[PEN-L:9765] Re: Rethinking Marxism conference
I just heard a description of the "Rethinking Marxism" conference that occurred in Amherst late last year. The reporter (Olga Celle de Bowman, a sociologist from Peru) said that there was a tremendous amount of (verbal) conflict between the audience and the speakers at the plenaries, something I hadn't heard about before. She said that the activists in the audience were objecting to the lack of answers to the key "what is to be done?" question and the lack of any kind of orientation toward people outside of academe. Was anyone on pen-l at the conference and has a different perspective on the conflict? in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ. 7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA 310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950 "It takes a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed. Several people on PEN-L were at the conference and will undoubtedly offer different perspectives, but the bottom line is that a bunch of orthodox marxists were upset that suggestions from speakers were not the same as the answers offered by orthodox marxists. Because we know that orthodox marxism has all the answers. oh well. Blair Sandler [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:9767] Re: Globaloney
D Shniad wrote: The growth in the speculative power of finance capital, the magnitude of which dwarfs that of productive capital, has increased enormously over the past 20+ years and undermined the mechanisms that were put in place over the postwar period to prevent a recurrence of the disaster of the speculative '20s followed by the deflationary '30s. People say these things all the time without detailing the relations between "speculative" and real activity - I think they assume that Keynes was right about those links in chapter 12 of the GT, which he wasn't really. Are you talking about pure financial speculation, the undermining of the social safety net, the undermining of the financial safety net (which happened in the 1980s, but I have my doubts about how weak it is in the 1990s), the leveraging up of balance sheets (true of U.S. households in the 1990s, but not of U.S. corporations, which have reduced debt since the 1980s), capital flight punishing any left-of-center government, or what? Doug -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 250 W 85 St New York NY 10024-3217 USA +1-212-874-4020 voice +1-212-874-3137 fax email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html
[PEN-L:9768] Essentialist humor
A panda walks into a restaurant, sits down, and orders a sandwich. After finishing the sandwich, the panda pulls out a gun and shoots the waiter dead. As the panda stands up to leave, the mangers shouts, "Hey! Where are you going? You just shot my waiter and you did not pay your bill!" The panda yells back to the restaurant manager, "Hey buddy, I'm a panda! Look it up!" And walks out. Nonplussed, the manager opens his dictionary and finds the following definition: Panda: A tree dwelling mammal of Asian origin, characterised by distinct black and white coloring. Eats shoots and leaves. wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233 ** REDUCE MENTAL POLLUTION - LOBOTOMIZE PUNDITS! ** +--+ |There is no such thing as society, only the individuals | |who constitute it. -Margaret Thatcher | | | | | |There is no such thing as government or corporations,| |only the individuals who lust for power and money.| | -no apologies to Margaret Thatcher | +--+ *DROGI KURWA BUDUJA, A NIE MA DOKAD ISC
[PEN-L:9770] Re: Rethinking Marxism conference
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Several people on PEN-L were at the conference and will undoubtedly offer different perspectives, but the bottom line is that a bunch of orthodox marxists were upset that suggestions from speakers were not the same as the answers offered by orthodox marxists. Because we know that orthodox marxism has all the answers. oh well. Now Blair, I knew you were a partisan, but I thought you were a fair guy. First of all, the most prominent "orthodox Marxist" dissenters were not quite the dinosaurs your use of that epithet implies - the most prominent was a young Indian woman who's a grad student in English at Cornell, who, among other things, argues that the picutre painted of "orthodox Marxists" by pomos is highly inaccurate. She cites, for example, vigorous debates within Indian Marxism about issues like nationality and gender of just the sort that pomos flatter themselves into thinking they originated. And second, there was a great deal of discontent about the makeup of the plenary panels, which were *all* - to replicate this binary that we're all playing with even though we're all too sophisticated to fall prey to such devious dyads - partisan pomos. A panel inspired by Alan Sokal consisting of Vandana Shiva and Sandra Harding isn't likely to offer any real exchange of views, is it? Especially when you have Harding, who seems from what I've read and heard of her to be a bit of a fool, flickering her fingers ceilingward to evoke the "hole in the atmosphere, up there, you know." Or Judith Butler, who is certainly no fool, denouncing "neoconservative Marxists" in a mode of pure caricature. Or Roger Burbach slamming me, without offering any evidence or argument in his support. There was also a lot of discontent that Etienne Balibar, who was supposed to be having an exchange on race with Cornel West, gassed on for about 90 minutes with no exchange in sight. The one-sided makeup of the plenaries was proof, I think, that postmodernism has hardened into the kind of, dare I say it, hegemonic orthodoxy that it fancies itself a critique of. Fortunately, there were enough dissenters in the audience and on the smaller panels to make the conference an interesting one. Too bad the plenary organizers took any criticism of their work as personal insults. Doug -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 250 W 85 St New York NY 10024-3217 USA +1-212-874-4020 voice +1-212-874-3137 fax email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html
[PEN-L:9774] Re: Barbara Ehrenreich on War
While I generally agree with Louis' argument, I also believe that his argument would have gained from making a distinction between spontaneous and institutionalised behaviour. In essence, the bourgeois pundits argue that bourgeois social institutions originate in the law of human nature. Ehrenreich follows the suit, but adds: "let's change human nature (as if it were a yuppie life style) to get rid of the institution. Of course, similar arguments are raised re. any other institution. Property relations, we are told, originate in the "natural" desire to acquire useful materila goods. Racism originates in our "natural" propensity to stereotype or fear people who are different than ourselves. And so on, and so forth. The appeal of this mythology is that the antecedent asserting that "people tend to engage in conflicting, hoarding, or stereotypong behaviour" is essentially true. But despite that, the argument is a nonsequitur, because it was constructed in a flawed manner. In essence, it is a logical fallacy known as confirming the antecedent; e.g. "if people are bellicose by nature, then wars are frequent; "wars are freguent; ergo: people are bellicose in nature." According to the same logic "if Richard M. Nixon was assassinated, then Richard M. Nixon is dead; Richard M. Nixon is dead, ergo: Richard M. Nixon was assassinated." Distinguishing between spontaneous and institutionalised behaviour, the former falls on a continuum ranging between "good" and "bad", "selfish" and "selfless" "rational" and irrational" and so forth. In short, we are capable of any sort of behaviour. The role of social instituions is to encourage some of those behaviours while discouraging others. It is like a bullhorn -- it amplifies only certain sounds (namely the speech of the person who holds it), but it does not pick up (or even drowns) other sounds. With that in mind, it is easy to see that social institutions, like war, private property, division of labour, or racism, are maintained by those in a position to do so, namely -- the ruling classes who also control the means of mental production. There is another question, however, how these institutions are being established and maintained. Louis suggests that they are being simply imposed by the ruling class -- but such a view simply does not hold water. A more useful view is that while social institutions do serve the interests of the elite, they also serve, in various ways (that may or may not correspond with the interests of the elites), various interests and needs of the ruled. In other words, the ruled collaborate, willingly and unadvertently, with the elites in the creation and maintenance of social institutions. Examples are abundant. Michael Burawoy (_Manufacturing Consent_) shows how workers in Chicago manufacturing plants use capitalist institutions (competition) for their own purposes that have little to do with the preservation of capitalism. In the same vein, part of the Blach population in South Africa (the Bantu-stan elites) were staunch supporters of the appertheid, because it gave them a relatively privileged position over other Blacks (something that they would not be able to maintain under a democratic rule). In the same vein, the nazis coopeted the women liberation movement in Germany (see Klaudia Koontz, _Mothers in the Fatherland_). I think a common mistake of the old day socialists is a belief that the masses would revolt againts their rulers as soon as an opportunity arises and, even more importantly, the revolutionary vanguard will give a signal. I am afraid it ain't so. One of the most frightening powers of the state and social institutions (modern and ancient alike) is its capacity tor organize people against their own interests, and even for their own destruction. Diatribes denouncing these institutions as a ploy serving the elite interests do little to help us understand how they extert their influence on common people. In the same vein, the modern military and its weaponry is obviously a tool of the ruling class to maintain their hegemony and keep the lower classes in line. But that fact does not yet explain why and how the lower classes are fascinated with the military and weapons (cf. the militias) despite the fact that these are the proverbial Damocles' sword hanging over their heads. In that respect, Echrenreich's bourgeois morality play can offer more insights into the process, than a conventional class analysis. wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233 ** REDUCE MENTAL POLLUTION - LOBOTOMIZE PUNDITS! ** +--+ |There is no such thing as society, only the individuals | |who constitute it. -Margaret Thatcher | | | |
[PEN-L:9776] henwood
Hi, hope no one minds, but I forwarded Doug's critique of Ed Herman's Z article to Ed, and here's his reply. Elaine Original message Dear Elaine: I've put up a few notes on Henwood's defense of his citation of Larry Summers. Can you put it into circulation on Pen-L (if that's the right web site)? Best, Ed Herman PS: I did write to Robert and Ethel after last talking with you. -- Reply to Doug Henwood's defense of his reliance on Larry Summers: 1. Henwood says that Summers is not always wrong and has "done a lot of very useful academic work..." But Henwood fails to note that that academic work was many years ago--Henwood cites Summers as of 1991, in his World Bank employment role that preceded his phase as a Clinton administration official. So his academic work would seem pretty much irrelevant; his commitment to the principles--and principals--of the New World Order in 1991 and after would seem obvious. A "political agenda" supportive of FDI and globalization as beneficial would also seem a requirement for the kind of work Summers has been doing. Would Henwood suggest that Summers could take a position questioning free trade and FDI? If not, is Henwood not neglecting "context" in citing Summers as a presumably objective scholar? 2. Henwood says I rely on "assertion" and don't bother with the substance of his argument or "evidence." But my article has more "evidence" in it than Henwood's, and much of his evidence is a quoting of qualitative opinions, notably by Summers. I give evidence on financial flows that Henwood largely ignores, but which are vastly more important than 30 years ago, and far more important than in 1913 in effects on policy. Henwood's evidence is also dated and backward, not forward looking. For example, his quote from the 1991 Summers statement asks whether the telecommunications revolution has really had a major impact? But we are in the midst of a telecom revolution that is advancing rapidly (and has gained further strength from the recent WTO deal getting scores of countries to agree to privatize). Furthermore, even if manufacturing hasn't been "fundamentally altered" (whatever that means), cross-border integration of production keeps growing in importance. And while sellers have always tried to "locate production at the lowest cost location," you would think a leftist would recognize that the increased mobility of capital, greater power of IMF and World Bank, and new agreements protecting investment rights, are widening options for sellers and that a "reserve army" that runs from China to Russia to Indonesia to Mexico (etc.) represents something a bit different and worth noting. The economist Richard DuBoff, who also wasn't too keen on Henwood's analysis of globaloney, sent Henwood a detailed statement with a lot of "evidence," to which Henwood hasn't yet replied. 3. Henwood says that globalization "is often held up as the reason things can't get any better." But if it is an important fact, we can't deny its reality because it is used is some particular way. Furthermore, why do a Larry Summers and the conservative Martin Wolf go along with Henwood in denying a powerful negative effect of globalization? It is because if it were admitted to be having damaging effects on the incomes of the majority and killing social democratic policy there would be a political demand for bringing it under control. I made this point in my Z article, but I haven't yet heard Henwood come to grips with it. 4. He repeats his statement that the focus on globalization "deflects attention away from the causes of globalization," etc. This is not true--as I point out in my article, it focuses attention on the particular forms of capitalism that are important in the age of globalization, like the rise in power and spread of TNCs, financial flows and speculation, the role of the IMF and World Bank in serving the TNCs and the like. On the other hand, the Henwood position, which denies the importance of globalization, deflects attention away from globalization and its damaging capitalist--institutional causes to vague generalities like "the quest for higher profits and stock prices." Beyond that, if as Summers and Henwood agree, "the revolution is merely incremental, and not something all so fundamentally new," why worry about transnationalization, global mergers, IMF rules, and the like? "Natura non facit saltum" was the rule for neoclassical economist Alfred Marshall and his successors as well, including Summers, and apparently Henwood. ---Edward S. Herman
[PEN-L:9777] Re: tenure
For the sake of clarity, although there is no formal 'tenure'in the UK, there are permanent positions. If you are hired for a permanent track position, you are permanent usually after 6 months. The only way that you can be fired is if the department is dissolved and/or there is no work for you to do in the University. The UK has mandatory retirement. The situation here is the opposite of the manner in which the situation is going in the states: there is job security, but room for new people. Susan Pashkoff Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 15:14:08 -0700 (PDT) Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: James Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:9761] tenure susan, any comments? Original message what experience do people in places like the UK have with the absense of tenure for professors? is it as bad as some people in the US fear? is there a lot of violation of academic freedom? in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ. 7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA 310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950 "It takes a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed.
[PEN-L:9766] Re: Walras vs. Sraffa
My response to Gil continues... Gil continues: Ajit continues: So what does this mean? It means that the two theoretical worlds are wide appart. The GE framework does not get away from what Sraffa called a "one way avenue", ie. a linear theoretical structure which goes from 'factors of production' to consumer goods production. For reasons given above, this distinction is necessarily specious. ___ Ajit: Where is the reason given above? As I have explained above, this is a fundamental methodological difference between the two theories. _ Gil: Consumption is the final *goal* of the theory. So the theory is ahistorical through and through. It is a solution to a problem generated by axiomatic *nature* of man. The Sraffian theoretical framework is circular. It is interested in the question of *reproduction*-- consumption is simply a moment in the reproduction of the system. Ajit's anthropomorphic wording, which suggests the bizarre notion that theories, i.e. formal analytical structures, can somehow *themselves* have "goals" and "interests" (as if my copy of _Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities_ could express an "interest" in going out to lunch), effectively illustrates my point that the differences he cites between the two systems have mostly to do with the "goals" and "interests" of their respective adherents, not with the systems themselves. It is nonsense to suggest that consumption is the "goal" of the Walrasian framework, since this suggests that "theories" can have thoughts and feelings. But even if they could, consumption is no more or less the "goal" of the Walrasian framework itself than it is for the Sraffian. It is true in both cases that production takes place, and that production is necessary for consumption. It is true in both cases that if people did not consume, production would be unnecessary. ___- Ajit: That's very smart of you Gil, and my hat's off to you for that! Any reader with minimum sympathey would understand what I'm saying there; which is that the GE theoretical paradigm is rooted in human subjectivity. The purpose of production is considered to be consumption, and not accumulation. This is a theoretical, and not just an ideological, difference between the two theories. People produce in order to consume and people consume in order to produce are not the same thing. As Marx said, accumulation for accumulation sake; production for production sake is the reason behind capitalist production. M-C-M' is necessarily a circular circuit. And this is what is reflected in the title of Sraffa's book, 'Production of Commodities by means of Commodities'. _ Gil: Thus it is historical through and through, since it does not allow the framework to be draged into a mythical origin or the begining. Again, there is nothing about the formal Sraffian framework *itself* which is any more or less "historical" than the Walrasian system, with the important difference that since the Sraffian framework ignores the operation of time in market exchange (by Ajit's own advertisement), it ignores this particular slice of "history." And again, in no relevant sense does the Walrasian system deal in "mythic origins". ___ Ajit: What is this "formal Sraffian framework *itself*", which no Sraffian has ever heard off? There is no such thing. In the very Preface of PCMC Sraffa says: "The investigation is concerned exclusively with such properties of an economic system as do not depend on changes in the scale of production or in the proportions of 'factors'. This standpoint, which is that of the old classical economists from Adam Smith to Ricardo, has been submerged and forgotten since the advent of the 'marginal' method." Sraffa's reading of classical theory suggested to him that classical theory divided itself into three parts: a theory of distribution, a theory of value or prices, and a theory of accumulation. He believed in Ricardo's dictum that the subject matter of economics is so complex that it does not lend itself to a long chain of deductive reasoning. Only short chains of deductive reasoning could be applied. Thus the connections between the three departments of the theory cannot be established by some functional relations of quantitative nature. Their relationships are qualitative and overdetermined in nature, to use an Althusserian term. Sraffa's price system was designed to establish the classical theory of prices, which was independent of human subjectivity, and dependent on distribution determined in a socio-historical context. This price theory also proved that the neoclassical theory based on long chain of deductive reasoning was flawed. So your talk of a "formal Sraffian model" is simple nonsense. __ Gil: Now, my question is this: Gil, do you think that a skilled man can always turn a straight line into a circle? Ah, a riddle. I can do no better than respond with riddles of equal meaning and relevance
[PEN-L:9782] The election in Britain
This says it all: The Globe and Mail Thursday, May 1, 1997 Lead editorial: WHY BRITAIN IS VOTING LABOUR On the face of it, John Major and the Conservatives should win today's election in Great Britain. If the economy were the measure of performance, his government would do well. If personality were the measure of performance, Mr. Major would do well. The trouble is that neither the economy nor personality seems decisive in how Britons are judging this government, which is why it is likely to lose. From this perspective, Mr. Major has reason to think his compatriots ungrateful. It recalls the fate of Winston Churchill in 1945. Mr. Churchill had led Briton for five tumultuous years. He had rallied the nation, retooled the economy, won the war. For his Herculean labours he was summarily returned to opposition. It isn't that Britons disliked Sir Winston; they simply decided that he wasn't up to the socio-economic challenges of the new era. As they saw it then, he was more suited for war than for peace (even though they brought him back the next time). Mr. Major is no Mr. Churchill, but there is some of that logic in his diminishing prospects. After all, it is largely because of the Conservatives that Britain is prosperous. With unemployment around 6 per cent, Britain's level is half that of France and Germany, both of which are now contemplating some of the measures -- budget-cutting, privatization and deregulation -- that Britain adopted under Margaret Thatcher and Mr. Major. Britain now draws about 40 per cent of the new investment in the European Union. It has fuelled the revival of London, which has again become a centre of design, fashion, pop music, even cuisine, recalling the spirit of a generation ago. Then there is Mr. Major himself. While his party trails badly in the polls, his personal popularity remains high. It is hard to dislike the man, however one might disagree with him. He has humility and modesty. He has pluck and determination, so much so that had he refused to step aside when challenged for the leadership two years ago, he would have spared himself all this anguish. So what is it, then, which is propelling the Labour Party to victory? If it isn't a stagnant economy or an unpopular prime minister, is it the appeal of the opposition and its leader? Here, too, the answer is probably no. Labour is not demonstrably different on the main issues, and Tony Blair, the prime minister-in-waiting, offers competence more than charisma. Our guess is that this election is more about ennui than anger. Britons have had 18 years of the Conservatives, and now they have had enough. They are simply bored with the Tories, tired of their divisions and scandals. They want something new, even if it is less a matter of substance than style. Labour, or "New Labour" as it shrewdly calls itself, understands that. By adopting the government's economic policies, and raising sufficient skepticism about embracing Europe, it offers wary Britons a way to vote Labour and elect the Conservatives. With a no-risk solution that will change the players but keep the policies, they are free to vote Labour without fear. Yes, there are differences between the parties, but they are limited. On the constitutional questions -- home rule for Scotland and Wales, a freedom of information act, the abolition of hereditary peers -- Labour is more daring. But this is fussing on the fringes. At root, what makes the Labourites attractive is that they are conservatives without being Conservatives. This kind of imitation is supremely flattering to Mr. Major, but it is unlikely to be enough to save his weary government.
