[Marxism] Lecture for a Chinese Delegation

[michael perelman]

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I am going to give a talk to a Chinese delegation.  I have to write up 
the talk in advance for the participants to have a translation to read.

Any comments would be appreciated.

China presents a curious contradiction.  Your country sees herself as a 
socialist state, yet the influence of Western, capitalist-oriented 
economics in the universities seems to be pervasive.  Here in the United 
States, many people put great stock in what the economists have to say. 
  Part of this authority comes from academic credentials; part comes 
from economists' ability to talk in pseudo-scientific terms.

Yet, this style of economics has left a trail of failures for decades, 
culminating in the present economic crisis.  In my book, The 
Confiscation of American Prosperity: From Right-Wing Extremism and 
Academic Economics to the next Great Depression, which came out just as 
the stock market peaked in 2007, I predicted that terrible consequences 
were sure to follow policies that academic economists were promoting. 
Fortunately, a Chinese translation is in the works.

More at:

http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com/2010/12/18/lecture-for-a-chinese-delegation/

-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA
95929

mperel...@csuchico.edu

530 898 5321
fax 530 898 5901
http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com


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[Marxism] lies and medical statistics

[Paula]

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A fascinating piece from The Atlantic:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269/

Paula

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Re: [Marxism] Moderator's note

[Jeff]

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At 17:24 17/12/10 -0500, Louis Proyect wrote:
>
>On 12/17/10 4:41 PM, Jeff wrote:
>
>> You are called the "moderator" so that you can MODERATE the discussion, not
>> outlaw it!
>>
>
>Because the people participating have a history of going ballistic when 
>such a topic comes up. 

Well all cynicism aside, where does that leave us? I think that these
issues are of critical importance and shouldn't be beyond discussion.

And I can understand "going ballistic." I could go ballistic when I see
"Marxists" going along with racism, for instance. Or Marxists supporting
religion instead of promoting science. Or participating in the oppression
of women. Those are all good reasons for "going ballistic" in my book.

What you need is to ask for a civil discussion in which, for instance, Dan
and David Thorstad can argue why their position isn't co-opting racism. And
where the rest of us can argue why we aren't supporting religion or the
oppression of women. And get to the issues. After all, this is a major --
if not defining -- issue facing countless organizations including the NPA.
Given that I had been hopeful about the NPA but fear that they might "blow
it," I consider it plausible that their orientation toward these questions
could have major historical ramifications, at least if you believe that
France is an important country (yes, I realize that Holland isn't).

>Brecht said something about dissolving the people
>and electing another.

Now without hiding behind humor and cynicism, I wonder if Lou can come
forth with some clear idea of how important issues (i.e. ones that cause
people INCLUDING ME to "go ballistic") can be discussed. Or do we just
stick with "safe" issues? :-(
 
- Jeff



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[Marxism] Captain Beefheart is dead

[Louis Proyect]

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http://music-mix.ew.com/2010/12/17/captain-beefheart-dies/


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Re: [Marxism] Moderator's note

[S. Artesian]

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As one of the ballistics, I have no intention of making any additional 
comments on this matter.


- Original Message - 
From: "Louis Proyect" 
.net 



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[Marxism] Loading. Wen's piece in english

[Peggy Dobbins]

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Sorry. I misclicked the Chinese version. Here's the english

http://chinastudygroup.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Wen_2007_Deconstructing_Modernization.pd


Peggy Powell Dobbins 
Sociology as an Art Form
www.peggydobbins.net

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[Marxism] Untitled

[Peggy Dobbins]

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This was forwarded from the china study group.  A very thoughtful set of sum 
ups and questions by a leading Chinese theorist. Translated into English 3 
years ago,  it has achieved the status of "a classic" for many and deserves a 
serious read by living marxists of whatever preferred tendency

http://chinastudygroup.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Wen_2007_Deconstructing_Modernization.pdf


Peggy Powell Dobbins 
Sociology as an Art Form
www.peggydobbins.net

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Re: [Marxism] Moderator's note

[Jeff]

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At 12:45 17/12/10 -0500, Louis Proyect wrote:
>
>The thread on NPA, Islamophobia, hijab is finished. Now.

Let's see. you think the discussion has descended into name-calling,
generating much more heat than light. Well perhaps I'd agree with you. Then
you should have asked for a more civil discussion, rather than targeting
the original TOPIC of the discussion.

This isn't particularly about the NPA after all (though I am very
disappointed that they have been affected in this manner). But the above
ban on discussion as you have stated it, would make Islamophobia the one
form of racism that can't be discussed on this list! Moreover it's arguably
the most severe racism affecting Europe right now, certainly including
France but also here in the Netherlands where the government that recently
formed was dependent on an agreement with an openly and vociferously
anti-Muslim party (the PVV), and it would not be an exaggeration to suggest
that Islamophobia is the largest issue driving Dutch politics during this
period. Can't we discuss that?

