[Marxism-Thaxis] Left-Wing Communism in Great Britain
Left-Wing Communism in Great Britain There is no Communist Party in Great Britain as yet, but there is a fresh, broad, powerful and rapidly growing communist movement among the workers, which justifies the best hopes. There are several political parties and organisations (the British Socialist Party [35], the Socialist Labour Party, the South Wales Socialist Society, the Workers’ Socialist Federation [36]), which desire to form a Communist Party and are already negotiating among themselves to this end. In its issue of February 21, 1920, Vol. VI, No. 48, The Workers’ Dreadnought, weekly organ of the last of the organisations mentioned, carried an article by the editor, Comrade Sylvia Pankhurst, entitled Towards a Communist Party. The article outlines the progress of the negotiations between the four organisations mentioned, for the formation of a united Communist Party, on the basis of affiliation to the Third International, the recognition of the Soviet system instead of parliamentarianism, and the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It appears that one of the greatest obstacles to the immediate formation of a united Communist Party is presented by the disagreement on the questions of participation in Parliament and on whether the new Communist Party should affiliate to the old, trade-unionist, opportunist and social-chauvinist Labour Party, which is mostly made up of trade unions. The Workers’ Socialist Federation and the Socialist Labour Party *7 are opposed to taking part in parliamentary elections and in Parliament, and they are opposed to affiliation to the Labour Party; in this they disagree with all or with most of the members of the British Socialist Party, which they regard as the Right wing of the Communist parties in Great Britain. (Page 5, Sylvia Pankhurst’s article.) Thus, the main division is the same as in Germany, notwithstanding the enormous difference in the forms in which the disagreements manifest themselves (in Germany the form is far closer to the Russian than it is in Great Britain), and in a number of other things. Let us examine the arguments of the Lefts. On the question of participation in Parliament, Comrade Sylvia Pankhurst refers to an article in the same issue, by Comrade Gallacher, who writes in the name of the Scottish Workers’ Council in Glasgow. The above council, he writes, is definitely anti-parliamentarian, and has behind it the Left wing of the various political bodies. We represent the revolutionary movement in Scotland, striving continually to build up a revolutionary organisation within the industries [in various branches of production], and a Communist Party, based on social committees, throughout the country. For a considerable time we have been sparring with the official parliamentarians. We have not considered it necessary to declare open warfare on them, and they are afraid to open an attack on us. But this state of affairs cannot long continue. We are winning all along the line. The rank and file of the I.L.P. in Scotland is becoming more and more disgusted with the thought of Parliament, and the Soviets [the Russian word transliterated into English is used] or Workers’ Councils are being supported by almost every branch. This is very serious, of course, for the gentlemen who look to politics for a profession, and they are using any and every means to persuade their members to come back into the parliamentary fold. Revolutionary comrades must not [all italics are the author’s] give any support to this gang. Our fight here is going to be a difficult one. One of the worst features of it will be the treachery of those whose personal ambition is a more impelling force than their regard for the revolution. Any support given to parliamentarism is simply assisting to put power into the hands of our British Scheidemanns and Noskes. Henderson, Clynes and Co. are hopelessly reactionary. The official I.L.P. is more and more coming under the control of middle-class Liberals, who ... have found their ’spiritual home’ in the camp of Messrs. MacDonald, Snowden and Co. The official I.L.P. is bitterly hostile to the Third International, the rank and file is for it. Any support to the parliamentary opportunists is simply playing into the hands of the former. The B.S.P. doesn’t count at all here What is wanted here is a sound revolutionary industrial organisation, and a Communist Party working along clear, well-defined, scientific lines. If our comrades can assist us in building these, we will take their help gladly; if they cannot, for God’s sake let them keep out altogether, lest they betray the revolution by lending their support to the reactionaries, who are so eagerly clamouring for parliamentary ’honours’ (?) [the query mark is the author’s] and who are so anxious to prove that they can rule as effectively as the ’boss’ class politicians themselves. In my
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Worried German bourgeoisie
This is very interesting and being discussed in Germany for more than one year. What I find more interesting in this connection is what Roland Koch, the temporary prime minister of Hessen and one of the leading figures?of Christian Democrat Party (CDU), said:?he said that Germany must come out of the crisis with new market segments in hand. Similar assertions has been made by chancellor Angelika Merkel. She said that Germany must come out the crisis stronger. Is that the old game of imperialist expansion policy? -Original Message- From: Charles Brown charl...@cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us To: a-l...@lists.econ.utah.edu; marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Mon, 5 Jan 2009 17:18 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Worried German bourgeoisie Louis Proyect (posted to LBO-talk by SA) [From an interview with Hasso Plattner, co-founder of SAP] http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,598945,00.htmlhttp://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,598945,00.html [...] SPIEGEL: Sometimes it's a nasty game. In 2005, Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackerman announced a 25 percent return for the company while at the same time saying it would lay off more than 6,000 employees. Plattner: Objectively speaking, he was completely right. His bank needed those returns in order to stay globally competitive. He just expressed it badly. It's something that's understood almost everywhere around the world, just not in Germany, where one sometimes comes across a confused social romanticism. SPIEGEL: What's utopian about people wanting a just society? Plattner: Is German society unjust, then? Ever since the economic miracle of Ludwig Erhard, we Germans have been entrenched in a capitalist business system, on top of which we have super-imposed the cloak of a social market economy SPIEGEL: which we find reasonable, because it softens the effects of extreme capitalism. Plattner: I completely agree. But there's a feeling in this country that we don't want capitalism any more, and instead want something different, something nicer. But nothing better exists, despite all the system's weaknesses and its dark sides. East Germany showed us where a communist planned economy would lead us. Some people have started talking fondly about those times. SPIEGEL: For example, the actor who played the police detective on the TV crime show Tatort, Peter Sodann, [now running for the largely ceremonial post of German president on behalf of the Left Party in an election next year] said: I won't let the GDR be taken away from me. Plattner: For me, that's just curious. On the other hand, the man is a candidate for the office of president of the republic. SPIEGEL: In surveys, fewer and fewer Germans say they consider democracy to be the best politica l system, or capitalism to be the most sensible economic system. Plattner: That really bothers me too. The only thing to do is take a look at the world, Cuba for example. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis AOL Email goes Mobile! You can now read your AOL Emails whilst on the move. Sign up for a free AOL Email account with unlimited storage today. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Owl of Minerva: looking back at a labor era in Detroit
