with all monopolistic constraints on the operation of the law of value, and by explicit and ever increasing democratic social determination of the overall quantity of resources devoted to investment in ecological repair and in improving beneficial technologies) with conscious social determination of economic evolution. < It is not clear to me whether this concept might include "market socialism." The existence of markets, of course, does not mean market socialism. It is rather an economy of public ownership in which firms keep a significant portion of profits or, if all profit goes to one or another level of the government, the firms are rewarded to a significant degree by their rate of profit. Charles Andrews Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The anthropology wars
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Robert Briffault debated Malinowski on the radio in the 1930s. Usually labeled a debate about the institution of marriage, the real topic was the classless nature of early human society extending into the period when communities were so productive that there was a surplus and classes were possible. The facts support Briffault. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Book inquiry : Mathematics for the masses
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Passages from Engels' Anti-Duhring. On the archive site, search the work for the word mathematics. Passages from Morris Kline's lengthy Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times. Irving Adler, sometimes with his wife Ruth, wrote a series of popular texts. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] At $3 million, Kerrey at New School was highest paid private college president
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Top 10 recipients, in total compensation, among private-college leaders in 2010. 1. Bob Kerrey (x), The New School, $3,047,703 2. Shirley Ann Jackson, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, $2,340,441 3. G. David Pollick (x), Birmingham-Southern College, $2,312,098 4. Mark S. Wrighton, Washington University in Saint Louis, $2,268,837 5. Nicholas S. Zeppos, Vanderbilt University, $2,228,349 6. Steven B. Sample (x), University of Southern California, $1,963,710 7. Lee C. Bollinger, Columbia University, $1,932,931 8. Richard C. Levin, Yale University, $1,616,066 9. Robert J. Zimmer, University of Chicago, $1,597,918 10. Jack P. Varsalona, Wilmington University (Del.), $1,550,218 (x): no longer president http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_COLLEGES_PRESIDENTS_PAY_TOP_10 Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Eric Foner letter on Lincoln
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Looking back, we fall into seeing slavery as the crucial issue of the Civil War. The cry of the North, however, was Save the Union. The issue behind that banner not slavery in itself. The issue was the expansionism of the slave system. Economically, the big slaveholders and slave breeders needed new land; politically, they needed to maintain their domination of the federal government, hence the new states and their representation in Congress. The free farmers of the North and the Midwest then being settled came into irreconcilable contradiction with this slave system. So, too, did the Northern industrial capitalists. Much of the North was willing to let slavery persist in the South, hopefully dying out over time, if it could be contained there. But they learned that it could not. The slave system and the big slaveholders' domination of the federal government was broken. That led to the end of slavery, but it did not rule out a tamed plantation system in the South. The question is not: who moved history, Lincoln or the slaves? Lincoln was the head of the coalition that could not accept the expansionist slave system. There was a great mass of people in that coalition, slaves comprising part of it. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Excellent documentary on inequality
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Marv, your reply sharpens the question. Is the growing attack on the livelihood of working people in the U.S. and other developed capitalisms a result of globalization plus a long deep depression? Yes and no. Yes, the decline in living standards works through those two processes. No, because a curb on globalization and an eventual climb out of the depression would not restore prosperity-under-capitalism. Not even with a mass movement as militant as can be. (The hyphens are there because sure, a movement that passes into the overthrow of capitalism ... ) My post used the phrase "decline of labor," alluding to the decline in the real wage, which peaked in the U.S. in 1973, well before globalization. You point to a table of strike action. It shows the peak occurred somewhere between 1970 and 1974, depending on which column of the table you choose. That was the turning point. Industrial capitalism based on unskilled and semiskilled labor was able to combine rapid accumulation and a trend line of a rising standard of living. (Not paradise, excluding Blacks, punctuated by boom and bust, trading a better life off the job for mind-numbing and body-wrecking drudgery in the factory, etc.) Such qualified prosperity is no longer possible under capitalism, regardless of what happens with globalization. That is the fact in the U.S., it is becoming the fact in Europe, and it will become the reality in China in a few decades at most. Coda: Foxconn has done the math, announcing it will introduce up to a million robots in its Chinese factories in the next five years. Allowing for bluster, we still see that it pays Foxconn to substitute robots for wages and the management costs of supervising and terrorizing the workforce in China. Charles Andrews (more on this in:) No Rich, No Poor Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Excellent documentary on inequality