[PEN-L:9769] Re: IB Systems (was Globaloney)
On Wed, 30 Apr 1997, Tavis Barr wrote: What amazes me is this: The system that I put together probably cut the non-production workforce (people with the fairly mundane jobs of keeping track of inventory and filling out and keeping track of purchase orders and payments on bills) by a factor of three or four (no layoffs necessary since it was a growing company though I'm sure I would have been a hatchet boy in another situation). This seems the natural effect of any IB system. And yet it's the non-production workforce in manufacturing that's been growing and the production workforce that's been shrinking. Any thoughts? Is it that most businesses simply haven't implemented IB systems (I have this impression, or at least the impression that they're not as fully implemented as they could be)? Or is there a really exploding ratio of non-production work that's simply been tamed by the computer revolution? Isn't it possible that the growth of a "non-production workforce" in manufacturing simply reflects the transition from some of these companies out of manufacturing into finance? Isn't the purpose of US Steel to enhance the share value of its equity rather than make steel? Louis Proyect
[PEN-L:9783] game theory torture
(apologies ahead of time for this: I also walked out of the Mel Gibson flick "Ransom" thinking about game theory.) The L.A. TIMES today (May 1, 1997) published exerpts from the CIA manual on how to torture prisoners (used at the notorious US Army School of the Americas). This book should not be rejected out of hand, and instead should be treated as serious social science, despite its moral depravity (and its violation of current rules about experiments with human subjects): it represents the thinking of bright people dealing with serious questions, based on empirical evidence; it was a secret document and thus shows little need to cover up what's being recommended with euphemisms.[*] It seems a compendium of age-old wisdom about torture, used by the "torture professionals" (the CIA, etc.) to enlighten the "torture amateurs" (a large number of Latin American military officers) on how to torture efficiently (e.g., holding actual physical torture in reserve rather than revealing one's cards right away). In addition to being disgusting, it sheds a lot of light on the standard textbook presentation of the "prisoners' dilemma" in economics, or rather on the key assumption usually made in PD discussions, i.e., that people are atomistic individuals with absolutely no psychological depth. The CIA's prescriptions, in sum, are to mess with the prisoners' minds (and, if need be, their bodies) in order to _create_ the textbook prisoners' dilemma, to encourage each prisoner to "defect," to turn in his or her comrades. The textbook treatment _assumes_ that the prisoners are already atomistic individuals and there is _no need_ to plumb the depths of their psyches in order to make them that way. In fact, the vast majority of economists reject the need to study the depths of psychology at all; instead, they simply assume that people "maximize utility," having no sense of honor or morality, solidarity or self-esteem. It treats the fact that many if not most prisoners do not defect as a "paradox" rather than as showing up the severe limitations of the theory. The CIA manual suggests that we reject the standard economics attitude toward people. Further, if the prisoners' dilemma is something that has to be _actively created_ by the captors (doing more than simply separating the prisoners, preventing them from communcating) that the a priori presumption in PD games should be that people do not "defect." Of course, just as with the experiments done at death camps by the Nazi doctors, the validity of the CIA wisdom should not be tested via replication. But I bet that experimental economics has already been done for more moderate cases, showing the limits of the textbook presentation. Of course, the power of ideology is such that such research does not show up in the textbooks, where it would have the most influence. Happy May Day, International Workers' Day! [*] Because of the way e-mail strips nuance from our prose, I must stress that I do not admire the "bright" CIA social scientists. Rather, this shows one of the big problems with social science. But maybe some of them will turn out to be Daniel Ellsbergs. in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ. 7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA 310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950 "It takes a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed.
[PEN-L:9779] Re: henwood
Ed Herman wrote: 1. Henwood says that Summers is not always wrong and has "done a lot of very useful academic work..." But Henwood fails to note that that academic work was many years ago--Henwood cites Summers as of 1991, in his World Bank employment role that preceded his phase as a Clinton administration official. So his academic work would seem pretty much irrelevant; his commitment to the principles--and principals--of the New World Order in 1991 and after would seem obvious. A "political agenda" supportive of FDI and globalization as beneficial would also seem a requirement for the kind of work Summers has been doing. Would Henwood suggest that Summers could take a position questioning free trade and FDI? If not, is Henwood not neglecting "context" in citing Summers as a presumably objective scholar? I brought up Summers' academic work because his positions, first with the World Bank and then with the U.S. Treasury, were in themselves being used to discredit his argument. Yeah, so Larry Summers is a bourgeois pig. But that doesn't mean he's always wrong, does it? Especially when he's writing a memo for intra-pen consumption by his comradely herd of piglets. 2. Henwood says I rely on "assertion" and don't bother with the substance of his argument or "evidence." But my article has more "evidence" in it than Henwood's, and much of his evidence is a quoting of qualitative opinions, notably by Summers. I give evidence on financial flows that Henwood largely ignores, but which are vastly more important than 30 years ago, and far more important than in 1913 in effects on policy. I really don't want to get into a "my evidence is longer than your evidence" debate, but this is a really preposterous claim. I've spent years writing more articles with more numbers in them than just about anyone in the field of left-wing economic journalism. On PEN-L the other day I quoted from a longer piece, which was itself a sequel to an even longer one. I've continued to analyze the figures behind the globalization mania, and the issue of LBO that's going to press in a couple of days will have more. Henwood's evidence is also dated and backward, not forward looking. Kind of hard to make a historical argument without looking backwards, isn't it? For example, his quote from the 1991 Summers statement asks whether the telecommunications revolution has really had a major impact? But we are in the midst of a telecom revolution that is advancing rapidly (and has gained further strength from the recent WTO deal getting scores of countries to agree to privatize). Oh, you mean the revolution in production has happened since 1991? Gosh, time moves so fast these days! Furthermore, even if manufacturing hasn't been "fundamentally altered" (whatever that means), cross-border integration of production keeps growing in importance. And while sellers have always tried to "locate production at the lowest cost location," you would think a leftist would recognize that the increased mobility of capital, greater power of IMF and World Bank, and new agreements protecting investment rights, are widening options for sellers and that a "reserve army" that runs from China to Russia to Indonesia to Mexico (etc.) represents something a bit different and worth noting. Ed Herman subscribes to LBO, and I think he even reads it. So if he's been reading my articles on this issue, he must know that I've been using BEA figures on multinationals to show that the "cross-border integration of production" hasn't progressed anywhere near as far as he claims. As I've said almost every time I've made this point, you can challenge the figures as inaccurate, but you'll have to do better than just make an Aronowitz-style argument by assertion. 3. Henwood says that globalization "is often held up as the reason things can't get any better." But if it is an important fact, we can't deny its reality because it is used is some particular way. Furthermore, why do a Larry Summers and the conservative Martin Wolf go along with Henwood in denying a powerful negative effect of globalization? Here we go again, discrediting arguments by political association. If I wanted to I could say, well here we have a Wharton professor who wrote a book commissioned by the Twentieth Century Fund. Ooh can't trust him, must be bourgeois! Speaking of associations, I wonder if Herman has talked over globalization with his sometime collaborator, Noam Chomsky. Chomsky holds a position rather similar to mine, I think. In fact, here's what he wrote to me after reading my ITT piece: "I quite agree that the tales about "globalization" are mostly devised to make people feel powerless, and have been trying to make that point for a while. And by now there is plenty in print in highly respectable technical literature (e.g., Ruigrok and von Tulder) to make it pretty clear that the story is mostly a crock, and that by gross measures, at least, it's pretty much a return to early in the
[PEN-L:9781] Cyber Picket Line (fwd)
From: STEPHEN DAVIES [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Unions1 [EMAIL PROTECTED], Unions1 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 15:44:50 GMT Subject: Cyber Picket Line NET NEWS RELEASE International Workers Day, 1 May 1997 UNION FLYING PICKETS HEAD INTO CYBERSPACE 1997's May Day is not only marked by the British General Election but also by the launch of the Cyber Picket Line - the world's biggest internet directory of trade union websites. Its address is: http://www.cf.ac.uk/ccin/union/ With links to over 1000 trade union and trade union-related sites, the Cyber Picket Line shows the massive strides that the labour movement has taken in high tech communications over the last few years. The small group of pioneers who began it all a decade or more ago - primarily in Europe and North America - have now been joined by union internationals, national union centres, individual unions and hundreds of local union branches all over the world. The Cyber Picket Line features union sites from every continent in the world ranging from South African miners to Brazilian dockers; from council shop stewards in Sheffield to journalists in Hong Kong; from Croatian railworkers to Canadian loggers. The effects are already being felt as workers build new links across continents and oceans. The Liverpool Dockers campaign, the Korean trade unionists battle against repressive laws and the US Firestone workers have all used the internet and the world wide web to organise solidarity action and to build support. Steve Davies, the co-ordinator of the new web site said: "For too long unions all over the world have been on the ropes. Now we're on the Net and its already beginning to pay off. It's now possible for workers to communicate effectively with each other as never before. "It is also possible for rank and file stewards and branch activists to have access to the sort of information resource and research capacity that was previously only available to senior full time officers. It is potentially one of the most powerful and democratic weapons at the disposal of the labour movement. "I hope that this site helps local branches all over the world take advantage of the resources that exist, make the contacts that count, and use 21st century techniques to rebuild international solidarity." ENDS NOTES FOR EDITORS The site co-ordinator is Steve Davies. He lives in Cardiff, and works at the University of Wales Cardiff in adult education where he's been since the beginning of 1996. Before that he spent 11 years working at the London headquarters of a British Civil Service union (now called PTC). He started as a research officer, later specialising in privatisation and contracting out, before becoming national press officer and Assistant to the General Secretary. A Spanish version of the site is under construction (translation being done by Companero David Jones of Pontypridd and Zaragoza). Eventually the site may appear in several other languages. All the tricky techie work for this site was done by Sioned Rogers of CapitalNet, the server for Cardiff, who have also provided the webspace.
[PEN-L:9771] Re: Rethinking Marxism conference
I was at the conference (in fact, I was one of the organizers). There were some conflicts. Most of the conflicts were around the question of postmodernism. I don't want to enter again into the merits and demerits of postmodernism. The positions are somewhat known about that. I would like to say, however, that the impression that the conference did not address the question of "what is to be done" that is of interest to activists is, in my view, wrong. One of the plenaries was on the experiences of Latin American socialism. Again, one might quarrel with whether postmodernist forms of activism are valid, (and the discussion about a sociaslist strategy in Latin America, including a glorifying and moving representation of the Zapatista movement, did have a postmodernist tone), but that is quite different from saying that activism was not part of the conference. I think the gist of Blair Sandler's message was correct: that traditional, orthodox, views of activism were not the dominant ones in the plenaries, and in fact were not very welkl represented in the plenaries, and that those who held those views mistook the non-dominance/presence of these views as an absence of activism itself: which is simply incorrect. One other point to be made is that, perhaps, the distinction between academics and activists is sometimes overdrawn. The proper distinction should be between activist academics and non-activist academics. Most of the people who talk a lot about activism are themselves either academics (either students or professors) or enmeshed in a network of academic discourses and processes; just as people who are academics are often enmeshed in activist discourses and practices, even if they do not advertise it=themselves, or glamorize it=themselves, or romanticize it=themselves. Antonio Callari I just heard a description of the "Rethinking Marxism" conference that occurred in Amherst late last year. The reporter (Olga Celle de Bowman, a sociologist from Peru) said that there was a tremendous amount of (verbal) conflict between the audience and the speakers at the plenaries, something I hadn't heard about before. She said that the activists in the audience were objecting to the lack of answers to the key "what is to be done?" question and the lack of any kind of orientation toward people outside of academe. Was anyone on pen-l at the conference and has a different perspective on the conflict? in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ. 7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA 310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950 "It takes a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed. Antonio Callari E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] POST MAIL: Department of Economics Franklin and Marshall College Lancaster PA 17604-3003 PHONE: 717/291-3947 FAX:717/291-4369
[PEN-L:9784] Re: Globaloney
D Shniad wrote: What follows is a response to Doug's call to specify a bit more what we're talking about when we compare the relative magnitude of financial speculation to that of trade and other economic activity. (Caveat: I don't work with or have access to trade stats; what follows is the seat-of-the- pants calculation that I've done based on readings about speculation, etc. I invite those with access to the stats to respond.) The IMF estimates that foreign exchange transactions are more than $1 trillion daily, while trade volumes are in the $3.5 trillion ballpark annually. If trade volumes are 5% of the total of the world's domestic output (a *very* conservative estimate), then the aggregate of the world's real output would be in the neighbourhood of $70 trillion per year. Actually, gross global product was around $25 trillion in 1994, according to the World Bank, making trade around 14% of output. Let's look at some export/GDP ratios for 1980 and 1994 for evidence of some globalizing "revolution." Of course it's always possible the revolution started after 1994; someone check with Ed Herman on this. EXPORTS AS PERCENT OF GDP 1980 1994 "developing" countries23% 22% Latin Amer/Caribb 16 15 Brazil 98 Mexico11 13 S Africa36 24 S Korea 34 36 Canada28 30 Japan 149 Norway47 33 Sweden29 33 UK27 25 U.S. 10 10 source: World Development Report 1996, table 13 (If trade volumes are a somewhat larger portion of domestic production in the aggregate, then the world's aggregate production is somewhat smaller.) By comparison, aggregate international financial transactions come in at more than $300 trillion per year. By these calculations, the aggregate of international *financial* transactions are more than four times the dollar magnitude of *real* production. It was on the basis of this observation that I made the statement that speculative activity had dwarfed the activity of productive capital. No one disputes that there's lots of furious, pointless, even destructive speculative activity going on. How, precisely, is it malignant, though? Merely describing its magnitude is not to make the case. Doug -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 250 W 85 St New York NY 10024-3217 USA +1-212-874-4020 voice +1-212-874-3137 fax email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html
[PEN-L:9785] re: Environmental Economics
I second Jim Devine's message about neoclassicals and the environment in its entirety. The astounding misinterpretation of what the Coase theorem actually tells any reasonable analyst about the likelihood of environmental efficiency being achieved through voluntary and private negotiations of polluters and pollution victims is an excellent case in point. A reasonable reading of the theorem AND ITS INCREDIBLE LIST OF NECESSARY ASSUMPTIONS gives more than enough theoretical reasons for anyone who cares about the environ- ment to immediately embrace a government role!