The end of an era for labor in Detroit was made obvious by the loss of the Detroit newspaper workers' strike. http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/1998-May/009617.html INTERVIEW WITH DETROIT NEWSPAPER STRIKER BARB INGALLS [Editor's note: On July 13, 1995, some 2,500 employees of the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press went on strike against owners Gannett and Knight-Ridder, who had been trying for some time to bust the unions at the two papers. Thirty-three months later, the strike continues. The Action Coalition of Strikers and Supporters (ACOSS) sponsored a speaking tour so that the strikers could educate the public, gain support across the West Coast and promote a nationwide boycott of USA Today. After they were locked out, some of the strikers started the Sunday Journal, a Detroit weekly striker-run newspaper funded entirely by advertising. At the forefront of the struggle is Barb Ingalls, a 41-year-old graphic designer who had been working at the Detroit newspapers for one year and one week when the strikers were locked out in 1995. Barb is a member of Detroit Typographical Union Local 18 as well as a member of the Communications Workers of America (CWA). Today her strike job is classified as director for the Sunday Journal with, as she puts it, a minor in mischief and mayhem. Barb is incredibly outspoken, articulate, and passionate about the strikers' cause. The following is an excerpt of an interview Barb Ingalls granted while she was on a speaking tour in Oregon. The interviewer is Amanda Levinson.] PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE: What kind of press, if any, are the strikers getting in Detroit and nationally? Are you finding that the community is supportive? BARB INGALLS: One of our people went to the Media and Democracy Forum last fall in New York City and met with a couple of people from the New York Times, and they just said, It's old, it's boring news, and we're not going to write about you. Public radio is really a bad joke. In fact, in the local NPR [National Public Radio] station, one of their people is a really important scab who crossed our picket line. We had 100,000 people for a labor march, one of the largest labor marches in the United States last June, and the local station said it was 7,000 people. We have to rely on going door to door. When people find out that we're still [on strike], they're incredulous, they're supportive. We've had people call when we're right there and cancel their subscriptions [to the Free Press and the News]. But we're working in the dark. We have radio ads that none of the stations will play. They won't buy them, they say that they're too controversial. We have newspaper ads which only one newspaper would buy. We're under a total media blackout. I am representing a group called ACOSS, which is Action Coalition of Strikers and Supporters, and what's happened is that we got really tired of waiting for the courts, and we got tired of waiting for them to grow hearts -- it's not going to happen. So a group of really wonderful people around the country have networked and brainstormed and put these tours together. Word of mouth is what has kept us alive, and my joke is that if I have to talk to everybody in America one by one, I'll do it. PT: What do you see in the future of the strike and what are the things you need to really win? BI: I believe really strongly that this strike isn't just about Detroit. It's a national issue about union busting. So what we need to do is to stay on the road. We need crews of people out on the road in Arlington, Virginia, where Gannett's headquarters are, and we need to have people there working the streets and getting publicity and raising hell and having demonstrations and making it embarrassing. We need to be able to continue the ad boycott and costing them money. We're trying to spark a nationwide boycott of USA Today. USA Today is Gannett's No. 1 money maker. We're also trying to raise money across the country. What's important right now is that the people on strike and a lot of the community supporters have decided that we can't go on like this, waiting and waiting for the courts to work. When they write the history of the strike, and the victory of it, it's going to be because people wouldn't put up with it anymore and came up with these ways to deal with it and ended it. It's going to end up being the workers' strike and the workers' victory. To support the strike, you can send money to: Detroit Newspaper Striker Relief Fund, 450 W. Fort Street, Detroit, Michigan 48226. You're also encouraged to visit the Sunday Journal website at http://www.rust.net/~workers/strike.html For more information on ACOSS, write: Action Coalition of Strikers and Supporters, 5750 Fifteen Mile Road Box 242, Sterling Heights, Michigan 48310-5777 or visit the website at http://members.aol.com/actmotown/index.html ** This article originated in the PEOPLE'S
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Lenin philosophy blog
More comments from Riggins: (3) There now follow a few pages where Lenin defends the objectivity of time and space against Mach who thinks that Newton's views may not actually be applicable. Here Lenin seems to equate Newton's notion of ABSOLUTE time and space with the materialist view the denial of which leaves room for fedeism [religion]. Newton was, however, himself a Deist and left room for God in his system. Modern physics has adopted the views of Einstein concerning time and space which are very different from those of Newton. (4) Lenin does agree with Mach in rejecting a fourth spacial dimension. Mach is no believer and rejects a fourth spacial dimension so as not to aid many theologians, who experience difficulty in deciding where to place hell. Lenin, of course, doesn't worry about the location of Hell. He would probably agree with Sartre that Hell is other people (especially mensheviks). His point is that Mach, thinking that Space and Time are products of the human mind, unconsciously adopts the materialist position (as it was in his time) when he asserts there are only three spacial dimensions because he assumes this to be an objective fact and is thus inconsistent. (5) Lenin says, The principal feature of Kant's philosophy is the reconciliation of materialism with idealism, a compromise between the two, the combination within one system of heterogeneous and contrary philosophical trends. Yes, but here is a question to think about. Why is this not a dialectical unity of opposites, a synthesis of a thesis (idealism) and antithesis (materialism), making Kantianism a higher philosophy than either of the others? Why is dialectical materialism so hostile to Kantianism rather than trying to make a synthetic unity with it? NOTE: Lenin goes on to lambaste the Russian Machists and link Machism with fideism. (6) Lenin and Helmholtz may be just having a verbal disagreement and not a disagreement of substance. Lenin says because Helmholtz says our sensations are symbols of the external world which, when we learn to read them properly can direct our actions so as to achieve the desired result, he has lapsed into subjectivism and a denial of objective truth and reality. This is too strong and I believe it is incorrect. The rose is part of objective reality-- it is red for us and ultra-violet for the bee. That the red rose is a symbol of my love-- is that objective or subjective? I also think Lenin is wrong to say that Helmholtz presents a flagrant untruth when he says An idea and the object it represents obviously belong to two entirely different worlds Helmholtz is only saying, more or less, what Plato (I think truthfully) would have said, viz., when I look at the Mona Lisa my sensation is not the same as the picture on the wall, and the picture on the wall is not anything like the woman painted by Leonardo. That this is so is seen when Helmholtz says, As to the properties of the objects of the external world, a little reflection will show that all the properties we may attribute to them merely signify the EFFECTS wrought by them either on our senses or on other natural