And it's not my fault that the PVV (among others) chooses to use the hijab
as the target of their hate. The government coalition has already agreed to
banning the wearing of the hijab by certain government employees (such as
police) as a first inroad. Two weeks ago a school in the Hague which
receives government funding turned away a teacher who wore the hijab
(whereas Christian symbols are expressly allowed at that school). I hope
you're not saying that this simply isn't a topic for discussion and that in
order to post on a Marxist list I need to look for an economic or
"workplace" issue.

You are called the "moderator" so that you can MODERATE the discussion, not
outlaw it!

- Jeff






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[Marxism] Lynne Stewart in Transit: Destination unknown!

[David Walsh]

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- Forwarded Message 
From: Barry Weisleder 
To: sa-n...@yahoogroups.com; mark ostapiak 
Sent: Fri, December 17, 2010 5:45:01 AM
Subject: Re: [SA-News] Lynne Stewart in Transit: Destination unknown!

  
May I suggest that you publicize the address to which you want folks to 
continue 
to send cards and letters to Lynne.

Barry

At 03:26 PM 16/12/2010, Jeff Mackler wrote:

  
>
>An Update on Lynne Stewart from her husband Ralph Poynter:
>
>
>
>>Greetings
>> 
>>It is official.  Lynne Stewart, our shero and people's lawyer is at this very 
>>moment in transit to the Oklahoma prison complex which is a transit point for 
>>the prison system.  
>>
>> 
>>We still have no confirmation as to where they will send her.  
>> 
>>They may keep her there for two weeks until this is determined.  Clearly, the 
>>request of friends and family that she be allowed to remain at mcc until that 
>>time, has been deliberately disregarded.  
>>
>> 
>>Clearly the efforts of the police state to break and abuse her spirit is 
>>evident, in that she could have just as easily been allowed to remain close 
>>to 
>>her love ones for the holidays, instead of being handcuffed and shackled to 
>>the 
>>floor of a prison transport plane  to Oklahoma transit prison. This is 
>>business 
>>as usual policy for the  U.S. Prison system and we hope, against all hope, 
>>that 
>>Lynne was not shackled in this manner.
>> 
>>Continue to write, write, write.  Her letters will follow her and when she 
>>arrives at her destination i.e. assigned place of imprisonment, she will need 
>>them as much as we will appreciate them.
>> 
>>Thank you much.
>> 
>>Ralph Poynter
>>Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
>> 
>>

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[Marxism] What's Behind the GOP's War Against NPR?

[Ralph Johansen]

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http://www.alternet.org/story/149207/what%27s_behind_the_gop%27s_war_against_npr?page=entire#disqus_thread

These are my comments posted to this Alternet story:

The collapse of public radio and TV are part of an egregious on-going 
saga of failing democracy in the US as elsewhere:

With radio, TV, print news, and investigative journalism being 
controlled by corporate oligarchies, with newspapers failing as a 
profitable investment mainly because fewer are subscribing and ad 
revenues do not pay for any semblance of responsible journalism, we 
should recall that at this nation's founding and throughout the 19th 
century newspapers were heavily subsidized by the federal government - 
not only very low mail rates but tax and many other incentives - which 
produced literally thousands of small, local start-up newspapers, with 
every conceivable shade of opinion. The stated rationale was that a 
literate, informed citizenry was essential to a functioning, 
participatory, Jeffersonian democracy. Then came corporate ownership of 
newspapers, eventually by the turn of the last century ownership by 
oligopoly and support not by subscribers but by restrictive, 
content-restraining corporate advertisers.

Also, we should recall that originally, with the inception of radio and 
TV, Congress imposed minimally protective public interest requirements 
in exchange for turning our public airwaves over to private control and 
virtual ownership. Those requirements have in their application by 
private media been winnowed away to nothing, and now even so-called 
'public' radio and TV, ratcheted down to a minimum of objective 
information in a corporate-supported format, are to be dispensed with 
altogether.

Also, now what of the newly emergent Congressional internet legislation, 
which has removed Communications Commission oversight over the internet, 
giving free rein to corporate control over this once-promising new 
medium of multi-directional communication?

And humanity's intellectual record now sits no longer in our print 
libraries but in electronic records. Those records are increasingly in 
the control of  governmental and corporate archives, subject to erasure, 
concealment and distortion, with no effective public oversight. As 
Julian Assange said in Oslo last month, 'he who controls the internet 
controls the intellectual history of mankind.'




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Re: [Marxism] I hear from Daniel Pinkwater

[Paul mueller]

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Lou,
 
As one of the 3 per cent, one who closely followers your vendetta against 
Botstein, I was delighted to read the comments of Pinkwater.