[PEN-L:9786] Re: Rethinking Marxism conference
Just a brief response to Jim's initial question on the Rethinking Marxism conference. I was one of the co-organizers of the conference, and the one mainly responsible for the conference program, of some 190 panels. There is no question in my mind that the conference attracts mainly academics doing all types of critical analysis, from radical political economy to semiotic cultural studies, and often combining them both. There are very few "activists" who come. Whether that is good or bad is not obvious to me. It seems to me that there is no one best way to organize on the Left these days and we all need to do what we can, in whatever ways we can. (BTW, I know that academics are also activists and activists are also academics - I not concerned with this finer point). In a similar way, the conference was both open and ecumenical, while also rather partisan (which I suppose you can pejoratively call exclusionary, as some have). We found space for any and everyone who wanted to present a paper, panel, performance, art, etc., to do so. But, yes, the plenaries were decided on by the organizers, and really why shouldn't it be this way? Afterall, the conference was organized and sponsored by Rethinking Marxism and therefore might well reflect the ideas, positions, and biases of its editors. RM is a journal open to a wide array of ideas concerned with Marxism and related fields, and we have published with a wide diversity. Yet, we are not, and never have pretended to be, as ecumenical as say URPE and the RRPE. We have been a journal with a partisan, yet always shifting set of postionings, as new ideas push and pull Marxism in various directions. But one thing has remained a priority, and that is the RM's interest in developing and fostering non-essentialist forms of discourse as related to Marxism (whether you want to call that postmodernism or not). So, as I have heard some criticize the conference for being exclusionary (I prefer partisan), I remain a little puzzled. The conference was extrememly open with regard to conference program, but what exactly did people expect coming to a conference sponsored by Rethinking Marxism??? Afterall, that is what we are about, and we don't disguise our intentions as others on the Left have recently felt the need to do. Instead, I would like to hear discussion or criticism about the quality of the papers (and of course many have already commented on this), or was there a poor turnout (which of course was the opposite case), what was the sense of interest and excitement (extremely vigorous), did people make new connections across disciplines and internationally (many), or even did Balibar have anything to say, even though he (unfortunately) spoke too long, and so on. I am sorry the conference was not exactly what some people had hoped for, or wanted, or even at times seem to demand. We all do what we can and make the types of intereventions we are able to and that we feel will have some impact, however limited that might be. I wish that we on the Left would demand less of each other about how things should be, or feel the need to entrap each other in faux pas's, and show a little more graciousness and understanding, because we are all working very hard in these inauspicious times and no one I know has yet found the unique way to change this world for the better. Steve C. p.s. For a full description of our conference program, post-conference reactions from the international press, and a lot about RM, check out our new web site: http://www.nd.edu/~remarx/ *** Stephen Cullenberg office: (909) 787-5037, ext. 1573 Department of Economics fax: (909) 787-5685 University of California[EMAIL PROTECTED] Riverside, CA 92521 http://www.ucr.edu/CHSS/depts/econ/sc.htm
[PEN-L:9791] Re: Barbara Ehrenreich on War
No, tell me Paul, what does it "say about the state of DSA's understanding of class, etc. etc.!"? In the best leninist tradition and always eager to receive knowledge from on high, I remain, Robert Saute On Wed, 30 Apr 1997, Louis Proyect wrote: is this true! what does it say about the state of DSA's understanding of class, etc. etc.! -paul Original message I guess I have gotten used to how bad the Nation magazine has become, but every once in a while I run into something so rancid that I have to pause and catch my breath. This was the case with a review by DSA leader Barbara Ehrenreich of 3 books on war. This review was accompanied by a review by Susan Faludi of Ehrenreichs new book on war titled "Blood Rites". All this prose is dedicated to the proposition that large-scale killing has been around as long as homo sapiens has been around and that it has nothing much to do with economic motives. Looking for an explanation why George Bush made war on Iraq? It wasnt over oil, "democratic socialist" Ehrenreich would argue. It was instead related to the fact that we were once "preyed upon by animals that were initially far more skillful hunters than ourselves. In particular, the sacralization of war is not the project of a self-confident predator...but that of a creature which has learned only recently, in the last thousand or so generations, not to cower at every sound in the night." In a rather silly exercise in cultural criticism, Ehrenreich speculates that the popularity of those nature shows depicting one animal attacking and eating another are proof of the predatory disposition we brutish human beings share. I myself have a different interpretation for what its worth. I believe that PBS sponsors all this stuff because of the rampant oil company sponsorship that transmits coded Social Darwinist ideology. Just as the Leopard is meant to eat the antelope, so is Shell Oil meant to kill Nigerians who stand in the way of progress. One of the books that Ehrenreich reviews is "War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage" by Lawrence Keeley. Keeley argues that material scarcity does not explain warfare among Stone Age people. It is instead something in our "shared psychology" that attracts us to war. Keeley finds brutish behavior everywhere and at all times, including among the American Indian. If the number of casualties produced by wars among the Plains Indians was proportional to the population of European nations during the World Wars, then the casualty rates would have been more like 2 billion rather than the tens of millions that obtained. Ehrenreich swoons over Keeleys book that was published in 1996 to what seems like "insufficient acclaim". I suspect that Keeleys book functions ideologically like some of the recent scholarship that attempts to show that Incas, Aztecs and Spaniards were all equally bad. They all had kingdoms. They all had slaves. They all despoiled the environment. Ad nauseum. It is always a specious practice to project into precapitalist societies the sort of dynamic that occurs under capitalism. For one thing, it is almost impossible to understand these societies without violating some sort of Heisenberg law of anthropology. The historiography of the North American and Latin American Indian societies is mediated by the interaction of the invading society with the invaded. The "view" is rarely impartial. Capitalism began to influence and overturn precapitalist class relations hundreds of years ago, so a laboratory presentation of what Aztec society looked like prior to the Conquistadores is impossible. Furthermore, it is regrettable that Ehrenreich herself is seduced by this methodology since she doesnt even question Keeleys claims about the Plains Indian wars. When did these wars occur? Obviously long after the railroads and buffalo hunters had become a fact of North American life. The reason all this stuff seems so poisonous is that it makes a political statement that war can not be eliminated through the introduction of socialism or political action. For Ehrenreich, opposing war is a psychological project rather than a political project: "Any anti-war movement that targets only the human agents of war -- a warrior elite or, on our own time, the chieftains of the military-industrial complex risks mimicking those it seeks to overcome .. So it is a giant step from hating the warriors to hating the war, and an even greater step to deciding that the enemy is the abstract institution of war, which maintains its grip on us even in the interludes we know as peace." Really? The abstract institution of war maintains its grip on "us"? Who exactly is this "us"? Is it the average working person who struggles to make ends meet? Do they sit at home at night like great cats fantasizing about biting the throats out of Rwandans or
[PEN-L:9792] Re: Rethinking Marxism conference
By the way, isn't it important for Blair to identify himself as a member of the collective that sponsored the Conference? This is highly scandalous when people hide such information. Where's Jerry Levy when you need him? Jerry, it's time for a crusade against Blair Sandler's dissembling before the august body of PEN-L. The nerve of Blair to hide his connections. Oh, perfidy. Thank you for asking and bringing up that subject again, Louis. I know of no scandal that Blair Sandler is involved with. Certainly, nothing he has done is so scandalous as when a Marxist journal in Germany published a review of the RM conference by a person who months beforehand -- before he had even seen a full copy of the schedule! -- trashed that conference in public and in writing. Jerry
[PEN-L:9793] Re: IB Systems (was Globaloney)
On Thu, 1 May 1997, Louis N Proyect wrote: Isn't it possible that the growth of a "non-production workforce" in manufacturing simply reflects the transition from some of these companies out of manufacturing into finance? Isn't the purpose of US Steel to enhance the share value of its equity rather than make steel? That's one I hadn't thought of. I don't know enough details to judge it, but on the face of it it seems unlikely. Transferring into finance doesn't so much mean that firms transfer out of manufacturing. After all, the best way to maximize share values is to produce good steel cheap. What's really happened is that these firms place their new investments in diverse portfolios, which can be taken care of by a handful of portfolio managers, instead of, say, steel. The rising ratio of production workers comes from technological change, which produces more and more output with fewer and fewer production workers, but there hasn't been a similar trend in non-production work. It was Braverman's theory that as production becomes more coordinated and deskilled, fewer workers are required on the shop floor and more workers are required to manage control processes. But it's exactly these types of control processes (inventory, quality, orders, auditing) that the computer is supposed to be automating. It seems like there's a missing piece of the puzzle somewhere. Befuddled, Tavis
[PEN-L:9794] Re: Cyber Picket Line (fwd)
On May Day no less, we are advised that it is no longer "Workers of the World Unite!..." but rather "Workers of the World---log on!" If that isn't postmodernism, what is? Let's all reach out and digitize someone. (:-) Can this Cyber Picket Line intercept cyber capital flows? Are we ready for the virtual general strike? At 10:56 AM 5/1/97 -0700, D Shniad wrote: From: STEPHEN DAVIES [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Unions1 [EMAIL PROTECTED], Unions1 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 15:44:50 GMT Subject: Cyber Picket Line NET NEWS RELEASE International Workers Day, 1 May 1997 UNION FLYING PICKETS HEAD INTO CYBERSPACE 1997's May Day is not only marked by the British General Election but also by the launch of the Cyber Picket Line - the world's biggest internet directory of trade union websites. Its address is: http://www.cf.ac.uk/ccin/union/ With links to over 1000 trade union and trade union-related sites, the Cyber Picket Line shows the massive strides that the labour movement has taken in high tech communications over the last few years. The small group of pioneers who began it all a decade or more ago - primarily in Europe and North America - have now been joined by union internationals, national union centres, individual unions and hundreds of local union branches all over the world. The Cyber Picket Line features union sites from every continent in the world ranging from South African miners to Brazilian dockers; from council shop stewards in Sheffield to journalists in Hong Kong; from Croatian railworkers to Canadian loggers. The effects are already being felt as workers build new links across continents and oceans. The Liverpool Dockers campaign, the Korean trade unionists battle against repressive laws and the US Firestone workers have all used the internet and the world wide web to organise solidarity action and to build support. Steve Davies, the co-ordinator of the new web site said: "For too long unions all over the world have been on the ropes. Now we're on the Net and its already beginning to pay off. It's now possible for workers to communicate effectively with each other as never before. "It is also possible for rank and file stewards and branch activists to have access to the sort of information resource and research capacity that was previously only available to senior full time officers. It is potentially one of the most powerful and democratic weapons at the disposal of the labour movement. "I hope that this site helps local branches all over the world take advantage of the resources that exist, make the contacts that count, and use 21st century techniques to rebuild international solidarity." ENDS NOTES FOR EDITORS The site co-ordinator is Steve Davies. He lives in Cardiff, and works at the University of Wales Cardiff in adult education where he's been since the beginning of 1996. Before that he spent 11 years working at the London headquarters of a British Civil Service union (now called PTC). He started as a research officer, later specialising in privatisation and contracting out, before becoming national press officer and Assistant to the General Secretary. A Spanish version of the site is under construction (translation being done by Companero David Jones of Pontypridd and Zaragoza). Eventually the site may appear in several other languages. All the tricky techie work for this site was done by Sioned Rogers of CapitalNet, the server for Cardiff, who have also provided the webspace.
[PEN-L:9796] US Steel and Finance Capital
Tavis and others brought up the case of U.S. Steel. Many of the great industrial organizations were built by industrialists, whose main interest was industry. Carnegie was a sharper, but he was still very interested in making steel at the lowest possible cost. Over time, many of these became more financially oriented, erasing the distinction between finance and industrial capital. Today U.S. Steel is USX, you can guess what the x stands for. Here is a short section from my End of Economics book dealing with the transformation of U.S. Steel. In the midst of the Great Depression, the editors of "Fortune magazine reported: ##Now there are two possible ways to look at a steel plant or an ore mine. One is as an investment that must be protected. The other is as an instrument of production, to be cherished only so long as it cannot be replaced by a more efficient instrument. The first may be called the banker's point of view; the second, the industrialist's. [Anon. 1936, p. 170] According to the investigators at Fortune, United States Steel "has always been a management with a financial rather than an industrial turn of mind" (Anon., p. 63). This perspective reflected the origins of the corporation. "The Steel Corporation was founded by financiers, has been dominated ever since by financially-minded men" (ibid., p. 170). While many industries used the expansive conditions of the 1920s to develop improved technologies, the management of United States Steel chose a different track. As a result: ##the chief energies of the men who guided the Corporation were directed to preventing deterioration in the investment value of the enormous properties confided to their care. To achieve this, they consistently tried to freeze the steel at present, or better yet, past levels Any radical change in steel technology would render worthless millions of dollars of the Corporation's plant investment. [ibid., pp. 170 and 173] While firms in less concentrated industries attempted to rationalize their operations and prune costs, the financially-oriented management of United States Steel was intent on maintaining the status quo. Perhaps Hoover, the engineer, realized that protecting the corporate sector from competitive forces would allow more firms to emulate United States Steel, making an economic disaster inevitable. Even the Great Depression was insufficient to make this firm change its ways. Over time, the firm's stodgy, hidebound management found itself humbled both by foreign competition and aggressive mini-mills. Management changed the corporate name to USX and considered retreating from the steel altogether. Perhaps, United States Steel represented the ultimate verdict on Morgan and the corporatists. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:9798] Re: MAI and Foreign Control in Canada
Shawgi Tell noted a couple of days ago that foreign control of corporate revenues in Canada rose by 1.3 points to 29.8% of the total in 1995, and that this was the second largest yearly rise ever recorded. I don't know Shawgi's point of view on this question, but the implication of his observation is consistant with the usual conception of Canada as a semi-colony which is slipping further under US domination as a result of 'free' trade agreements. The **nationalist** opposition to MAI that I questioned last week is also (partially) rooted in such approaches. What does the data on foreign control really say about this issue? I prefer to argue this using data on *assets* (a stock variable) rather than *revenues* (a flow variable), since the latter is heavily influenced by the business cycle and foreign controlled firms are concentrated in sectors with higher revenue-to-asset ratios. Statistics Canada's figure for foreign control of all corporate assets in Canada rose to 21% in 1995. This increase restored foreign control to the 21% rate previously reached in 1990, and is only up 0.5 percentage points since 1988 (the first year for which this data for *all* industries is available). In other words there has not been much of a change. While foreign control rose in *non-financial* sectors to 24.3%, this was partially offset by a slight drop to 17.6% in *finance and insurance* sectors. Nor does the data on *US* control of *all* corporate assets indicate any great increase attributable to the FTA or NAFTA, at least so far. While the 11.4% US control of all corporate assets in Canada in 1995 is a notable increase over 1994 (when it was 10.8%), it is only 0.4 points higher than in 1988, the year before the FTA took effect. For most of this period it has been lower than before 'free' trade. Perhaps most important, and contrary to the usual assumptions, the level of foreign control in Canada has **declined substantially** over the last few decades. The data series on foreign control of *all* industries only goes back to 1988, but if we assume the trend here has been similar to that for the *non-financial* half of the corporate economy (for which the earlier data is available), then the current range of foreign (and US) control in Canada is lower than it has been for about half a century! Foreign control of *non-financial* industries peaked in the early 1970s, but Canadian capitalists have regained about one-third of all non-financial assets in Canada since then, and they have retained the decisive control they have always had over the *financial* half of the economy. One measure that highlights the strength of Canadian capital is that Statistics Canada reports that in 1992 they controlled 96.5% of the assets of the *25 largest enterprises* (corporations grouped under common control) in Canada. The rate of foreign control for *all* industries in Canada cited above (and that for the largest 25 enterprises) is considerably lower than the *non-financial* rates Canadian nationalists have traditionally cited for their purposes. However, it is true foreign control is higher in Canada than in most - but not all - major OECD countries. Other countries do not collect data on foreign control comparable to that cited above, but if we use OECD data on the ratio of the stock of (inward) FDI to GDP as a basis, foreign control in the UK (!!) and the Netherlands is **higher** than in Canada. Further, the level of inward FDI should be considered in tandem with that of outward FDI. *Canadian* capitalists hold more FDI *abroad* per Canadian than do their competitors in the US, Japan, Germany and France relative to the latters' populations. In recent years, the flow of Canadian FDI to the US has *exceeded* US FDI coming into Canada. I think this is a pretty impressive record, and to bring it back to the MAI issue, one that makes we wonder why we would want to offer Canadian capitalists national protection from their foreign competitors. I live in Canada so I've concentrated on the usual suggestion that protectionism is more appropriate here than in other imperialist countries. Since I'm working on a paper on this point I would appreciate any comments and criticism on at least ***this aspect*** of the debate. Bill Burgess University of B.C. [EMAIL PROTECTED] home (604) 255-5957 fax c/o (604) 822-6150
[PEN-L:9797] Re: Rethinking Marxism conference