objects. Lenin also says this is materialism. (7) What is the error of Machism in general? It does not understand the basis of materialism and does not differentiate metaphysical from dialectical materialism. Changes is our scientific understanding of the world is not a problem for diamat! Lenin, for example, uses the ether as an example of something existing independently of the human mind and reproaches the idealists for thinking it only a mind dependent convention. But the science of your day may not be the science of tomorrow. The ether turned out to be a construction of the human mind. So Lenin was wrong, but his real claim, that dialectical materialism insists on the approximate, relative character of every scientific theory of the structure of matter and its properties, is not wrong, and so, where it matters, Lenin was right. (8) After discussing atoms, the ether, and electrons Rucker prefers the copy theory. Lenin says, The gist of his position is this: The theory of physics is a copy (becoming ever more exact) of objective reality. The world is matter in motion, our knowledge of which grows ever more profound. This may an argument over words. How can the Ptolemaic geo-centric universe of Dante, or even the Copernican universe, which still uses epicycles, be a copy of the universe as it is as opposed to a symbolic representation? Physicists today (2008) don't know what the universe is really like.* Seventy four per cent of it is composed of something called dark energy and they have no idea what that is, so how can their descriptions be a copy of anything? It should be enough, for materialism, to hold that whatever is out there has been around before there were any humans (even before there was the Earth) and so it exists in objective reality
[Marxism-Thaxis] Lenin philosophy blog
Yes, but here is a question to think about. Why is this not a dialectical unity of opposites, a synthesis of a thesis (idealism) and antithesis (materialism), making Kantianism a higher philosophy than either of the others? Why is dialectical materialism so hostile to Kantianism rather than trying to make a synthetic unity with it? ^^^ CB: In the philosophical line Lenin is part of Kant's philosophy had already been critiqued by Hegel. Marx and Engels don't even have much to say about Kant, as far as I know. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Why a Philosophy of the Natural Sciences is Needed
Ralph Dumain This article is shockingly awful and an unfortunate product of CP Soviet miseducation, and a further contribution to same. ^^^ CB: No this article is very much needed. Your comment is more evidence of your unfortunate ignorance of critical aspects of Marxist philosophy (that of Marx , Engels and Lenin) due to _your_ anti-Soviet mis-education. Reminds me of that book _The Mis-education of the Negro_. Somewhere down the line you got petit bourgeois educated , and it keeps you from becoming a real Marxist philosopher. The part about Newton's mechanics is interesting, as are the materialist interpretations of quantum mechanics, and the reference to Joseph Needham, but the rest is useless and even harmful. ^^^ CB: Yeah, silly rabbit. He's physicist (smile) . Reread and rethink and you might learn something about philosophy and the natural sciences. ^^ Here is a quick list of some commonly accepted falsehoods or nonsensical assertions: ^^ CB: I'll get to a critique of the critique later. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] American steel industry needs $1 trillion bailout
NY Times, January 2, 2009 Steel Industry, in Slump, Looks to U.S. Stimulus By LOUIS UCHITELLE The steel industry, having entered the recession in the best of health, is emerging as a leading indicator of what lies ahead. As steel production goes — and it is now in collapse — so will go the national economy. That maxim once applied to Detroit’s Big Three car companies, when they dominated American manufacturing. Now they are losing ground in good times and bad, and steel has replaced autos as the industry to watch for an early sign that a severe recession is beginning to lift. The industry itself is turning to government for orders that, until the September collapse, had come from manufacturers and builders. Its executives are waiting anxiously for details of President-elect Barack Obama’s stimulus plan, and adding their voices to pleas for a huge public investment program — up to $1 trillion over two years — intended to lift demand for steel to build highways, bridges, electric power grids, schools, hospitals, water treatment plants and rapid transit. “What we are asking,” said Daniel R. DiMicco, chairman and chief executive of the Nucor Corporation, a giant steel maker, “is that our government deal with the worst economic slowdown in our lifetime through a recovery program that has in every provision a ‘buy America’ clause.” Economists in the Obama camp said the president-elect’s proposals to Congress will include significant infrastructure spending that draws on heavy industry. New spending should provide an immediate jolt to the steel business, which has already gone through the painful makeover now demanded of automakers. Steel mills were closed, companies were consolidated, hundreds of thousands lost their jobs and the survivors agreed to concessions. As a result, productivity shot up and so did profits, to record levels in the first nine months of this year. Even as the economy wobbled, steel held its own. But then the recession hit in force. Steel goes into nearly everything made in America, from homes and office buildings to cars, appliances and light bulb sockets, and as construction and manufacturing wound down, so did the output of steel, plunging 50 percent since September. The steel industry’s collapse closely tracks the alarming late-autumn swoon in the national economy, as the housing bust and the credit crisis converted a mild downturn into “a severe one that has much further to run,” says Nigel Gault, chief domestic economist at IHS Global Insight, offering a view increasingly shared by forecasters. Through August, steel production was actually up slightly for the year. The decline came slowly at first, and then with a rush in November and December. By late December, output was down to 1.02 million tons a week from 2.1 million tons on Aug. 30, the American Iron and Steel Institute reported. The price of a ton of steel is also down by half since late summer. “We are making our steel at four mills instead of six,” said John Armstrong, a spokesman for the United States Steel Corporation, adding that two mills were recently idled and the four still operating are running at less than full capacity. “The third quarter was one of the best in U.S. Steel’s history,” Mr. Armstrong added. “And it has been a very precipitous drop from there.” The cutback has been particularly hard on workers at the big integrated mills like those at U.S. Steel and Arcelor Mittal USA, with their blast furnaces and coke ovens converting iron ore and other materials into steel. Operated at less than full capacity, these mills are less efficient than the equally large “minimills,” like Nucor, whose electric arc furnaces can be operated efficiently at lower speeds. So the plant closings have been mostly at the integrated mills, whose 50,000 workers — roughly 40 percent of the nation’s steelworkers — are represented by the United Steelworkers. The union says that early this year it expects 20,000 workers to be on furlough. Ten thousand already have been. Kathleen Loepker, a millwright and mechanic, is among the most recent to join their ranks. She was laid off on Dec. 19 from the U.S. Steel plant in Granite City, Ill., which shut, putting more than 2,000 employees out of work. With nearly 30 years seniority, Ms. Loepker, 48, has worked through bankruptcies, union concessions and consolidations during which her mill was acquired by U.S. Steel in 2003. Her income today is tied more to incentive bonuses than in the past. On layoff, she is collecting $20 an hour, which is 80 percent of her base pay of $25.12 an hour. That base pay, rather than rising significantly, is fattened by incentive bonuses tied to amounts of steel produced and to profits. It had been averaging an additional $7 an hour — money now gone until the mill reopens. “No one knows when that will happen,” said Ms. Loepker, who lives by herself in a four-bedroom home she bought in nearby