I so happens that I was one of those students who came to Bard because of 
Reamer Kline. My father was willing to put up the money because he was led to 
believe he was sending me to an Episcopalian college. Within my first year I 
was converted by my roommate Richie to the religious views of the Realist 
Magazine, recruited to YPSL, and got my first taste of what turned out to be 
the joy of my life, Jewish girls.

So Bluecher was probably right to urge the meeting to do whatever had to be 
done to save the college. The old Bard culture prevailed over the Episcopalian 
takeover and the years when you, Pinkwater, and I were students were still good 
years.  It took Botstein to turn things around.

Paul




On Dec 17, 2010, at 6:36 AM, Louis Proyect  wrote:

> ==
> Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> ==
> 
> 
> Some of you might be familiar with this person, who is one of 
> America's best-known author of children's book and a commentator 
> on NPR--he still might be, I don't listen to the station. In any 
> case, he was a year ahead of me at Bard College and reads my blog. 
> I was very pleased to hear from him this morning in the form of a 
> comment on one of my tirades against Leon Botstein. I know that 
> this will be of absolutely no interest to 97 percent of our 
> subscribers but do want to share it with the 3 percent who have 
> been following my 15 year vendetta against the toxic college 
> president. The Bluecher referred to in Pinkwater's comment was 
> Heinrich Bluecher, a colorful philosophy professor who was married 
> to Hannah Arendt and shared many of her ideas. I was quite close 
> to him as a student.
> 
> 
>   25.
> 
>   Louis, a couple of years before you arrived at Bard there 
> was a meeting of the whole community–students, faculty, 
> administration, kitchen workers, buildings and grounds people, 
> alumni who had never left, all packed into the old gym. The topic 
> was on the order of “What the fuck should we do, shut the place 
> down and walk away with heads high, or make some compromises which 
> will certainly ultimately lead to something we won’t like?” I 
> remember Bleucher walking up and down, arguing both sides and 
> doing his gadfly thing–which mantle, by the way, you inherit. It 
> was a long night and there were many impassioned speeches and 
> noble sentiments expressed. In the end, people drawing salary or 
> about to graduate having sway, the sense of the meeting was that 
> the college would do what had to be done in order to continue to 
> exist…in whatever shape or form. And the rest, as they say, is 
> history. Reamer Kline, Botstein’s predecessor, does not get the 
> credit he deserves for unmaking what the school had been. By the 
> time Botstein arrived I believe he had pretty much a blank canvas, 
> and it so happened that his tenure has been contemporary with 
> education becoming the education industry, and, I don’t know, 
> maybe he has made a valiant futile effort to resist the trend, 
> maybe he laps it up, maybe he invented it. And here’s my point–it 
> doesn’t matter. Keep doing what you do, Louis.
> 
>   Comment by Daniel Pinkwatrer — December 17, 2010 @ 8:18 am 
> | Edit This
> 
> 
> 
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[Marxism] Video: Raynor Lysaght on Irish Crisis

[David Walsh]

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http://birminghamresist.wordpress.com/2009/08/08/socialist-resistance-forum-crisis-in-the-irish-economy-workers-resistance/


  

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[Marxism] Bradley Manning in Solitary at New Gitmo for Months

[David Walsh]

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http://www.commondreams.org/video/2010/12/16-0



  

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Re: [Marxism] H.K. Edgerton is one happy House Negro

[Greg McDonald]

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On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 8:27 PM, Mark Lause  wrote:

> The entire Jackson chapter of the NAACP passed a resolution supporting the
> efforts of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (or whatever they call
> themselves nowadays) to recover the "suppressed history" of the black
> Confederates.
>
> Frankly, it's one of the top five reasons I can think of for emmigrating
>
> ML

What's next? The Jackson chapter linking arms with the local KKK and
singing Kumbaya beneath a burning cross?


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Re: [Marxism] H.K. Edgerton is one happy House Negro

[Greg McDonald]

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On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 8:15 PM, Louis Proyect  wrote:

>
> I don't know what is more off-putting, the Black man taking part in
> racist ceremonies described in the article above or the blogger's
> idiotic defense of Barack Obama and trashing of Ralph Nader.

Yeah, speaking of house negros.  On the other hand, Nader's doing a
good job trashing himself these days.

G.


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[Marxism] The rise of the killer machines

[Stuart Munckton]

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By Tony Iltis 

  One of the features of advances in military technology is that an
increasing proportion of those killed in wars are civilians, not combatants.


During the 20th century, airstrikes became the preferred form of warfare by
technologically well-resourced superpowers. This led to civilians becoming
the majority of those killed in wars worldwide.

In the first decade of the new century, new developments in military
technology have raised the possibility for powerful countries of
increasingly dispensing with combatants entirely.

http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/46341
-- 
“Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is humanity’s
original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made,
through disobedience and through rebellion.” — Oscar Wilde, Soul of Man
Under Socialism

“The free market is perfectly natural... do you think I am some kind of
dummy?” — Jarvis Cocker

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