Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate
It's not a Nobel Prize. It's Nobel MEMORIAL Prize. Not sure the point of the question about the creation of the Prize (?) in a context of the fear of the success of socialism, idea is that the Prize was meant to shore up capitalism by honoring its apologists? Actually the prize in economics is not even that. It has been referred to as many different things in several European languages, but the last time I looked, the one English term they have settled on is: The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel I guess that is synonomous with calling it a memorial prize (=in memory of), but could we just call it Nobel Economics for short? I doubt that Nobel would have minded or that he is rolling over in his grave. In 1971 it was officially referred to in English as simply Prize in Economic Science, which is how it is listed at the nobel .org website at the top as well. Some winners have referred to it as the Nobel Prize in Economics in their economics speech (the wonders of the web! never have I known so little about so many topics!). (Not all NMP have been capitalist apologists btw, Wassily Leontiff and Joseph Stiglitz for example). Even some of the early winners weren't APOLOGISTS. Leontief was identified with 'anti-communism' but I don't know if that makes him much of a friend of most capitalists--they tend to favor their accountants anyway. Perhaps. 1969 seemed at the time a revolutionary year, capitalism threatened at the time a legitimation crisis. Objectively state socialism didn't look as good by the numbers as it had a decade before. It wasn't one of the better questions I have asked over the years, but reading your answer now, it comes to mind that the US was facing crises. First, all that debt accumulated over the Vietnam War, plus the loss of face over being seen as having suffered a defeat at the hands of 'communism' and Viet nationalism. By the time Nixon is in office, we have a 'decided response'. The US will cheapen the dollar and make surplus/creditor countries pay for the war. Japan will pay an even higher penalty--tariffs (f- free trade) while undergoing major currency appreciation. Moreover, US foreign policy will shift to affirming Japan will always remain a US satellite while the US should focus on China (as a simple way to offset Soviet power). I guess some who kept track of finance were fretting that the 'big one' would soon happen and capitalism would collapse. The 70s wasn't a very good time for bond holders. Looks like the Obama years won't be either. ___ 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] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate
CeJ jannuzi at gmail.com CB: What's logistics ? Basically, the science of how an economy supplies and distributes goods. ^^^ CB: Not to be cute, but isn't economics the science of supply and distribution of goods ? ___ 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] Paul Cockshott on Leonid Kantorovich and the socialist calculation debate
CeJ jannuzi at gmail.com CB: Think about it. To admit that macroeconomics can be understood scientifically is to admit that there can be macroeconomic planning, ie. centralized planning, that Hayek is wrong. So, the bourgeoisie are always going to be leery of a prize for the science of economics. This contradiction also must doom the project of every school of bourgeois, i.e. free market, economics to fail or else it undermines free market ideology. Perhaps, but not necessarily. This is why the Vienna line of economists emphasize 'logic'. They think they are tapping into some sort of subsistent realm and providing a picture that captures the reality. ^ CB: What means tapping in ? smile. Somehow they tap into it, and provide a picture, but that tap in and picture don't allow using it to guide practice and plan. Sounds like some kind of Kantian unknowable thing-in-itself , what Engels calls shamefaced materialism. If the Viennans can't do anything with their logic , I don't think they should get credit for knowing anything. So according to a lot of thinkers following on Hayek, markets are rational because they encompass the totality of economic activity and express a 'collective will'. What the market does is rational, even if it doesn't make sense to an individual businessman, ponzi schemer, duped investor or academic economist. CB: The only ones it makes sense to are the anti-Communist ideologues trying to claim centralized planning is impossible. What a mytifying crock of shit. ^ I don't buy recent arguments that the advent of supercomputers will result in our ability to model sufficiently in order to 'see all'. I'm still waiting for a three day extended weather forecast that is actually correct. CB: What, with such a supercomputer, hurricanes will suddenly make sense or be logical ? They make sense now. When one is coming , move out of town until it blows over. That's centralized weather planning. ^^^ I think the debate of public vs. private is largely irrelevant here. The question is more along the lines of on what scale can you undertake economic planning and business. The calamities of the US's occupation of Iraq shows both the calamities of central planning and the 'magic of the markets'. ^ CB: The calamaties of the US's occupation of Iraq show that centralized planning of war causes mass death and destruction. Centralized planning of production and distribution of goods and services averts and remedies death and destruction. Of course Hayek would look at recent financial events and see them as a rational change, a rational collective action of the market, I guess. ^^^ CB: What an idiot and prostitute for capitalism Hayek was As for being anti-science, as the paper that started this thread states, anti-science has often been associated with post-mo Marxists--literary Marxists and social theorists (although I disagree and don't seem them following mainly from Althusser). That potential was always there in the thought of Marx himself. ^ CB: Wheres the potential for anti-science in the thought of Marx ? Which brings us back to a recurring but much larger debate: is there such thing as a social science? Will there be a body of thought that unifies the various 'soft sciences' (social, psycho-, logico-formal--such as formal linguistics-- etc.)