[Marxism-Thaxis] Worried German bourgeoisie
Louis Proyect (posted to LBO-talk by SA) [From an interview with Hasso Plattner, co-founder of SAP] http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,598945,00.htmlhttp://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,598945,00.html [...] SPIEGEL: Sometimes it's a nasty game. In 2005, Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackerman announced a 25 percent return for the company while at the same time saying it would lay off more than 6,000 employees. Plattner: Objectively speaking, he was completely right. His bank needed those returns in order to stay globally competitive. He just expressed it badly. It's something that's understood almost everywhere around the world, just not in Germany, where one sometimes comes across a confused social romanticism. SPIEGEL: What's utopian about people wanting a just society? Plattner: Is German society unjust, then? Ever since the economic miracle of Ludwig Erhard, we Germans have been entrenched in a capitalist business system, on top of which we have super-imposed the cloak of a social market economy SPIEGEL: which we find reasonable, because it softens the effects of extreme capitalism. Plattner: I completely agree. But there's a feeling in this country that we don't want capitalism any more, and instead want something different, something nicer. But nothing better exists, despite all the system's weaknesses and its dark sides. East Germany showed us where a communist planned economy would lead us. Some people have started talking fondly about those times. SPIEGEL: For example, the actor who played the police detective on the TV crime show Tatort, Peter Sodann, [now running for the largely ceremonial post of German president on behalf of the Left Party in an election next year] said: I won't let the GDR be taken away from me. Plattner: For me, that's just curious. On the other hand, the man is a candidate for the office of president of the republic. SPIEGEL: In surveys, fewer and fewer Germans say they consider democracy to be the best political system, or capitalism to be the most sensible economic system. Plattner: That really bothers me too. The only thing to do is take a look at the world, Cuba for example. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Lenin philosophy blog
-- Ralph Dumain rdum...@autodidactproject.org wrote: (11) Lenin chose physics to illustrate his theories. He could have picked any number of sciences had he so wished. I should also note the conditions of 1908 are not unique. Marxism itself, as a scientific world view, is going through a similar crisis today in 2008 as was physics in 1908. Lenin's methods of analysis are as useful today as they were then. COMMENT: The prior citations include some questioning of Lenin, with occasional extrapolations of the issues involved. This one is not a criticism, but a rather silly analogy. --- Well in Soviet writing, Lenin's notion of a crisis in physics as described in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism was applied to a number of different disciplines. Thus, the early Soviet psychologists (Vygotsky,Lenontiev, Rubenshtein, Luria, etc. maintained that their own science was undergoing a crisis that was similar to the one that Lenin had asserted was troubling physics. The crisis in psychology was seen as emerging from a contradiction between the materialist outlook that was associated with experimental psychology, and the idealism which bourgeois psychology retained from the philosophies of Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and Kant. The writings of Wundt, the father of modern psychology, were seen as exemplifying this contradiction. Therefore, early Soviet psychologists were more than willing to give a fair hearing to psychologies that challenged Wundt's introspectionism including both John B. Watson's behaviorism and Gestalt psychology. Watson's work was looked favorably upon because he was seen as attempting to articulate a materialist psychology. Indeed, Watson was invited to write an article on behaviorism for the *Large Soviet Encyclopedia*. Gestalt psychology was treated favorably at first because it was seen as an attempt at developing a dialectical psychology. A little later on, Soviet psychologists initiated attempts at developing their own psychological theories which they hoped would be consistent with basic Marxist principles such as the materialist conception of history and Lenin's analysis of reflection. Thus, American behaviorism was ultimately rejected as being mechanistic and positivistic while Gestalt psychology was rejected as idealist. Nevertheless, they were recognized as having made important contributions which had to be absorbed into a psychology that was firmly grounded in dialectical materialism. Jim Farmelant Click here for proven Credit Repair programs. Increase your score today! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/PnY6rw2Ou7KoRuSgp0h3NwUUGbacARVZUxreAzViQItkbYknBozHT/ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Thomas Riggins' blog (1)
Early Christianity as a manifestation of the Communist ideal is a rather simplistic conception of the nature of Christianity. See for example, THE MIND OF THE BIBLE-BELIEVER by Edmund G. Cohen. ^^^ CB: True. In case you don't think Engels also held a more complex understanding of the nature of Christianity. See _Ludwig Feuerbach_ and Marx's Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right - Introduction. This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Super Capitalism, Super Imperialism and Monetary Imperialism
Lenin is dead, and hasn't had a chance to update his work lately. CJ CB: Most of Lenin's concepts from 1916 don't need updating. Monopoly, financial oligarchy cartels. financial sector dominance and parasitism of industrial capital, objective laws or tendencies of capitalism apply better in 2009 than anything you or other analysts are talking about. We can learn more from the dead Lenin about capitalism 2009 than we can from your posts even though you are alive (ha ha !). As to the updating, aren't you up to that ? This message has been scanned for malware by SurfControl plc. www.surfcontrol.com ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Good look at crisis in Gaza
http://pww.org/article/articleview/14219/ Gaza crisis: challenge and opportunity for Obama to turn the page toward peace Archive http://pww.org/article/archive/0/ - Daily Onlinehttp://pww.org/article/archive/266/ Author: Susan Webb http://pww.org/article/author/view/247 People's Weekly World Newspaper, 12/31/08 17:45 The tiny Gaza Strip, with its 1.5 million people crowded into 139 square miles, has been a tinderbox since Israel's unilateral pullout in 2005. Israel has maintained a punitive military and economic grip on Gaza, keeping the population in what is internationally condemned as a deepening humanitarian crisis. Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement) seized power there in 2007, and began its resistance policy of firing rockets into southern Israel. A tenuous six-month ceasefire ended in early December despite reported behind-the-scenes initiatives to extend it, and now we have the horrible spectacle of a massive aerial bombardment of this densely populated strip by Israel, with the civilian toll mounting daily (currently nearly 500 Gazans dead and approaching 2,000 wounded, including children). Hamas has continued rocket attacks on Israel, killing 4 Israelis as of this week, and is threatening suicide bombings and other attacks in Israel. Israel says its assault is a defensive operation, yet also says it intends to physically wipe out the Hamas leadership. Other objectives appear to be to intimidate the Palestinian people, further weaken Palestinian civil society and promote disunity, and reassert Israeli power. There is growing international condemnation of Israel's disproportionate use of force and collective punishment of Gaza's civilian population, both violations of the Geneva Conventions. It's possible a temporary truce may emerge in the next few days, but, more than ever, the underlying issues will at long last have to be resolved. And the incoming Obama administration will have the challenge, and the opportunity, to lead the way to peace. *Who benefits from the crisis that has erupted in **Gaza**?