What a romantic account! I don't think anybody in their right mind came to the Amherst conference looking for an activist focus. The conferences have been around long enough for people to know what's up. Back in the late 1980s a friend of mine who was active in Sister Cities Projects and who worked as a nurse went up to the conference (it might have been the first) and returned with the observation that she did not understand a single word that anybody was saying. Pretty soon the word got out. Activists stayed home. So as this filtering process started to take place, the people who did make the trek *understood* what the conference was about. It was an academic conference not that much different from MLA conferences, etc. This conference was a gathering of the post-Marxist tribe. Every graduate student in America who was into Althusser, Zizek, Bourdieu, etc. would have to consider putting money aside for hotel and transportation costs. Later in hotel rooms people would drink Jack Daniels from the bottle and gossip about goings-on in the groves of academe. What happened in December 1996 was unexpected. A whole number of people, possibly a majority of the conference attendees, came with a theoretical approach to Marxism that was much more in line with what I call classical Marxism. People like Ellen Meiksins Wood, John Bellamy Foster, Doug Henwood and Meera Nanda have been carving out a space for this current for a few years now. When graduate students and louts like me came up to the conference with an identification with this current, we clashed with the post-Marxists. The clash could have been avoided if the organizers had the good sense to not have such lopsided plenaries. That they lacked such good sense reminds me of the public relations failure of Social Text after the Sokal Affair. It became tempting for Andrew Ross et al to label Sokal as an enemy of multiculturalism rather than to engage with his ideas. Likewise, it became easier for the Amherst conference organizers to view the disruptions from the floor as evidence of intolerant behavior on the part of others rather than their own exclusionary practices. Louis Proyect Blair Sandler [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:9790] Re: Rethinking Marxism conference
Stephen Cullenberg wrote: Yet, we are not, and never have pretended to be, as ecumenical as say URPE and the RRPE. This then is Rethinking? My first reaction to the conference was too much Re, not enough thinking, but now I'm even questioning the Re. A nonecumenical group of people who agree on fundamental things and view plenaries as a form of preaching to a mixed crowd of converted and unconverted? Did the presence of a large critical minority seem something worthy of ackknowledging as something other than a personal attack? This is exactly what I meant by the plenaries having shown signs of hardening into orthodoxy, which as the postmodernists have taught us well, is defined through exclusion. Is the devotion to polyvocality just another empty signifier? Doug -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 250 W 85 St New York NY 10024-3217 USA +1-212-874-4020 voice +1-212-874-3137 fax email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html
[PEN-L:9795] Re: game theory torture
Recently Devine writes as follows: The CIA's prescriptions, in sum, are to mess with the prisoners' minds (and, if need be, their bodies) in order to _create_ the textbook prisoners' dilemma, to encourage each prisoner to "defect," to turn in his or her comrades. The textbook treatment _assumes_ that the prisoners are already atomistic individuals and there is _no need_ to plumb the depths of their psyches in order to make them that way. In fact, the vast majority of economists reject the need to study the depths of psychology at all; instead, they simply assume that people "maximize utility," having no sense of honor or morality, solidarity or self-esteem. It treats the fact that many if not most prisoners do not defect as a "paradox" rather than as showing up the severe limitations of the theory. COMMENT: There are two competing views of the non-repeating PD. While there is a standard argument that concludes that the dominant and rational strategy is to defect,(the Dominance argument) there is a so-called symmetry argument that can be traced back at least to Anatol Rapoport in FIGHTS GAMES AND DEBATES (1960). This argument has been elaborated by L Davis in Prisoners, Paradox, and Rationality. AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 14: 319-27.) A somewhat different argument but equally critical of the standard argument is McClennen E. Prisoners Dilemma and Resolute Choice. In Campbell R. and Sowden L.(eds) PARADOXES OF RATIONALITY AND CO-operation UBC Press 1985. The basic idea behind the symmetry argument is that each prisoner being rational and in the same situation will see that the dominance argument leads to a sub-optimal result FOR BOTH as contrasted with their both remaining silent. THerefore as rational agents they will resolutely choose, to use McLennen's term, not to defect in order to improve the result for them both. This avoids the paradoxical result of the traditional argument in which allegedly rational choice leads to sub-optimal outcomes for both participants. I agree with Davis and McLennen but not with Rapoport because Rapoport thinks that somehow altruism is involved. ALtruism is not involved at all. The argument works even for rational egoists who have no interest per se in the welfare of others. However, when it is necessary to co-operate to maximize the welfare of each it is rational to do so. I have an unpublished (but presented) paper that argues against the dominance argument, and also Parfit's(REASONS AND PERSONS 1984) critique of ethical egoism as self-defeating as shown by the PD. I think the PD shows no such thing. I also think that Gauthier(MORALS BY AGREEMENT 1986) is incorrect in thinking that unconstrained maximisers would choose defection as the rational strategy in PD contexts. Of course many of the things discussed in the literature as PD's have nothing to do with PD's. For example the position of polluters who have no motive to install pollution devices in a competitive market even though this might advance the public welfare. In these cases all polluters defecting from the welfare producing policy does not on the whole hurt them, so there is nothing at all paradoxical involved. One case that is like that of the PD is that involving manufacture of aerosols without fluorocarbon propellants. If everyone did it, it would cheaper for all manufacturers, and in that sense in all their interests, but no one manufacturer will do it because they do not want to give up the market that still exists for the earlier propellant. Manufacturers did not oppose a ban on fluorocarbon propellants since it would provide assurance that no firm could defect and capture a market niche. CHeers, Ken Hanly Cheers, Ken Hanly
[PEN-L:9799] Re: US Steel and Finance Capital
I have some queries since I am wriing a book on technology and the steel industry (1950-1996). See below. Anthony P. D'Costa Associate Professor Senior Fellow Comparative International Development Department of Economics University of WashingtonNational University of Singapore 1103 A Street 10 Kent Ridge Crescent Tacoma, WA 98402 USASingapore 119260 On Thu, 1 May 1997, Michael Perelman wrote: Tavis and others brought up the case of U.S. Steel. Many of the great industrial organizations were built by industrialists, whose main interest was industry. Carnegie was a sharper, but he was still very interested in making steel at the lowest possible cost. Over time, many of these became more financially oriented, erasing the distinction between finance and industrial capital. Today U.S. Steel is USX, you can guess what the x stands for. Here is a short section from my End of Economics book dealing with the transformation of U.S. Steel. In the midst of the Great Depression, the editors of "Fortune magazine reported: ##Now there are two possible ways to look at a steel plant or an ore mine. One is as an investment that must be protected. The other is as an instrument of production, to be cherished only so long as it cannot be replaced by a more efficient instrument. The first may be called the banker's point of view; the second, the industrialist's. [Anon. 1936, p. 170] According to the investigators at Fortune, United States Steel "has always been a management with a financial rather than an industrial turn of mind" (Anon., p. 63). This perspective reflected the origins of the corporation. "The Steel Corporation was founded by financiers, has been dominated ever since by financially-minded men" (ibid., p. 170). While many industries used the expansive conditions of the 1920s to develop improved technologies, the management of United States Steel chose a different track. Can you give me some specific examples of what technologies we are talking about? The basic argument is correct i.e. the attitude toward technological change (something that happened in the 1950s, BOF versus OHF). But "sunk costs" are important to the direction of technological change for a firm. As a result: ##the chief energies of the men who guided the Corporation were directed to preventing deterioration in the investment value of the enormous properties confided to their care. To achieve this, they consistently tried to freeze the steel at present, or better yet, past levels Any radical change in steel technology would render worthless millions of dollars of the Corporation's plant investment. [ibid., pp. 170 and 173] While firms in less concentrated industries attempted to rationalize their operations and prune costs, the financially-oriented management of United States Steel was intent on maintaining the status quo. Perhaps Hoover, the engineer, realized that protecting the corporate sector from competitive forces would allow more firms to emulate United States Steel, making an economic disaster inevitable. Even the Great Depression was insufficient to make this firm change its ways. Over time, the firm's stodgy, hidebound management found itself humbled both by foreign competition and aggressive mini-mills. Management changed the corporate name to USX and considered retreating from the steel altogether. Perhaps, United States Steel represented the ultimate verdict on Morgan and the corporatists. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:9788] Re: Rethinking Marxism conference
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Several people on PEN-L were at the conference and will undoubtedly offer different perspectives, but the bottom line is that a bunch of orthodox marxists were upset that suggestions from speakers were not the same as the answers offered by orthodox marxists. Because we know that orthodox marxism has all the answers. oh well. Now Blair, I knew you were a partisan, but I thought you were a fair guy. Doug, I think it's fair to say my opinion and indicate clearly that it *is* my opinion, that others will have other opinions. I was hoping you'd be one of them; Louis Proyect was also there. I've read a number of pieces by Nanda Meera and I stand by my opinion. Personally, I agree about the Shiva/Harding panel, also that Balibar talked too long (though I wouldn't say "gassed"). The dissenters impressed me about as much as Shiva and Harding, which is to say, not at all. Blair _ Blair Sandler "If I had to choose a reductionist paradigm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Classical Marxism is a damned good one." _
[PEN-L:9787] re: Environmental Economics
Actually what I find useful and interesting about the Coase Theorem (not really a theorem, BTW) is that it shows how hard it is to have the conditions under which a free market will internalize externalities easily. So, positive externalities between two neighboring parties, such as orchard owners and beekeepers, are easily negotiated, big whoop. But most real world externalities involve lots of parties over larger areas with confused property situtations. Coase says this is no go, and this appears to be the rule, not the exception. Barkley Rosser On Thu, 1 May 1997 13:14:12 -0700 (PDT) Robin Hahnel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I second Jim Devine's message about neoclassicals and the environment in its entirety. The astounding misinterpretation of what the Coase theorem actually tells any reasonable analyst about the likelihood of environmental efficiency being achieved through voluntary and private negotiations of polluters and pollution victims is an excellent case in point. A reasonable reading of the theorem AND ITS INCREDIBLE LIST OF NECESSARY ASSUMPTIONS gives more than enough theoretical reasons for anyone who cares about the environ- ment to immediately embrace a government role! -- Rosser Jr, John Barkley [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:9789] Re: Rethinking Marxism conference
Louis, there was nothing "snide" or "patronizing" about my private message to you. I don't play games. When I like what people are doing I say so; when I don't like it, I say so. Pretty straightforward, I think. It's absurd to say I'm "dissembling" about my connections to RM (I had nothing to do with the conference directly, though). PEN-L has had several long series of discussions about modernist and postmodernist Marxism in which I participated actively and openly as a post-modernist Marxist and member of the RM editorial board. Yup. I'm counting on everyone having forgotten those discussions from, what several months ago? Damn, guess it didn't work with you, Louis, and now you've exposed me. I don't understand your reference to "postmodernist/Althusserian/green regionalism trip": how does "green regionalism" fit in there? Blair Yeah, this question of personal insults rings a bell with me. Blair sent me some snide private mail shortly after I showed up on PEN-L giving me a patronizing pat on the back for my AM posts, but slapping my wrist for "boorish" behavior at the Amherst Conference. During the discussion period following the first plenary with the ineffable Vandana Shiva, I charged Richard Wolff with running an exclusionary panel and that in the future such bullshit should not be allowed. By the way, isn't it important for Blair to identify himself as a member of the collective that sponsored the Conference? This is highly scandalous when people hide such information. Where's Jerry Levy when you need him? Jerry, it's time for a crusade against Blair Sandler's dissembling before the august body of PEN-L. The nerve of Blair to hide his connections. Oh, perfidy. The problem with the Amherst school is that it has placed all of its eggs in a rotting basket. This whole postmodernist/Althusserian/green regionalism trip is getting very dated. We got a visitation from a group of Teresa Morton's acolytes over on the Spoons Marxism list loaded for bear. They were going to slay all postmodernists, including *Doug Henwood and Ellen Meiksins Wood*. Yes, it does sound weird, but these are weird people. A witty comrade from Portugal commented that postmodernism is dead as a doornail and not worth the trouble of killing twice. He suggested that Marxism's main opponent are the old-fashioned ones of pragmatism and idealism. I think there's something to be said for that. It's getting harder and harder to simply make the usual allegations against "orthodox" Marxism. (Actually, classical Marxism is a much more descriptive term and is embraced by the new journal "Historical Materialism" that just got founded over in Great Britain.) The reason for this is that the objective circumstances that led to the pomo doctrine have largely disappeared. 1997 looks a lot different than pre-crash 1987 when characters like Baudrillard had the ability to captivate the thinking of humanities professors in America. Louis Proyect _ Blair Sandler "If I had to choose a reductionist paradigm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Classical Marxism is a damned good one." _
[PEN-L:9765] Re: Rethinking Marxism conference
I just heard a description of the "Rethinking Marxism" conference that occurred in Amherst late last year. The reporter (Olga Celle de Bowman, a sociologist from Peru) said that there was a tremendous amount of (verbal) conflict between the audience and the speakers at the plenaries, something I hadn't heard about before. She said that the activists in the audience were objecting to the lack of answers to the key "what is to be done?" question and the lack of any kind of orientation toward people outside of academe. Was anyone on pen-l at the conference and has a different perspective on the conflict? in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ. 7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA 310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950 "It takes a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed. Several people on PEN-L were at the conference and will undoubtedly offer different perspectives, but the bottom line is that a bunch of orthodox marxists were upset that suggestions from speakers were not the same as the answers offered by orthodox marxists. Because we know that orthodox marxism has all the answers. oh well. Blair Sandler [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:9768] Essentialist humor
A panda walks into a restaurant, sits down, and orders a sandwich. After finishing the sandwich, the panda pulls out a gun and shoots the waiter dead. As the panda stands up to leave, the mangers shouts, "Hey! Where are you going? You just shot my waiter and you did not pay your bill!" The panda yells back to the restaurant manager, "Hey buddy, I'm a panda! Look it up!" And walks out. Nonplussed, the manager opens his dictionary and finds the following definition: Panda: A tree dwelling mammal of Asian origin, characterised by distinct black and white coloring. Eats shoots and leaves. wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233 ** REDUCE MENTAL POLLUTION - LOBOTOMIZE PUNDITS! ** +--+ |There is no such thing as society, only the individuals | |who constitute it. -Margaret Thatcher | | | | | |There is no such thing as government or corporations,| |only the individuals who lust for power and money.| | -no apologies to Margaret Thatcher | +--+ *DROGI KURWA BUDUJA, A NIE MA DOKAD ISC
[PEN-L:9771] Re: Rethinking Marxism conference
I was at the conference (in fact, I was one of the organizers). There were some conflicts. Most of the conflicts were around the question of postmodernism. I don't want to enter again into the merits and demerits of postmodernism. The positions are somewhat known about that. I would like to say, however, that the impression that the conference did not address the question of "what is to be done" that is of interest to activists is, in my view, wrong. One of the plenaries was on the experiences of Latin American socialism. Again, one might quarrel with whether postmodernist forms of activism are valid, (and the discussion about a sociaslist strategy in Latin America, including a glorifying and moving representation of the Zapatista movement, did have a postmodernist tone), but that is quite different from saying that activism was not part of the conference. I think the gist of Blair Sandler's message was correct: that traditional, orthodox, views of activism were not the dominant ones in the plenaries, and in fact were not very welkl represented in the plenaries, and that those who held those views mistook the non-dominance/presence of these views as an absence of activism itself: which is simply incorrect. One other point to be made is that, perhaps, the distinction between academics and activists is sometimes overdrawn. The proper distinction should be between activist academics and non-activist academics. Most of the people who talk a lot about activism are themselves either academics (either students or professors) or enmeshed in a network of academic discourses and processes; just as people who are academics are often enmeshed in activist discourses and practices, even if they do not advertise it=themselves, or glamorize it=themselves, or romanticize it=themselves. Antonio Callari I just heard a description of the "Rethinking Marxism" conference that occurred in Amherst late last year. The reporter (Olga Celle de Bowman, a sociologist from Peru) said that there was a tremendous amount of (verbal) conflict between the audience and the speakers at the plenaries, something I hadn't heard about before. She said that the activists in the audience were objecting to the lack of answers to the key "what is to be done?" question and the lack of any kind of orientation toward people outside of academe. Was anyone on pen-l at the conference and has a different perspective on the conflict? in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ. 7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA 310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950 "It takes a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed. Antonio Callari E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] POST MAIL: Department of Economics Franklin and Marshall College Lancaster PA 17604-3003 PHONE: 717/291-3947 FAX:717/291-4369
[PEN-L:9774] Re: Barbara Ehrenreich on War