? Will there be a body of thought that ultimately unifies the social sciences with the natural sciences, etc? ^ CB: Historical materialism is the social science from Marxism. See my posts from a few months back on materialism. ^ I tend to take an anti-scientific stance in the fields that affect me the most--applied linguistics, second language acquisition, language education, education, etc. This often gets me backed into a corner with the children of the romantics, but for me it is more a stance of rationalism--destroy all pseudo-sciences and their various forms of oppression. ^^^ CB: Well, you are the linguist, but I'm not convinced there aren't laws and regular patterns in languages, grammars. Clearly we follow rules in speaking. There are definite grammatically correct and incorrect statements. There's lots of science in law, jurisprudence. It's very materialist. Must base legal claims on material evidence, etc. ___ 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] Cynthia McKinney Announces Formation of DIGNITY
Cynthia McKinney Announces Formation of DIGNITY By The Editors Created 06/03/2009 - 10:11 Which way forward for the Black Left? The path leads in the same direction it always has: agitation, organization, and confrontation with Power. Cynthia McKinney chose a Harlem church to announce formation of DIGNITY, to bring the Black body politic back from its current comatose state. Dignity is attempting to show real change is possible - if people fight for it. We want to organize networks so that we can relay information quickly to a large number of people. Cynthia McKinney Announces Formation of DIGNITY the editors Former congresswoman (D-GA) and Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney addressed a packed house at St. Mary’s Church, in Harlem, on Sunday, May 31. Also sharing the podium were Glen Ford and Margaret Kimberley, of Black Agenda Report, Nellie Bailey, Harlem Tenants Council, Prof. Anthony Monteiro, of the African American Studies Department, Temple University, and writer/activist Mae Jackson. The event was titled, “Which Way Forward for the Black Left?” ”We agreed to found an action organization and to call it Dignity.” Thank you all for being here. On Thursday, General Taguba spoke to journalists and said that the photos currently being withheld by President Obama show rape. On Friday, he went even further and said that he saw video of U.S. soldiers raping and sodomizing detainees. From the first batch of photos that were released, we know that detainees were also murdered. In your name and mine. But some of us here in the U.S. are not shocked or surprised that this kind of behavior could occur. For those of us who have our eyes open, the gritty streets of America are filled with the experience of unarmed black and brown men being beaten, raped, sodomized, and even murdered by terroristic agents of the state. We remember the Black Panther Party, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Kwame Touré. We remember George Jackson, Soledad and Attica. We remember the American Indian Movement, the Puerto Rican Independistas, the Chicano Movement, and we remember the FBI. We know about Area A in Chicago and we’ve heard the San Francisco 8 recount for us their experiences of torture at the hands of law enforcement. We’ve heard them tell how 30 years later, the very same people who tortured them showed up on their doorsteps to re-arrest them for crimes they did not commit. So when General Taguba verifies that torture, rape, and murder were used by U.S. service men and women, we cannot be surprised. When we see Dick Cheney say that torture worked, we in this audience, are not surprised. The gritty streets of America are filled with the experience of unarmed black and brown men being beaten, raped, sodomized, and even murdered by terroristic agents of the state.” When we hear that Democratic Attorney General Jerry Brown who allowed the San Francisco 8 prosecution to move forward is rumored to want to be the Governor of California, and expects our votes to win, we are not surprised. Or that Gavin Newsome, current mayor of San Francisco who is abetting the ethnic cleansing of the last remaining black neighborhood in that city wants to be Governor and expects black, brown, and progressive white votes, we are not surprised. So, when yet another young man is gunned down by the police, be it Oscar Grant in Oakland or Omar Edwards in New York City, and the policy doesn’t change to stop it. We shouldn’t be surprised. The authorities have proven that they will do everything and more if the people let them get away with it. Our President has breathed new life into the Democratic Party. But the fact is, our precious breath, that gives that Party life, is killing us. Glen Ford, Roy Singham, Dedon Kamathi of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party, and I all came together earlier this year, to not only lament the present, but to change the future. We decided that while our movement was nascent, coming out of my Power to the People campaign, that there was power in organization. That there was hope in mobilization. And that victory was possible in implementation. We agreed to found an action organization and to call it Dignity. There will be some who will maintain that this country, founded as a settler state, never had any dignity since it rested on taking and not sharing land that belonged to someone else. ”We decided that while our movement was nascent, coming out of my Power to the People campaign.” After deep engagement in slavery, the take-over of whole countries, denial of self-determination, and endless war and occupation, still others would say that our country has certainly lost whatever dignity it might have been able at one time to earn. And after Abu Ghraib, dignity is no longer possible. For about ten