* The election of Barack Obama brought with it the real possibility for a just solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict based on two states, as long ago envisioned by the United Nations. During his campaign Obama told Jewish leaders on a number of occasions that his support for Israel did not mean he would support the policies of Israel's Likud Party. This was a courageous stand by Obama, but it also reflected the growing awareness in influential U.S. circles that a peaceful two-state solution is in U.S. interests, including the long-term global interests of U.S. capitalism, not to mention the interests of the Israeli and Palestinian people. When he announced his naming of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state and other top national security appointments, Obama singled out a lasting solution for Israel and the Palestinians as one of his four top foreign policy priorities. Many believe the current military explosion in Gaza seeks to take advantage of the post-election/pre-inauguration leadership vacuum in Washington and the Bush administration's knee-jerk green-lighting of Israeli military confrontation. Some see it as a challenge to Obama, and an effort to stymie his peace efforts. The Gaza crisis, rather than advancing peace, has the potential to strengthen military extremism in Israel, among the Palestinians, and in the region. *Not everyone wants a political solution* Reactionary forces in Israel, like the fanatical settlers who attacked Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron recently, don't want a political settlement of the conflict. The Israeli far right rejects Palestinian statehood and even the state of Israel within the UN-recognized pre-1967 borders, claiming the entire West Bank as part of the land of Israel. Other right and center forces in Israel, while in some cases giving lip service to a two-state solution, want to hold onto as much of the occupied West Bank as possible. Noted Israeli historian Avi Shlaim wrote last May, Sixty years on, Israel is not fighting for its security or survival but to retain some of the territories it conquered in the course of the war of June 1967. The real purpose of Ariel Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 (snubbing negotiations with the Palestinian leadership), Shlaim wrote, was not peace, but to concentrate on unilaterally redrawing the borders of greater Israel by incorporating Jerusalem and key settlement blocs in the West Bank. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a long-term Likud effort to deny the Palestinian people an independent political existence on their land. Since then, Israel, with the help of provocations by Hamas, has continued to use Gaza as a lever to disrupt the overall peace process. *Regional power struggle/failed Cold War strategy* Reactionary Islamic and Arab elements don't want a political settlement either. For them, and
[Marxism-Thaxis] Why a Philosophy of the Natural Sciences is Needed
Ralph Dumain Here is a quick list of some commonly accepted falsehoods or nonsensical assertions: 1. The logic of the Marxist analysis of social development is based on the philosophical system of dialectical and historical materialism. Dialectical and historical materialism together constitute a unitary philosophical system. 2. By the 1870s, Marx and Engels had essentially established the law-governed revolutionary transformative character of the process leading from capitalism to socialism. 3. The Hegelian Marxists, such as Lukács, Korsch, and Gramsci, argued that dialectics is not applicable to nature and that in fact its application to nature is the source of the mechanistic determinism that led to reformism (Azad 2005, 307, drawing on Callinicos 1976, 70). In making this argument, they also rejected the Leninist reflection theory of knowledge as the basis for the Marxist-Leninist concept of the relationship between the two fundamental philosophical categories, matter and ideas. The understanding of this relationship lies at the heart of the Marxist concept of the scientific method. The idealist character of this view led to giving overriding priority to the development of a socialist consciousness while paying inadequate attention to strengthening the material organizational basis of the class struggle. Actually it was not necessary, of course, for Marx to state explicitly (although clearly he did) that dialectics applies to the sphere of nature. Hegel had already spelled this out in his works, as did Marx himself in Capital and elsewhere. Underlying the attempt to deny the applicability of dialectics to nature is a strong anti-Communism that dissociates itself from any political, organizational forms of class struggle. 4. One of the principal reasons for attention to dialectical materialism by natural scientists is the clarity it brings to understanding processes of change in all the natural sciences. In the dialectical-materialist view, fundamental properties in a given field are akin to philosophical categories, the building blocks of logical thought. The meaning of fundamental properties is determined by the interrelationships among them as expressed through the laws of the particular scientific field invoking them. Another change in the direction of the Marxist dialectical understanding is the change in the textbook statements about the subject matter of physics – from characterizing it as the study of invariances (that is, the unchanging character) of matter to the increasingly current characterization as the study of changes in the physical world. 5. Philosophy of the natural sciences is also needed because of the interconnection between the natural sciences and societal development. The failure to integrate philosophy into each discipline deprives natural scientists of intimate contact with the conceptual foundations of their sciences. They are left ignorant of understanding the broad scope of the interconnections of their fields with other fields unless they happen to self-educated in the philosophical literature concerning their fields as well as in philosophy in general. CONCLUSION: Dialectical and historical materialism came into being as a philosophical system because Marx and Engels needed it to uncover the evolutionary process guiding societal transition from capitalism to communism. These quotes are only symptomatic of a very confused argument. One could go into more detail, but it seems hardly worth the bother. ^^^ CB: Typical of you. A critical and insulting conclusory remark with no supporting argumentation for the conclusion. You like to make emoting comments with no logical discussion. Ridiculous for philosophical analysis. Marx did not create a philosophical system at all, let alone dialectical materialism as a philosophical system. ^ CB: No evidence from Ralph to support this assertion. ^^^ Marx had epistemological principles, which have to be teased out of his episodic methodological statements, and he had what could be called an ontology of labor and social being, especially in his earlier years, but a philosophical system-builder he was not. CB: Oh yeah, he just had casual epistemological principles. And who does this teasing ? Read the chapter in _Ludwig Feuerbach_ and _Anti-Duhring_ for a view of the their system. ^^^ Marquit is correct that it is simplistic to attribute the mechanistic determinism of the 2nd International and its inheritors to dialectical materialism per se, but he misses the logic of Lukacs' turning away from Engels' dialectics of nature, which emerges clearly in Lukacs' recently published manuscript TAILISM AND THE DIALECTIC. CB: Marx didn't turn away from Engels. Engels was right there making Marxism with Marx. To that extent, so much the worse for Luckacs turning away from Engels. ^ Here is another telling passage: But the transition from capitalism to socialism differs from previous societal