While I generally agree with Louis' argument, I also believe that his argument would have gained from making a distinction between spontaneous and institutionalised behaviour. In essence, the bourgeois pundits argue that bourgeois social institutions originate in the law of human nature. Ehrenreich follows the suit, but adds: "let's change human nature (as if it were a yuppie life style) to get rid of the institution. Of course, similar arguments are raised re. any other institution. Property relations, we are told, originate in the "natural" desire to acquire useful materila goods. Racism originates in our "natural" propensity to stereotype or fear people who are different than ourselves. And so on, and so forth. The appeal of this mythology is that the antecedent asserting that "people tend to engage in conflicting, hoarding, or stereotypong behaviour" is essentially true. But despite that, the argument is a nonsequitur, because it was constructed in a flawed manner. In essence, it is a logical fallacy known as confirming the antecedent; e.g. "if people are bellicose by nature, then wars are frequent; "wars are freguent; ergo: people are bellicose in nature." According to the same logic "if Richard M. Nixon was assassinated, then Richard M. Nixon is dead; Richard M. Nixon is dead, ergo: Richard M. Nixon was assassinated." Distinguishing between spontaneous and institutionalised behaviour, the former falls on a continuum ranging between "good" and "bad", "selfish" and "selfless" "rational" and irrational" and so forth. In short, we are capable of any sort of behaviour. The role of social instituions is to encourage some of those behaviours while discouraging others. It is like a bullhorn -- it amplifies only certain sounds (namely the speech of the person who holds it), but it does not pick up (or even drowns) other sounds. With that in mind, it is easy to see that social institutions, like war, private property, division of labour, or racism, are maintained by those in a position to do so, namely -- the ruling classes who also control the means of mental production. There is another question, however, how these institutions are being established and maintained. Louis suggests that they are being simply imposed by the ruling class -- but such a view simply does not hold water. A more useful view is that while social institutions do serve the interests of the elite, they also serve, in various ways (that may or may not correspond with the interests of the elites), various interests and needs of the ruled. In other words, the ruled collaborate, willingly and unadvertently, with the elites in the creation and maintenance of social institutions. Examples are abundant. Michael Burawoy (_Manufacturing Consent_) shows how workers in Chicago manufacturing plants use capitalist institutions (competition) for their own purposes that have little to do with the preservation of capitalism. In the same vein, part of the Blach population in South Africa (the Bantu-stan elites) were staunch supporters of the appertheid, because it gave them a relatively privileged position over other Blacks (something that they would not be able to maintain under a democratic rule). In the same vein, the nazis coopeted the women liberation movement in Germany (see Klaudia Koontz, _Mothers in the Fatherland_). I think a common mistake of the old day socialists is a belief that the masses would revolt againts their rulers as soon as an opportunity arises and, even more importantly, the revolutionary vanguard will give a signal. I am afraid it ain't so. One of the most frightening powers of the state and social institutions (modern and ancient alike) is its capacity tor organize people against their own interests, and even for their own destruction. Diatribes denouncing these institutions as a ploy serving the elite interests do little to help us understand how they extert their influence on common people. In the same vein, the modern military and its weaponry is obviously a tool of the ruling class to maintain their hegemony and keep the lower classes in line. But that fact does not yet explain why and how the lower classes are fascinated with the military and weapons (cf. the militias) despite the fact that these are the proverbial Damocles' sword hanging over their heads. In that respect, Echrenreich's bourgeois morality play can offer more insights into the process, than a conventional class analysis. wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233 ** REDUCE MENTAL POLLUTION - LOBOTOMIZE PUNDITS! ** +--+ |There is no such thing as society, only the individuals | |who constitute it. -Margaret Thatcher | | | |
[PEN-L:9776] henwood
Hi, hope no one minds, but I forwarded Doug's critique of Ed Herman's Z article to Ed, and here's his reply. Elaine Original message Dear Elaine: I've put up a few notes on Henwood's defense of his citation of Larry Summers. Can you put it into circulation on Pen-L (if that's the right web site)? Best, Ed Herman PS: I did write to Robert and Ethel after last talking with you. -- Reply to Doug Henwood's defense of his reliance on Larry Summers: 1. Henwood says that Summers is not always wrong and has "done a lot of very useful academic work..." But Henwood fails to note that that academic work was many years ago--Henwood cites Summers as of 1991, in his World Bank employment role that preceded his phase as a Clinton administration official. So his academic work would seem pretty much irrelevant; his commitment to the principles--and principals--of the New World Order in 1991 and after would seem obvious. A "political agenda" supportive of FDI and globalization as beneficial would also seem a requirement for the kind of work Summers has been doing. Would Henwood suggest that Summers could take a position questioning free trade and FDI? If not, is Henwood not neglecting "context" in citing Summers as a presumably objective scholar? 2. Henwood says I rely on "assertion" and don't bother with the substance of his argument or "evidence." But my article has more "evidence" in it than Henwood's, and much of his evidence is a quoting of qualitative opinions, notably by Summers. I give evidence on financial flows that Henwood largely ignores, but which are vastly more important than 30 years ago, and far more important than in 1913 in effects on policy. Henwood's evidence is also dated and backward, not forward looking. For example, his quote from the 1991 Summers statement asks whether the telecommunications revolution has really had a major impact? But we are in the midst of a telecom revolution that is advancing rapidly (and has gained further strength from the recent WTO deal getting scores of countries to agree to privatize). Furthermore, even if manufacturing hasn't been "fundamentally altered" (whatever that means), cross-border integration of production keeps growing in importance. And while sellers have always tried to "locate production at the lowest cost location," you would think a leftist would recognize that the increased mobility of capital, greater power of IMF and World Bank, and new agreements protecting investment rights, are widening options for sellers and that a "reserve army" that runs from China to Russia to Indonesia to Mexico (etc.) represents something a bit different and worth noting. The economist Richard DuBoff, who also wasn't too keen on Henwood's analysis of globaloney, sent Henwood a detailed statement with a lot of "evidence," to which Henwood hasn't yet replied. 3. Henwood says that globalization "is often held up as the reason things can't get any better." But if it is an important fact, we can't deny its reality because it is used is some particular way. Furthermore, why do a Larry Summers and the conservative Martin Wolf go along with Henwood in denying a powerful negative effect of globalization? It is because if it were admitted to be having damaging effects on the incomes of the majority and killing social democratic policy there would be a political demand for bringing it under control. I made this point in my Z article, but I haven't yet heard Henwood come to grips with it. 4. He repeats his statement that the focus on globalization "deflects attention away from the causes of globalization," etc. This is not true--as I point out in my article, it focuses attention on the particular forms of capitalism that are important in the age of globalization, like the rise in power and spread of TNCs, financial flows and speculation, the role of the IMF and World Bank in serving the TNCs and the like. On the other hand, the Henwood position, which denies the importance of globalization, deflects attention away from globalization and its damaging capitalist--institutional causes to vague generalities like "the quest for higher profits and stock prices." Beyond that, if as Summers and Henwood agree, "the revolution is merely incremental, and not something all so fundamentally new," why worry about transnationalization, global mergers, IMF rules, and the like? "Natura non facit saltum" was the rule for neoclassical economist Alfred Marshall and his successors as well, including Summers, and apparently Henwood. ---Edward S. Herman
[PEN-L:9775] Re: Rethinking Marxism conference
I think the gist of Blair Sandler's message was correct: that traditional, orthodox, views of activism were not the dominant ones in the plenaries, and in fact were not very welkl represented in the plenaries, and that those who held those views mistook the non-dominance/presence of these views as an absence of activism itself: which is simply incorrect. One other point to be made is that, perhaps, the distinction between academics and activists is sometimes overdrawn. The proper distinction should be between activist academics and non-activist academics. Most of the people who talk a lot about activism are themselves either academics (either students or professors) or enmeshed in a network of academic discourses and processes; just as people who are academics are often enmeshed in activist discourses and practices, even if they do not advertise it=themselves, or glamorize it=themselves, or romanticize it=themselves. Antonio Callari I don't think anybody in their right mind came to the Amherst conference looking for an activist focus. The conferences have been around long enough for people to know what's up. Back in the late 1980s a friend of mine who was active in Sister Cities Projects and who worked as a nurse went up to the conference (it might have been the first) and returned with the observation that she did not understand a single word that anybody was saying. Pretty soon the word got out. Activists stayed home. So as this filtering process started to take place, the people who did make the trek *understood* what the conference was about. It was an academic conference not that much different from MLA conferences, etc. This conference was a gathering of the post-Marxist tribe. Every graduate student in America who was into Althusser, Zizek, Bourdieu, etc. would have to consider putting money aside for hotel and transportation costs. Later in hotel rooms people would drink Jack Daniels from the bottle and gossip about goings-on in the groves of academe. What happened in December 1996 was unexpected. A whole number of people, possibly a majority of the conference attendees, came with a theoretical approach to Marxism that was much more in line with what I call classical Marxism. People like Ellen Meiksins Wood, John Bellamy Foster, Doug Henwood and Meera Nanda have been carving out a space for this current for a few years now. When graduate students and louts like me came up to the conference with an identification with this current, we clashed with the post-Marxists. The clash could have been avoided if the organizers had the good sense to not have such lopsided plenaries. That they lacked such good sense reminds me of the public relations failure of Social Text after the Sokal Affair. It became tempting for Andrew Ross et al to label Sokal as an enemy of multiculturalism rather than to engage with his ideas. Likewise, it became easier for the Amherst conference organizers to view the disruptions from the floor as evidence of intolerant behavior on the part of others rather than their own exclusionary practices. Louis Proyect
[PEN-L:9777] Re: tenure
For the sake of clarity, although there is no formal 'tenure'in the UK, there are permanent positions. If you are hired for a permanent track position, you are permanent usually after 6 months. The only way that you can be fired is if the department is dissolved and/or there is no work for you to do in the University. The UK has mandatory retirement. The situation here is the opposite of the manner in which the situation is going in the states: there is job security, but room for new people. Susan Pashkoff Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 15:14:08 -0700 (PDT) Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: James Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:9761] tenure susan, any comments? Original message what experience do people in places like the UK have with the absense of tenure for professors? is it as bad as some people in the US fear? is there a lot of violation of academic freedom? in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ. 7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA 310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950 "It takes a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed.
[PEN-L:9779] Re: henwood
Ed Herman wrote: 1. Henwood says that Summers is not always wrong and has "done a lot of very useful academic work..." But Henwood fails to note that that academic work was many years ago--Henwood cites Summers as of 1991, in his World Bank employment role that preceded his phase as a Clinton administration official. So his academic work would seem pretty much irrelevant; his commitment to the principles--and principals--of the New World Order in 1991 and after would seem obvious. A "political agenda" supportive of FDI and globalization as beneficial would also seem a requirement for the kind of work Summers has been doing. Would Henwood suggest that Summers could take a position questioning free trade and FDI? If not, is Henwood not neglecting "context" in citing Summers as a presumably objective scholar? I brought up Summers' academic work because his positions, first with the World Bank and then with the U.S. Treasury, were in themselves being used to discredit his argument. Yeah, so Larry Summers is a bourgeois pig. But that doesn't mean he's always wrong, does it? Especially when he's writing a memo for intra-pen consumption by his comradely herd of piglets. 2. Henwood says I rely on "assertion" and don't bother with the substance of his argument or "evidence." But my article has more "evidence" in it than Henwood's, and much of his evidence is a quoting of qualitative opinions, notably by Summers. I give evidence on financial flows that Henwood largely ignores, but which are vastly more important than 30 years ago, and far more important than in 1913 in effects on policy. I really don't want to get into a "my evidence is longer than your evidence" debate, but this is a really preposterous claim. I've spent years writing more articles with more numbers in them than just about anyone in the field of left-wing economic journalism. On PEN-L the other day I quoted from a longer piece, which was itself a sequel to an even longer one. I've continued to analyze the figures behind the globalization mania, and the issue of LBO that's going to press in a couple of days will have more. Henwood's evidence is also dated and backward, not forward looking. Kind of hard to make a historical argument without looking backwards, isn't it? For example, his quote from the 1991 Summers statement asks whether the telecommunications revolution has really had a major impact? But we are in the midst of a telecom revolution that is advancing rapidly (and has gained further strength from the recent WTO deal getting scores of countries to agree to privatize). Oh, you mean the revolution in production has happened since 1991? Gosh, time moves so fast these days! Furthermore, even if manufacturing hasn't been "fundamentally altered" (whatever that means), cross-border integration of production keeps growing in importance. And while sellers have always tried to "locate production at the lowest cost location," you would think a leftist would recognize that the increased mobility of capital, greater power of IMF and World Bank, and new agreements protecting investment rights, are widening options for sellers and that a "reserve army" that runs from China to Russia to Indonesia to Mexico (etc.) represents something a bit different and worth noting. Ed Herman subscribes to LBO, and I think he even reads it. So if he's been reading my articles on this issue, he must know that I've been using BEA figures on multinationals to show that the "cross-border integration of production" hasn't progressed anywhere near as far as he claims. As I've said almost every time I've made this point, you can challenge the figures as inaccurate, but you'll have to do better than just make an Aronowitz-style argument by assertion. 3. Henwood says that globalization "is often held up as the reason things can't get any better." But if it is an important fact, we can't deny its reality because it is used is some particular way. Furthermore, why do a Larry Summers and the conservative Martin Wolf go along with Henwood in denying a powerful negative effect of globalization? Here we go again, discrediting arguments by political association. If I wanted to I could say, well here we have a Wharton professor who wrote a book commissioned by the Twentieth Century Fund. Ooh can't trust him, must be bourgeois! Speaking of associations, I wonder if Herman has talked over globalization with his sometime collaborator, Noam Chomsky. Chomsky holds a position rather similar to mine, I think. In fact, here's what he wrote to me after reading my ITT piece: "I quite agree that the tales about "globalization" are mostly devised to make people feel powerless, and have been trying to make that point for a while. And by now there is plenty in print in highly respectable technical literature (e.g., Ruigrok and von Tulder) to make it pretty clear that the story is mostly a crock, and that by gross measures, at least, it's pretty much a return to early in the
[PEN-L:9778] Re: Barbara Ehrenreich on War
Wojtek Sokolowski: There is another question, however, how these institutions are being established and maintained. Louis suggests that they are being simply imposed by the ruling class -- but such a view simply does not hold water. A more useful view is that while social institutions do serve the interests of the elite, they also serve, in various ways (that may or may not correspond with the interests of the elites), various interests and needs of the ruled. In other words, the ruled collaborate, willingly and unadvertently, with the elites in the creation and maintenance of social institutions. I guess I was bending the stick in my comments on Ehrenreich. There is plenty of evidence of the ruling class ruling by means of the carrot rather than the stick. One great cultural studies expert who went by the name of Malcolm X (not affiliated with the Frankfurt school) had astute observations on the tendency of black folks to mimic white behavior through conked hair, etc. The desire to identify with elites and ultimately the ruling class itself is as old as class society. It would even be fair to say that this is normal behavior. Before the Vietnam war started, Ivy League students had no reason to join Maoist or Trotskyist groups. The issue, however, is what people do in *abnormal* times. Ehrenreich's ideas point to the futility of ever resisting war, which is in itself the most abnormal of situations. History reassures us that in times of abnormality people tend to act normal, that is they often reach revolutionary conclusions. I wouldn't worry too much about people today staying away from revolutionary parties. I myself wouldn't join one unless it had at least 50,000 members. What would be a cause for concern is if during the next prolonged imperialist war like Vietnam, people insisted on identifying with leopards or hyenas rather than Martin Luther King Jr. or Vladimir Lenin. Louis Proyect
[PEN-L:9782] The election in Britain
This says it all: The Globe and Mail Thursday, May 1, 1997 Lead editorial: WHY BRITAIN IS VOTING LABOUR On the face of it, John Major and the Conservatives should win today's election in Great Britain. If the economy were the measure of performance, his government would do well. If personality were the measure of performance, Mr. Major would do well. The trouble is that neither the economy nor personality seems decisive in how Britons are judging this government, which is why it is likely to lose. From this perspective, Mr. Major has reason to think his compatriots ungrateful. It recalls the fate of Winston Churchill in 1945. Mr. Churchill had led Briton for five tumultuous years. He had rallied the nation, retooled the economy, won the war. For his Herculean labours he was summarily returned to opposition. It isn't that Britons disliked Sir Winston; they simply decided that he wasn't up to the socio-economic challenges of the new era. As they saw it then, he was more suited for war than for peace (even though they brought him back the next time). Mr. Major is no Mr. Churchill, but there is some of that logic in his diminishing prospects. After all, it is largely because of the Conservatives that Britain is prosperous. With unemployment around 6 per cent, Britain's level is half that of France and Germany, both of which are now contemplating some of the measures -- budget-cutting, privatization and deregulation -- that Britain adopted under Margaret Thatcher and Mr. Major. Britain now draws about 40 per cent of the new investment in the European Union. It has fuelled the revival of London, which has again become a centre of design, fashion, pop music, even cuisine, recalling the spirit of a generation ago. Then there is Mr. Major himself. While his party trails badly in the polls, his personal popularity remains high. It is hard to dislike the man, however one might disagree with him. He has humility and modesty. He has pluck and determination, so much so that had he refused to step aside when challenged for the leadership two years ago, he would have spared himself all this anguish. So what is it, then, which is propelling the Labour Party to victory? If it isn't a stagnant economy or an unpopular prime minister, is it the appeal of the opposition and its leader? Here, too, the answer is probably no. Labour is not demonstrably different on the main issues, and Tony Blair, the prime minister-in-waiting, offers competence more than charisma. Our guess is that this election is more about ennui than anger. Britons have had 18 years of the Conservatives, and now they have had enough. They are simply bored with the Tories, tired of their divisions and scandals. They want something new, even if it is less a matter of substance than style. Labour, or "New Labour" as it shrewdly calls itself, understands that. By adopting the government's economic policies, and raising sufficient skepticism about embracing Europe, it offers wary Britons a way to vote Labour and elect the Conservatives. With a no-risk solution that will change the players but keep the policies, they are free to vote Labour without fear. Yes, there are differences between the parties, but they are limited. On the constitutional questions -- home rule for Scotland and Wales, a freedom of information act, the abolition of hereditary peers -- Labour is more daring. But this is fussing on the fringes. At root, what makes the Labourites attractive is that they are conservatives without being Conservatives. This kind of imitation is supremely flattering to Mr. Major, but it is unlikely to be enough to save his weary government.