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Marv Gandall wrote: > the assault on the welfare state and widening inequality are a consequence of the abrupt decline of the labour and socialist movement under the combined pressure of new communications, transportation, and production technologies which have allowed capital to shed workers at home and tap huge new reserves of cheaper labour overseas. < Yes, there is a materialist explanation of the change, not a mysterious fluctuation in capitalists' inhumanity. However, the decline of labor began well before globalization in the sense of shifting production easily from one place to another. There were plenty of new technologies during the height of industrialization, roughly, the 100 years after 1860. Averaged across boom and bust, capitalist accumulation eagerly exploited as much labor as it could find. But no more after 1973, if one must pick a year (well before globalization in the above sense), Charles Andrews No Rich, No Poor Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Spielberg's 'Lincoln': Passive Black Characters
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The examples that the historian in the NY Times gives of Black slave and ex-slave activism are largely secondary. The capitalists, small farmers, and eventually the workers of the North fought such a bloody war as the Civil War because the slave-plantation system was a lunge at their jugular. Their recognition of the inhumanity of slavery was supportive of their destruction of the Southern regime, and their ultimate abolitionism was a genuinely held belief that accorded with the economic-political imperative. Arguing against this view without stating it, the historian is ahistorical. Who practices historical materialism in the large these days? Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Boots Riley on the black bloc
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Boots Riley almost a year ago, Nov. 8, 2011: The truth is that while almost everyone I know in Occupy Oakland (including myself) thinks that breaking windows is tactically the wrong thing to do and very stupid, many people do not agree with non-violent philosophy. If you kicked those folks out then you would have a body of folks that wouldn't have been radical enough to even call for a General Strike. Occupy Oakland, on the whole, has a radical analysis that leads us to campaigns that others wouldn't and which also capture people's imagination. http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10150386269828664&id=520078663 Sounds like a reasonable position then, but it was not. The window-breakers did not combine their tactic with any program at all (except Police let us do what we want). Occupy Oakland tapped working-class sentiment with the mass march on the port in support of the Longview struggle, but OO never came close to generalizing or sustaining that sentiment. At least, that is the evidence of reports on this list at the time. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Several Wal-Mart strikes
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://www.salon.com/2012/10/04/walmart_workers_on_strike/singleton/ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Fwd: QUERY: How are Loyalists treated in courses? [G Furr]
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == It might be suggestive to look at the revolt of farmers and other working people against the imposition of the Constitution. Suggestive to look backward in order to get on the trail of causation running forward in human affairs. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Inevitable Collapse or Crises
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Marx never self-criticized his famous statement on modes of production in the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. More important, the concept has guided research and analysis to discover the limits of capitalist development. Crises are inevitable from the beginning of industrial capitalism. They are not heralds of its end. Limits turn out to explain why the lot of workers has gotten worse for an unprecedented four decades since 1973. There will not be a post-industrial era of capitalist economic growth from which workers will extract a major share. That is not collapse, but it is the introduction to new terms in the debate over reform versus revolution. Charles Andrews No Rich, No Poor Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] NPR reports China's market explosion came from below
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == When officials in China want to legitimize a policy change, they often point to a local success story - just as every cause in the U.S. likes to have a poster child. China is a big country, and local practices do vary across the land and over time. Class struggle goes on at all levels from the highest peaks of power to small villages. For serious reporting of how agriculture fared under communes and after they were dissolved, see the writings of William Hinton. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The Port Shut-Down, Occupy, and Decision-making
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Mark L.: "If we're serious about building this into a real mass movement, we have to encourage these groups to do things differently." Based on the actions at Oakland, those who steer the course there do not want to do things differently. Eidlin's commentary reports that the only issue was payback for earlier police actions. Also, see the poster for Dec. 12 at the original web page for the commentary. Fine general slogan about Wall Street, nothing about union-busting, and no specific or agitational demands, neither for dockworkers nor the 99 percent. http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/andrews071011.html _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ No Rich, No Poor Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] OccupyOakland moves to the 'hood, sets sights on fighting foreclosures, serving community