[Marxism-Thaxis] More spectre of socialism from the right
Speaking of... http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/30/rnc-pushes-unprecedented-criticism-of-bailouts/ Tuesday, December 30, 2008 EXCLUSIVE: RNC draft rips Bush's bailouts Ralph Z. Hallow http://www.washingtontimes.com/staff/ralph-z-hallow/ ( Contact http://www.washingtontimes.com/staff/ralph-z-hallow/contact) *EXCLUSIVE:* Republican Party officials say they will try next month to pass a resolution accusing President Bush and congressional Republican leaders of embracing socialism, underscoring deep dissension within the party at the end of Mr. Bush's administration. Those pushing the resolution, which will come before the Republican National Committee at its January meeting, say elected leaders need to be reminded of core principles. They said the RNC must take the dramatic step of wading into policy debates, which traditionally have been left to lawmakers. We can't be a party of small government, free markets and low taxes while supporting bailouts and nationalizing industries, which lead to big government, socialism and high taxes at the expense of individual liberty and freedoms, said Solomon Yue, an Oregon member and co-sponsor of a resolution that criticizes the U.S. government bailouts of the financial and auto industries. Republican National Committee Vice Chairman James Bopp Jr. wrote the resolution and asked the rest of the 168 voting members to sign it. The resolution also opposes President-elect Obama's proposed public works program and supports conservative alternatives, while encouraging the RNC to engage in vigorous public policy debates consistent with our party platform, said Mr. Bopp, a leading attorney for pro-life groups who has also challenged the campaign finance legislation that Mr. Bush signed. If enacted, the resolution would put the party on record opposing the $700 billion bailout of the financial sector, which passed Congress with Republican support and was signed by Mr. Bush, and opposing the bailout of the auto industry. The auto bailout bill was blocked by Senate Republicans, but Mr. Bush then reversed course and announced that he would use financial bailout money to aid the auto manufacturers. The RNC usually plays a policy role only every four years when it frames the national party platform, which typically is forgotten quickly. In 2006, some party members presented a resolution challenging Mr. Bush's plan to legalize illegal immigrants and enact a guest-worker program. Mr. Bush's lieutenants fought back, arguing that the party should not tie the president's hands on a policy issue, and the RNC capitulated, passing an alternate White House-backed resolution instead. This time, the backers of the new resolution say they will not be deterred by a fight, and say they have the numbers to pull off this rebellion. We have enough co-sponsors to take this to the RNC floor at the party's Jan. 28-31 annual winter meeting in Washington, Mr. Bopp said. I will take it to the Resolutions Committee, but I intend to press this issue to the floor for decision. North Dakota Republican Party Chairman Gary Emineth said it's time for the RNC to end the disconnect between what the party platform says and what elected Republicans do. It is time the party gets involved in policy issues and forces candidates to respond to the platform, Mr. Emineth said. Frankly the way we view the platform is a joke. We work hard to drive our principles into the platform, then candidates ignore it. If the party doesn't move in this direction, we will continue to be irrelevant. Whoever has the larger star power will continue to win, and what they stand for and believe will become less relevant, Mr. Emineth said. House Minority Leader John A. Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, both of whom voted for the financial bailout but opposed the auto bailout, declined to comment. White House spokesman Tony Fratto defended the Bush administration's actions, saying, We understand the opposition to using tax dollars to support private businesses we also oppose using tax dollars to support private businesses. But this was the necessary and responsible thing to do to prevent a collapse of the American economy. Several RNC members including some of Mr. Bopp's fellow conservatives are not pleased with the idea of having it make policy instead of simply minding the campaign fundraising store. Ron Nehring, chairman of the California Republican Party, said the party also can't be seen endorsing a do-nothing approach. We have to be careful not to confuse passing resolutions for action, or creating a situation where people interpret the lack of some resolution as an excuse for inaction on an important issue, he said. The resolution says: WHEREAS, the Bank Bailout Bill effectively nationalized the Nation's banking system, giving the United States non-voting warrants from participating financial institutions, and
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Crash of 2008 and Historical Materialism (2)
I. Capitalism is not the meaning of industrial process. The industrial system is founded on machinery driven by mechanical motion. Each expansion of the quantitative boundary of the electro-mechanical process further revolutionized the productive forces on the basis of mechanical motion principles. The passing from one boundary to another does not qualitatively change the underlying logic of industrial process (machine mechanical motion and electro-mechanical motion). Rather, each expansion of the productive forces enlarges the principles upon which our existing mode of production was founded. Machine mechanical motion is a system of pulleys, levers, gears and wheels (fly wheels) that sit at the foundation and give meaning to the word industrial.’ The semi-conductor and the modern integrated circuits/boards are not mechanical motion devices, rotates and oscillating on the basis of the fly wheel principle. A summary of the origins of the industrial revolution and its mechanical properties is necessary. When in 1735, John Wyatt brought out his spinning machine, and began the industrial revolution of the 18th century, not a word did he say about an ass driving it instead of a man, and yet this part fell to the ass. He described it as a machine to spin without fingers. (Capital Vol. 1) _http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm_ (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm) The history of the proletariat in England begins with the second half of the last century, with the invention of the steam-engine and of machinery for working cotton. These inventions gave rise, as is well known, to an industrial revolution, a revolution which altered the whole civil society; one, the historical importance of which is only now beginning to be recognized. (Introduction: Conditions of the Working class of England) _http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch02. htm_ (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch02.htm) . This industrial revolution was precipitated by the discovery of the steam engine, various spinning machines, the mechanical loom, and a whole series of other mechanical devices. These machines, which were very expensive and hence could be bought only by big capitalists, altered the whole mode of production and displaced the former workers, because the machines turned out cheaper and better commodities than the workers could produce with their inefficient spinning wheels and handlooms _http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm_ (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm) After the steam-engine, this ( the spinning throstle invented by Richard Arkwright) is the most important mechanical invention of the 18th century. It was calculated from the beginning for mechanical motive power, and was based upon wholly new principles. But as soon as the immeasurable importance of mechanical power was practically demonstrated, every energy was concentrated in the effort to exploit this power in all directions, and to exploit it in the interest of individual inventors and manufacturers; and the demand for machinery, fuel, and materials called a mass of workers and a number of trades into redoubled