[PEN-L:9767] Re: Globaloney
D Shniad wrote: The growth in the speculative power of finance capital, the magnitude of which dwarfs that of productive capital, has increased enormously over the past 20+ years and undermined the mechanisms that were put in place over the postwar period to prevent a recurrence of the disaster of the speculative '20s followed by the deflationary '30s. People say these things all the time without detailing the relations between "speculative" and real activity - I think they assume that Keynes was right about those links in chapter 12 of the GT, which he wasn't really. Are you talking about pure financial speculation, the undermining of the social safety net, the undermining of the financial safety net (which happened in the 1980s, but I have my doubts about how weak it is in the 1990s), the leveraging up of balance sheets (true of U.S. households in the 1990s, but not of U.S. corporations, which have reduced debt since the 1980s), capital flight punishing any left-of-center government, or what? Doug -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 250 W 85 St New York NY 10024-3217 USA +1-212-874-4020 voice +1-212-874-3137 fax email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html
[PEN-L:9769] Re: IB Systems (was Globaloney)
On Wed, 30 Apr 1997, Tavis Barr wrote: What amazes me is this: The system that I put together probably cut the non-production workforce (people with the fairly mundane jobs of keeping track of inventory and filling out and keeping track of purchase orders and payments on bills) by a factor of three or four (no layoffs necessary since it was a growing company though I'm sure I would have been a hatchet boy in another situation). This seems the natural effect of any IB system. And yet it's the non-production workforce in manufacturing that's been growing and the production workforce that's been shrinking. Any thoughts? Is it that most businesses simply haven't implemented IB systems (I have this impression, or at least the impression that they're not as fully implemented as they could be)? Or is there a really exploding ratio of non-production work that's simply been tamed by the computer revolution? Isn't it possible that the growth of a "non-production workforce" in manufacturing simply reflects the transition from some of these companies out of manufacturing into finance? Isn't the purpose of US Steel to enhance the share value of its equity rather than make steel? Louis Proyect
[PEN-L:9783] game theory torture
(apologies ahead of time for this: I also walked out of the Mel Gibson flick "Ransom" thinking about game theory.) The L.A. TIMES today (May 1, 1997) published exerpts from the CIA manual on how to torture prisoners (used at the notorious US Army School of the Americas). This book should not be rejected out of hand, and instead should be treated as serious social science, despite its moral depravity (and its violation of current rules about experiments with human subjects): it represents the thinking of bright people dealing with serious questions, based on empirical evidence; it was a secret document and thus shows little need to cover up what's being recommended with euphemisms.[*] It seems a compendium of age-old wisdom about torture, used by the "torture professionals" (the CIA, etc.) to enlighten the "torture amateurs" (a large number of Latin American military officers) on how to torture efficiently (e.g., holding actual physical torture in reserve rather than revealing one's cards right away). In addition to being disgusting, it sheds a lot of light on the standard textbook presentation of the "prisoners' dilemma" in economics, or rather on the key assumption usually made in PD discussions, i.e., that people are atomistic individuals with absolutely no psychological depth. The CIA's prescriptions, in sum, are to mess with the prisoners' minds (and, if need be, their bodies) in order to _create_ the textbook prisoners' dilemma, to encourage each prisoner to "defect," to turn in his or her comrades. The textbook treatment _assumes_ that the prisoners are already atomistic individuals and there is _no need_ to plumb the depths of their psyches in order to make them that way. In fact, the vast majority of economists reject the need to study the depths of psychology at all; instead, they simply assume that people "maximize utility," having no sense of honor or morality, solidarity or self-esteem. It treats the fact that many if not most prisoners do not defect as a "paradox" rather than as showing up the severe limitations of the theory. The CIA manual suggests that we reject the standard economics attitude toward people. Further, if the prisoners' dilemma is something that has to be _actively created_ by the captors (doing more than simply separating the prisoners, preventing them from communcating) that the a priori presumption in PD games should be that people do not "defect." Of course, just as with the experiments done at death camps by the Nazi doctors, the validity of the CIA wisdom should not be tested via replication. But I bet that experimental economics has already been done for more moderate cases, showing the limits of the textbook presentation. Of course, the power of ideology is such that such research does not show up in the textbooks, where it would have the most influence. Happy May Day, International Workers' Day! [*] Because of the way e-mail strips nuance from our prose, I must stress that I do not admire the "bright" CIA social scientists. Rather, this shows one of the big problems with social science. But maybe some of them will turn out to be Daniel Ellsbergs. in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ. 7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA 310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950 "It takes a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed.
[PEN-L:9788] Re: Rethinking Marxism conference
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Several people on PEN-L were at the conference and will undoubtedly offer different perspectives, but the bottom line is that a bunch of orthodox marxists were upset that suggestions from speakers were not the same as the answers offered by orthodox marxists. Because we know that orthodox marxism has all the answers. oh well. Now Blair, I knew you were a partisan, but I thought you were a fair guy. Doug, I think it's fair to say my opinion and indicate clearly that it *is* my opinion, that others will have other opinions. I was hoping you'd be one of them; Louis Proyect was also there. I've read a number of pieces by Nanda Meera and I stand by my opinion. Personally, I agree about the Shiva/Harding panel, also that Balibar talked too long (though I wouldn't say "gassed"). The dissenters impressed me about as much as Shiva and Harding, which is to say, not at all. Blair _ Blair Sandler "If I had to choose a reductionist paradigm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Classical Marxism is a damned good one." _
[PEN-L:9789] Re: Rethinking Marxism conference
Louis, there was nothing "snide" or "patronizing" about my private message to you. I don't play games. When I like what people are doing I say so; when I don't like it, I say so. Pretty straightforward, I think. It's absurd to say I'm "dissembling" about my connections to RM (I had nothing to do with the conference directly, though). PEN-L has had several long series of discussions about modernist and postmodernist Marxism in which I participated actively and openly as a post-modernist Marxist and member of the RM editorial board. Yup. I'm counting on everyone having forgotten those discussions from, what several months ago? Damn, guess it didn't work with you, Louis, and now you've exposed me. I don't understand your reference to "postmodernist/Althusserian/green regionalism trip": how does "green regionalism" fit in there? Blair Yeah, this question of personal insults rings a bell with me. Blair sent me some snide private mail shortly after I showed up on PEN-L giving me a patronizing pat on the back for my AM posts, but slapping my wrist for "boorish" behavior at the Amherst Conference. During the discussion period following the first plenary with the ineffable Vandana Shiva, I charged Richard Wolff with running an exclusionary panel and that in the future such bullshit should not be allowed. By the way, isn't it important for Blair to identify himself as a member of the collective that sponsored the Conference? This is highly scandalous when people hide such information. Where's Jerry Levy when you need him? Jerry, it's time for a crusade against Blair Sandler's dissembling before the august body of PEN-L. The nerve of Blair to hide his connections. Oh, perfidy. The problem with the Amherst school is that it has placed all of its eggs in a rotting basket. This whole postmodernist/Althusserian/green regionalism trip is getting very dated. We got a visitation from a group of Teresa Morton's acolytes over on the Spoons Marxism list loaded for bear. They were going to slay all postmodernists, including *Doug Henwood and Ellen Meiksins Wood*. Yes, it does sound weird, but these are weird people. A witty comrade from Portugal commented that postmodernism is dead as a doornail and not worth the trouble of killing twice. He suggested that Marxism's main opponent are the old-fashioned ones of pragmatism and idealism. I think there's something to be said for that. It's getting harder and harder to simply make the usual allegations against "orthodox" Marxism. (Actually, classical Marxism is a much more descriptive term and is embraced by the new journal "Historical Materialism" that just got founded over in Great Britain.) The reason for this is that the objective circumstances that led to the pomo doctrine have largely disappeared. 1997 looks a lot different than pre-crash 1987 when characters like Baudrillard had the ability to captivate the thinking of humanities professors in America. Louis Proyect _ Blair Sandler "If I had to choose a reductionist paradigm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Classical Marxism is a damned good one." _
[PEN-L:9791] Re: Barbara Ehrenreich on War
No, tell me Paul, what does it "say about the state of DSA's understanding of class, etc. etc.!"? In the best leninist tradition and always eager to receive knowledge from on high, I remain, Robert Saute On Wed, 30 Apr 1997, Louis Proyect wrote: is this true! what does it say about the state of DSA's understanding of class, etc. etc.! -paul Original message I guess I have gotten used to how bad the Nation magazine has become, but every once in a while I run into something so rancid that I have to pause and catch my breath. This was the case with a review by DSA leader Barbara Ehrenreich of 3 books on war. This review was accompanied by a review by Susan Faludi of Ehrenreichs new book on war titled "Blood Rites". All this prose is dedicated to the proposition that large-scale killing has been around as long as homo sapiens has been around and that it has nothing much to do with economic motives. Looking for an explanation why George Bush made war on Iraq? It wasnt over oil, "democratic socialist" Ehrenreich would argue. It was instead related to the fact that we were once "preyed upon by animals that were initially far more skillful hunters than ourselves. In particular, the sacralization of war is not the project of a self-confident predator...but that of a creature which has learned only recently, in the last thousand or so generations, not to cower at every sound in the night." In a rather silly exercise in cultural criticism, Ehrenreich speculates that the popularity of those nature shows depicting one animal attacking and eating another are proof of the predatory disposition we brutish human beings share. I myself have a different interpretation for what its worth. I believe that PBS sponsors all this stuff because of the rampant oil company sponsorship that transmits coded Social Darwinist ideology. Just as the Leopard is meant to eat the antelope, so is Shell Oil meant to kill Nigerians who stand in the way of progress. One of the books that Ehrenreich reviews is "War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage" by Lawrence Keeley. Keeley argues that material scarcity does not explain warfare among Stone Age people. It is instead something in our "shared psychology" that attracts us to war. Keeley finds brutish behavior everywhere and at all times, including among the American Indian. If the number of casualties produced by wars among the Plains Indians was proportional to the population of European nations during the World Wars, then the casualty rates would have been more like 2 billion rather than the tens of millions that obtained. Ehrenreich swoons over Keeleys book that was published in 1996 to what seems like "insufficient acclaim". I suspect that Keeleys book functions ideologically like some of the recent scholarship that attempts to show that Incas, Aztecs and Spaniards were all equally bad. They all had kingdoms. They all had slaves. They all despoiled the environment. Ad nauseum. It is always a specious practice to project into precapitalist societies the sort of dynamic that occurs under capitalism. For one thing, it is almost impossible to understand these societies without violating some sort of Heisenberg law of anthropology. The historiography of the North American and Latin American Indian societies is mediated by the interaction of the invading society with the invaded. The "view" is rarely impartial. Capitalism began to influence and overturn precapitalist class relations hundreds of years ago, so a laboratory presentation of what Aztec society looked like prior to the Conquistadores is impossible. Furthermore, it is regrettable that Ehrenreich herself is seduced by this methodology since she doesnt even question Keeleys claims about the Plains Indian wars. When did these wars occur? Obviously long after the railroads and buffalo hunters had become a fact of North American life. The reason all this stuff seems so poisonous is that it makes a political statement that war can not be eliminated through the introduction of socialism or political action. For Ehrenreich, opposing war is a psychological project rather than a political project: "Any anti-war movement that targets only the human agents of war -- a warrior elite or, on our own time, the chieftains of the military-industrial complex risks mimicking those it seeks to overcome .. So it is a giant step from hating the warriors to hating the war, and an even greater step to deciding that the enemy is the abstract institution of war, which maintains its grip on us even in the interludes we know as peace." Really? The abstract institution of war maintains its grip on "us"? Who exactly is this "us"? Is it the average working person who struggles to make ends meet? Do they sit at home at night like great cats fantasizing about biting the throats out of Rwandans or
[PEN-L:9792] Re: Rethinking Marxism conference
By the way, isn't it important for Blair to identify himself as a member of the collective that sponsored the Conference? This is highly scandalous when people hide such information. Where's Jerry Levy when you need him? Jerry, it's time for a crusade against Blair Sandler's dissembling before the august body of PEN-L. The nerve of Blair to hide his connections. Oh, perfidy. Thank you for asking and bringing up that subject again, Louis. I know of no scandal that Blair Sandler is involved with. Certainly, nothing he has done is so scandalous as when a Marxist journal in Germany published a review of the RM conference by a person who months beforehand -- before he had even seen a full copy of the schedule! -- trashed that conference in public and in writing. Jerry
[PEN-L:9793] Re: IB Systems (was Globaloney)
On Thu, 1 May 1997, Louis N Proyect wrote: Isn't it possible that the growth of a "non-production workforce" in manufacturing simply reflects the transition from some of these companies out of manufacturing into finance? Isn't the purpose of US Steel to enhance the share value of its equity rather than make steel? That's one I hadn't thought of. I don't know enough details to judge it, but on the face of it it seems unlikely. Transferring into finance doesn't so much mean that firms transfer out of manufacturing. After all, the best way to maximize share values is to produce good steel cheap. What's really happened is that these firms place their new investments in diverse portfolios, which can be taken care of by a handful of portfolio managers, instead of, say, steel. The rising ratio of production workers comes from technological change, which produces more and more output with fewer and fewer production workers, but there hasn't been a similar trend in non-production work. It was Braverman's theory that as production becomes more coordinated and deskilled, fewer workers are required on the shop floor and more workers are required to manage control processes. But it's exactly these types of control processes (inventory, quality, orders, auditing) that the computer is supposed to be automating. It seems like there's a missing piece of the puzzle somewhere. Befuddled, Tavis
[PEN-L:9794] Re: Cyber Picket Line (fwd)
On May Day no less, we are advised that it is no longer "Workers of the World Unite!..." but rather "Workers of the World---log on!" If that isn't postmodernism, what is? Let's all reach out and digitize someone. (:-) Can this Cyber Picket Line intercept cyber capital flows? Are we ready for the virtual general strike? At 10:56 AM 5/1/97 -0700, D Shniad wrote: From: STEPHEN DAVIES [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Unions1 [EMAIL PROTECTED], Unions1 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 15:44:50 GMT Subject: Cyber Picket Line NET NEWS RELEASE International Workers Day, 1 May 1997 UNION FLYING PICKETS HEAD INTO CYBERSPACE 1997's May Day is not only marked by the British General Election but also by the launch of the Cyber Picket Line - the world's biggest internet directory of trade union websites. Its address is: http://www.cf.ac.uk/ccin/union/ With links to over 1000 trade union and trade union-related sites, the Cyber Picket Line shows the massive strides that the labour movement has taken in high tech communications over the last few years. The small group of pioneers who began it all a decade or more ago - primarily in Europe and North America - have now been joined by union internationals, national union centres, individual unions and hundreds of local union branches all over the world. The Cyber Picket Line features union sites from every continent in the world ranging from South African miners to Brazilian dockers; from council shop stewards in Sheffield to journalists in Hong Kong; from Croatian railworkers to Canadian loggers. The effects are already being felt as workers build new links across continents and oceans. The Liverpool Dockers campaign, the Korean trade unionists battle against repressive laws and the US Firestone workers have all used the internet and the world wide web to organise solidarity action and to build support. Steve Davies, the co-ordinator of the new web site said: "For too long unions all over the world have been on the ropes. Now we're on the Net and its already beginning to pay off. It's now possible for workers to communicate effectively with each other as never before. "It is also possible for rank and file stewards and branch activists to have access to the sort of information resource and research capacity that was previously only available to senior full time officers. It is potentially one of the most powerful and democratic weapons at the disposal of the labour movement. "I hope that this site helps local branches all over the world take advantage of the resources that exist, make the contacts that count, and use 21st century techniques to rebuild international solidarity." ENDS NOTES FOR EDITORS The site co-ordinator is Steve Davies. He lives in Cardiff, and works at the University of Wales Cardiff in adult education where he's been since the beginning of 1996. Before that he spent 11 years working at the London headquarters of a British Civil Service union (now called PTC). He started as a research officer, later specialising in privatisation and contracting out, before becoming national press officer and Assistant to the General Secretary. A Spanish version of the site is under construction (translation being done by Companero David Jones of Pontypridd and Zaragoza). Eventually the site may appear in several other languages. All the tricky techie work for this site was done by Sioned Rogers of CapitalNet, the server for Cardiff, who have also provided the webspace.