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == San Francisco Chronicle, November 23, 2011, page C - 1: "I have asked them to leave," said Gloria Cobb, who owns the lot. "They won't leave. I can't afford to stop work and physically go down there." Activists had said late Monday that Cobb gave them permission to set up their tents, but Cobb denied that. "No, it is not the case," said Cobb, the sister of longtime activist and Oakland Post Publisher Paul Cobb. (A little search engine work shows that the Oakland Post is a Black community newspaper.) http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/23/BALN1M2KQ2.DTL Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Nurse Union to Set Up First Aid Station for Occupy Wall Street
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == New York – The nation’s largest organization of nurses today announced it will set up a first aid station Friday to provide basic medical assistance to participants in the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, an effort that will be expanded to other cities where protests continue. National Nurses United (NNU) will establish a first aid station in New York’s Zuccotti Park Friday at noon, October 14. http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/entry/nurses-to-set-up-first-aid-station-for-occupy-wall-street/ - - - - - - This is wonderful. One likely consequence, though, is that many occupiers will learn of serious health issues -- and left feeling helpless, lacking that insidious commodity known as health insurance. No rich, no poor Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The NYT Oglesby obit (and histories of SDS)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == There is another chronicle that turns out to be more favorable to Progressive Labor: Alan Adelson, SDS: A Profile, Scribners, 1972. Adelson is clearly more interested in telling it like it was, while Sale is more interested in bending the story to his interpretation - which underscores Sale's acknowledgment that the RYM/Weatherman side made the split happen. It is a concession to Progressive Labor by a hostile witness. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Action Theory
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The main form of action for the human species is labor. If your philosophy helps understand the history of labor and makes a case for the kind of labor that is approaching, you might write it up for a more formal platform than an email list. No Rich, No Poor Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Radical rupture in property requires radical rupture in ideas
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Michael Y. wrote: > I noticed this on the Kasama Project web site. Does this put the cart before the horse? < The horse is always in front of the cart. When the cart has too much baggage piled on it, the horse cannot pull it. Someone has to get the idea that it's time to throw a bunch of useless old junk off the cart. Charlie Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The health benefits of atomic bombing
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Now we understand the problem with the 1950s move to add flourine to drinking water - it wasn't radioactive flourine. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Nuclear Hubris: Could Japan's Disaster Happen Here?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == The tsunami triggered most of the problems at the Fukushima reactors. Thirty feet tall, it washed away three-story houses like flicking a finger - and left generators and other vital systems at Fukushima useless. The seawall was designed to stop a 20-foot tsunami. Back in the USA, here is a photo of the seaside nuclear complex at San Onofre, California: http://kpbs.media.clients.ellingtoncms.com/img/photos/2009/10/19/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Power_Plant_tx700.jpg?8e0a8887e886a6ff6e13ee030987b3616fc57cd3 That wall facing the Pacific Ocean is designed to protect the site from a 25-foot tsunami ( http://www.pe.com/localnews/stories/PE_News_Local_D_onofre15.1c27410.html ) . As Les pointed out, locating nuclear reactors by the sea is a cost-cutting decision; the reactors depend on large amounts of water - circulating in pipes, not smashing into equipment. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] What was the excuse for putting those reactors there?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Rod Holt wrote: "...In any case, the earthquake was far offshore." Too bad the tsunami didn't stay far offshore. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] What was the excuse for putting those reactors there?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Rod Holt wrote: "...In any case, the earthquake was far offshore." Too bad the tsunami didn't stay far offshore. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] What was the excuse for putting those reactors there?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == What was the excuse for putting nuclear reactors on a coast next to fault lines, guaranteeing exposure to tsunamis? In northern California, the developing scandal arises out of killing "only" eight people by the explosion of a natural gas transmission line in San Bruno. We learn a new outrage almost every week about how the utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, cut costs. They didn't want to check the welds on a six-decades-old line the safe way, so instead they tested by raising the pressure above official safety levels. Great, the line didn't blow up. Except last Fall a failure at a pumping station something like 20 miles away sent a surge of pressure through the line ... boom. Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] glorious Spring
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Mark Lause wrote: "...waves of social upheaval took the form of a series of very different events in very different circumstances. 1968 wasn't the same in Paris as Mexico or Prague or elsewhere. And 1848 was certainly different and came to different ends, depending on where you look..." Agreed. Nonetheless, a common theme in the current movements is that the rich are waging a war on the rest of us, and one way or another we must fight back. That theme was barely visible in 1968. No Rich, No Poor Charles Andrews Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