activity. The steam-engine first gave importance to the broad coal-fields of England; the production of machinery began now for the first time, and with it arose a new interest in the iron mines which supplied raw material for it. _http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch02. htm_ (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch02.htm) In one swoop Marx describes the concrete dialectic in the development of the industrial process, as it emerges from manufacture. Here, then, we see in Manufacture the immediate technical foundation of Modern Industry. Manufacture produced the machinery, by means of which Modern Industry abolished the handicraft and manufacturing systems in those spheres of production that it first seized upon. The factory system was therefore raised, in the natural course of things, on an inadequate foundation. When the system attained to a certain degree of development, it had to root up this ready-made foundation, which in the meantime had been elaborated on the old lines, and to build up for itself a basis that should correspond to its methods of production. Chapter Fifteen: Machinery and Modern Industry _http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm_ (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm) Industrial society as the primary mode of production is the sublating of the manufacturing process and basis of agrarian society. In a few words, the domination of machinery as the primary means by which society reproduces itself. This
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Crash of 2008 and Historical Materialism (3)
II. The semi-conductor is to industrial society, what the spinning machine and steam engine was to manufacture. The semi-conductor and associated technology, expresses a leap is in progress, (understanding leap to mean a transition), from an industrial society founded on mechanical motion machinery, first driven by oxen, then water and finally electricity. Every leap - transition, in the development of a process is not necessarily a qualitative leap or the kind of leap where a new quality comes into existence. There are leaps in development that quantitatively expand the productive capacity of industrial machinery without changes its underlying principles. The leap from water power to electricity as primary energy source, did not change the principles by which machinery is operated, but expanded the boundary of the industrial system by making it more productive. The semi-conductor and computer expresses a new kind of machine. Its injection into the production process produces and begins the qualitative leap. Our society is undergoing a revolution in its mode of production, described by many writers as post-industrial. The introduction of the semi-conductor (integrated circuit) into the productive forces brings to an end further development of the productive forces on the basic of machine mechanical motion principles. This quantitative addition of a new qualitative ingredient - (the semi-conductor), into the electro-mechanical process is altering and must alter - qualitatively, the foundation upon which industrial society was built. Not all at one time, but incrementally and inexorably. Further development of the productive forces takes place on the basis of electrical-computerized processes, advanced robotics, biotech development, etc., rather than electro-mechanical principles. III. Comrade Case begins the new era in 1971 with no closing date. This era should be the period of 1971-1990 or mid 1990‘s. During this period first and second generation new products appeared, like the CD player, cell phones, the early video games, alongside the first and second generation factories producing semi-conductors on a mass scale. First generation advanced robotics appeared in auto in the 1980s and second generation machines in the 1990’s. The computer driven machinery is the beginning of a new mode of production in the exact same manner that the spinning machine and steam engine was the beginning of the industrial revolution. We are at the beginning of a new era. Historical Imperialism and problems of history conception The history of the major surges in technology within the capitalist mode of production expanded the boundary of industrial production and each stage constitutes the technological/scientific meaning of era. The sum total of these era’s becomes the technological and scientific meaning of epoch. There has been a history problem within the Marxist movement concerning our application of historical materialism. Marx method and approach was born of the period of the industrial revolution and the overthrow of monarchy. Subsequent generations of Marxist tended to define a primary mode of production on the basis of the political superstructure. For instance our society is called capitalism because the capital is privately owned. However, what is fundamental to our society that makes it what it is; is an industrial society, not capitalism. The Soviet Union was an industrial society but socialist. This description of society on the basis of political superstructure remained a valid description of mode of production, in as much as industrial society had no visible ending. Thus, the entire epoch of manufacture and its passing over to heavy manufacture (ship building and the founding of steel works) is defined as the epoch of feudalism rather than by the primary principles by which the productive forces operates. And in turn feudalism was implied to mean its productive forces. Feudalism is the political superstructure with sits upon an agrarian society in which products and needs are met by hand labor. The epoch of feudalism embraces the long period from hand labor to the emergence of heavy manufacture; the emergence of commodity production and capital. If . . . The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. And it does. Then it is valid to describe our society and the industrial revolution as: 1). the advent of machine society; 2). the incremental displacement of
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Super Capitalism, Super Imperialism and Monetary Imperialism
9. Super Capitalism, Super Imperialism and Monetary Imperialism (Charles Brown) CB: Most of Lenin's concepts from 1916 don't need updating. Monopoly, financial oligarchy cartels. financial sector dominance and parasitism of industrial capital, objective laws or tendencies of capitalism apply better in 2009 than anything you or other analysts are talking about. We can learn more from the dead Lenin about capitalism 2009 than we can from your posts even though you are alive (ha ha !). As to the updating, aren't you up to that ? Poor CB,he can't even tell when I agree with him. Dude, if you would stop soaking your ass in places like A-hole list, Marxmal and Liberal Bored Observer, maybe we could communicate occasionally. CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Lenin philosophy blog
5. Re: Lenin philosophy blog (farmela...@juno.com) A little later on, Soviet psychologists initiated attempts at developing their own psychological theories which they hoped would be consistent with basic Marxist principles such as the materialist conception of history and Lenin's analysis of reflection. Thus, American behaviorism was ultimately rejected as being mechanistic and positivistic while Gestalt psychology was rejected as idealist. Nevertheless, they were recognized as having made important contributions which had to be absorbed into a psychology that was firmly grounded in dialectical materialism. It could also be noted that the 'crisis' was hardly limited to Soviet thinkers--see the works of Brentano and Husserl, for example. And later Wittgenstein as well. It's interesting that the Soviet Union gives modern and post-modern thinking such influential psychologists as Vygotsky, who probably gets more cited in educational research as a 'founder' now than Dewey. And then there is the research of Elkonin, from which emerges the attempt to treat 'reading development' within a psychological scientific framework. http://www.marxist.com/science/vygotsky_501.html CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] The Crash of 2008 and Historical Materialism (5)