[PEN-L:9781] Cyber Picket Line (fwd)
From: STEPHEN DAVIES [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Unions1 [EMAIL PROTECTED], Unions1 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 1 May 1997 15:44:50 GMT Subject: Cyber Picket Line NET NEWS RELEASE International Workers Day, 1 May 1997 UNION FLYING PICKETS HEAD INTO CYBERSPACE 1997's May Day is not only marked by the British General Election but also by the launch of the Cyber Picket Line - the world's biggest internet directory of trade union websites. Its address is: http://www.cf.ac.uk/ccin/union/ With links to over 1000 trade union and trade union-related sites, the Cyber Picket Line shows the massive strides that the labour movement has taken in high tech communications over the last few years. The small group of pioneers who began it all a decade or more ago - primarily in Europe and North America - have now been joined by union internationals, national union centres, individual unions and hundreds of local union branches all over the world. The Cyber Picket Line features union sites from every continent in the world ranging from South African miners to Brazilian dockers; from council shop stewards in Sheffield to journalists in Hong Kong; from Croatian railworkers to Canadian loggers. The effects are already being felt as workers build new links across continents and oceans. The Liverpool Dockers campaign, the Korean trade unionists battle against repressive laws and the US Firestone workers have all used the internet and the world wide web to organise solidarity action and to build support. Steve Davies, the co-ordinator of the new web site said: "For too long unions all over the world have been on the ropes. Now we're on the Net and its already beginning to pay off. It's now possible for workers to communicate effectively with each other as never before. "It is also possible for rank and file stewards and branch activists to have access to the sort of information resource and research capacity that was previously only available to senior full time officers. It is potentially one of the most powerful and democratic weapons at the disposal of the labour movement. "I hope that this site helps local branches all over the world take advantage of the resources that exist, make the contacts that count, and use 21st century techniques to rebuild international solidarity." ENDS NOTES FOR EDITORS The site co-ordinator is Steve Davies. He lives in Cardiff, and works at the University of Wales Cardiff in adult education where he's been since the beginning of 1996. Before that he spent 11 years working at the London headquarters of a British Civil Service union (now called PTC). He started as a research officer, later specialising in privatisation and contracting out, before becoming national press officer and Assistant to the General Secretary. A Spanish version of the site is under construction (translation being done by Companero David Jones of Pontypridd and Zaragoza). Eventually the site may appear in several other languages. All the tricky techie work for this site was done by Sioned Rogers of CapitalNet, the server for Cardiff, who have also provided the webspace.
[PEN-L:9766] Re: Walras vs. Sraffa
My response to Gil continues... Gil continues: Ajit continues: So what does this mean? It means that the two theoretical worlds are wide appart. The GE framework does not get away from what Sraffa called a "one way avenue", ie. a linear theoretical structure which goes from 'factors of production' to consumer goods production. For reasons given above, this distinction is necessarily specious. ___ Ajit: Where is the reason given above? As I have explained above, this is a fundamental methodological difference between the two theories. _ Gil: Consumption is the final *goal* of the theory. So the theory is ahistorical through and through. It is a solution to a problem generated by axiomatic *nature* of man. The Sraffian theoretical framework is circular. It is interested in the question of *reproduction*-- consumption is simply a moment in the reproduction of the system. Ajit's anthropomorphic wording, which suggests the bizarre notion that theories, i.e. formal analytical structures, can somehow *themselves* have "goals" and "interests" (as if my copy of _Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities_ could express an "interest" in going out to lunch), effectively illustrates my point that the differences he cites between the two systems have mostly to do with the "goals" and "interests" of their respective adherents, not with the systems themselves. It is nonsense to suggest that consumption is the "goal" of the Walrasian framework, since this suggests that "theories" can have thoughts and feelings. But even if they could, consumption is no more or less the "goal" of the Walrasian framework itself than it is for the Sraffian. It is true in both cases that production takes place, and that production is necessary for consumption. It is true in both cases that if people did not consume, production would be unnecessary. ___- Ajit: That's very smart of you Gil, and my hat's off to you for that! Any reader with minimum sympathey would understand what I'm saying there; which is that the GE theoretical paradigm is rooted in human subjectivity. The purpose of production is considered to be consumption, and not accumulation. This is a theoretical, and not just an ideological, difference between the two theories. People produce in order to consume and people consume in order to produce are not the same thing. As Marx said, accumulation for accumulation sake; production for production sake is the reason behind capitalist production. M-C-M' is necessarily a circular circuit. And this is what is reflected in the title of Sraffa's book, 'Production of Commodities by means of Commodities'. _ Gil: Thus it is historical through and through, since it does not allow the framework to be draged into a mythical origin or the begining. Again, there is nothing about the formal Sraffian framework *itself* which is any more or less "historical" than the Walrasian system, with the important difference that since the Sraffian framework ignores the operation of time in market exchange (by Ajit's own advertisement), it ignores this particular slice of "history." And again, in no relevant sense does the Walrasian system deal in "mythic origins". ___ Ajit: What is this "formal Sraffian framework *itself*", which no Sraffian has ever heard off? There is no such thing. In the very Preface of PCMC Sraffa says: "The investigation is concerned exclusively with such properties of an economic system as do not depend on changes in the scale of production or in the proportions of 'factors'. This standpoint, which is that of the old classical economists from Adam Smith to Ricardo, has been submerged and forgotten since the advent of the 'marginal' method." Sraffa's reading of classical theory suggested to him that classical theory divided itself into three parts: a theory of distribution, a theory of value or prices, and a theory of accumulation. He believed in Ricardo's dictum that the subject matter of economics is so complex that it does not lend itself to a long chain of deductive reasoning. Only short chains of deductive reasoning could be applied. Thus the connections between the three departments of the theory cannot be established by some functional relations of quantitative nature. Their relationships are qualitative and overdetermined in nature, to use an Althusserian term. Sraffa's price system was designed to establish the classical theory of prices, which was independent of human subjectivity, and dependent on distribution determined in a socio-historical context. This price theory also proved that the neoclassical theory based on long chain of deductive reasoning was flawed. So your talk of a "formal Sraffian model" is simple nonsense. __ Gil: Now, my question is this: Gil, do you think that a skilled man can always turn a straight line into a circle? Ah, a riddle. I can do no better than respond with riddles of equal meaning and relevance
[PEN-L:9770] Re: Rethinking Marxism conference
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Several people on PEN-L were at the conference and will undoubtedly offer different perspectives, but the bottom line is that a bunch of orthodox marxists were upset that suggestions from speakers were not the same as the answers offered by orthodox marxists. Because we know that orthodox marxism has all the answers. oh well. Now Blair, I knew you were a partisan, but I thought you were a fair guy. First of all, the most prominent "orthodox Marxist" dissenters were not quite the dinosaurs your use of that epithet implies - the most prominent was a young Indian woman who's a grad student in English at Cornell, who, among other things, argues that the picutre painted of "orthodox Marxists" by pomos is highly inaccurate. She cites, for example, vigorous debates within Indian Marxism about issues like nationality and gender of just the sort that pomos flatter themselves into thinking they originated. And second, there was a great deal of discontent about the makeup of the plenary panels, which were *all* - to replicate this binary that we're all playing with even though we're all too sophisticated to fall prey to such devious dyads - partisan pomos. A panel inspired by Alan Sokal consisting of Vandana Shiva and Sandra Harding isn't likely to offer any real exchange of views, is it? Especially when you have Harding, who seems from what I've read and heard of her to be a bit of a fool, flickering her fingers ceilingward to evoke the "hole in the atmosphere, up there, you know." Or Judith Butler, who is certainly no fool, denouncing "neoconservative Marxists" in a mode of pure caricature. Or Roger Burbach slamming me, without offering any evidence or argument in his support. There was also a lot of discontent that Etienne Balibar, who was supposed to be having an exchange on race with Cornel West, gassed on for about 90 minutes with no exchange in sight. The one-sided makeup of the plenaries was proof, I think, that postmodernism has hardened into the kind of, dare I say it, hegemonic orthodoxy that it fancies itself a critique of. Fortunately, there were enough dissenters in the audience and on the smaller panels to make the conference an interesting one. Too bad the plenary organizers took any criticism of their work as personal insults. Doug -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 250 W 85 St New York NY 10024-3217 USA +1-212-874-4020 voice +1-212-874-3137 fax email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html
[PEN-L:9797] Re: Rethinking Marxism conference
What a romantic account! I don't think anybody in their right mind came to the Amherst conference looking for an activist focus. The conferences have been around long enough for people to know what's up. Back in the late 1980s a friend of mine who was active in Sister Cities Projects and who worked as a nurse went up to the conference (it might have been the first) and returned with the observation that she did not understand a single word that anybody was saying. Pretty soon the word got out. Activists stayed home. So as this filtering process started to take place, the people who did make the trek *understood* what the conference was about. It was an academic conference not that much different from MLA conferences, etc. This conference was a gathering of the post-Marxist tribe. Every graduate student in America who was into Althusser, Zizek, Bourdieu, etc. would have to consider putting money aside for hotel and transportation costs. Later in hotel rooms people would drink Jack Daniels from the bottle and gossip about goings-on in the groves of academe. What happened in December 1996 was unexpected. A whole number of people, possibly a majority of the conference attendees, came with a theoretical approach to Marxism that was much more in line with what I call classical Marxism. People like Ellen Meiksins Wood, John Bellamy Foster, Doug Henwood and Meera Nanda have been carving out a space for this current for a few years now. When graduate students and louts like me came up to the conference with an identification with this current, we clashed with the post-Marxists. The clash could have been avoided if the organizers had the good sense to not have such lopsided plenaries. That they lacked such good sense reminds me of the public relations failure of Social Text after the Sokal Affair. It became tempting for Andrew Ross et al to label Sokal as an enemy of multiculturalism rather than to engage with his ideas. Likewise, it became easier for the Amherst conference organizers to view the disruptions from the floor as evidence of intolerant behavior on the part of others rather than their own exclusionary practices. Louis Proyect Blair Sandler [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:9796] US Steel and Finance Capital
Tavis and others brought up the case of U.S. Steel. Many of the great industrial organizations were built by industrialists, whose main interest was industry. Carnegie was a sharper, but he was still very interested in making steel at the lowest possible cost. Over time, many of these became more financially oriented, erasing the distinction between finance and industrial capital. Today U.S. Steel is USX, you can guess what the x stands for. Here is a short section from my End of Economics book dealing with the transformation of U.S. Steel. In the midst of the Great Depression, the editors of "Fortune magazine reported: ##Now there are two possible ways to look at a steel plant or an ore mine. One is as an investment that must be protected. The other is as an instrument of production, to be cherished only so long as it cannot be replaced by a more efficient instrument. The first may be called the banker's point of view; the second, the industrialist's. [Anon. 1936, p. 170] According to the investigators at Fortune, United States Steel "has always been a management with a financial rather than an industrial turn of mind" (Anon., p. 63). This perspective reflected the origins of the corporation. "The Steel Corporation was founded by financiers, has been dominated ever since by financially-minded men" (ibid., p. 170). While many industries used the expansive conditions of the 1920s to develop improved technologies, the management of United States Steel chose a different track. As a result: ##the chief energies of the men who guided the Corporation were directed to preventing deterioration in the investment value of the enormous properties confided to their care. To achieve this, they consistently tried to freeze the steel at present, or better yet, past levels Any radical change in steel technology would render worthless millions of dollars of the Corporation's plant investment. [ibid., pp. 170 and 173] While firms in less concentrated industries attempted to rationalize their operations and prune costs, the financially-oriented management of United States Steel was intent on maintaining the status quo. Perhaps Hoover, the engineer, realized that protecting the corporate sector from competitive forces would allow more firms to emulate United States Steel, making an economic disaster inevitable. Even the Great Depression was insufficient to make this firm change its ways. Over time, the firm's stodgy, hidebound management found itself humbled both by foreign competition and aggressive mini-mills. Management changed the corporate name to USX and considered retreating from the steel altogether. Perhaps, United States Steel represented the ultimate verdict on Morgan and the corporatists. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:9784] Re: Globaloney
D Shniad wrote: What follows is a response to Doug's call to specify a bit more what we're talking about when we compare the relative magnitude of financial speculation to that of trade and other economic activity. (Caveat: I don't work with or have access to trade stats; what follows is the seat-of-the- pants calculation that I've done based on readings about speculation, etc. I invite those with access to the stats to respond.) The IMF estimates that foreign exchange transactions are more than $1 trillion daily, while trade volumes are in the $3.5 trillion ballpark annually. If trade volumes are 5% of the total of the world's domestic output (a *very* conservative estimate), then the aggregate of the world's real output would be in the neighbourhood of $70 trillion per year. Actually, gross global product was around $25 trillion in 1994, according to the World Bank, making trade around 14% of output. Let's look at some export/GDP ratios for 1980 and 1994 for evidence of some globalizing "revolution." Of course it's always possible the revolution started after 1994; someone check with Ed Herman on this. EXPORTS AS PERCENT OF GDP 1980 1994 "developing" countries23% 22% Latin Amer/Caribb 16 15 Brazil 98 Mexico11 13 S Africa36 24 S Korea 34 36 Canada28 30 Japan 149 Norway47 33 Sweden29 33 UK27 25 U.S. 10 10 source: World Development Report 1996, table 13 (If trade volumes are a somewhat larger portion of domestic production in the aggregate, then the world's aggregate production is somewhat smaller.) By comparison, aggregate international financial transactions come in at more than $300 trillion per year. By these calculations, the aggregate of international *financial* transactions are more than four times the dollar magnitude of *real* production. It was on the basis of this observation that I made the statement that speculative activity had dwarfed the activity of productive capital. No one disputes that there's lots of furious, pointless, even destructive speculative activity going on. How, precisely, is it malignant, though? Merely describing its magnitude is not to make the case. Doug -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 250 W 85 St New York NY 10024-3217 USA +1-212-874-4020 voice +1-212-874-3137 fax email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html
[PEN-L:9787] re: Environmental Economics
Actually what I find useful and interesting about the Coase Theorem (not really a theorem, BTW) is that it shows how hard it is to have the conditions under which a free market will internalize externalities easily. So, positive externalities between two neighboring parties, such as orchard owners and beekeepers, are easily negotiated, big whoop. But most real world externalities involve lots of parties over larger areas with confused property situtations. Coase says this is no go, and this appears to be the rule, not the exception. Barkley Rosser On Thu, 1 May 1997 13:14:12 -0700 (PDT) Robin Hahnel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I second Jim Devine's message about neoclassicals and the environment in its entirety. The astounding misinterpretation of what the Coase theorem actually tells any reasonable analyst about the likelihood of environmental efficiency being achieved through voluntary and private negotiations of polluters and pollution victims is an excellent case in point. A reasonable reading of the theorem AND ITS INCREDIBLE LIST OF NECESSARY ASSUMPTIONS gives more than enough theoretical reasons for anyone who cares about the environ- ment to immediately embrace a government role! -- Rosser Jr, John Barkley [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:9790] Re: Rethinking Marxism conference
Stephen Cullenberg wrote: Yet, we are not, and never have pretended to be, as ecumenical as say URPE and the RRPE. This then is Rethinking? My first reaction to the conference was too much Re, not enough thinking, but now I'm even questioning the Re. A nonecumenical group of people who agree on fundamental things and view plenaries as a form of preaching to a mixed crowd of converted and unconverted? Did the presence of a large critical minority seem something worthy of ackknowledging as something other than a personal attack? This is exactly what I meant by the plenaries having shown signs of hardening into orthodoxy, which as the postmodernists have taught us well, is defined through exclusion. Is the devotion to polyvocality just another empty signifier? Doug -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 250 W 85 St New York NY 10024-3217 USA +1-212-874-4020 voice +1-212-874-3137 fax email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html
[PEN-L:9785] re: Environmental Economics
I second Jim Devine's message about neoclassicals and the environment in its entirety. The astounding misinterpretation of what the Coase theorem actually tells any reasonable analyst about the likelihood of environmental efficiency being achieved through voluntary and private negotiations of polluters and pollution victims is an excellent case in point. A reasonable reading of the theorem AND ITS INCREDIBLE LIST OF NECESSARY ASSUMPTIONS gives more than enough theoretical reasons for anyone who cares about the environ- ment to immediately embrace a government role!
[PEN-L:9799] Re: US Steel and Finance Capital
I have some queries since I am wriing a book on technology and the steel industry (1950-1996). See below. Anthony P. D'Costa Associate Professor Senior Fellow Comparative International Development Department of Economics University of WashingtonNational University of Singapore 1103 A Street 10 Kent Ridge Crescent Tacoma, WA 98402 USASingapore 119260 On Thu, 1 May 1997, Michael Perelman wrote: Tavis and others brought up the case of U.S. Steel. Many of the great industrial organizations were built by industrialists, whose main interest was industry. Carnegie was a sharper, but he was still very interested in making steel at the lowest possible cost. Over time, many of these became more financially oriented, erasing the distinction between finance and industrial capital. Today U.S. Steel is USX, you can guess what the x stands for. Here is a short section from my End of Economics book dealing with the transformation of U.S. Steel. In the midst of the Great Depression, the editors of "Fortune magazine reported: ##Now there are two possible ways to look at a steel plant or an ore mine. One is as an investment that must be protected. The other is as an instrument of production, to be cherished only so long as it cannot be replaced by a more efficient instrument. The first may be called the banker's point of view; the second, the industrialist's. [Anon. 1936, p. 170] According to the investigators at Fortune, United States Steel "has always been a management with a financial rather than an industrial turn of mind" (Anon., p. 63). This perspective reflected the origins of the corporation. "The Steel Corporation was founded by financiers, has been dominated ever since by financially-minded men" (ibid., p. 170). While many industries used the expansive conditions of the 1920s to develop improved technologies, the management of United States Steel chose a different track. Can you give me some specific examples of what technologies we are talking about? The basic argument is correct i.e. the attitude toward technological change (something that happened in the 1950s, BOF versus OHF). But "sunk costs" are important to the direction of technological change for a firm. As a result: ##the chief energies of the men who guided the Corporation were directed to preventing deterioration in the investment value of the enormous properties confided to their care. To achieve this, they consistently tried to freeze the steel at present, or better yet, past levels Any radical change in steel technology would render worthless millions of dollars of the Corporation's plant investment. [ibid., pp. 170 and 173] While firms in less concentrated industries attempted to rationalize their operations and prune costs, the financially-oriented management of United States Steel was intent on maintaining the status quo. Perhaps Hoover, the engineer, realized that protecting the corporate sector from competitive forces would allow more firms to emulate United States Steel, making an economic disaster inevitable. Even the Great Depression was insufficient to make this firm change its ways. Over time, the firm's stodgy, hidebound management found itself humbled both by foreign competition and aggressive mini-mills. Management changed the corporate name to USX and considered retreating from the steel altogether. Perhaps, United States Steel represented the ultimate verdict on Morgan and the corporatists. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 916-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[PEN-L:9798] Re: MAI and Foreign Control in Canada
Shawgi Tell noted a couple of days ago that foreign control of corporate revenues in Canada rose by 1.3 points to 29.8% of the total in 1995, and that this was the second largest yearly rise ever recorded. I don't know Shawgi's point of view on this question, but the implication of his observation is consistant with the usual conception of Canada as a semi-colony which is slipping further under US domination as a result of 'free' trade agreements. The **nationalist** opposition to MAI that I questioned last week is also (partially) rooted in such approaches. What does the data on foreign control really say about this issue? I prefer to argue this using data on *assets* (a stock variable) rather than *revenues* (a flow variable), since the latter is heavily influenced by the business cycle and foreign controlled firms are concentrated in sectors with higher revenue-to-asset ratios. Statistics Canada's figure for foreign control of all corporate assets in Canada rose to 21% in 1995. This increase restored foreign control to the 21% rate previously reached in 1990, and is only up 0.5 percentage points since 1988 (the first year for which this data for *all* industries is available). In other words there has not been much of a change. While foreign control rose in *non-financial* sectors to 24.3%, this was partially offset by a slight drop to 17.6% in *finance and insurance* sectors. Nor does the data on *US* control of *all* corporate assets indicate any great increase attributable to the FTA or NAFTA, at least so far. While the 11.4% US control of all corporate assets in Canada in 1995 is a notable increase over 1994 (when it was 10.8%), it is only 0.4 points higher than in 1988, the year before the FTA took effect. For most of this period it has been lower than before 'free' trade. Perhaps most important, and contrary to the usual assumptions, the level of foreign control in Canada has **declined substantially** over the last few decades. The data series on foreign control of *all* industries only goes back to 1988, but if we assume the trend here has been similar to that for the *non-financial* half of the corporate economy (for which the earlier data is available), then the current range of foreign (and US) control in Canada is lower than it has been for about half a century! Foreign control of *non-financial* industries peaked in the early 1970s, but Canadian capitalists have regained about one-third of all non-financial assets in Canada since then, and they have retained the decisive control they have always had over the *financial* half of the economy. One measure that highlights the strength of Canadian capital is that Statistics Canada reports that in 1992 they controlled 96.5% of the assets of the *25 largest enterprises* (corporations grouped under common control) in Canada. The rate of foreign control for *all* industries in Canada cited above (and that for the largest 25 enterprises) is considerably lower than the *non-financial* rates Canadian nationalists have traditionally cited for their purposes. However, it is true foreign control is higher in Canada than in most - but not all - major OECD countries. Other countries do not collect data on foreign control comparable to that cited above, but if we use OECD data on the ratio of the stock of (inward) FDI to GDP as a basis, foreign control in the UK (!!) and the Netherlands is **higher** than in Canada. Further, the level of inward FDI should be considered in tandem with that of outward FDI. *Canadian* capitalists hold more FDI *abroad* per Canadian than do their competitors in the US, Japan, Germany and France relative to the latters' populations. In recent years, the flow of Canadian FDI to the US has *exceeded* US FDI coming into Canada. I think this is a pretty impressive record, and to bring it back to the MAI issue, one that makes we wonder why we would want to offer Canadian capitalists national protection from their foreign competitors. I live in Canada so I've concentrated on the usual suggestion that protectionism is more appropriate here than in other imperialist countries. Since I'm working on a paper on this point I would appreciate any comments and criticism on at least ***this aspect*** of the debate. Bill Burgess University of B.C. [EMAIL PROTECTED] home (604) 255-5957 fax c/o (604) 822-6150
[PEN-L:9786] Re: Rethinking Marxism conference
Just a brief response to Jim's initial question on the Rethinking Marxism conference. I was one of the co-organizers of the conference, and the one mainly responsible for the conference program, of some 190 panels. There is no question in my mind that the conference attracts mainly academics doing all types of critical analysis, from radical political economy to semiotic cultural studies, and often combining them both. There are very few "activists" who come. Whether that is good or bad is not obvious to me. It seems to me that there is no one best way to organize on the Left these days and we all need to do what we can, in whatever ways we can. (BTW, I know that academics are also activists and activists are also academics - I not concerned with this finer point). In a similar way, the conference was both open and ecumenical, while also rather partisan (which I suppose you can pejoratively call exclusionary, as some have). We found space for any and everyone who wanted to present a paper, panel, performance, art, etc., to do so. But, yes, the plenaries were decided on by the organizers, and really why shouldn't it be this way? Afterall, the conference was organized and sponsored by Rethinking Marxism and therefore might well reflect the ideas, positions, and biases of its editors. RM is a journal open to a wide array of ideas concerned with Marxism and related fields, and we have published with a wide diversity. Yet, we are not, and never have pretended to be, as ecumenical as say URPE and the RRPE. We have been a journal with a partisan, yet always shifting set of postionings, as new ideas push and pull Marxism in various directions. But one thing has remained a priority, and that is the RM's interest in developing and fostering non-essentialist forms of discourse as related to Marxism (whether you want to call that postmodernism or not). So, as I have heard some criticize the conference for being exclusionary (I prefer partisan), I remain a little puzzled. The conference was extrememly open with regard to conference program, but what exactly did people expect coming to a conference sponsored by Rethinking Marxism??? Afterall, that is what we are about, and we don't disguise our intentions as others on the Left have recently felt the need to do. Instead, I would like to hear discussion or criticism about the quality of the papers (and of course many have already commented on this), or was there a poor turnout (which of course was the opposite case), what was the sense of interest and excitement (extremely vigorous), did people make new connections across disciplines and internationally (many), or even did Balibar have anything to say, even though he (unfortunately) spoke too long, and so on. I am sorry the conference was not exactly what some people had hoped for, or wanted, or even at times seem to demand. We all do what we can and make the types of intereventions we are able to and that we feel will have some impact, however limited that might be. I wish that we on the Left would demand less of each other about how things should be, or feel the need to entrap each other in faux pas's, and show a little more graciousness and understanding, because we are all working very hard in these inauspicious times and no one I know has yet found the unique way to change this world for the better. Steve C. p.s. For a full description of our conference program, post-conference reactions from the international press, and a lot about RM, check out our new web site: http://www.nd.edu/~remarx/ *** Stephen Cullenberg office: (909) 787-5037, ext. 1573 Department of Economics fax: (909) 787-5685 University of California[EMAIL PROTECTED] Riverside, CA 92521 http://www.ucr.edu/CHSS/depts/econ/sc.htm
[PEN-L:9795] Re: game theory torture
Recently Devine writes as follows: The CIA's prescriptions, in sum, are to mess with the prisoners' minds (and, if need be, their bodies) in order to _create_ the textbook prisoners' dilemma, to encourage each prisoner to "defect," to turn in his or her comrades. The textbook treatment _assumes_ that the prisoners are already atomistic individuals and there is _no need_ to plumb the depths of their psyches in order to make them that way. In fact, the vast majority of economists reject the need to study the depths of psychology at all; instead, they simply assume that people "maximize utility," having no sense of honor or morality, solidarity or self-esteem. It treats the fact that many if not most prisoners do not defect as a "paradox" rather than as showing up the severe limitations of the theory. COMMENT: There are two competing views of the non-repeating PD. While there is a standard argument that concludes that the dominant and rational strategy is to defect,(the Dominance argument) there is a so-called symmetry argument that can be traced back at least to Anatol Rapoport in FIGHTS GAMES AND DEBATES (1960). This argument has been elaborated by L Davis in Prisoners, Paradox, and Rationality. AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY 14: 319-27.) A somewhat different argument but equally critical of the standard argument is McClennen E. Prisoners Dilemma and Resolute Choice. In Campbell R. and Sowden L.(eds) PARADOXES OF RATIONALITY AND CO-operation UBC Press 1985. The basic idea behind the symmetry argument is that each prisoner being rational and in the same situation will see that the dominance argument leads to a sub-optimal result FOR BOTH as contrasted with their both remaining silent. THerefore as rational agents they will resolutely choose, to use McLennen's term, not to defect in order to improve the result for them both. This avoids the paradoxical result of the traditional argument in which allegedly rational choice leads to sub-optimal outcomes for both participants. I agree with Davis and McLennen but not with Rapoport because Rapoport thinks that somehow altruism is involved. ALtruism is not involved at all. The argument works even for rational egoists who have no interest per se in the welfare of others. However, when it is necessary to co-operate to maximize the welfare of each it is rational to do so. I have an unpublished (but presented) paper that argues against the dominance argument, and also Parfit's(REASONS AND PERSONS 1984) critique of ethical egoism as self-defeating as shown by the PD. I think the PD shows no such thing. I also think that Gauthier(MORALS BY AGREEMENT 1986) is incorrect in thinking that unconstrained maximisers would choose defection as the rational strategy in PD contexts. Of course many of the things discussed in the literature as PD's have nothing to do with PD's. For example the position of polluters who have no motive to install pollution devices in a competitive market even though this might advance the public welfare. In these cases all polluters defecting from the welfare producing policy does not on the whole hurt them, so there is nothing at all paradoxical involved. One case that is like that of the PD is that involving manufacture of aerosols without fluorocarbon propellants. If everyone did it, it would cheaper for all manufacturers, and in that sense in all their interests, but no one manufacturer will do it because they do not want to give up the market that still exists for the earlier propellant. Manufacturers did not oppose a ban on fluorocarbon propellants since it would provide assurance that no firm could defect and capture a market niche. CHeers, Ken Hanly Cheers, Ken Hanly
[PEN-L:9800] Trying to keep focused
Doug, I started my part of this exchange by saying that the magnitude of activity of speculative capital had dwarfed the magnitude of productive capital. You challenged that statement. In your latest response to my response, you provide information that confirms that that magnitude of speculative to productive activity is much larger than I had tentatively hypothesized. Then you provide data on export/GDP ratios, presumably responding to an argument that someone else was raising. Then you apply the coup de grace: "No one disputes that there's lots of furious, pointless, even destructive speculative activity going on. How, precisely, is it malignant, though? Merely describing its magnitude is not to make the case." Forgive me, but aren't we quibbling a bit here? What is the analytical importance of the difference between the terms "destructive" and "malignant"? I was making what I thought was a rather straight forward point: that this manic speculative activity of such a huge magnitude was a symptom of the fact that the power of finance capital had overtaken that of productive capital, thanks at least in part to the breakdown of the internation regulatory mechanism that was Bretton Woods. Quick question: are we in agreement or disagreement here? Cheers, Sid The IMF estimates that foreign exchange transactions are more than $1 trillion daily, while trade volumes are in the $3.5 trillion ballpark annually. If trade volumes are 5% of the total of the world's domestic output (a *very* conservative estimate), then the aggregate of the world's real output would be in the neighbourhood of $70 trillion per year. Actually, gross global product was around $25 trillion in 1994, according to the World Bank, making trade around 14% of output. Let's look at some export/GDP ratios for 1980 and 1994 for evidence of some globalizing "revolution." Of course it's always possible the revolution started after 1994; someone check with Ed Herman on this. EXPORTS AS PERCENT OF GDP 1980 1994 "developing" countries23% 22% Latin Amer/Caribb 16 15 Brazil 98 Mexico11 13 S Africa36 24 S Korea 34 36 Canada28 30 Japan 149 Norway47 33 Sweden29 33 UK27 25 U.S. 10 10 source: World Development Report 1996, table 13 (If trade volumes are a somewhat larger portion of domestic production in the aggregate, then the world's aggregate production is somewhat smaller.) By comparison, aggregate international financial transactions come in at more than $300 trillion per year. By these calculations, the aggregate of international *financial* transactions are more than four times the dollar magnitude of *real* production. It was on the basis of this observation that I made the statement that speculative activity had dwarfed the activity of productive capital. No one disputes that there's lots of furious, pointless, even destructive speculative activity going on. How, precisely, is it malignant, though? Merely describing its magnitude is not to make the case. Doug
[PEN-L:9780] Re: Globaloney
What follows is a response to Doug's call to specify a bit more what we're talking about when we compare the relative magnitude of financial speculation to that of trade and other economic activity. (Caveat: I don't work with or have access to trade stats; what follows is the seat-of-the- pants calculation that I've done based on readings about speculation, etc. I invite those with access to the stats to respond.) The IMF estimates that foreign exchange transactions are more than $1 trillion daily, while trade volumes are in the $3.5 trillion ballpark annually. If trade volumes are 5% of the total of the world's domestic output (a *very* conservative estimate), then the aggregate of the world's real output would be in the neighbourhood of $70 trillion per year. (If trade volumes are a somewhat larger portion of domestic production in the aggregate, then the world's aggregate production is somewhat smaller.) By comparison, aggregate international financial transactions come in at more than $300 trillion per year. By these calculations, the aggregate of international *financial* transactions are more than four times the dollar magnitude of *real* production. It was on the basis of this observation that I made the statement that speculative activity had dwarfed the activity of productive capital. Unless there is a hole in this reasoning, it should be possible to compare this ratio, which is more than 4:1, with the comparable ratio in the 1920s. Sid Shniad PS -- None of this takes into account the magnitude of speculative activity that occurs *within* borders. D Shniad wrote: The growth in the speculative power of finance capital, the magnitude of which dwarfs that of productive capital, has increased enormously over the past 20+ years and undermined the mechanisms that were put in place over the postwar period to prevent a recurrence of the disaster of the speculative '20s followed by the deflationary '30s. People say these things all the time without detailing the relations between "speculative" and real activity - I think they assume that Keynes was right about those links in chapter 12 of the GT, which he wasn't really. Are you talking about pure financial speculation, the undermining of the social safety net, the undermining of the financial safety net (which happened in the 1980s, but I have my doubts about how weak it is in the 1990s), the leveraging up of balance sheets (true of U.S. households in the 1990s, but not of U.S. corporations, which have reduced debt since the 1980s), capital flight punishing any left-of-center government, or what? Doug -- Doug Henwood Left Business Observer 250 W 85 St New York NY 10024-3217 USA +1-212-874-4020 voice +1-212-874-3137 fax email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html
[PEN-L:9802] May Day
May I wish you all an affirmative May Day (a happy May Day would be a bit much). There are still so many out there that are suffering from the ravages of capitalism that they deserve our sympathy, but more than that, our organized help. At the moment we are battling the ravages of nature, the flood of the century. But when that battle is over, let us battle the deprivations of inequality, poverty and homelessness! Paul Phillips, Economics, University of Manitoba