V. Speculation But the middle ages had handed down two distinct forms of capital, which mature in the most different economic social formations, and which before the era of the capitalist mode of production, are considered as capital quand même — [all the same] usurer’s capital and merchant’s capital. (emphasis added) Chapter Thirty-One: Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist _http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm_ (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm) Speculation has ancient roots as old as money and like capital predates the capitalist mode of production. Even the Biblical Jesus is said to have entered the temple and turned over the tables of the money lenders in contempt. Speculation as risk taking during the epoch of feudalism is part of the early user’s and merchant capital. Speculation was also involved in financing the slave trade or later, the huge latifundia plantations. Speculative and financing played a role in ship building and opening the so-called New World to European exploration and exploitation. There also existed scattered private speculators that passed from usury to loaning money to the government. At their birth the great banks, decorated with national titles, were only associations of private speculators, who placed themselves by the side of governments, and, thanks to the privileges they received, were in a position to advance money to the State. (Idid) The problem for historical materialism is that the first round of recorded financial speculation is tulip speculation. Tulip mania or tulipomania (Dutch names include tulpenmanie, tulpomanie, tulpenwoede, tulpengekte, and bollengekte) was a period in the Dutch Golden Age during which contract prices for bulbs of the newly-introduced tulip reached extraordinarily high levels and then suddenly collapsed[1]. At the peak of tulip mania in February 1637 tulip contracts sold for more than 20 times the annual income of a skilled craftsman. It is generally considered the first recorded speculative bubble.[2] The term tulip mania is often used metaphorically to refer to any large economic bubble.[3] Further, There is no dispute that prices for tulip bulb contracts rose and then fell in 1636–37, but even a dramatic rise and fall in prices does not necessarily mean that an economic or speculative bubble developed and then burst. For tulip mania to have qualified as an economic bubble, the price of tulip bulbs would need to have become unhinged from the intrinsic value of the bulbs. Modern economists have advanced several possible reasons for why the rise and fall in prices may not have constituted a bubble.[37] _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania) Speculation needs to be looked at in its relatedness in each of the distinct boundaries in the industrial system. During The Age of Steel, Electricity, Heavy Engineering, 1875-1918, speculation as an aspect (part of the world) of finance capital is more often than not, productive capital, even when the speculative bubble emerges. After all tulip speculation involved a real thing recognized as matter - tulip bulbs, while the modern speculative regime deal in intangible and abstractions of an abstraction. The Age of Steel, Electricity, Heavy Engineering, 1875-1918, is the era of emergence of financial imperialism. This period proper is also the era of the rise of monopoly industrial concerns and their corresponding financial institutions. Finance capital, indissolubly fused with industrial capital becomes dominant over industrial capital and speculation operates as another part of finance capital. With the emergence of modern imperialism, finance capital is/means financial-industrial capital and not what is implied in the word financing or an abstract finance. No matter how one approach speculation today, it was not the dominating form of financial-industrial capital writing the economic and political agenda for capital during this period. Speculation as an aspect of finance capital, even as fiction capital - (certificates, commercial paper and debt instruments), remains connected to production of commodities, even when the connection is distant or remote. Interestingly, Case does not mention that a speculative form of capital, dominating and writing the agenda for capital as a whole, exists. Speculation on the part of a sector of capitalists, whose sum total is a form of capital dubbed speculative capital, is not reducible to risk taking, because all capital investment, production and sale of commodities involves risk of some sort, due to capitalist competition. Any economic bubble can be called a speculative bubble but this does not described the inner essence of modern speculation and its connection or non-connection with production.
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Lenin philosophy blog
And see: http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/crisis/index.htm CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Super Capitalism, Super Imperialism and Monetary Imper...
In a message dated 1/6/2009 12:00:59 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, jann...@gmail.com writes: 9. Super Capitalism, Super Imperialism and Monetary Imperialism (Charles Brown) CB: Most of Lenin's concepts from 1916 don't need updating. Monopoly, financial oligarchy cartels. financial sector dominance and parasitism of industrial capital, objective laws or tendencies of capitalism apply better in 2009 than anything you or other analysts are talking about. We can learn more from the dead Lenin about capitalism 2009 than we can from your posts even though you are alive (ha ha !). As to the updating, aren't you up to that ? Poor CB,he can't even tell when I agree with him. Dude, if you would stop soaking your ass in places like A-hole list, Marxmal and Liberal Bored Observer, maybe we could communicate occasionally. CJ Comment An industrial capital formation as a historically distinct sector of capital no longer exist. I am not aware of one single economist of note that speaks of an industrial sector of capital. Not one. The existence of Chrysler, Ford or GM does not mean a sector of capital called industrial capital exists. Industrial capital without industrial capitalists cannot exists. Where is the industrial capitalist as a sector of capital? Why not simple produce the evidence of the existence of a sector of capital that is industrial capital? Waistline **New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom0026) ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Lenin philosophy blog
And see: http://www.marxists.org/archive/elkonin/works/1971/stages.htm Also important to note that Piaget, in attempting to work out a description of the 'sciences of man', integrates Marxism into his system. CJ -- Japan Higher Education Outlook http://japanheo.blogspot.com/ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Super Capitalism, Super Imperialism and Monetary Imperialism
An industrial capital formation as a historically distinct sector of capital no longer exist. I am not aware of one single economist of note that speaks of an industrial sector of capital. Not one. The existence of Chrysler, Ford or GM does not mean a sector of capital called industrial capital exists. Industrial capital without industrial capitalists cannot exists. Whoah, wait a minute. Are you trying to argue against Lenin or Marx here? I think Lenin does contribute to Marxism in many ways (pay me and I'll write a book about it), and I think much of what Lenin wrote about has relevance to understanding the historic formations that reach into this post-modern episteme. I'm not sure what a serious economist is nowadays and think for the most part I couldn't give a shit. CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Super Capitalism, Super Imperialism and Monetary Imperialism
This paper from 1997 does look prescient though--but then again I was thinking the same sort of things in 1997 having seen Japan's crash and then the run up to the Asian crisis (which was precipitated by currency bets by the big players like Soros). http://www.cbpa.drake.edu/hossein-zadeh/papers/HowFinanceCapital.htm CJ ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
